by Yosef Shapiro

Created on: July 28, 2009

The allies most definitely should have bombed Auschwitz during World War II. Auschwitz was a factory of death. The sole purpose of Auschwitz was to kill as many innocent souls as was possible.

Really, the main focus behind this question, I believe is if it would have been a productive or useful move to bomb Auschwitz. Many have argued that bombing this infamous concentration camp during World War II would not have prevented it from operating. Also, many feel that the Nazis would have retaliated by killing even more people.

But, I feel that this is not a good answer. Doing nothing about this issue was one of the big moral failures of World War II. By not taking any action, the Nazis got to implement their final solution with impunity. Bombing Auschwitz, even once, would have sent the message that the allies would not tolerate this sort of action on the part of the Nazis.

The bombing would not have halted the Nazis. But, it would have put them on notice that the world was watching and more importantly that the world was willing to take action to halt their abhorrent behavior.

I am not sure that the Nazis would have wanted to make the concentration camps a focus for the world community during the war. Also, if they had to keep rebuilding the camp, where would they get the materials? Don't forget, there were severe shortages of many materials during the war. If the Nazis suspected that the allies were going to make bombing Auschwitz a priority, the Nazis would have had to devote manpower and materials to the project. Both of the aforementioned commodities were scarce during the war. As crazy as the Nazi leadership was, I do not think that they would have made a decision to devote all of these resources if they believed that it was a losing cause. The only way to convince them that it was a losing cause was to repeatedly bomb Auschwitz.

The other argument commonly presented is that the Nazis would have forced Jewish slave labor to repair everything or simply kill more Jews. I think that the allies should have realized that Jews were going to die anyway and if they bombed Auschwitz at least there was a chance at life for some of the people instead of certain death if nothing was attempted.

It was indeed an issue of moral cowardice on the part of the allies that prevented them from taking action.

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