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| Yes | 27% | 124 votes | Total: 454 votes | |
| No | 73% | 330 votes |
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Add to FavoritesShould the allies have bombed Auschwitz in world war 2?
They knew about it, and they knew that people were going there to die, maybe they did not know its true horror, but they had a pretty good idea, so why didn't they do something about it?
You have to remember the Auschwitz was deep inside of German controlled territory. The allies were looking at a nearby factory to bomb but not the actual site of Auschwitz.
There were two methods of bombing. one was a precision bomb, this was dropped from a smaller aircraft, it was relatively precise (for the 1940s at least) but it had to be dropped by a small aircraft, these aircrafts did not have much of a range. flying one all the way into Poland to drop a bomb was a risky venture.
The other method was carpet bombing, this was done usually by a fleet of B-17s or some similar plane, they dropped hundreds of bombs in the hopes that some would hit the target. these planes had a long enough range to reach Auschwitz, but their precision was laughable. They could have bombed Auschwitz this way, but they likely would have killed all of the prisoners there as well as the Nazis. This would defeat the whole purpose of bombing Auschwitz in the first place.
They could have bombed the rail lines going to the camp, but those could be replaced quickly and would not have been a very good solution. with no trains then the Nazis might have just made the prisoners walk to the camps, no matter the distance.
So the options were rather grim, any bombing raid onto Auschwitz was likely to fail or cause more harm than good.
As far as I am concerned the allies did what was right, they realized that the best way to shut down Auschwitz was to defeat the Nazis.
it is interesting to note that Auschwitz was bombed by accident. when the allies bombed a nearby factory a few bombs went astray and hit parts of Auschwitz, more Jews were killed than Nazis. i think this is indicative of any bombing campaign against Auschwitz.
Something else to think about is, what if the allies had bombed Auschwitz and wiped it off of the map, killing almost everyone in it. Then we would be sitting here talking about how awful of a thing it was that they would bomb a camp like that where innocent people were being kept.
For the most part it was a lose/lose situation, i think that the allies did the right thing though.
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No
In spite of the excellent articles colleagues have written on the YES side, I find it almost impossible to conceive of bombing Auschwitz or any one of the other 23 death camps.
A bit of history, in which you'll pardon mistakes of memory.
In 1944-45, two colleagues of mine, Larry Donovan, and Albert Roy Clarke, all three of us seamen in the U.S. Navy, all aged 19, and all three of us assigned to guard the Combined Operations War Plotting Room. All three of us were friends and living in the same London apartment, shared the 24 hours of guarding not only that huge room, but also across the hall, the quarters and person of Dwight David Eisenhower. (After the war, I worked as his international mailman, as a courier).
I usually had the 12 midnight to 8 a.m. shift, and Ike was a nighthawk so he came often to sit while I fixed coffee at 3 a.m. after he had gone through the War Room and prepared his notes for the next day.
But about the 15th or 17th of January, 1945 (I'm not now certain) when I checked in at midnight, he was sitting by my desk with a pink flimsy paper from the special teletype which reported from the Russian front. Again I apologize for ignorance or loss of memory.
The message was from Russian General____________ and asked Ike to come to a flying field near Auschwitz, and see the most awful horror of humankind.
President Roosevelt had FORBIDDEN Eisenhower to put himself in harms way, and above all, not to stray into enemy terrtory. But Ike was both bull-headed and curious. He asked me if I was willing to take a risk with him and of course I was excited.
We had captured a Nazi Storch four-place airplane, painted white with Red Cross insignia, and bearing the other Nazi numerals, etc. Ike wired the Russian general through the spy network that we would arrive in a white enemy plane, please advise every one!
I was issued a Thompson sub-machine gun, and off we went at 3 a.m., four of us, a pilot, Ike, his colonel, and I.
We landed at a clandestine airport where lights were fired for just long enough to get us down. It was dawn. We were 18 miles from Auschwitz.
Ike, the pilot, and the colonel had breakfast with General__________ and I with the Russian guards.( my brain wants me to say the General was VICHITSKY but I'm not certain). After breakfast,in a large truck, Ike in front with the General and driver, we went to Auschwitz. Remember the gate withthe sign ARBEIT MACHT FREI (Labor will free you!) It was open and I was sent in with a dozen Russian soldiers to reconnoiter.
There were about 200 inmates about, skeletal, weak and staring and dressed in uniforms like the Georgia chain gangs, but they said nothing, and watched us curiously. The Russians has started a program to get the most sickly to hospital and to feed the weak and dying. I THINK the liberation had taken place two days previously.
Eventually, we went back and got Ike, his colonel, the pilot, and the General and his entourage. The General's bodyguard motioned me to the front, and we led them to a spot where were piled 350,000 bodies of men, women and children, mostly Jewish.(WE, of course, didn't KNOW that number at that moment) The stench was unbelievable. Planks had been fixed so we could go near the middle of the pile. Two dead Nazis still holding weapons for killimg the innocents were on the side of the monstrous scene.
Ike went to the front, and turned to all of us, tears streaming down his face: "Today," he said in an emotional tone, "We are ALL Jews!"
We circumnavigated Switzerland going back. Ike did not speak. We went to bed and tried to sleep.
As a matter of fact I was PROBABLY the first American to be in Auschwitz, but David Dwight Eisenhower has that historic honor!. There were a half-dozen American Jews among the survivors, who had been caught much earlier before the war visiting relatives.
Here are the reasons we did not bomb Auschwitz. It was forbidden by both Russians and French and English and us, especially President Roosevelt. It might have killed a few of the nastier Nazis, but at least 1700 Jews, 270 Gypsies, 38 Jehovahs Witnesses and others would have been exterminated. Look at the records of some survivor who have come to the United States as children, and who are or were distinguished physicists, educators, historians, etc.
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