ok guys, your remarks sounds all sensible.... So i'll try to be more specific:

- i repeat that i heard this argument at the camp (birkenau) from the guide. She reported that many inmates were looking forward a military action from the allies, whatever the cost could be.

- when i say "no military action was ever taken" i mean behind enemy lines, not just liberating the camp

- when i say "bombing the camp", i mean targeting the infamous railway or something like that, not levelling the camp. collateral effects for the inmates wolud be "relatively" limitated, pls consider that birkenau is enourmous.

- at the climax aschwitz/birkenau was able to kill thousands of jews a day (i read it in this thread too). the creamtorium were not enough, the death factory worked too fast! the bodies burned in open air.... grilled. So it's a paradox but the bombing would have reduced the death rate in the camp (i read it in this thread too)

- of course, the nazis could rebuild the railway in a few days, but maybe things would not have been the same for nazis working there. rebuilding a camp or building a new one would have meant divert precious resources from the war front and soften the curtain of secrecy around the "final solution". the nazis were very sensitive to this issue.

- if i well remember the allies gave to germany a few (mild) warnings... but the nazis simply denied everything. Anyway an "official" warning would never be heard from ordinary nazis involved (they didn't use to read the Guardian or NYtimes). A specific bombing would have been heard from many more.

- nazis dismantelled very carefully all the camps, there is nothing left in mathausen or dachau. auschwitz is the exception, they simply didn't have enough time because russians arrived too fast. So the nazis feared that the allies could find out the truth.

Once again, the point is that the nazis were sure that the allies had not evidence, maybe just a couple of stories from someone fled... nothing really serious. Targeting the camps would have changed this. maybe.

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