would you bomb the death camps?

[Shdo]

in WW2 the most 'efficent' and industrial mass murder in the history of mankind happend. millions were killed in the nazi death camps for reasons such as being born defective, being of another race (jews and roma), being gay pr polish resistance.

the most famous of the death camps was auschwitz ( http://www.britannica.com/holocaust/article-9011296 ) where more then a million people were killed in a mechanic fashion of: train comes, victims go down, then they are given a 'shower' to clean them but the shower is actually a gas chamber. the bodies are then moved to be cremated.

at the height of the death camp the chambers worked non stop and it was hard to cremate all the bodies.

the question if to bomb the camps was risen, but the officel excuse was that the allies cant know if bombing the camps would lower the killing, not knowing what are the conditions at the surface.
in the summer of 1944 detailed information about the death camps was given to the allies by two prisoners who ran and gave detailed information.

http://www.britannica.com/holocaust/article-9342910

by that time 90% of the victims of the holocaust were killed, bombing the camps would have save up to 10% of the victims (likely less) but that still hundred of thousends of people.

the question is, should the allies had bombed the death camps and if it would happen again, would you give the order to bomb a future death camp?



EDIT: the poll asks if you think the allies should or shouldnt bombed the death camps and if it was to happen again (death camps) in the future and you had the choice, would you bomb the camps?

also i suggest that, unless you already familiar with the subject, you read the article about bombing the camps before voting.

[Rain]

I wouldn't bomb them

i see a few problems with it

the first may be a simple mistake on my part, but isn't bombing potentially lethal to the people you're trying to save

I mean, i understand it is targeting specific areas, but I think that bombing is at least somewhat dangerous to the people

and maybe its avoiding the situation, but I would step in before it became that bad

If I were going to interfere, i wouldn't wait until it was that bad, and i think there are more effect ways than bombing

[Shdo]

I wouldn't bomb them

i see a few problems with it

the first may be a simple mistake on my part, but isn't bombing potentially lethal to the people you're trying to save

I mean, i understand it is targeting specific areas, but I think that bombing is at least somewhat dangerous to the people

and maybe its avoiding the situation, but I would step in before it became that bad

If I were going to interfere, i wouldn't wait until it was that bad, and i think there are more effect ways than bombing

by bombing you would kill many, many innocents also, but those innocents are about to be gassed away and die anyway. you cant send ground troops and it will take mounths for your forces to reach the camps.
byt bombing the camps you will kill a few thousands but you will stop the killing of hundred of thousands.


a nearby facility was bombed, a survivor said that with each bomb falling on that facility, he and the rest of the workers (those who werent gassed were used to move the bodies to cremation) cheered, hoping that the bombs will reach the death camp.
this testimony was given in an article from britanica.


you cant save them, you can only save those who will be sent to the gass chamber later, those that are now been shifted in trains to auschwitz. also its impossiable to step in before its too late.
in WW2, no one knew about the nazi horrors, there were rumors from survivors but no one believed such a thing is possiable (or chose to ignore the testimonies) by the time that proofs of auchwitz as a death camp only, 90% of the holocaust victems were dead.
so even if the allies didnt knew and couldnt done anything about those 90% there were still hundred of thousands of people they could have saved by bombing death camps.

inaction is as worse as the act itself, especially when you can do it (and they could, by that time of the war, the allies had almost complete air superiority and even attacked nearby militery facilities)

there is no fooling that by attacking you will kill the people you try to save, but by not killing them you still doomed them and many more.

[Fyrefox]

I'm confused, Shdo. Are you for the bombing or against them?

It doesn't matter either way, to me. There's no point in looking back and saying 'what if'. And by the time something like this happens again, even if it is tommorow, military technology has come along in a such a way that this is no longer a problem.

[Shdo]

if there is no point in 'what if' then you are in the wrong thread.
as for the future, how come do you think that tech will make a diffrence? even today precise bombing miss and cause innocent death. in auchwitz it was a train that dropped the victims and from there directly to the gas chambers.
http://holocaust-info.dk/auschwitz/Auschwitz/map.jpg
at its peak the place worked non stop so even if you used a precision bomb on the gass chambers (all five) you would still kill people.
besides, in auschwits it was the nazies, a superpower, who said that the next time it wont be another powerful country? one with defence systems against jets and missiles? maybe the only thing you can do is a massive Air attack that will kill many of the prisoners?

[Fyrefox]

Then bomb the train tracks. It's not possible to cover every single spot at once, if that was going to be your next defense. And you could always strafe the defenses first.

[Shdo]

you assume that everything will go well, that its easy to strafe the defences and that destroying the railroads would stop the killing, it might slow it down a little (since they will use trucks until the railroad will be repered and you can be sure that they will repair it in no time) but the only way to truly stop the killing is to destroy the camp that actually do the killing.

even prisoners that were held there said that when the allies bombed a nearby facility they prayed to the bombs to come and destroy the camp as well. when you reach a point when the prisoners themselves wish for the camp to be destroyed so that others will live, forsaking their own life for that, its mean that you already reached rockbuttom with the death camps.

the fact is that no attack was made either on the railroads or the camp itself, raising questions about the morality towards the prisoners plight for help.

[mechaqua]

The suffering at the camps was incomprehensible, when i talked to survivors of the camps they wished the allies had bomb the camps,anything to damage the nazi infrastructure, i had talked to survivor who worked in a U2 bomb factory who would urinate on the parts and sabotage the bomb, when i asked him about this he said he pryed that the allies would either liberate the camp or bomb it they believed that they would die anyway at least for a few weeks or months the death rate of the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, and Russians would decline maybe they might be able to use the bombing as a distraction to escape, although the nazi might just have start mass killings on the spot.

[stark espada]

Me personally i would have hit the signal for the bomb from the start I see it as this A few will die any way you look at it but there life's being taken even more so in auschwitz from there very start if a few die but end up saving more I see that as a plus rather then a minus it could have prevented an almost total genocide of a race of people.

You could destroy the rail ways or entrenches or block it but in time the defenses would go or the bridge would be fixed in fact bombing is about the only choice for this that would have resulted in a real if any form of true success.Or at least hit the axises army were it truly hurt.

[bradc]

The people knew they were going to die either way from both torture chambers and the on-going war from the bombs going back and forth between allies and target. But it would save many lives as possible from the sick and twisted of human torture from bombing; giving them a chance to escape.

A small price of hope goes a long way...

[Shdo]

a more recent example.

in one of the genocides in africa dozens of thousands of tribe A were sorrounded by the army of the country, controlled by tribe B. they were stuck on a mountain and were bombarded for several days, in order to hold the army infantry, the men of tribe A went and fought them, while their families being bombed. they fought with sticks and stones but thanks to their numbers it took them several days to die in a bloody close quarters battle with the enemy infantry in the forest below the hill their familes were at.

if (its a big if because no one cared about that genocide, including the UN forces that stayed there) someone forces had bombed the army columns then many of the victims would die while holding the army at place but their families would have been saved.

of course that didnt happend and everyone died. sometimes cruelty can save lives, its a fucked up world out there.

[cornflakes]

the question if to bomb the camps was risen, but the officel excuse was that the allies cant know if bombing the camps would lower the killing, not knowing what are the conditions at the surface.
in the summer of 1944 detailed information about the death camps was given to the allies by two prisoners who ran and gave detailed information.
Yes, but if I remember correctly the Allies thought it was an exaggeration, they didn't believe even the Nazis were capable of such atrocities. Remember, in a toxic environment where propoganda, counter-propoganda and misinformation were flung around, "eyewitness" accounts aren't neccesarily considered concrete.

What I'm saying is, we are speaking with the benefit of foresight here. We now know for sure that mass murder was being committed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and other places, but the Allies at the time couldn't have.

[Shdo]

maybe you didnt read the article about the bombing itself. until summer 1944 there was not enought information about the killing and not enough air supiriority for the allies to take this step, no one expected them to do that then.
but since 1944 there were enough escapees and enough evidance about camp to know the truth, there is no doubt about that since the question was raised and requests were made for that action.


"In fact, as early as May 1944, the U.S. Air Force had the capability to strike Auschwitz at will. The rail lines from Hungary were also well within range. On July 7, 1944, American bombers flew over the railway lines to Auschwitz. On August 20, 127 Flying Fortresses dropped 1,336 500-pound bombs on the I.G. Farben synthetic oil factory less than five miles east of Birkenau. The death camp remained untouched."

"Requests were also made to U.S. officials to bomb Auschwitz. The Americans gave several reasons for their refusal: Military resources could not be diverted from the war effort, which was reaching its crescendo in the post-D-Day battles; bombing Auschwitz might prove ineffective, and might even provoke more vindictive German action. Nowhere did the Americans claim that Auschwitz was not within range of American bombers."

[cornflakes]

But I didn't say the Allies did not have the ability to strike at Auschwitz, I said they probably (and understandably) was skeptical about the escapees' accounts of the death camps, which is pretty much what your quote is saying.... unless I've completely misunderstood your post.

[Shdo]

as i said, there were more then 1 or two escepees (in all the war there were 300 escepees) and they also were able to do reconisence missions over the place to confirm the clouds of smoke from the bodies and never ending trains.

notice that their excuse to the world jewry wasnt "we dont know for sure" but "we cant""it might not be effective"
the higher ups knew everything, it only came to shock to the ground troops who saw the horrors later.

the point is that they knew.

[Fyrefox]

you assume that everything will go well, that its easy to strafe the defences and that destroying the railroads would stop the killing, it might slow it down a little (since they will use trucks until the railroad will be repered and you can be sure that they will repair it in no time) but the only way to truly stop the killing is to destroy the camp that actually do the killing.

even prisoners that were held there said that when the allies bombed a nearby facility they prayed to the bombs to come and destroy the camp as well. when you reach a point when the prisoners themselves wish for the camp to be destroyed so that others will live, forsaking their own life for that, its mean that you already reached rockbuttom with the death camps.

the fact is that no attack was made either on the railroads or the camp itself, raising questions about the morality towards the prisoners plight for help.


I said nowhere in there that it would be easy, or that everything would go well. The easiest way to destroy air defenses is from the air, though, in my opinion.

Also, do you have any idea how long it takes to rebuild a railroad? Especially when it has been cut unevenly. You could also hit a point, skip a part, hit again.....

I have no idea what the next two paragraphs have to do with my post.

[Shdo]

not that hard to replace a railroad, after all this is WW2, infrastructure was hit all the time and it did little damage, nazi germany was already trained in fast reconstruction. how advance were the railroads back then? stripes of metal and wood boards? to the nazi war machine it wasn't difficult.

[HELLA PINOY]

This goes hand in hand with the old saying "Kill one, save a thousand". Its just like the debate over if we should have bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Im honestly in the middle of this. On one hand if you destroy the camps you are willingly killing innocent civilians, even if they are about to die...they're not dead yet. Theres always a slim chance of a rebellion of the Jews or insurrection within the German ranks. Even if you do bomb it theres a chance the Nazi's would have simply built another, more efficient killing factory. Everything is a double edged sword or has a silver lining and this is no different. In this case the silver lining was the eventual Allied victory and freeing of the concentration camp victims, but there will always be a debate over what would have ben the "humane" thing to do...

[Shdo]

as for building a new death camp: it was the ending days of the war, blowing auschwitz would at least slow the killing considerably.
by this time most of europe was clear of jews, the real question was if there was any chance for the jews in hungary that were one of the last communities alive.

there is no doubt that the nazi would continue, they would shot or gassed the jews in trucks like they did before the death camps but it would be much slower, and many more would escape or be saved by the allies advance.

[Primera Espada]

This is just silly.

Kill em all, let god sort em out.

That's the philosophy coming out of this it seems.

Simply put, it would have slowed down the killings, but not really saved anyone. How many people were being rounded up in those last days of the war? There would be less of an urgency if the rate of people at risk was already slowing down.

I dislike the way some people try to justify massive violence to save a few.

The nukes were a bit different. They were used to attack specific military targets and also to cause an immediate surrender. Not a slow down of fighting, IMMEDIATE. Combined with the fact that Hiroshima had no POW camps in it, it was the smart choice.

I don't agree with the nukes either, but it's easy to see why they chose to nuke japan, but not bomb germany

[cornflakes]

Simply put, it would have slowed down the killings, but not really saved anyone. How many people were being rounded up in those last days of the war? There would be less of an urgency if the rate of people at risk was already slowing down.
That is a flawed argument IMO. With the Third Reich on borrowed time, slowing down the killings would likely have saved plenty of people.


The nukes were a bit different. They were used to attack specific military targets and also to cause an immediate surrender. Not a slow down of fighting, IMMEDIATE. Combined with the fact that Hiroshima had no POW camps in it, it was the smart choice.
An argument can still be made for Hiroshima being a naval base, but Nagasaki was simply chosen for the shock value. Also, I would say that there's nothing "specific" about wiping out an entire city of hundreds of thousands in order to eliminate (maybe) two, three thousand military personnel.


notice that their excuse to the world jewry wasnt "we dont know for sure" but "we cant""it might not be effective"
the higher ups knew everything, it only came to shock to the ground troops who saw the horrors later.

the point is that they knew.
I don't know if that's the case, so I can't debate with you on this.. :( But if you're right about this then I'd have to agree with you.

[Shdo]

if they did slowed the killing then up to 10% might been saved (i doubt it would be much more then 7%)
but even 7% out of 6 million is a big number.