Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Avoid anti-Bush opinions here, focus on the real issue.
Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz - 13 Jan 2008 - NZ Herald: World / International News

Should the Allies have bombed Nazi death camps?

By early 1944, they were all within range, and information of what had been going on had been available for some time thanks to the Polish resistance (especially Witold Pilecki, who got himself sent to Auschwitz to find out what was going on, and then escaped).

Bombing would have killed tens of thousands of prisoners - but would have shut down the camps for possibly the rest of the war.

Thoughts?

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Well, it's a tough question to answer. On the one hand it could have killed thousands of prisoners, but on the other hand it also could have sparred thousands more. Also, those that would be killed in the bombing were likely close to death anyways, and were likely in excruciating pain.

Ultimately though, I don't think it could have done any good, as I don't think it would have actually shut the camps down. The Nazis would have simply killed people in other ways.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Sure, even if it didn't save lives in an immediate sense the Nazis would have had to waste bullets on getting rid of them and you'd deny them a source of labour. Harming the Nazi’s ability to make war by denying them resources would have saved some lives, which in turn would have been mainly lives in the military speeding the allied advance thus saving even more lives by shortening the war.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

That is a tough call. It depends on how early in the war. If you took it out at the beginning, then yes. Later in the war then I dunno.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

It would have to have been late '43/early '44 at the earliest.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Well then I really don't know. If it was early, then the death of some prisoners would have saved a huge amount of lives during the course of the war.

However, you can never under estimate the Nazi's. If they couldn't have used Auschwitz (due to its destruction) I'm sure they would have found some other method of carrying out their destruction

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Killing the prisoners there, just isn't American and I'd say that if you ask them they'd be happily saying they're glad to be alive today, despite the suffering they went through.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I think it would have killed a lot of people, bombing the death camps. It could have knocked out the gas chambers and such, but accuracy wasn't as good then as it is now. That isn't to say they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but would have hit the farmouse, silo, etc in the process. Bombing a death camp back then could have had the effect of knocking out vital food or medical stores as well as the gas chambers, etc. Then again, the Nazis in charge of the Holocaust probably wouldn't have complained too much about any bombing, killing the Jews and other minorites was their main task, Allied bombing which could have knocked out medical and food stores was of little necessity (the Nazis would not have fed or healed the Jews anyways). Though Bush (according to Condi) did mean to say bomb the rail lines leading to said death camps, and that probably would have been a better idea than bombing the camps in the first place.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Bombing wasn't accurate enough to destroy targets for a long time, especially targets that could easily be reconstructed. I think even the not so effective bombing of civilian targets would have been more effective at assuring that those camps would be liberated as early as possible.

Bombing the infrastructure would have made more sense, as Octovon said.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Sure, because the logical response to mass execution of people is the mass execution of those same people.

...

Are you kidding me?

That kind of idiot-tactic is that? I don't care if you believe in the systematics of war over the value of human life or not [I'm pointing at you, Nem ;D], that's just ridiculous. Death camps were large in number, and if they weren't killed at Auschwitz, they could have been killed elsewhere.

Seriously, that is one of the least intelligent things I've ever heard come out of Bush's mouth. Bombing a death camp just to prevent the death of other people [which it wouldn't prevent enough to justify it] is just some ill-thought of, rash decision. People like this should not be the ones leading any sort of war effort.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

The idea is that you could suspend or limit the death camps for a few months. While other methods may be reverted to, it would raise questions about the economic cost of the death camps, and at least set back the project by as long as possible.

But I agree; some people survived several years in Nazi death camps, and came out alive at their liberation. They would have been killed in a bombing raid.

Bombing infrastructure would not have been effective, as the railways were small and easily replaced, and large stations were already targets.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I think the idea was to destroy the gas chambers and crematoria, obviously there would be casualties among the prisoners (don't forget there were two camps at Auschwitz, one for extermination and one for slave labour).

Besides i think being killed in a bombing raid would be preferable to a long and slow death due to malnutrition and hard labour. How were the prisoners to know how long the war would last? Having no contact with the outside world? I'd imagine that many had resigned themselves to the fact that they would die in the camps.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Bombing infrastructure may not be the most effective thing to do, but it is still more effective than bombing wooden sheds crowded with people you're trying to save. Stations were already targets, but that doesn't mean that additional bombers wouldn't have done more damage.

Another method to increase the economic costs would have been to target those industries that were needed to keep the camps running (factories for poisonous gas, for example).

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I understand the concept, but I'm saying outright that it's a ridiculous idea. I am quite sure there could be more humane resolutions.

In Elie Wiesel's book Night, he addresses something similar to this. Yes, they did resign themselves to the fact that their lives would end inside the camp eventually. At one point in the book, as Ally planes were bombing in the distance, the were praying that the planes would come and bomb Auschwitz--with them inside. It's not a question of suffering. Obviously a quick death from an explosion would be preferable than the torturous deaths that they had been subjected to. However, the point is, it's a rash decision that is made without consideration to every human being's basic right to life in the name of war strategy.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Such as?

I understand the problem, but the concentration camps the world has seen, such as Vortuka or Sunghori, or Auschwitz (minor in comparison to the others), have epitomised human suffering in the extreme. But of course the question stretches our moral bounds, and even with the benefit of hindsight, we cannot make a clear decision.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Oh, I knew that was coming. I honestly have no idea. I mean, you can't really expect me to just churn out a solution, and I am by no means a war-strategist, nor do I make the claim to be. Not even those in power had a plan, obviously. I am interested in human rights, not winning wars. Hope you understand where I'm coming from and that doesn't hurt my argument too much?

But yeah, as I said, I do understand the suffering that they went through, and that they were hoping we'd come to bomb their camps. At that point, though, they did not believe that liberation was feasible, and it obviously was. In the end, I revert to my original statement, minus the sarcasm, that the response to the mass extermination of people is not to exterminate them ourselves under the claim that it will "slow down" the killing, and reduce their suffering.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Killing them elsewhere would have meant moving them over destroyed infrastructure, removing them as a workforce and expending extra resources in their extermination. These people were dying in mass numbers anyway, it's not like you'd really be having a massive impact on the death toll, and it costs the enemy a high price limiting their ability to make war, which is what war is about.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Moving them from camp-to-camp wasn't anything new. I seem to recall reading about a several mile run in the snow (most of them had no shoes), in which they were shot if they ran too slow.

As for them dying in mass numbers, you'd have to look at the rate of killing... Which I'm too distracted to do at the moment. They only killed the unhealthy ones that were unable to work, not those that were able to contribute their labor to the camp. Keep in mind they also had hospitals (for those suffering from dysentery, etc.), so they just didn't knock them off every second they got (though that certainly was the case in some individuals). Granted, the hospitals weren't really their to save their lives, but they were more like "waiting rooms" for the chamber.

Regardless of whether or not it would be more strategical to kill them all at once in a giant explosion, it's just a bad idea. Like I said, it's just a shallowly thought-through idea. I'm sure we could find some sort of alternative that did not involve the compromising of morals.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Of course. =p I wasn't expecting a full answer, not from you or anybody.

I think we run the risk of changing the question to "Should the Allies have attempted to alleviate the suffering of Nazi concentration camp inmates?", to which we can all comfortably say "yes" and be done with it.

With the question as it stands, we open up a new variety of questions, each just as challenging. Is an instant death preferable to a long suffering with the prospect of survival?

And not all inmates resigned themselves to death. Take the example of Wiltold Pilecki again - he volunteered to be sent to Auschwitz, arrived in 1940, and escaped in 1943. Or St Maksymillian Kolbe, who volunteered to take the place of a stranger to be starved to death. Many more survived because they refused simply to die.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I'm not a fan of Utilitarianism. :vikki:

No, definitely no. Not to mention, the Nazis would've probably found other ways to eliminate as many Jews as possible before their defeat. Judging by their fanaticism the extinction of Jews was more valuable than the war victory, so they would've rather spent remaining ammunition on the former.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Indeed, this was the case with many of them, which brings me back to my point of the human right to life. Those who wanted to die quickly would obviously just give up the will to live--it wasn't that difficult to find death in a Death Camp.

As you said, oftentimes the reason that many, if not most, survived is due solely to their will to live. While some were watching in the distance as Allied planes bombed targets in the distance, some watched passively, some watched with hope that they would come for liberation, some watched hoping that they would bomb the camp itself, and others were all to willing to run those miles, barefoot, in the snow, to escape from the camp.

[Literary note for those interested: in the book I referenced earlier, shortly after the prisoners at Auschwitz were evacuated, the camp was liberated, rather than bombed. Obviously I wasn't at the camps, but I feel this book portrays the situation from a prisoner's standpoint with great accuracy, so any WW2 fanatics interested in the human rights aspect of WW2 should check out Night.]

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Bombing the camps I wouldn't do for moral reasons. You wouldn't know for sure if you woul save lifes in the long run, not to mention the emotion of you being the one ending lifes. As other have said I would target the infratructure (railway lines etc.) and maybe the gaschambers (though that would be tricky with the accuracy they had and all so this would be very unlikely to do). That would seriously hinder the nazis, while not having you kill thousands of people.

Now if it would be garanteed that if I would save tens of thousands by killing a thousand... then it might become interesting. But evne then it would be a very difficult moral choice. I... do not know... I do't wish to kill innocents, though neither do I wish to let a murderer continue with it's job when I can stop him... I would probably again chose to target the infrastructre and such and thus try to reduce the number of souls reach the camp.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I remember watching a documentary about this from TV. I don't think it was specifically about Auschwitz, but death camps anyway.

IIRC they discussed some options, some saying large bombers would have been too inaccurate, and that the best option would have been some small fighter-bombers such as P-38 either attacking from the Baltic Sea or from Soviet territory.

Because of the range of the small bombers, it would have not been possible at an early stage. But some experts said those high altitude bombers with advanced bomb sights were very accurate when destroying German factories, so that the "excuse" was useless.

It also interviewed some Jews from the camps. Some woman said they just hoped every day that Allies would have bombed the camp, and that it wouldn't have mattered if they had died just if the camp just would have been finished along the nazis.

But who knows how much it would have affected the killings. The Nazis themselves destroyed some of the camps at a later stage to prevent Allies getting evidence anyway.

Still, I think the bombing would have been good. Allies were killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians by bombing open cities anyways. :rolleyes: Open city /=/ military target.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

That's a very interesting question, to say the least. A great thought experiment in ethics. Kill some now, save potentially much more later? Still: targeting a concentration of suffering civilians seems counterintuitive. "Bombing you to save you" rarely ever works.

Military action, especially bombing, often yields unpredictable results. It could have turned out maybe much worse had we bombed the death camps. In any case, that's the way the accidents of history operate. It's hard to be sure of how it would have turned out had we done X instead of Y.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

No, they would have killed all the Jews in them.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I think in most cases the Allies made the right decision.

1. You're saving prisoners that are likely to die anyway before the war is over even if you do bomb the death camps.

2. The death camps have no military value. You can bomb them forever, wasting ammunition, but it doesn't win the war. The enemy will just keep manufacturing their ammunition and keep killing the innocents in other places and ways.

Put simply: You can have people suffer for a year and then be free, or you can lose the war and have them suffer until they die.

3. You are probably going to kill the prisoners, but you're also going to risk your own bomber crews. Many will be shot down before reaching the target. That's just a waste of life IMO, especially if your precious innocents are killed anyway either by your own bombs or by the Nazis.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

They were DEATH camps, those people were going to die anyway.

And we could have at least bombed the railroads to the camps to slow or even stop the flow of prisoners.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I fully agree. Actually that's a pretty nifty idea there. I wonder why the allies didn't come up with it.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

The Allies had the idea of "Liberation through Victory", which is why they did not go after the camps. There was also much bigotry by the populous against Jews which is why we didn't accept many refugees, and also some anti-semitic internal elements in the governments that went out of their way to stop aid.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Also consider this - we greatly supported and supplied the French resistance... while the large Jewish revolts didn't get a single penny or bullet from the allies. They literally had to fight the Germans with knives and clubs.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Pardon my ignorance here, as I'm not well-informed on any "large Jewish revolts," but I am going off the assumption that the majority of them were not trained soldiers, and therefore "we" had no reason to give them war-supplies. That'd be just a waste, if not more dangerous to the revolting party than a "knives and clubs" rebellion.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Well, the French Resistance weren't exactly the trained elite either. The difference between the French Resistance and Jewish Revolts was that the FR was a single large organization with a continued battle. The Jewish Revolts were little organized quick uprisings.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I know that around that same time, the RAF performed several raids with Mossies carrying highballs (smaller versions of the "bouncing bomb" by all accounts) to knock out walls and towers and such and allow prisoners in POW Camps to escape. While the inmates in Auschwitz might not have had the same chances as POWs in the west, wouldn't bombing the camp in such a way that the inmates could escape atleast give them some chance of survival rather than none?

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

The French Resistance was anything but an organisation.

It was at the best of times a uneasy alliance of various groups within France who were occasionally "controlled" (with much resentment) from without France by the FFI. Most of the "French Resistance", the maquis, were draft dodgers who fled into the forests and hills, and formed gangs, who often raided local villages for food, and very rarely attempted action against the Germans until the final days of the occupation in France.

By contrast the Jewish Uprisings, such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, was organised well in the long term, close knit organisations with common purpose, who developed contacts and aid links with other resistance units, primarily the Armia Krawoja.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

If the camp was leveled, the Nazis would just send the prisoners/future prisoners to another camp.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

The point is if the Allies had bombed the power plants or the rail lines leading in or out of the camps it would have at minimum hampered German execution efforts and at best interfered with war production and taken away a large percentage of their slave labor work force.

I dont think Bush was referring to outright carpet bombing the prisoner barracks to put a end to their misery. I think he was saying soemthing more should have been done to interfere with German efforts.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

It's a hard call, but I'd basically say hell no because it would be killing the innocent. Logic dictates that we should have done it, though the Nazis may have continued Hitler's "Final Solution" another way, but emotions say no, because innocents would die, even though they may die anyway, but those deaths wouldn't be on our shoulders, which could have been used as propaganda against the Nazis (though the camps were kept secret at the time).

In my opinion, I wouldn't do it, but instead find another way. Maybe use a squad of troops and some armor (though the armor could cause civilian casualties as well). In fact, the whole thing could have caused casualties, but much less than if the camp was bombed. This has it's complications as well, though, which I'll explain later, but overall, it's a better plan than just bombing the place.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

I'd prefer bombing the rail lines and gas factories, we didn't have enough force to go in there and liberate them and feed them, so bombing wouldn't do much good. However, taking out the rail lines would severely curtail the influx of new prisoners.

EDIT: For those who don't know much about the Holocaust, check out Maus, by Art Spiegelman.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Yes, because it would have decreased the death toll.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

Bombing would have killed more people at the end of the war, not saved them. Even with the thousands of tons of bombs being dropped on Germany's 'war factories' and various cities, production of war materiel hardly faltered. In fact, Germany reached maximum production capacity of the war during 1944. Different tactics on the ground could have saved a countless number of lives, much more than a bomb drop ever could.

Re: Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz
 

To say the bombing of Germany could have been conducted better and more effectively is true. But to say it had no eefect is not correct either.

The problem with bombing factories is that nothing short of a direct hit of a 1000lb bomb or bigger is going to damage very large factory machinery. Most B-17's and B-24's carried 500lb bombs and sometimes a mix of 500lbr's and 1000lbr's.

In Belton Cooper's book "Deathtraps: The Story Of A US Armored Division" he was shocked doing post war inspections that the Allies never targeted power plants. The large power plants providing electricity to countless factories and refineries and foundries were never bombed. This would have also affected civilians but the bombing of the electrical plants and the destruction of hard to replace transformers and generators would ahve crippled Germany.

Apparently war planners decided not to bomb them because it was felt it would be very difficult to repair post war and they would have been needed for post war rebuilding.

Bombing of the Ploestin and the oil infrastructure also had a major effect on the war.

Also important were the bombings of the ball bearing plants at Schweinfurt and Regensburg. Both were important to Germany's war effort. Little in a mechanized society moves without bearings.

In another case Germany switched production of Stug III's to the PzIV hull due to Allied bombings crippling the factory where StuG III's were made.

Germany was able to make IIRC 38,000 Bf109 fighters in WW2. By mid 1944 many were destroyed on the ground due to a lack of fuel and trained pilots.

One of Germany's new very large underground pilot training bases was destroyed when the Dambusters hit and flooded one of the valleys and thus the underground base.

Bombing the camps would have required absolute pinpoint precision by Mossie's or RAF's 617 squadron. Targets should have been rail lines in and out, gas chambers, ovens, guard barracks, etc.

I would have attempted at all cost to avoid killing the prisoners.