WI Allies bomb Auschwitz and other extermination camps in WWII?

Hi!

I have a crazy question. We know that simply bombing the railroad tracks leading to the camps wouldn't do much good as the Germans would just rebuild them (and the bombers didn't have enough precision to do the job). But what if they were to actually bomb the camps themselves, which were bigger targets and more difficult to replace?

Yes, inmates would be killed along with the Nazis. However, many of them would have died anyway and in one very real sense killing them would have put them out of their misery. The important thing would be that destroying the camps would make it much more difficult for Hitler to implement the Final Solution (at least I would expect so at least). Preventing the Holocaust would be better in the long run, and destroying the camps would do that.

I suspect the bombers wouldn't be precise enough to eliminate the gas chambers...but who knows?
 
Why would they waste their bombs? Really, you look back with hindsight and say "If only we bombed the camps, then the Holocaust would be less worse."

You'd need every bomber and bomb to destroy the infrastructure of the Reich, and not to play hero and bomb military-insignificant targets.
 

Japhy

Banned
They did have the ability to blow up the Gas Chambers, Mosquito Crews pulled some impressive bomb runs during the war.

But the result of doing that would have been quite simple: The Germans would have responded to it no differently then any other camp rising, they'd simply get some extra men with guns on scene, execute everyone and raze the camp.
 
They did have the ability to blow up the Gas Chambers, Mosquito Crews pulled some impressive bomb runs during the war.

But the result of doing that would have been quite simple: The Germans would have responded to it no differently then any other camp rising, they'd simply get some extra men with guns on scene, execute everyone and raze the camp.
I assumed he meant actual bombing raids with Lancasters and B-17s.
 
I'd be reluctant to bomb the camps on the grounds that bombing neutrals, especially civilian neutrals who are already going through hell, isn't such a nice thing to do. I'd also be reluctant because it's a waste of bombs. Every bomb that falls on a camp is one that doesn't fall on a factory or an airfield. The war lasts longer and the Germans get some comedy gold as the Allies squander resources and help them eliminate the Jews.
 
Even by the standards of Arthur "Bomber" "It Takes Six Months to Rebuild a Factory but 18 Years to Rebuild a Worker" Harris the camps are from a military target. I cannot see anyone wasting resources on them. If they did I think the only long term effect would be Holocaust deniers blaming the USAAF and the RAF for "killing innocent civilians in refugee camps."
 

Japhy

Banned
I assumed he meant actual bombing raids with Lancasters and B-17s.

Well he asked if the Gas Chambers could be eliminated.

And blowing the shit out of the death camps with Area Bombing just means the focus shifts to the Einsatzgruppen, who of course were quite effective as is. With more resources to them I don't know what the death toll would be though.
 
You have several targets ...

  1. The railway lines - the Germans send the prisoners on a deathmarch for the last few miles ... or keep them locked in the cattle wagons whilst the line is repaired.
  2. The living quarters - the Germans make the prisoners build new sheds or sleep outside or send them to other already overcrowded huts or kill those that don't have a home.
  3. Destroy the gas chambers - as mentioned above the Germans find another way to kill the prisoners.
  4. Destroy the industry associated with the camps - the Germans rebuild, send the workers elsewhere or kill those that no longer have a productive existence.
On top of that the majority of those arriving at the camps were killed straight away. The allies did not always know where the camps were or if they did they didn't know the true purpose. The allies also had better ways of dealing with the camps and saving lives by getting to them overland as quickly as possible. And they had better uses for the ground and air forces.

The final solution was a production line of death that had many "factories" spread across a vast area. Nothing was going to stop it once full production was in swing. Knock out one death camp and production moves elsewhere or a new production facility is built. I guess by production I should actually say destruction (of life).
 

BlondieBC

Banned
If you bomb the camps, you will kill large numbers of Jews in the raid. Not large compared to the total excess civilian deaths by Nazi, but large by any other standard. It makes the story of the holocaust much more complicated and harder to paint the Nazis as pure evil. Basically, the Nazi will argue the Americans also killed Jews without purpose. True or not, it give the holocaust deniers some facts to work with. It will also obliterate the best evidence of the holocaust and the one with the easiest to explain story. A few B-17 raids per camp will destroy most of the evidence. Then we get to practical issues

- Nazi find other ways to kill Jews or just rebuild camps.
- Did the B-17 have the range for the job? The escorts don't. Probably heavier losses to bomber commands. Interesting potential butterflies if the losses are significantly higher than OTL, and it is possible. A lot of these raids will spend quite a few more hours over Nazi controlled lands.
- More important German factories and cities not hit. On a one for one basis, every time you bomb a camp in Poland, you did not bomb a German city.
- Stalin will think the Western Allies are crazy. Political fallout.

My guess is doing this would reduce slightly the number of Jews killed by Nazi by May 1945, a few % total. But the war would last a couple months longer since the Germans will produce more, Allied bomber losses will be heavier, and it will take longer to defeat the Luftwaffe fighters.
 
My limited 2 cents

I would have thought that thoroughly bombing the tracks (even targeting the entire rail network if needed be, which would also served to have disrupted the Nazi supply lines) and the gas chambers would have at least reduced the murder rate, as it was mentioned somewhere that the Nazis and their local collaborators prior to making use of the gas chambers found the killing process to have been tiresome, inefficient and labor intensive.


Assuming the Nazis and collaborators were forced to resort to other less efficient means of mass murder, that would have meant more lives saved via the reduced death rate and the arms end up being used to replace the gas chambers that futther takes up much needed resources from the Nazi war effort (that even when the Nazis began retreating from the Soviets was more focused on the mass killing of Jews than anything else).


That is not even mentioning Witold Pilecki’s unrealised plans for the liberation of Auschwitz, with Witold hoping that the Allies would drop arms (for his local underground resistance organization) or troops into the Auschwitz (such as the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, based in Britain).
 
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Strangely, as the Allies liberated the concentration camps most of the inmates ask the soldiers "Why din't you bomb this camp ?"
 

Delta Force

Banned
Using strategic bombers against railways is a huge waste of resources, unless they are striking the rail terminals. You would be better off sending attack aircraft to shoot the locomotives and tactical bombers to destroy bridges and tunnels.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Using strategic bombers against railways is a huge waste of resources, unless they are striking the rail terminals. You would be better off sending attack aircraft to shoot the locomotives and tactical bombers to destroy bridges and tunnels.

Except for much of the war, most of the camps our outside of the range of the fighters used as attack craft. And the medium bombers may well lack the range and they will get slaughter by air defense without escort. Many of the camps are well past Berlin so the raids will be more dangerous in some ways than attacking Berlin. Sure, almost no flak, but the bombers will have to fly several hours longer over Germany. I assume we are talking about a real bombing campaign, not some one time PR stunt. Sure, a single attack might catch the Germans off guard, but not a campaign. Fighters don't have range. Medium bombers are suicide run and likely lack range. So now we are back to the heavy bombers with all the issues these entail. Probably also massively higher losses than the usage IOTL. Definitely less damage to German war machine and Luftwaffe.
 
To some extent, we did. George McGovern mentioned in one of his books a bombing run targeted at (IIRC) the IG Farben works at Oswiecim (Auschwitz).

There have been arguments and counterarguments over the subject for years. Personally, I think what was done was the right course: end the war as quickly as possible. Yes, we could have bombed the tracks leading into the camps, but they would have been quickly repaired. "Precision" bombing as we understand it today isn't quite what it was circa 1944. Trying to knock out the gas chambers and crematoria would likely have led to the killing of innocents and would have been, in the greater scheme of a world war, a diversion of resources. And, as has already been noted, the elimination of those facilities did not end the prospect of exterminations still taking place. Things like this are always a hard decision; I am reluctant to second guess things that happened nearly 70 years ago.
 
I have been to Aushwitz and read on the subject. FDR knew in 1943 already what was going on, but he thought it would be better to win the war instead of announce to the world what the Germans were up to because then people would belive it was allied propaganda

The main problem was that nobody really belived that Germany would act the way they did.
 
The main problem was that nobody really belived that Germany would act the way they did.

Some people had gotten out in early in the war and reported what they had seen, so there were definetly whispers and rumors of what was coming, but no real believed it until they actually saw it.
 
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