What if Allies during World war 2 bomb death camps and railroads

Let's not forget that there were prominent figures in Bomber Command, not to forget their American counterparts, whose attitude towards any use of bombers for any reason other than their own specific goals came close to bordering on the psychotic.

Or crossed the line in the case of men such as Arthur 'Bomber' Harris, as seen in his response to being told that a set number of bombers would be used as patrol craft against the U-boats due to the unfortunate need to prevent the UK from being starved into surrender.

His response, in which the vast bulk of the bombers were gifts from the US or RAF reserve aircraft not in current use, might have led one to imagine that a peace settlement had been proposed in which the entire manpower of Bomber Command was to be handed over to the Nazis.
 
And that plan didn't go far.

Earliest an Allied plane flew over the Auschwitz area (and Madijanek near Lublin was also in operation until the Soviets overran it during their '44 Summer Offensive) was a recon flight from Italy in April, '44. First strike flown against the Buna Works near Auschwitz was Aug '44. The camp and surrounding area was photographed by recon and during the strikes (four). But the photo interpeters didn't know what they were seeing when they saw the barracks, guard towers, and fencing. It was assumed at the time that what the cameras picked up was just one large slave-labor camp. Detailed analysis of the photography wasn't done until 1978, and that after the miniseries Holocaust aired on NBC. Several CIA photo interpeters who saw the show wondered if the camp had been photographed. They discovered that it had, so they ordered the imagery from DIA (which has custody of all wartime airborne photo recon imagery), and on off-duty hours, examined the photos, comparing the pictures with published eyewitness accounts from both survivors and guards, the memoirs of the infamous commandant Rudolf Hoess, and several maps of the area. Lots of detail emerged: guard towers, fencing, groups of prisoners, trains awaiting unloading, the gas chambers and crematoria, the execution wall at the infamous Block 11, etc.

One can find the imagery and analysis here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/imint/holocaust.htm

The article is written by Dino Brugoini, who was a senior photo interpeter at the National Photographic Interpetation Center for many years-he saw U-2 photography of the Soviet Union, China, NK, and other areas, ID'd the Soviet missiles in Cuba, and so on.
 
The problem is that the death camps are in the Soviet sector of the war, and any attempts to bomb areas in Poland are simply a means to provide Germans with aces until the Red Army is in a position to liberate the death camps. The only Ally in a position to really liberate them was the USSR, and it did not get there until rather late in the game. Strategic bombing tended to be subject to diminishing returns very blatantly the further out it veered.
 

Jason222

Banned
The problem is that the death camps are in the Soviet sector of the war, and any attempts to bomb areas in Poland are simply a means to provide Germans with aces until the Red Army is in a position to liberate the death camps. The only Ally in a position to really liberate them was the USSR, and it did not get there until rather late in the game. Strategic bombing tended to be subject to diminishing returns very blatantly the further out it veered.
Could have allies ask permission to brow some USSR airfield so they do bombing run Death camps. I would surprise USSR said no Idea.
 
^This. In some situations the Nazis burned people alive atop burning corpses to save a few Deutschmarks (equivalent to pennies) on Zyklon B. Starving people to death is even cheaper, so as long as there's a structure to put people in and the war doesn't end any earlier, the Holocaust numbers aren't going to look much better. You may cause some more prisoner escapes that happened IOTL, and thus strengthen the resistance movement slightly, but casualties aren't going to drop by more than 10,000 or so, at the absolute maximum.

They could even go up. You could see a couple dozen shot down and not a single person in the camps saved because the ones that weren't shot down all missed their targets.
 
Like I said earlier: you could pull off a mission from the Eighth Air Force as part of Operation FRANTIC (the shuttle-bombing into the Ukraine and back). Just tell the Russians that the target is a Synthetic Oil and Rubber Plant in Silesia, and mount the mission. But the same caveat applies: the bomb pattern and accuracy from 20,000 feet or higher may not guarantee target destruction. And what happens if you miss the extermination facilities and wind up killing a lot of the people you're trying to save? The Germans simply repair the damage to the camp-with inmate labor, of course, and resume operations. And a failed mission means that the Bomber generals aren't going to want to mount another.
 
And that plan didn't go far.

Earliest an Allied plane flew over the Auschwitz area (and Madijanek near Lublin was also in operation until the Soviets overran it during their '44 Summer Offensive) was a recon flight from Italy in April, '44. First strike flown against the Buna Works near Auschwitz was Aug '44. The camp and surrounding area was photographed by recon and during the strikes (four). But the photo interpeters didn't know what they were seeing when they saw the barracks, guard towers, and fencing. It was assumed at the time that what the cameras picked up was just one large slave-labor camp. Detailed analysis of the photography wasn't done until 1978, and that after the miniseries Holocaust aired on NBC. Several CIA photo interpeters who saw the show wondered if the camp had been photographed. They discovered that it had, so they ordered the imagery from DIA (which has custody of all wartime airborne photo recon imagery), and on off-duty hours, examined the photos, comparing the pictures with published eyewitness accounts from both survivors and guards, the memoirs of the infamous commandant Rudolf Hoess, and several maps of the area. Lots of detail emerged: guard towers, fencing, groups of prisoners, trains awaiting unloading, the gas chambers and crematoria, the execution wall at the infamous Block 11, etc.

One can find the imagery and analysis here: http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/imint/holocaust.htm

The article is written by Dino Brugoini, who was a senior photo interpeter at the National Photographic Interpetation Center for many years-he saw U-2 photography of the Soviet Union, China, NK, and other areas, ID'd the Soviet missiles in Cuba, and so on.
True ,but there are some important points to remember here firstly ,the CIA experts were using equipment not available at the time ,capable of much finer resolution. Secondly they knew what they were looking at, hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Lastly the contempory interpretors would have seen thousands of camps like these and saw no difference between them and the thousands of other camps for imported worker slaves that the Nazis established
 
Problem.. Stalin years later would speak of the 'doctors conspiracies', paranoid antisemitism...

I wonder if the USSR would help actually. Earlier.

Agreed, Stalin would more paranoid that we are trying to get our planes based in the USSR to either back a military coup or as a way to get spies in place more than anything else. He couldn't care less about Jews being killed and would be looking for some kind of plot against him instead.
 
Maybe I'm quietly losing my mind here, but wasn't there an Allied mission that did bomb a PoW camp with the aim of smashing up the walls and letting the prisoners escape?
 

Macragge1

Banned
Maybe I'm quietly losing my mind here, but wasn't there an Allied mission that did bomb a PoW camp with the aim of smashing up the walls and letting the prisoners escape?

This was an attack by Mosquitoes on a Gestapo prison (as distinct from a POW camp) in either Belgium, France or the Netherlands (I forget which one) - partly the aim was to blow the walls up to allow the prisoners a chance to escape, but the plan also allowed for the prisoners to be killed in order to stop them from divulging sensitive information under torture.

As I'm sure you understand it's rather a stretch from this - admittedly impressive - operation on what was basically the RAF's front doorstep to an attack planned with sketchy intelligence all the way over in deepest Eastern Europe.
 
This was an attack by Mosquitoes on a Gestapo prison (as distinct from a POW camp) in either Belgium, France or the Netherlands (I forget which one) - partly the aim was to blow the walls up to allow the prisoners a chance to escape, but the plan also allowed for the prisoners to be killed in order to stop them from divulging sensitive information under torture.

As I'm sure you understand it's rather a stretch from this - admittedly impressive - operation on what was basically the RAF's front doorstep to an attack planned with sketchy intelligence all the way over in deepest Eastern Europe.

I understand completely, I was just having absolutely no luck finding it, and was sort of dreading digging through years of WW2 History magazine back issues to find the article I remembered. Thank you for the Gestapo bit, I had forgotten that.

There's Operation Carthage, which was one of a number of pinpoint air attacks on the Gestapo in the Netherlands, and Operation Jericho, which was on a prison in France, which numerically worked out as:
Of the 717 prisoners, 102 were killed, 74 wounded, and 258 escaped, including 79 Resistance and political prisoners, although two thirds of the escapees were recaptured

Even if the Allies were able and willing to mount this sort of operation against a death camp, the numbers aren't going to be very happy, if this is a reliable example.
 
I understand completely, I was just having absolutely no luck finding it, and was sort of dreading digging through years of WW2 History magazine back issues to find the article I remembered. Thank you for the Gestapo bit, I had forgotten that.

There's Operation Carthage, which was one of a number of pinpoint air attacks on the Gestapo in the Netherlands, and Operation Jericho, which was on a prison in France, which numerically worked out as:

Even if the Allies were able and willing to mount this sort of operation against a death camp, the numbers aren't going to be very happy, if this is a reliable example.

If anything it will be worse as it would be far more risky. Like it or not there was very little the Allies could do about the Death Camps except win as quickly as possible.
 
Which is what the Allied leadership ultimately decided. The best way to save those people was to win the war as quickly as possible.

As for the aerial photos: in 1944, the photo interpeters at the time simply assumed that what they were seeing was just a large slave-labor camp that housed those working on the bombing target: the Synthetic Rubber and oil plant. Like you said, hindsight is 20/20. But the photo analyists in 1978 were still able to detail the whole Auschwitz facility from the air.
 
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