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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Bush: 'We should have bombed' Auschwitz 
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