Holocaust-US did not do enough

..if there is a thread on this, please advise
....in Military History magazine Sep 2018 it states:
''..The US Holocaust Museum...has opened Americans and the Holocaust...exhibition...scrutinizing America's response to Nazism, the outbreak of WWII and the Holocaust..........the exhibit questions whether the US government could have done more to prevent genocide'''

''''while acknowledging the US war effort and the 405,399 American soldiers killed.....''''
bold mine--soldiers--they forgot Navy, Marines, USAAF, Merchant Marine, civilians,etc.....

????!!!!!!!???!!! what?
..this appears to be what a lot of people do---live in Unreality Land....do not think realistically ..to me it is more than a slap in the face of the US
....allow me to give you the Rwanda example where they also blame the US [ and they blame the US for Old Yeller's death ]
1. reports/accusations/etc in the US are wrong/false/sensationalized/etc a lot of times, so there is no way to credibly/undeniably confirm reports/accusations from other countries ----and can't be done in time = go to # 2:
2. by the time reports get out, and THEN deemed credible or not, and THEN reasonable responses discussed, THEN implemented----the genocide is usually well in progress--- if not done with
3. the US is damned if we respond or damned if we don't
A. WW2 was not a time of internet/etc = so communication with the world and nazi controlled areas was not instant .....FDR and Churchill communicated with letters sometimes

...the MSM is a perfect, undeniable example of falsehoods/sensationalism/etc
caps--bold for emphasis only

 

I think it's acceptable to use "soldiers" generically for combatants. The 405,399 figures is all WWII deaths including non-combat.

On the Holocaust, people ought to present some solid, well-thought-out ideas, rather than just saying "We should have done something!!!!" There are some things like admitting more Jewish refugees that would have helped a bit, but the fundamental problem would remain - the Nazi regime was bent on expanding its territory and ridding that territory of what it considered undesirables. What answer is there to that other than the military defeat and overthrow of the regime?

 

..very logical...well put and concise
..I'm former active duty USMC

 

Thanks.
May have mentioned I'm a former Navy officer, six years, including two in the Gator Navy.

 

I have just been re -reading Michael Burleigh's Moral Combat - an ethical history of WW2.

The Holocaust was undoubtedly a particularly evil activity, not only for the scale of the deaths and for singling out a minority of racial and religious grounds but by the callous bureaucracy.and complicity by an entire society. However, far less attention has been paid to the deaths of around 3.3 million Soviet PW in German hands, just under 2 million christian poles, or around 20 million Chinese who died in one way or another under Japanese occupation. The Second World War was a particularly bloody conflict, somewhere around half of the 50 million who died were innocent civilians. The Holocaust because involved a people with an articulate world wide diaspora.

What could the Americans have done about it?

1. After Woodrow Wilson dictated his fourteen points, including a principle of self determinations which fragmented central and eastern Europe, America could have stuck around to ensure that the League of Nations worked.

2. America could have been a little more engaged earlier in saying NO to Hitler Mussolini and the Japanese. The signals were that isolationist America would do nothing. Had the axis powers known what would happen they would not have undertaken their risky acts of aggression.

3. America could have taken in a few more of the persecuted huddled masses.

Once the war had started there was very little practical action that the allies could do except win the war.

 

I've got an unpublished picture of a young, dead SS guard killed by the prisoners at Buchenwald on the day of the liberation. The photographer was in 474th HQ and dad was in a 474th medical unit and was there too. The daughter of the man who took the picture sent it to me. Oddly(?), we both grew up in the same city and our dad's never connected. Send me a message if you'd like a copy for your WWII historical collection.

 

It is useful to remember the adage 'history is written by the victors', which while is only partially true does point out history often devolves into 'us good,them bad'.

I have neither seen the exhibit or the article, so I can not fully vet the content of each. The museum might offer a balance account that was not brought out in the article, but part of a job of a museum is to stimulate thought and conversation, otherwise it is just propaganda.

Carronade is correct, more could have been done about Jewish refugees (see the shameful SS St. Louis affair), but the US was not alone in this. Yes there was no internet then, but the scope of the Holocaust was beginning to be understood in Allied leadership in 1942-43. The problem was how to respond, late in the war troops could be sent behind the lines to liberate PoW camps but it didn't always work, as Patton came to find out.

There was consideration of using heavy bombers to disrupt rail lines, but was rejected over the objections of bomber commanders as a dangerous diversion from their campaign to crush German industry. However they also objected to using bombers to disrupt transportation and rail in France in the lead up to Overlord and had to over-ruled by SHEAF.

We should never be afraid to ask questions about our history, but they must be fair questions and context must be provided.

 

wow--no, I don't think I knew....

 

thanks for all replies
..I think I went through that book once...not the whole book though
..concerning your # 1:
..is it not very, very difficult to get ''political''' organizations to agree and work? aren't there many examples of the UN and NATO not being able to get things done?
IE:
--UN thrown out of Egypt before the Six Day War
--UN ''''''peacekeepers'' were murdered in Rwanda--they couldn't even keep their own troops alive
--Serbs took UN personnel hostage
--Cambodian genocide/Serbian genocide/Rwandan genocide
--Russia/etc counter voting/vetoing
etc
---the UN/NATO did ''win'' in Serbia by getting negotiations going---but the genocide was not stopped
=====by the time the UN/NATO/etc find out--plan-implement a plan = it's too late--per the OP
...in the US it is near ''''impossible''' to get the politicians to agree on anything.....I think the League of Nations would've been just about impotent

 

..I thought they tore some guards apart '''by hand''' near Dachau, from the book Rock of Anzio, if I remember correctly ...my uncle was with the 45th Thunderbirds....they were at Dachau ...he would not say much about the war....as I've said a few times on WW2F, when I was a youngster, he mentioned the Germans were accurate with their mortars---and---he would say ''Dachau'' .....it would be with a quick, pointed remark on what my brothers and I ''could get'' if we didn't behave ourselves ..something like ''you'll get what they got at Dachau''' ......something like that .....he was a little '''out of it''' .....didn't say much...... and when he did, it would be with a grin with a little bit of malevolence

 

Some irony that the original 45th unit patch was a Native American swastika and had to be changed into the 'Thunderbirds', another native image.

 

The prisoners might have torn some of the guards apart, but those executed(shot) by the 45th(IIRC, I Company) were Waffen SS, not camp guards(not that it made a difference to the troops). Some Neo-Nazi/Pro-German folks like to make hay with this incident.

 

The League of Nations is irrelevant to the matter. What Germany was doing to the Jews in the 30s was a domestic/internal matter, and the League, as per their charter were powerless to do anything.

 

Thanks for that, but now I have to say that by 1942-43 there was nothing the Allies could do other than trying to win the war as expeditiously as possible. As you mentioned, it's often suggested that heavy bombers could have destroyed the camps or the railroads leading to them, but until the last months of the war, they couldn't stop the Germans shipping raw materials to factories, turning them into weapons, ammunition, etc., and delivering those to the frontline troops; so it seems unlikely that they could have stopped them "processing" human beings.

The pre-Overlord Transportation Plan is a good analogy. I agree it was the right strategy, but the fact remains that German war production peaked in mid-1944, when the bombers were tasked with preparing for the invasion and supporting the ground battle in Normandy. We never get something for nothing; bombing one target set means easing the pressure on something else.

And suppose they did knock out some of the camps, what would that do? Would Himmler come to Hitler one morning and say, "well, mein Fuhrer, they got Auschwitz last night, guess we'll have to give up on that Final Solution."? No, they'd simply go on murdering by other means.

 

Sigh...

Another of Bronk's knee-jerk reactions. I've just spent about an hour going over the online article, and I think Bronk has grossly misrepresented it.

If you have studied 1930s American History, WW2, and the Holocaust, all of what is brought to the table is not new. However, to most Americans, I think it would be surprising and thought provoking.

The USHMM basically concludes that there was not much the US could have done other than a more open, public, international campaign about the mass killings of the Jews and to have allowed more Jewish immigration in the pre-war years. The question of bombing the death camps, more specifically Auschwitz, is left open - Can't say I blame them, that debate has been going on for decades.

I think all members should take the time and give the article a thorough look-see.
Americans and the Holocaust - United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

 

''make hay''' of the Germans being shot? I'd say it was an issue of sow the wind, reap the whirlwind ....they were lucky more were not shot....

..here's a good website on it
Waffen-SS soldiers executed by I Company, 157th Regiment, 45th Thunderbird Division during liberation of Dachau

 

You might want to give the USHMM's article a look see. The MSM was trying to get news of the mass killings out to the US public. The article has several pages from various US newspapers with articles on the mass killings of the Jews.

But, as you say...the MSM is a perfect, undeniable example of falsehoods/sensationalism/etc

 

Yes, their argument goes....as in the Waffen SS were legitimate POWs, not camp guards, US troops cold-bloodedly killed POWs. Unlike the Germans at Malmedy, these US troops were not persecuted after the war.

The link I have as a pdf at home on my laptop, could not find the site on my cell.

 

The Allied know about the camps by 1942 . The prisoners asked for bombing the camps because they were dead anyway. The Allied refused this.

 

thanks all replies
..did they have undeniable evidence in 1942? ......I don't know how it is in Finland, but in the US, where we have freedom of the press/internet/etc, we have fake news all the time--everyday...you can't believe much ..it takes a long time to find the truth....I could give many, perfect examples--but those are for other threads
....remember Englandspiel?...the Allies did not trust Dutch informants after Englandspiel
....also the Venlo Incident had negative affects regarding trusting informants/etc
....also, the US and England put out much false information to fool the Germans --and they also were rightly skeptical of information coming out of Europe
Englandspiel - Wikipedia