Why auschwitz was never bombed wyman

Thus both proposed actions would assist, not hamper, the war effort. Nothing at all came of this overture. It drew the usual response. On August 9, , A. Leon Kubowitzki wrote McCloy submitting for consideration a message recently received from Ernest Frischer, a member of the Czech government-in-exile.

Frischer called for bombing the Auschwitz gas chambers and crematoria to halt the mass killings. Almost as an afterthought, he also proposed bombing the railways. It followed a by-now familiar pattern:. I refer to your letter of August 9 in which you request consideration of a proposal made by Mr.

Ernest Frischer that certain installations and railroad centers be bombed. The War Department has been approached by the War Refugee Board, which raised the question of the practicability of this suggestion.

After a study it became apparent that such an operation could be executed only by the diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere and would in any case be of such doubtful efficacy that it would not warrant the use of our resources.

There has been considerable opinion to the effect that such an effort, even if practicable, might provoke even more vindictive action [!

The War Department fully appreciates the humanitarian motives which prompted the suggested operation, but for the reasons stated above, it has not been felt that it can or should be undertaken, at least at this time. At the beginning of September, pressure built once more on the War Refugee Board for bombing rail lines, this time the lines between Auschwitz and Budapest, where the last large enclave of Hungarian Jews was threatened with deportation. These entreaties came from the Orthodox rescue committee in New York.

Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, anxious for the appeal to reach the WRB as soon as possible, placed a night phone call to Benjamin Akzin, who relayed the plea to Pehle the next day. Akzin took advantage of the opportunity to spell out to Pehle, in polite terms, his dissatisfaction with the inaction of the War Department regarding the bombing requests. But the Board did not move on the appeal. On the other crucial bombing issue, the question of air strikes on Auschwitz, the War Refugee Board did act, but with hesitation.

Near the end of September, members of the Polish exile government and British Jewish groups came to James Mann, the WRB representative in London, with information that the Nazis were stepping up the pace of extermination in the camps in Poland. They urged the Board to explore again the possibility of bombing the killing chambers. Mann cabled their plea to Washington.

Anguished messages then reaching the Board were also reporting Nazi threats to exterminate the thousands of prisoners in the camps in Poland as the Germans retreated before the Red Army. Influenced by these accounts, Pehle decided to raise the issue with McCloy once more, though not forcibly.

This was the only time the War Department sent a rescue-oriented bombing proposal to operational forces in Europe for consideration. Anderson, assigned his director of operations to attend to the matter. I do not consider that the unfortunate Poles herded in these concentration camps would have their status improved by the destruction of the extermination chambers. There is also the possibility of some of the bombs landing on the prisoners as well, and in that event, the Germans would be provided with a fine alibi for any wholesale massacre that they might perpetrate.

I therefore recommend that no encouragement be given to this project. Yet if the officers had wished clarification, they could readily have telephoned Mann or members of the Polish government in nearby London.

The last attempt to convince the War Department to bomb Auschwitz came in November. The complete reports made by the Auschwitz escapees finally reached the War Refugee Board in Washington on November 1.

Their story of horror jolted the Board. A shocked John Pehle wrote a strong letter on November 8 pressing McCloy to arrange for bombing the Auschwitz killing machinery.

He also pointed out the military advantage that would result from simultaneously bombing the Auschwitz industrial area. No further requests were made for bombing Auschwitz or the rail lines to it. Unknown to the outside world, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler in late November ordered the destruction of the killing machinery—a process that was completed in December. A month later, on January 27, , the Russian army liberated the camp.

Thus the proposals to bomb Auschwitz and the rail lines leading from Hungary to Auschwitz were consistently turned down by the War Department. The answer is no. From March on, the Allies controlled the skies of Europe. Official U. After this. From early May on, the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy had the range and capability to strike the relevant targets. Moreover, neither the Normandy invasion of June 6 nor the ensuing Allied drive across France drew on the resources of the Fifteenth Air Force.

The August invasion of southern France only very briefly took a small amount of Fifteenth Air Force power. The Twelfth Air Force, a tactical arm also based in Italy, assumed most of that responsibility.

And, in fact, during the same late June days that the War Department was refusing the requests to bomb railways, a fleet of Fifteenth Air Force bombers was waiting for proper flying conditions to attack oil refineries near Auschwitz. This mission, which took place on July 7, saw bombers travel along and across two of the five deportation railroads.

On June 26, 71 Flying Fortresses on another bomb run passed by the other three railroads, crossing one and coming within thirty miles of the other two. As for the area of Auschwitz, as early as January , Allied bombing strategists were analyzing it as a potential target because of the synthetic oil and rubber installations not far from the camp. Two months later, the huge Blechhammer oil-refining complex, forty-seven miles from Auschwitz, came under careful study.

Eaker, commander of the Allied air forces in Italy, inquiring about the feasibility of a Fifteenth Air Force attack on Blechhammer. By May , the Fifteenth Air Force had indeed turned its primary attention to oil targets.

Throughout the summer, as involvement with the invasion of France lessened, the British-based U. At least eight important oil targets were clustered there within a rough half-circle, thirty-five miles in radius, with Auschwitz near the northeast end of the arc and Blechhammer near the northwest.

Blechhammer was the main target—fleets of from to heavy bombers hit it on ten occasions between July 7 and November 20—but it was not the only one. No fewer than six additional plants shook under the impact of tons of high explosives, including the industrial section of Auschwitz itself.

On Sunday, August 20, late in the morning, Flying Fortresses, escorted by Mustang fighters, dropped 1, pound high-explosive bombs on the factory areas of Auschwitz, less than five miles to the east of the gas chambers. Conditions that day were nearly ideal for accurate visual bombing.

The weather was excellent. Anti-aircraft fire and the 19 German fighter planes there were ineffective. Only one American bomber went down; no Mustangs were hit. All five bomber groups reported success in striking the target area. Again on September 13, a force of heavy bombers rained destruction on the factory areas of Auschwitz.

The 96 Liberators which struck encountered no German aircraft, but ground fire was heavy and brought three of the bombers down. As before, no attempt was made to hit the killing installations which stood about five miles to the west.

On December 18 and also on December 26, American bombers again struck Auschwitz as an industrial target. Beginning in early July, then, air strikes in the area were extensive. For example, two days after the first raid on Auschwitz, Flying Fortresses and Liberators bombed the Blechhammer and Odertal oil refineries. Many of them passed within forty miles of Auschwitz soon after leaving their targets.

On August 27, another heavy bombers struck Blechhammer. Two days after that, heavies hit Moravska-Ostrava and Oderberg Bohumin , both within forty-five miles of Auschwitz.

Not long before, on August 7, heavy bombers had carried out attacks on both sides of Auschwitz on the same day: had bombed Blechhammer, and 55 had hit Trzebinia, only thirteen miles northeast of Auschwitz.

It would be no exaggeration, therefore, to characterize the area around Auschwitz, including Auschwitz itself, as a hotbed of United States bombing activity from August 7 to August In the case of the railroad lines, the answer is not clear-cut. Railroad bombing had its problems, and was the subject of long-lasting disputes within the Allied military.

A main argument centered on the relative effectiveness of interdiction bombing to cut rail lines and destroy bridges and attrition bombing to smash rail centers and marshaling yards, thereby hurting operations as well as repair facilities. With time, close observers concluded that successful blockage of enemy transport required both interdiction and attrition.

Attrition, however, would not have stopped the deportation of Jews. Bombing oil or munitions cars in marshaling yards was very effective, but blowing up trains containing deportees would have been absurd, and striking the deportation trains before loading would have required an impossibly detailed knowledge of German transportation orders.

Successful interdiction, on the other hand, would have necessitated close observation of the severed lines and frequent re-bombing, since repairs took only a few days. Even bridges, which were costly to hit, were often back in operation in three or four days. Nonetheless, bridge bombing was pressed throughout the war, including strikes from high altitudes by heavy bombers. Interdiction could be very effective, then, for targets assigned a heavy and continuing commitment of airpower.

But in the midst of the war, no one proposed or expected diversion of that kind of military force for rescue purposes. It might also be argued with some validity that railroad bombing would not have helped after July 8, —the day on which the last mass deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz took place.

The argument is convincing with regard to the three deportation railways farthest from Budapest, because most Jews outside Budapest were gone by then. The Nazis, with astounding speed, had moved , Jews to Auschwitz in fifty-five days. The deportations were suspended after July 8 mainly because an immense buildup of world pressure, most notably from the Pope and the King of Sweden, persuaded the Hungarian Regent, Miklos Horthy, belatedly to stand up to the Nazis on this issue.

Some , Jews still remained in Budapest, however, constantly threatened throughout the summer and fall by the very real possibility that the transports to Auschwitz might be resumed. Some deportations did occur, and through the summer Eichmann kept attempting to reestablish his operation. Because of the continuing threat, the other two deportation railways, since they would have been used to carry Jews from Budapest to the gas chambers, remained critically important.

Deportation of the Budapest Jews would have taken roughly three weeks, in addition to several days of preparations. An alarm might well have reached the outside world in time for cuts in those railroads to have been of some help, even if the bombing had to be sporadic. In this situation, the United States could readily have demonstrated concern for the plight of the Jews.

Without risking more than minute cost to the war effort, the War Department could have agreed to stand ready, if deportations had resumed, to spare some bomb tonnage for those two railroads, provided bombers were already scheduled to fly near them on regular war missions. And, as it happened, on ten different days from July through October, a total of 2, bombers carrying 6, tons of bombs traveled along or within easy reach of both the rail lines on the way to oil targets in the Blechhammer-Auschwitz region.

While the ending of mass deportations from Hungary on July 8 has some bearing on the question of railroad bombing, it has little relevance to the issue of the bombing of Auschwitz. There is no question that bombing the gas chambers and crematoria would have saved many lives. Mass murder continued at Auschwitz until the gas chambers closed down in late November. Throughout the summer and fall, transports kept coming from many parts of Europe, carrying tens of thousands of Jews to their death.

Could the death factories have been located from the air? The four huge gassing-cremation installations stood in two pairs, spaced along the westernmost edge of the Auschwitz complex, just outside the Birkenau section of the camp. New York: Pantheon Books, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, New York: The New Press, We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia.

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Lawrence H. Blum, Letter to the Editor, Commentary 66 July , 7. John A. Roger M. Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War , vol. London: Cassell, Henry L.

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