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THE ABANDONMENT OF THE JEWS -- AMERICA AND THE HOLOCAUST, 1941-1945 |
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[b]15. THE BOMBING OF AUSCHWITZ[/b]
A recurring question since World War II has been why the United States rejected requests to bomb the gas chambers and crematoria at Auschwitz and the railroads leading to Auschwitz.
Such requests began to be numerous in spring 1944. At that time, three circumstances combined to make bombing the Auschwitz death machinery and the railways leading to it from Hungary critically important and militarily possible. In mid-April, the Nazis started concentrating the Jews of Hungary for deportation to Auschwitz. Late in April, two escapees from Auschwitz revealed full details of the mass murder taking place there, thus laying bare the fate awaiting the Hungarian Jews. And by May the American Fifteenth Air Force, which had been operating from southern Italy since December 1943, reached full strength and started pounding Axis industrial complexes in Central and East Central Europe. For the first time, Allied bombers could strike Auschwitz, located in the southwestern corner of Poland. The rail-lines to Auschwitz from Hungary were also within range. [1]
The two escapees were young Slovak Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who fled on April 10, 1944. Toward the end of April, they reached the Jewish underground in Slovakia and sounded the alarm that preparations were under way at Auschwitz for exterminating the Hungarian Jews. They dictated a thirty-page report on what they had learned about the killing center during their two years there. It detailed the camp's geographical layout, internal conditions, and gassing and cremation techniques, and offered a statistical record of the months of systematic slaughter. The thoroughness that characterized the report is seen in this passage describing the operation of one of the four large gas chambers:
A copy of the Vrba-Wetzler statement, dispatched to the Hungarian Jewish leadership, was in Budapest by early May. By mid-June, the report had reached Switzerland, where it was passed to Roswell McClelland of the War Refugee Board. He found it consistent with earlier information that had filtered out concerning Auschwitz. It was further corroborated by the disclosures of a non-Jewish Polish military officer who had also recently escaped from the camp. [3]
During June, this information spread to the Allied governments and began to appear in the Swiss, British, and American press. By late June, then, the truth about Auschwitz, along with descriptions of its geographical location and layout, was known to the outside world. [4]
In mid-May, as deportation from the eastern provinces of Hungary started, Jewish leaders in Budapest sent out a plea for bombing the rail route to Poland. The message specified the junction cities of Kosice (Kassa) and Presov and the single-track rail line between them. It added that Kosice was also a main junction for Axis military transportation. Dispatched via the Jewish underground in Bratislava, Slovakia, the request was telegraphed in code to Isaac Sternbuch, the Vaad Hahatzala representative in Switzerland. It reached him about May 17. [5]
Sternbuch rewrote the telegram for transmission to the Union of Orthodox Rabbis in New York and submitted it to the military attache of the American legation in Bern, requesting that it be telegraphed to the United States through diplomatic lines. A week later a similar, but more urgent, telegram arrived from Bratislava. That appeal also went to the military attache for delivery to New York. Additional pleas came, and Sternbuch relayed them to the American legation. Yet, by June 22, he had received neither reply nor acknowledgment from New York. For unknown reasons, the messages had been blocked, either in Bern or in Washington. [6]
In Jerusalem, Jewish leaders had received appeals similar to those that had reached Sternbuch. On June 2, Yitzchak Gruenbaum, chairman of the Jewish Agency's rescue committee, arranged through the American consul general in Jerusalem to telegraph a message to the War Refugee Board in Washington. His request for bombing the deportation railroads reached the WRB, but nothing came of it. [7]
Meanwhile, during the third week of May, Rabbi Michael Weissmandel and Mrs. Gisi Fleischmann, leaders of the Slovak Jewish underground, wrote a long letter pleading with the outside world for help. They described the first deportations from Hungary and stressed the fate awaiting the deportees on their arrival at Auschwitz. Their message appealed for immediate bombing of the main deportation routes, especially the Kosice-Presov railway. The two also cried to the outside world to "bombard the death halls in Auschwitz." Writing in anguish, they asked, "And you, our brothers in all free countries; and you, governments of all free lands, where are you? What are you doing to hinder the carnage that is now going on?" Smuggled out of Slovakia, the plea, accompanied by copies of the Auschwitz escapees' reports, reached Switzerland, but not until late June. [8]
Some days earlier, about June 13, other copies of the escapees' reports had come via the Slovak underground to Jaromir Kopecky, a Czechoslovak diplomat in Geneva. He immediately showed them to Gerhart Riegner of the World Jewish Congress. Riegner summarized them for delivery to the American and British governments and the Czech exile government in London. To the summaries, Kopecky and Riegner added appeals for bombing the gas chambers and the rail lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. [9]
Shortly afterward, one of Sternbuch's pleas for railway bombing, transmitted illegally through Polish diplomatic channels, circumvented American censorship and broke through to American Jewish circles. On June 18, Jacob Rosenheim of the New York office of Agudath Israel World Organization addressed letters to high American government officials, informing them of the ongoing deportations. He submitted that paralysis of the rail traffic from Hungary to Poland could at least slow the annihilation process, and implored them to take immediate action to bomb the rail junctions of Koske and Presov. [10]
Rosenheim's appeals were relayed to the WRB. On June 21, Pehle transmitted the request to the War Department. Three days later, he discussed it with McCloy. Pehle himself expressed doubts about the proposal, but asked that the War Department explore the idea. McCloy agreed to look into it. [11]
In fact, the War Department had started to process the matter the day before, and on Saturday afternoon, June 24, it arrived at the Operations Division (OPD), the arm of the War Department charged with strategic planning and direction of operations. On Monday, OPD ruled against the proposed bombing, stating that the suggestion was "impracticable" because "it could be executed only by diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations." Actually, the decision was not based on any anal ysis of current Air Force operations. The War Department did not consult Air Force commanders in Europe. Rather, the rejection was based on a confidential War Department policy determined in Washington nearly five months before. [12]
In late January 1944, in one of its first steps, the WRB had requested British help in carrying out its program of rescue. The British government was reluctant to cooperate, partly because the presence of the secretary of war on the board implied that the armed forces would be used in rescuing refugees. The War Department, moving to reassure the British on this count, set down the following policy:
This policy effectively removed the War Department from participation in rescue efforts, except as they might arise incidental to regularly planned military operations. [13]
Another of the WRB's earliest moves was to try to arrange for a degree of cooperation from U.S. military commanders in the war theaters. In late January 1944, the board proposed through McCloy that the War Department send a message to war-theater commanders instructing them to do what was possible, consistent with the successful prosecution of the war, to assist the government's policy of rescue. [14]
Although such cooperation was specifically mandated by the executive order that established the WRB, the military leadership in Washington balked at dispatching the message. McCloy referred the proposal to the Office of the Chief of Staff after jotting on it, "I am very chary of getting the Army involved in this while the war is on." The War Department's decision crystallized in February in an internal memorandum that maintained:
In concrete terms, this meant that the military had decided to avoid rescue or relief activities. [i] [15]
In late June, when the Operations Division received Rosenheim's proposal to bomb rail points between Hungary and Auschwitz, it drew these two earlier pronouncements from the files and used them as the basis for its decision:
Thus two confidential policy statements, generated several months earlier, were used to rule out the proposal to bomb the Kosice-Presov railroad. That decision then served as a precedent for rejecting all subsequent requests. The War Department simply claimed it had already considered such operations and found them infeasible.
Back in February, while forming its basic policy on rescue, the War Department had knowingly set aside the executive order that established the War Refugee Board. The record of a crucial meeting of middle-level War Department officials shows that Colonel Harrison Gerhardt, McCloy's executive assistant, advised Colonel Thomas Davis of OPD's Logistics Group to "read from the executive order, in which it is stated that the War, State and Treasury Departments will cooperate to the fullest extent." Davis responded, "I cannot see why the Army has anything to do with it whatsoever." Later in the meeting, he in sisted, "We are over there to win the war and not to take care of refugees." Gerhardt replied, "The President doesn't think so. He thinks relief is a part of winning the war." At the end of the discussion, Davis crystallized the problem and its solution:
Davis's view prevailed. [18]
In fact, the position of the military had been inelastic all along. When the Bermuda Conference had originally recommended a refugee camp in North Africa, the War Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had resisted the plan, largely because they thought it might lead to more such requests. They claimed that shipping could not be spared, food supplies in North Africa were inadequate, and an influx of Jews might anger the Arab population and "necessitate military action to maintain order." Yet General Eisenhower, who was on the scene, saw no problem about keeping order; and at that very time the Allies were trans· porting thousands of non-Jewish refugees to camps in Africa and providing for them there. [19]
Months later, the Allied invasion of Italy opened new opportunities to rescue Jews; but again the military was negative. In fall 1943, Yugo slav partisans freed 4,000 people, mostly Jews, from Nazi internment and moved them to the Adriatic island of Rab. Because the Germans seemed likely to capture the island, the State Department, at the request of the World Jewish Congress, asked the military to help get the refugees to Italy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff replied that Allied forces in Italy were already overloaded with refugees to care for and action to aid those on Rab "might create a precedent which would lead to other demands and an influx of additional refugees." [20]
Even the State Department was taken aback. Stettinius warned Hull that if the response to the Rab situation accurately reflected military policy, the United States might as well "shut up shop" on the effort to rescue any more people from Axis Europe. He thought the President should inform the military that rescue was "extremely important ... in fact sufficiently important to require unusual effort on their part and to be set aside only for important military operational reasons. [ii] [21]
No such thing happened. Soon afterward, the War Refugee Board was formed and, as has already been noted, the War Department unilaterally decided against involving the military in rescue. It was this policy -- never disclosed to the WRB -- that extinguished Rosenheim's plea for railroad bombing.
Before McCloy could advise Pehle of the decision on Rosenbeim's proposal, another request reached the WRB. A cablegram from McClelland on June 24 summarized the information that had arrived in Switzerland concerning the Hungarian deportations. It also listed the five main railroad deportation routes and pointed out:
Pehle, not aware that the War Department had already ruled against Rosenheim's request, relayed McClelland's cablegram to McCloy on June 29, along with a note emphasizing its reference to bombing deportation railroads. The chance for approval of a proposal to bomb five rail systems was minute; indeed, it received no separate consideration. Gerhardt, McCloy's executive assistant, drafted a response to Pehle and forwarded it, with McClelland's cablegram and Pehle's covering note, to his chief. He also included this two-sentence memorandum:
The reply simply adapted the Operations Division's language rejecting the earlier Rosenheim proposal to fit the new, expanded bombing request. McCloy signed it on July 4. [24]
Calls for bombing the deportation rail lines continued to come to Washington. But starting early in July, appeals for Air Force action to impede the mass murders increasingly centered on destruction of the Auschwitz gas chambers. Even before the first of these proposals reached Washington, Benjamin Akzin of the WRB staff was arguing for strikes on Auschwitz. He held that destruction of the killing installations would, at least for a time, appreciably slow the slaughter. He also pointed out that Auschwitz could be bombed in conjunction with an attack on Katowice, an important industrial center only seventeen miles from the death camp. [25]
Shortly afterward, the London-based Czech government forwarded to Washington the summary of the Vrba-Wetzler report that Riegner and Kopecky had sent out of Switzerland two weeks before. Riegner and Kopecky's accompanying plea for bombing the Auschwitz gas chambers stimulated further WRB discussion of that possibility. By mid-July, Pehle and the board decided to press the military on the question. But a careful plan to do so apparently went awry, for no formal approach took place, though Pehle and McCloy did discuss the issue sometime during the summer of 1944. That conversation must have dampened Pehle's interest in the project, because he informed Morgenthau in September that the board had decided not to refer the proposal to the War Department. [26]
Late in July, the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe wrote President Roosevelt calling for bombing the deportation railways and the gas chambers. The letter emphasized that the railroads were also used for military traffic and that an attack on Auschwitz could open the way for inmates to escape and join the resistance forces. Both proposed actions would thus assist, not hamper, the war effort. Nothing at all came of this overture. [iii] [27]
The next proposal issued from the World Jewish Congress in New York and went directly to the War Department. On August 9, A. Leon Kubowitzki sent McCloy a message recently received from Ernest Frischer, a member of the Czech government-in-exile. It called for bombing the Auschwitz gas chambers and crematoria to halt the mass killings. It also proposed bombing the railways. [29]
The reply, drawn up in McCloy's office and approved by Gerhardt, was dated August 14. It followed a familiar pattern:
In early September, pressure built once more for bombing the railroads, this time the lines between Auschwitz and Budapest, where the last large enclave of Hungarian Jews was threatened with deportation. Entreaties came from Vaad Hahatzala, the Orthodox rescue committee. Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz, anxious for the appeal to reach the WRB as soon as possible, telephoned Benjamin Akzin, even· though it was the Sabbath. Kalmanowitz offered to travel to Washington immediately. When Akzin relayed the plea to Pehle, he took the opportunity to spell out, in polite terms, his dissatisfaction with the War Department's in action regarding the bombing requests. He maintained that the WRB had been "created precisely in order to overcome the inertia and -- in some cases -- the insufficient interest of the old-established agencies" concerning the rescue of Jews. Pointing to the Allies' current air superiority, he pressed for a direct approach to the President to seek orders for immediate bombing of the deportation rail lines. But the board did not move on the appeal. [31]
On the other crucial bombing issue, the question of air strikes on Auschwitz, the WRB 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 increasing the pace of extermination. They urged the board to explore again the possibility of bombing the killing chambers. Mann cabled their plea to Washington. Other messages then reaching the board were reporting Nazi threats to exterminate thousands of camp inmates as the Germans were forced back across Poland by the Red Army. Pehle decided to raise the issue once more, though not forcibly. He transmitted the substance of Mann's dispatch to McCloy "for such consideration as it may be worth." [32]
McCloy's office thought it worth too little consideration to trouble the Operations Division with it, or even to write a reply to the WRB. Gerhardt recommended that "no action be taken on this, since the matter has been fully presented several times previously." [33]
McCloy let the recommendation stand, and the matter was dropped. Meanwhile, Mann's dispatch had independently caught the attention of the Operations Division, which discussed it briefly with the Air Force Operational Plans Division. The Air Force radioed a message to England to General Carl Spaatz, commander in chief of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe. It asked him to consult Mann's original dispatch and informed him that "this is entirely your affair," but pointedly advised that military necessity was the basic requirement. The next day, Spootz's headquarters turned the proposal down. [34]
The last attempt to persuade the War Department to bomb Auschwitz came in November. The full text of the Auschwitz escapees' reports finally reached Washington on November 1. The detailed chronicle of horror jolted the board. Shocked, Pehle wrote a strong letter to McCloy urging destruction of the killing installations. He also pointed out the military advantages in simultaneously bombing industrial sites at Auschwitz. [35]
Peble's appeal went from McCloy's office to the Operations Division. It rejected the proposal on the grounds that air power should not be diverted from vital "industrial target systems" and Auschwitz was "not a part of these target systems." In reality, Auschwitz was definitely a part of those target systems. OPD was either uninformed or untruthful. [36]
OPD also explained that destruction of the killing facilities would require heavy bombers, or medium bombers, or low-flying or dive-bombing airplanes. It then made two misleading statements which indicated that the mission was either technically impossible or inordinately risky:
The first statement was inaccurate; Mitchell medium bombers and Lightning dive-bombers had sufficient range to strike Auschwitz from Italy, as did British Mosquito fighter-bombers. The second statement was apparently an attempt to muddle the issue. Why else omit the airfields in Italy? Heavy bombers flying from Italy could reach Auschwitz with no unusual difficulties. The bases in the United Kingdom, however, were substantially farther from Auschwitz and not relevant to the mission under consideration. [37]
No further requests were made for bombing Auschwitz or the rail lines to it. Unknown to the outside world, Himmler in late November ordered the killing machinery destroyed. On January 27, 1945, the Russian army captured the camp. [38]
Thus the proposals to bomb Auschwitz and the rail lines leading to it were consistently turned down by the War Department. The chief military reason given was that such proposals were "impracticable" because they would require the "diversion of considerable air support essential to the success of our forces now engaged in decisive operations elsewhere." Was this reason valid? The answer is no.
From March 1944 on, the Allies controlled the skies of Europe. Official U.S. Air Force historians have stated that "by 1 April 1944 the GAF [German air force] was a defeated force." Allied air power had "wrecked Hitler's fighter [plane] force by the spring of 1944. After this ... U.S. bombers were never deterred from bombing a target because of probable losses." [39]
From early May on, the Fifteenth Air Force, based in Italy, had the range and capability to strike the relevant targets. In fact, during the same late June days that the War Department was refusing the first 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 452 bombers travel along and across two of the five deportation railroads. On June 26, 71 Flying Fortresses on another bombing run passed by the other three railroads, crossing one and flying within thirty miles of the other two. [40]
As for Auschwitz, as early as January 1944, Allied bombing strategists were analyzing it as a potential target because of the synthetic oil and rubber installations connected to the camp. Two months later, the huge Blechhammer oil-refining complex, forty-seven miles from Auschwitz, came under careful study. Then, in late April, U.S. Strategic Air Force headquarters in England wrote to General Ira C. Eaker, commander of Allied air forces in Italy, inquiring about the feasibility of a Fifteenth Air Force attack on Blechhammer. Eaker replied on May 8 that not only were strikes on Blechhammer possible, but war industries at Auschwitz and Odertal "might also be attacked simultaneously." [41]
By May 1944, the Fifteenth Air Force had indeed turned its primary attention to oil targets. Throughout the summer, as their involvement with the invasion of France lessened, the British-based U.S. Eighth Air Force and the Royal Air Force increasingly joined the Fifteenth in fighting the "oil war." Most observers, then and now, have agreed that the high attention given to oil in 1944 and 1945 was one of the most decisive factors in Germany's defeat. Loss of oil gradually strangled the Third Reich's military operations. [42]
In late June, the "oil war" was about to move into Upper Silesia, where Germany had created a major synthetic-oil industry based on the vast Silesian coal resources. Eight important oil plants 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 102 to 357 heavy bombers hit it on ten occasions between July 7 and November 20 -- but it was not the only one. All eight plants shook under the impact of tons of high explosives. Among them was the industrial section of Auschwitz itself. [43]
On Sunday, August 20, late in the morning, 127 Flying Fortresses, escorted by 100 Mustang fighters, dropped 1,336 500-pound high-explosive bombs on the factory areas of Auschwitz, less than five miles to the east of the gas chambers. Conditions 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. [44]
Again, on September 13, a force of heavy bombers rained destruction on the factory areas of Auschwitz. The 96 Liberators encountered no German aircraft, but ground fire was heavy and brought three of them down. As before, no attempt was made to strike the killing installations, though two stray bombs hit nearby. One of them damaged the rail spur leading to the gas chambers. [iv] [45]
On December 18 and also on December 26, American bombers again pounded the Auschwitz industries. [47]
Beginning in early July, then, air strikes in the area were extensive. For example, two days after the first raid on Auschwitz, 261 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 350 heavy bombers struck Blechhammer. Two days after that, 218 hit Moravska Ostrava and Oderberg (Bohumin), both within forty-five miles of Auschwitz. Not long before, on August 7, heavy bombers had carried our attacks on both sides of Auschwitz on the same day: 357 had bombed Blechhammer, and 55 had hit Trzebinia, only thirteen miles northeast of Auschwitz. [48]
It would be no exaggeration, therefore, to characterize the area around Auschwitz, including Auschwitz itself, as a hotbed of American bombing activity from August 7 to August 29. Yet, on August 14, the War Department could write that bombing Auschwitz would be possible only by diversion of airpower from "decisive operations elsewhere."
Bur a further question remains: Would the proposed bombing raids have been, as the War Department maintained, of "doubtful efficacy"?
In the case of 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. Successful cutting of railways necessitated close observation of the severed lines and frequent rebombing, since repairs rook only a few days. Even bridges, which were costly to hit, were often back in operation in three or four days. [49]
Nonetheless, bridge bombing was pressed throughout the war. And bombing of both rail lines and railroad bridges constituted a significant part of the Fifteenth Air Force's efforts, especially during September and October 1944, when it assisted the Russian advance into Hungary by cutting and recutting railways running from Budapest to the southeastern front. Railroad bombing could be very effective, then, for targets assigned a continuing commitment of airpower. But in the midst of the war, no one expected diversion of that kind of military force for rescue purposes. [50]
It might also be argued that railroad bombing would not have helped after July 8, 1944 -- 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 the capital were gone by then. But more than 200,000 Jews remained in Budapest. And they faced constant danger because the transports to Auschwitz might be resumed. This threat meant that the other two deportation railways, which would have been used to carry Jews from Budapest to Auschwitz, remained critically important.
Deportation of the Budapest Jews would have taken roughly three weeks, in addition to several days of preparations. An alarm would have reached the outside world in time for cuts in those railroads to have been of s0lll" help, even if the bombing had to be sporadic. In this situation, the United States could readily have demonstrated concern for 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. As it happened, on ten different days from July through October, a total of 2,700 bombers traveled along or within easy reach of both rail lines on the way to targets in the Blechhammer-Auschwitz region. [51]
In fact, deportations from Budapest appeared imminent in late August, and another appeal for railroad bombing was sent to Washington through Sternbuch in Switzerland. On September 13, the answer came back to Bern: the War Department considered the operation impossible. Yet on that very day, 324 American heavy bombers flew from Italy to the Silesian targets. En route, they passed within six miles of one of the railways. On the way back, they rendezvoused directly above the other. As they regrouped, some of them dropped leftover bombs on the freight yard below and cut the main rail line. [52]
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 bombing Auschwitz. There is no doubt that destruction of the gas chambers and crematoria would have saved many lives. Mass murder continued at Auschwitz until the gas chambers closed down in November. Throughout the summer and fall, transports kept coming from many parts of Europe, carrying tens of thousands of Jews to their deaths. [53]
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. Two of the extermination buildings were 340 feet long, the others two-thirds that length. Chimneys towered over them. Descriptions of the structures and of the camp's layout, supplied by escapees, were in Washington by early July 1944. Beginning in April 1944, detailed aerial reconnaissance photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau were available at Air Force headquarters in Italy. [v] [54]
Could aerial bombing have been precise enough to knock out the mass-murder buildings? Definitely yes. The main obstacles to accurate bombing were clouds, smoke, extreme altitudes, enemy fighter opposition, and flak. [56]
Weather conditions in the Auschwitz region were excellent for air operations throughout August and most of September; October was a time of poor weather. The August attack on Auschwitz ran into no smoke screening. The September strike encountered some. But because the industrial area was five miles from the killing installations, it is unlikely the latter would have been enveloped in smoke anyway. (It was not during the September raid.) Unusually high altitude flight was not a problem; the missions into Upper Silesia operated at normal bombing altitudes. Enemy fighter opposition was negligible. Flak resistance at Auschwitz was moderate and ineffective on August 20, but intense and accurate on September 13. [57]
In sum, the only real obstacle to precision bombing of the death machinery would have been flak. Auschwitz had little flak defense until after the August raid. Only then were heavy guns added. In any case, the most likely operation would have combined a strike on the gas chambers with a regular attack on the industries. In that situation, the German guns would have concentrated on the aircraft over the factory area, five miles away from the planes assigned to the death installations. [58]
One procedure would have been to arrange for some of the heavy bombers on one of the large Auschwitz strikes to swing over to the Birkenau side and blast the killing facilities. Heavy bombers flying at their normal altitude of 20,000 to 26,000 feet could have destroyed the buildings. But complete accuracy was rarely possible from such heights. Some of the bombs probably would have struck nearby Birkenau, itself a heavily populated concentration camp. [vi]
Heavy bombers were not, however, the only choice. A small number of Mitchell medium bombers, which hit with surer accuracy from lower altitudes, could have flown with one of the missions to Auschwitz. The Mitchell had sufficient range to attack Auschwitz, since refueling was available on the Adriatic island of Vis, 110 miles closer than home base back in Italy. [60]
An even more precise alternative would have been dive-bombing. A few Lightning (P-38) dive-bombers could have knocked out the murder buildings without danger to the inmates at Birkenau. P-38's proved they were capable of such a distant assignment on June 10, 1944, when they dive-bombed oil refineries at Ploesti, making a 1,255-mile round trip from their bases in Italy. The distance to Auschwitz and back was 1,240 miles, and stopping at Vis shortened that to 1,130. Furthermore, in an emergency, Lightnings returning from Auschwitz could have landed at partisan-held airfields in Yugoslavia. [vii] [61]
The most effective means of all for destroying the killing installations would have been to dispatch about twenty British Mosquitoes to Auschwitz, a project that should have been possible to arrange with the RAF. This fast fighter-bomber had ample range for the mission, and its technique of bombing at very low altitudes had proven extremely precise. In February 1944, for instance, nineteen Mosquitoes set out to break open a prison at Amiens to free members of the French resistance held there for execution. The first two waves of the attack struck with such accuracy, smashing the main wall and shattering the guardhouses, that the last six planes did not bomb. [63]
Mosquitoes knocked out individual buildings on numerous occasians. Gestapo records centers were frequent targets, as in an April 1944 mission to The Hague. Six Mosquitoes, flying at fifty feet, blew up the structure and the German barracks behind it. In his November appeal for bombing the Auschwitz murder buildings, Pehle pointed out the similarity to the Amiens mission. But the War Department denied that any parallel existed. Actually, the Amiens attack required greater precision. And in order to strike before the executions took place, it had to be carried out in very bad winter weather. [64]
Opportunities for bombing the gas chambers were not limited to the August 20 and September 13 raids on Auschwitz. Aircraft assigned to smash the death factory could have flown with any of the many missions to the nearby Silesian targets. Auschwitz could also have been scheduled as an alternative objective when poor bombing conditions were encountered at other targets. [65]
If the killing installations had been destroyed at this stage of the war, it would have been practically impossible for the hard-pressed Germans to rebuild them. At the very least, the death machinery could not have operated for many months. (The original construction, carried out in a time of more readily available labor, transportation, and materials, had taken eight months.) [66]
Without gas chambers and crematoria, the Nazis would have been forced to reassess the extermination program in light of the need to commit new and virtually nonexistent manpower resources to mass killing. Gas was a far more efficient means of mass murder than shooting, and it caused much less of a psychological problem to the killers. Operation of the gas chambers, which killed 2,000 people in less than half an hour, required only a limited number of SS men. Killing tens of thousands by gunfire would have tied down a military force. The Nazis would also have again faced the body-disposal problem, an obstacle that had caused serious difficulty until the huge crematoria were built. [67]
Available figures indicate that 100,000 Jews were gassed at Auschwitz in the weeks after the August 20 air raid on the camp's industrial sector. If the date is set back to July 7, the time of the first attack on Blechhammer, the number increases by some 50,000. Requests for bombing Auschwitz did not arrive in Washington until July. If, instead, the earliest pleas for bombing the gas chambers had moved swiftly to the United States, and if they had drawn a positive and rapid response, the movement of the 437,000 Jews who were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz would most likely have been broken off and additional lives numbering in the hundreds of thousands might have been saved. More significant, though, than attempts to calculate particular numbers is the fact that no one could tell during the summer of 1944 how many hundreds of thousands more would die at Auschwitz before the Nazis ceased their mass murder. [viii] [68]
The basic principle behind the War Department's rejection of the bombing proposals was that military resources could not be diverted to nonmilitary objectives. The logic of this position was extremely forceful in a world at war. But it should be emphasized that the policy was not as ironbound as the War Department indicated in its replies to the bombing requests. Exceptions occurred quite often, many of them for humanitarian purposes. For instance, the Allied military moved 100,000 non-Jewish Polish, Yugoslav, and Greek civilians to Camps in Africa and the Middle East and maintained them there. Again, the American and British armies in Italy supplied thousands of refugees with food, shelter, and medical care. [70]
The war effort could be deflected for other decent purposes as well, such as art or loyalty to defeated allies. Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan and a center of culture and art, was on the Air Force target list. In spring 1945, Secretary of War Stimson asked McCloy, "Would you consider me a sentimental old man if I removed Kyoto from the target cities for our bombers?" McCloy encouraged him to do so. The Air Force command argued against the decision but adhered to it. On another occasion, McCloy himself prevented the planned bombing of Rothenburg, a German town known for its medieval architecture. [71]
As Soviet forces neared Warsaw at the beginning of August 1944, the Polish Home Army rose against the Germans. (The Home Army was s non-Communist resistance force linked to the Polish government in London.) The Russian advance suddenly stopped, however, and the Red Army remained about ten kilometers from Warsaw for weeks while the Nazis decimated the unaided and poorly supplied Polish fighters. [72]
Polish officials in London put intense pressure on the British government to do something about the situation. Although Air Marshal Sir John Slessor, the RAF commander in Italy, argued that supply flights to Warsaw from Italy would result in a "prohibitive rate of loss" and "could not possibly affect the issue of the war one way or another," the British government ordered the missions run. Volunteers flew twenty-two night operations from Italy during August and September. Of the 181 bombers sent, 31 did not come back. Slessor concluded that the effort had "achieved practically nothing." [73]
The United States did not participate in the Italy-based missions to Warsaw. But Roosevelt, under heavy pressure from Churchill, ordered American bombers in Britain to join the effort. On September 18, 107 Flying Fortresses dropped 1,284. containers of arms and supplies on Warsaw and continued on to bases in Russia. At most, 288 containers reached the Home Army. The Germans took the rest. [74]
The cost of the mission was low in numbers of aircraft lost, but extremely high in the amount of airpower kept out of regular operations. To deliver 288 (or fewer) containers to a military force known to be defeated, more than a hundred heavy bombers were tied up for nine days. For four days, the Fortresses sat in England, loaded with supplies, waiting for the right weather conditions. After the mission, four more days elapsed before the planes reached home, via Italy. (Prevailing wind patterns made the long trip directly from Russia to England unsafe for Flying Fortresses.) The bombers did strike a rail target in Hungary on the way from Russia to Italy, but carried out no other bombing operations in the entire nine days. [75]
The director of intelligence for the U.S. Strategic Air Forces summarized American involvement in the Warsaw airdrops. His report acknowledged that, even before the September 18 flight, the President, the War Department, and the Air Force realized that "the Partisan fight was a losing one" and that "large numbers of planes would be tied up for long periods of time and lost to the main strategic effort against Germany." Still, all those involved concurred in the decision to go forward, "despite the lack of a firm commitment" to the Polish government by the United States. [76]
Why did the United States divert a large amount of bombing capacity during a crucial phase of the oil campaign? The report's closing paragraph dealt with that question:
The Warsaw airdrop was executed only by diversion of considerable airpower to an impracticable project. But the United States had demonstrated its deep concern for the plight of a devastated friend. [ix] [77]
If, when the first bombing request reached it, the Operations Division had inquired of the air command overseas, it would have found the Fifteenth Air Force on the verge of a major bombing campaign in the region around Auschwitz. Instead, OPD never looked into the possibilities. From July through November 1944, more than 2,800 bombers struck Blechhammer and other targets close to Auschwitz. The industrial area of Auschwitz itself was hit twice. Yet the War Department persisted in rejecting each new proposal to bomb the railroads or the death camp on the basis of its initial, perfunctory answer -- that the plan was "impracticable" because it would require "diversion of considerable air support." [79]
It is evident that the diversion explanation was no more than an excuse, The real reason the proposals were refused was the War Department's prior decision that rescue was not part of its mission -- the President's order establishing the War Refugee Board notwithstanding. To the American military, Europe's Jews represented an extraneous problem and an unwanted burden.
In the fall of 1944, Jewish women who worked at a munitions factory Inside Auschwitz managed to smuggle small amounts of explosives to members of the camp underground. The material was relayed to male prisoners who worked in the gassing-cremation area. Those few wretched Jews then attempted what the Allied powers, with their vast might, would not. On October 7, in a suicidal uprising, they blew up one of the crematorium buildings. [80]
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[b]Notes:[/b]
[i] The War Department finally sent a message to theater commanders in early March, but all it did was inform them of the WRB's general mission. In April, the WRB learned that American military authorities in Italy were unaware even of the board's existence. That same month, a WRB representative spoke with General Benjamin Caffey at Allied headquarters in Algiers and found him adamant that military forces in the Mediterranean theater would not assist with any WRB plans. [16]
[ii] A few weeks later, the WRB sought War Department help in transmitting funds to the Jews on Rab so they could hire private boats to reach Italy. The military did not cooperate. [22]
[iii] At the same time, the Emergency Committee pointed to the use of poison gas at Auschwitz and stressed the President's earlier threat that "full and swift retaliation in kind" would follow "any use of gas by any Axis power." The committee called on Roosevelt to warn the Nazis that the continued use of gas to kill Jews would bring poison-gas attacks on the German people. This appeal was relayed to the State Department, then to the WRB, which answered that it was a military matter and thus outside its jurisdiction. In September, the proposal reached the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who ruled that it was not "within their cognizance." [28]
[iv] Both the August 20 and the September 13 air raids on Auschwitz were briefly reported in the New York Times and other American newspapers. Evidently the WRB did not monitor such information. [46]
[v] Officials in Washington had data on the Auschwitz killing installations, their location, and their purpose. But they relayed none of this information to the Air Force command in Italy. In Italy, Air Force personnel had aerial photographs of the extermination buildings, but no inkling of what they were and no reason to examine them closely. Their attention was focused on the industrial areas five miles distant. [55]
[vi] Jewish leaders in Europe and the United States, assuming the use of heavy bombers and the consequent death of some inmates, wrestled with the moral problem involved. Most concluded that loss of life under the circumstances was justifiable. They were aware that about 90 percent of the Jews were gassed on arrival at Auschwitz. They also realized that most who were spared for the work camps struggled daily through a hellish, famished existence as slave laborers and were worn out in a matter of weeks. Once unfit for hard labor, they were dispatched to the gas chambers. The bombing might kill some of them, but it could halt or slow the mass production of murder.
Although those who appealed for the bombing did not know it, many Auschwitz prisoners shared their viewpoint. Olga Lengyel, a Birkenau survivor, recalled after the war that she and the inmates she knew hoped for an air raid:. "If the Allies could blow up the crematory ovens! The pace of the extermination would at least be slowed." Two sisters, Hungarian Jews who were in Birkenau when the Auschwitz industrial areas were hit, told of the prisoners in their section praying for the bombers to blast the gas chambers. They were more than ready to die for that. [59]
[vii] The England-Russia-Italy shuttle bases system (code-named FRANTIC) became available in early June 1944. But flights that left Italy and returned directly to the bases in Italy could reach both Auschwitz and the deportation rail lines more effectively than shuttle missions could. Referring to plans to attack oil targets at Blechhammer and Auschwitz, General Eaker stated, "Return to our own bases is preferable to a shuttle operation." [62]
[viii] Incidentally, if the gas chambers had been destroyed on August 20 or earlier, Anne Frank might possibly have survived. Arrested on August 4, she and her family were deported to Auschwitz from a camp in Holland on September 2. They went on the last deportation train from Holland. Later, Anne and her sister were transferred to Bergen-Belsen, where both died of typhus, Anne in March 1945. If the Auschwitz mass-killing machinery had been destroyed by August 20, the train very likely would not have left Holland, because most of its passengers were bound for the Auschwitz gas chambers. [69]
[ix] Roosevelt's role in the effort for the Warsaw Poles is clearly documented. But evidence is lacking as to whether he was ever consulted on the question of bombing Auschwitz and the railroads to it. [78]
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