Ah, you bet me to it, SLip!

A story of tragedy and utter shame. Thank you both.

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

People tend to forget that you don't kill thousands people a day just by gathering the victims in some place and beat them to death or let them starve.

It takes a very strong industrial and logistical process to reach such yield, unless you commit very large numbers of personal to this task (for example the Rwanda genocide), and I don't mean white collar killers, I mean people who don't care ending their working day covered with blood and flesh of men, women and children.

In the case of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the destruction of the gas chambers and railways would have stalled the process big time (for example, during my visit to Auschwitz, I learnt that the crematoriums were not even able to keep the pace with the gas chambers).

Of course, this would not have stopped the genocide, but the nazis would have had no way to murder people nearly as fast without the gas chambers.

I don't know if this is the result of a mild antisemitism or indifference on the US or UK side, I lack elements to answer such a serious and critical question.

But I know the allies were over-estimating the impact their bombings had onto the shortening of the war.

Maybe if they knew the truth about the moderate efficiency of their bombings on industrial or civil targets, they would have been less reluctant to divert some of their air power to take out death camps.

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Police cars carry three agents. The first one can read, the second one can write and the third one keeps watch on those dangerous intellectuals.
Unknown subversive activist - 20th century.

But the critical target you identify, the gas chambers and crematoria were only very small targets within a huge area. If they were actually targetted how many impacts would they really take and how big would collateral damage (i.e., inmates) be? The only certain thing about these bombardments was that the bombs would all hit the ground, the target is another story.

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

You are correct, Za.

Aiming points during the war were not, for the most part, individual buildings, but large, easily identifiable objects such as rivers and roads. Yes, there were instances where unique buildings, such cathedrals, were used to locate targets, but not usually at night. The airborne radar used by the Allies at that time simply could not identify ground objects to the degree needed to pick out a 2000 sq ft one or two story building among other similar building. Any attempt to bomb any structure would have resulted in widespread damage to all surrounding structures, structures containing inmates. And try as they might to claim hitting a pickle-barrel at 20,000 feet, daylight bombing by the USAAF was only marginally more accurate than that practiced by Bomber Command.

I understand what you are trying to saying, chocapic, but even if the air forces had been able to take out the mechanisms for large scale killing, the Germans would have then dispersed the camps, as I am sure they would have done, given their record on dispersing means of arms production and the killings would have continued.

You might ask, why then, did we continue to bomb factories when they were being dispersed? Would we not be chasing our tails to hit dispersed factories just as we would be trying to hit the dispersed death camps? No. The Allies, even against the best determined wishes of Air Marshal Harris, changed the bombing strategy to go after transportation infrastructure. Dispersed factories were more heavily dependeant on rail transport than centralized manufactoring sites. Railroads could not be moved and were subject to damage and rail bridges are hard to replace. Kill the rails and you kill raw materials going in and finished products going out.

On a final note, I am not so certain that the Allied leadership was fully aware of the huge degree in which wholesale murder was being conducted on the European continent. They had to know that Jews and members of other ethnic groups were being killed, but I don't believe that they any inkling of enormousness of the enormity being perpertrated on the unfortunate souls in German hands. I don't believe that the various Allied leaders could have done anything more during the war to help these people, other than to try to see to the swift conclusion of the Nazi Empire.

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

As a matter of fact, who in the Allies knew that there was a Holocaust going on, and if so where that was, and when did they become aware of it?

That there were prisioner and concentration camps would be easy to deduce, but that industrial scale extermination was going on, is it a different matter?

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

It seems pretty obvious that, given the inaccuracy of the allied bombers, they could not seriously expect to aim at the gas chambers.

I can tell you that the gas chambers in the Auschwitz part of the camp were rather small buildings, very small compared to the size of the camp.

That's the reason why I talk about taking out the death camp, not only the gas chambers, which means plundering the whole Auschwitz Birkenau complex and most probably killing many if not the majority of inmates.

In the last part of the war, late 43 for example, I don't think that Germany would have been able to fastly rebuild such a murderous industrial tool, nor the railways leading to it, because this was not as "vital" (stange word association...) for them than war industries, and most of all : they were trying to keep the extermination process as much secret as possible and I really doubt they would have built hundreds of mini-Auschwtiz !!!

But of course, this would mean the Allies took the decision to destroy it along with most of the inmates, which is weird and would today be discussed as we discuss now about the fact they did not bombed Auschwitz

P.S. : If you now Auschwitz (I'm talking about the main Auschwitz-Birkenau), you know how to spot exactly the gas chambers : a shivering detail which proves this camp was thought as a mass murdering machine.

The railroad was in fact entering the camp, went all the way through it and ended right next to the main gas chamber, the goal was to quickly exterminate half of the people right after they got out of the train...

Someone knowing this would have been able to easily spot the gas chambers (just follow the railway).

You can easily see this on the linked aerial picture, which was taken in spring 1944 by the RAF. (gas chambers are located near the end of the camp internal railway, at the bottom left part of the picture)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...l_view_RAF.jpg

By this time, the Allies knew pretty much everything about the way Auschwitz worked, thanks to the Vrba-Wetzler report. US and UK medias made the first references to Auschwitz gas chambers at the time of the D-Day.

But still, they would not have been able to aim at it, the option was doing nothing or destroying the whole thing including the inmates.

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Police cars carry three agents. The first one can read, the second one can write and the third one keeps watch on those dangerous intellectuals.
Unknown subversive activist - 20th century.

Why on Earth would anyone, especially a Jew , make a remark as absurd as that ? You say that you can understand it - please explain.

Maybe because this would have put an end to the hell on earth they were living in.

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Police cars carry three agents. The first one can read, the second one can write and the third one keeps watch on those dangerous intellectuals.
Unknown subversive activist - 20th century.

Auschwitz had about 40 satellite camps, beside the three camps that were considered Auschwitz I, II & III. I see no reason that any or all of these could be used to murder prisoners. As you said, the crematorias were small buildings. Factor this throughout all the other larger camps (Dachau, etc) and not much new construction would have been needed.

I read that about 60% of the prisoners transported to Auschwitz were killed upon arrival. How much time would it have taken to rebuild these little crematorias? Originally, the Jews detrained a good distance from the crematoria and I do not doubt that the Germans could have reused this same method had the need arisen.

I see no reason for the Germans not pursuing thier barbaric goals in spite of bombs targeting camps. They may very well have welcomed if for no other reasons than the propaganda value and it would save them the trouble of having to kill the prisoners themselves. They continued to allocate railspace to transporting Jews to the camps right up to the end, even when it could have been better served supply troops.

Anyway, I am through with this discussion. It has turned into a case of damed if you, damned if you don't.

Ultimately, we have no way of knowing whether or not bombing the camps would helped in the plight of the Jews, but so far I have not been presented with any information to make me think that it would have.

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

Killing people is easy, if it's not by gassing you always resort the the tried beforehand methods of lining a few hundred at a time and machine gunning them, or go one by one with a pistol, that's the Babi-Yar approach.

Crematoria were to get get rid of the bodies. Or at least compact them enough, as I can't really see how one hides all those tons of human ashes with half burnt bones emerging.

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

Agreed.
Apologies.
I didn't use the correct terms, as I was refering to the gas chamber/crematoria combination, as they were called "Krema" which as tranlated into English "Crematorium"

..."Up to 12,000 Jews per day were immediately murdered in the underground gas chambers in the Crematorium II and Crematorium III buildings, called Krema II and III by the Germans."...
History of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and Monowitz labor camp

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

Slipdigit, I think you are really mistaking on the subject : the German policy was to concentrate efficient murder factories in scarse places, and bring all the Jews they could to these places.

Widepread small industrial extermination units goes against all the moves they made during the war.

You mention the small Auschwitz satellites : none of them had integrated gas chamber / crematory installation, and the fact that, from 1942 on, the majority of the gazing occuring at Auschwitz I were transferred to big gas/crematory facilities located in Auschwitz II, because only these big facilities could provide the murder yield they wanted.

As per Dachau, you are confusing the concentration camps : Dachau / Oranienburg / Flossenbürg / Buchenwald / Auschwitz / Gross-Rosen / Stutthof / Neuengamme / Ravensbrück / Sachsenhausen / Bergen-Belsen / Mauthausen / Maïdanek / Dora / Natzwiller-Struthof

Almost none of them had gas chambers that were used during the war

And the extermination camps : Belzec Maïdanek Treblinka Sobibor Auschwitz II - Birkenau Chelmno equipped with mas murder gas/crematory complexes (Auschwitz was both a concentration and an extermination camp).

So widespreads small gas/crematory complexes theory realy goes against the way the whole murder machine was thought at the time, not even speaking of the logistical mess it would have been to connect railroads to a myriad of small camps, divide the captured Jews between them etc etc.
I just don't buy this.

I think the material issue was the Allies were far from being able to do surgical strikes at the time and hit the gas/crematory complex without blowing up the whole camps.

It might also be a mild antisemitism or indifference but I've got no elements to back up such a serious accusation, so I won't step further in this direction, even if it's a very interesting question.

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Police cars carry three agents. The first one can read, the second one can write and the third one keeps watch on those dangerous intellectuals.
Unknown subversive activist - 20th century.

Anti-semitism would be blasting away some thousands of half-starved Jewish (etc) prisoners in the hope of hitting a gas chamber that could be rebuilt in three days. No way!

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

The official version is that, after being aware of what was exactly going on in Auschwitz in mid 1944 (see my post above), Churchill ordered the preparation of a bomb raid, but finaly cancelled it when the deportation from Hungaria ceased.

The risk of multiplication of gas chambers like syphillis in the clergy or killing inmates never weighted in the debate.

Anyway, as i posted above, if the Allies had bombed Auschwitz there would be as much debate about why they did as there are debate now about why they didn't

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Police cars carry three agents. The first one can read, the second one can write and the third one keeps watch on those dangerous intellectuals.
Unknown subversive activist - 20th century.

You're absolutely right!

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Everly Brothers - What I Have To Do Is Dream
"Never wrestle with pigs, you both end up getting dirty and the pig likes it."

Quote:

Slipdigit, I think you are really mistaking on the subject : the German policy was to concentrate efficient murder factories in scarse places, and bring all the Jews they could to these places.

No, that is correct, the tried and true plan by the German authorities was to concentrate the killing of Jews, Roma, etc in centralized areas as it happened in our reality. My misread opinion was that if Allied aerial bombings were perpetrated on the death camps in an alternate reality, the camps would have been dispersed, such as was done with factories.

Auschwitz wasn't a little out of the way place, a "scarse place", if you wish. It was a good-sized city of around 15,000 before the war.
History of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and Monowitz labor camp

Quote:

Widepread small industrial extermination units goes against all the moves they made during the war.

Because they had no reason to change since centralized large industrial extermination camps were not being bombed. Some, such as Belzec, were already closed by the time it has been proven that the Allied governments knew of the large-scale killings.

Quote:

You mention the small Auschwitz satellites : none of them had integrated gas chamber / crematory installation……As per Dachau, you are confusing the concentration camps : Dachau / Oranienburg ….

All of this, I am and was fully aware of when I stuck my hand in this tar-baby of a thread. The information is easily located on the web and any number of publications.

Quote:

from slipdigit: not much new construction would have been needed.

My point was that not much construction time or effort would be needed to put crematoriums in production where ever needed, whether in other camps or small satellites of existing death camps in the attempt to make it more difficult for the bomber commanders to mount missions to take them out, were they predisposed to do that. I mentioned the other camps as options because they already were established and had rail service to them. As badly as they seemed to want to kill “undesirables”, the Germans could have the killings elsewhere with relative time loss, had the need arisen due to repeated aerial bomb damage to the primary locations. But they may have not had to do all this, it they could get the Allied bommbers to do the killing for them and incerate the bodies too, with the incendiaries.

Quote:

So widespreads small gas/crematory complexes theory realy goes against the way the whole murder machine was thought at the time, not even speaking of the logistical mess it would have been to connect railroads to a myriad of small camps, divide the captured Jews between them etc etc.

So were small factories, but they adapted to the need imposed by incessant Allied bombing. They never dispersed the holding of prisoners and the accompanying killing because they never had to. Unfortunately for the Jews and other hated groups, they were nothing more than freight to those who wanted them dead. The logistics, to the Germans then, would have been roughly the same as moving coal or any other bulk item, as horrendous a concept as it sounds.

A theory is just that, a theory. It has to be proven or disproved and I am glad that it is not attempted now. Smaller, decentralized death camps can never be proven just as the theory of bombing the camps to save the Jews can’t be either.

Quote:

I think the material issue was the Allies were far from being able to do surgical strikes at the time and hit the gas/crematory complex without blowing up the whole camps.

Precisely. See my comments in postings above on this and which is what I thought the discussion was about from the beginning. My belief continues to be, and apparently the beliefs of the Allied leaders at the time were, that the best way to help the unfortunate souls was to interdict transport to help kill two birds with one stone by preventing war materials from reaching the factories and the fronts and, indirectly, the prisoners from reaching their final destinations.

Anyway, I've enjoyed the conversation but lets move on and see if we can find another subject to disagree on, or if we are lucky, to not disagree on. I’m not interested in changing my mind and I am not eloquent enough to convince you that you are wrong.

__________________
Best Regards,
JW

Quote:

In the case of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, the destruction of the gas chambers and railways would have stalled the process big time (for example, during my visit to Auschwitz, I learnt that the crematoriums were not even able to keep the pace with the gas chambers).

Indeed. It is often forgotten that the SS was facing a lot of logistical problems whilst implementing the Final Solution. The extermination of European Jewry was not taking place as rapidly nor efficiently as planned.

The BBC magnificent documentary Auschwitz: the Nazis and the 'Final Solution' shows how much improvisation was introduced to cope with the killing demand. The Birkenau personnel was facing enormous difficulties with body-disposal. The first improvised and rustic gas chambers, the 'Little Red House' and the 'Little White House' were killing much rapidly than the Sonderkommandos could get rid of the corpses. There were no crematoria yet, and massive graves and bonfires were being used. Then, after a long period of advanced building, the massive gas chambers with their huge crematoria (as well as lifts) could reduce the stress on the personnel.

What's the point? The little houses, the first big gas chambers at Birkenau, were quickly built and they could have been easily re-built. However, the large chambers and their respective crematoria could not. Nor the whole Birkenau compound, which took almost two years to be completed. When it was, Belzec, Sóbibor, Chełmnoand Treblinka were shut down. Only Majdanek kept running. And why? Because with Birekenau Himmler finally had centralised the process at this massive annihilation factory: he had, at last, the means to carry out the 'Final Solution' in the scale he wanted. It was only then when he gave Eichmann green light to commence the deportation of 900.000 Hungarian Jews.

Certainly, a severe disruptive of all this killing factory's infrastructure would have forced Himmler to eit