WWII Allied Planes Reached Auschwitz, But Didn't Bomb the Camp - Jewish World - Israel News - Arutz Sheva Could The Allies Have Bombed Auschwitz-Birkenau? Auschwitz bombing debate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Amazon.com: The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?: Michael J. Neufeld, Michael Berenbaum: Books
The opportunity was there to take the camps out and the allies knew what was going on, but on balance had they bombed them who do you think would have come out on top?
Chruchill passed it to the Americans to explore and it was buried - the pilots bombing the nearby Monowitz AG Farben plant - which drew its labour force from Birkenau had not got a clue what was going on in Birkenau. Some bombs did fall on the camp killing some SS men , justice of a sort.
The Birkenau camp was photographed a number times by reconnaissance planes that were intelligence gathering for a bombing mission on the IG Farben fuel and rubber manufacturing plant that was only 4km from the main camp. It was common practice for recon planes to start the camera rolling before the target, and stop filming some after. These photos were archived, until they were uncovered in 1978 by two photo annalists working for the CIA. They were re-annalised using the current information on Birkenau. The first photo was taken in May 1944 and even shows smoke coming from one of the crematoria. The second shot however, was taken from one of the US Bombers as it releases it's 500lb bomb-load on their mission to bomb the IG Farben Plant...Rather ironically the bombs appear suspended directly over the crematoria. The bombs however continued on their path and struck the factory. On a later mission stray bombs did hit the camp causing minor damage. As far as an actual mission to bomb Auschwitz, the Allies never deemed it a "viable" target. Post war claims were made that the camp was never identified as a "Death Camp". Yet the labor camp adjacent to IG Farben was identified as a concentration camp. The Auschwitz Album, Yad Vashem
The various claims about what the camp was identified as , and the lack of alledged evidence which can be taken from the photos come from the usual sources of misinformation , IHR , that village idiot and self appointed photographic expert Ball and their irk. No specific mission was flown to photograph the camp and the gas cha,bers were never identified as being what they were by the intellignce community work on the photos alone. Bombing the camp and making exact hits on specific structure would have been difficult , that the camp was not attacked is presented in a distorted manner by the so called "revisionist historians" to support their "evidence" that the camps contained only innocent structures. An attack on the camp might have served notice and perhaps with hindsight should have been made but it is unlikely that it would have been entirely effective. I realise that this is pretty much opinion and hindsight.
i dont really think the allies would have bombed the camps even with the available intel at the time. looking back at it we knew what the camps were and how bombing may have helped but at the time they knew them as labor camps you wouldnt bomb prisoners laboring for your enemy you would bomb the enemy themselves
This is a specious no win proposition. Here's all these poor souls being worked to death, literally, or out-right murdered and disposed of, wholesale. And it is a criticism that the - insert your choice RAF, USAAF, both - did not bomb the camp(s) where all this was going on? And had they, whether they knew what was going on there or no? Well, imagine the bleating. It would go something like this - "Amidst the daily horror and death in the camp XYZ, the executions, the starvation, the burning bodies, along came - your choice from the above list - and in a series of raids leveled the complex, killing 90% of all present either from direct bombing or the fires resulting in the aftermath." So, bad guys for not bombing? Or worse bad guys if they had? And goodness, does no one know anything about target selection?
I never knew this... I feel like an idiot! That seems like a tough choice, no matter what you'll receive heat from one side or another.
I never said they did, but in not knowing what was going on, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that some overly clever and imaginative intel-weeny might decide he's discovered the facility where the ultimate German secret weapon is being built, convinces everyone up the line and thus arrange for its destruction. Fog of war and all that.
Well according to the documentary DVD that I had, the planes are in pursuit of a different mission, and that's the only reason why they flew past Auschwitz. And I believe allies were not aware of it yet during that time.
J J McCloy,the Asst Sec-War '45, declined Jewish representative's request to war dept. to authorize bombing there. Reasons he explained like : ** target is beyond the range for medium or heavy bombardment [for precision bombing], for the destruction of the camps like Birkenau or Auschwitz. ** dive bombers mostly preferred but located in UK or France,which was beyond their max range. ** heavy bombers would have faced a risky[unescorted] 2000 m hazardous round the trip from UK ,over the enemy territories. ** strategic air forces mostly engaged in destruction of Axis industries[War potentials] intend to early seize of War. So diversion was not possible.
