Claudio Arena
Mr. Roe
English 3cp
27 May, 2011
Holocaust: The Inaction of the Allies
In history there have been unfortunately many genocides, or killing of an entire population. One of the biggest genocides in history was the killing of European Jews by Nazis, the Holocaust. While studying the Holocaust, it may be normal to ask some questions which are not usually asked: How much about the Holocaust was known by the allies while it was happening? Was Anti-Semitism present in allied countries as well during World War II? Did the allies have the possibility of stopping the Holocaust? Was information about the Holocaust fairly reported by the allies’ media? If stopping the Holocaust was possible, was the cost of it worth it? The Allies extensively knew about the holocaust while it was happening and for different reasons took almost no direct action to stop it.
Before the end of World War II, different reports from concentration camps gave the Allies information about what was happening. Witold Pilecki, a Polish soldier during World War II, entered the concentration camp of Auschwitz in 1940 under the name of Tomasz Serafiński for a secrets-gathering operation. After escaping Auschwitz in 1943, Witold furnished the first intelligence report about the concentration camp, a long document known as the Witold`s report. In this document Witold extensively talks about the killing and its methods, saying that “in already finished gas chambers, first mass gassings of people were started” (229). He also says that “We were building the crematorium for ourselves” (30). This report was transmitted to the allies’ governments, as well as other reports about the concentration camps, like the Vrba-Wetzler report from two Auschwitz’s escapees. Mark Grimsle, a member of the Ohio State Department of History, says that “By the summer of 1944, escapees from Birkenau had supplied the Allies with detailed, accurate information about the facility. The crematoria and gas chambers could be readily identified in aerial photographs” and so “Both Churchill and Roosevelt were briefed on the industrialized killing under way at Birkenau”. Also, the “[New York] Times published 1,186 stories about the Jews of Europe” (Grimsle), even if, not much attention and some distortions was brought to these stories. For these reasons, in “December 17, 1942, the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union issued a public statement” (Fischel) saying that “the German authorities . . . are now carrying out into effect Hitler’s often repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe” (qtd. in Fischel). It’s then self-evident that the governments had plenty and detailed records of what was happening in the concentration camps, and this knowledge was also public, thanks to public statements of allied countries. Information was also given about the different facilities of the concentration camps and their construction, especially in the Witold’s report, making planning for possible attack extremely simple. Lack of information about the concentration camps then cannot be the cause of the inaction by the allied countries and the US.
One of the main reasons why the allied forces didn’t take any direct action to stop the Holocaust isn’t merely a practical problem, but a problem lying in the social atmosphere in the allied countries and especially in the U.S. during World War II. Indeed, in these countries strong Anti-Semitism was diffused in the population, army and government as well. During the late 19th and early 20th century, “U.S. army officers tended to see themselves as the guardians of the ‘true’ America – white, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant – against the tide of immigrants crowding the nation’s cities. They subscribed to the concept of Social Darwinism . . . [and] Students at the Army War College studied the pseudo-scientific writing . . . about the superiority of the Nordic (or Aryan) race” (Medoff, “Anti-Semitic Politics”). The Jews, historically persecuted almost everywhere, were a perfect target for this new generation of army officers. “US Army Major Charles E. Woodruff, whose Social Darwinist writing and lecture helped provide his military colleagues with a ‘scientific’ basis for racism, wrote that Jewish ‘parasitism and ethnic disease’ threatened to turn America into another ‘Poland.’ It was no wonder, Woodruff wrote, that other nations had always persecuted the Jews: ‘European nations have repeatedly undergone disinfection in this regard . . . It is not a persecution of Jew as Jew, but an extermination of an invading disease’” (Medoff, “Anti-Semitic Politic”). These thoughts, which were much diffused in the army, sometime also influenced the government. For example, in 1921 the US government established the quota system to contrast immigrants arrival. General George S. Patton “favor[ed] the Germans and detested Holocaust survivors” and Benderrsky said that to him, their appearance and habits were manifestations of their hereditary racial traits of mental, moral and physical inferiority and degeneracy. Patton characterized the Jew as being lower than animals (qtd. in Medoff, “Anti-Semitic Politics”). This shows how Anti-Semitism was spread everywhere, even in the U.S. and how many generals actually supported the Holocaust. The comprehension of this social atmosphere is fundamental in understanding the reasons for the inaction of the U.S. and the allied countries, which otherwise would seems meaningless if we don’t take in consideration practical problems for a possible action.
However, practical problems were not the cause for the inaction of the Allies either. Indeed ,as Grimsley says “The Auschwitz complex was well within range of the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, based on Foggia, Italy” and also the “Allied bombers did bomb Auschwitz—five times” (Medoff, “New Evidences”). As Medoff says “On August 20, 1944, a fleet of U.S. bombers dropped more than one thousand bombs on the factory areas of Auschwitz, situated less than five miles from the gas chambers” (“New Evidence”). Many bombings near the concentration camp of Auschwitz took place between 1944 and 1945, and B-17 and B-24 heavy bombers actually bombed the German synthetic oil factories at Auschwitz and more than 2,800 B-17s and B-24s struck oil factories at Auschwitz and several other locations within 45 miles of Auschwitz concentration camp (Medoff, “New Evidence”). So bombing of Auschwitz concentration camps, as well as others, was indeed possible and not very difficult. “The real question is not whether Auschwitz could or should have been bombed, but rather why the Allies, despite knowledge of the Holocaust, made only perfunctory attempts to stop it” (Grimsley).
Another important factor in understanding allies’ response to the Holocaust is to understand how information was passed from the camps. Although information like the Witold’s report were available, lots of comments and interpretations of them have been done. Maybe due to the anti-Semitic clime in the allies, people often underestimated the reports, or said the news was exaggerated or propaganda. Even in the New York Times, “editors buried stories about Nazi outrages against Jews in the middle sections of their newspapers” and the events of the Holocaust “made Times front page only 26 times, but in only six of those stories were Jews identified on the front page as primary victims” (Fischel). Also, many magazines refused articles about the holocaust saying “get a less Jewish story” (qtd. in Medoff, “Anti-Semitic Politics”), and normally tried to omit the fact that the Jews were the main target of the Holocaust. When they talked about it, Times referred to the victims as refugees or persecuted minorities. The Time’s publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, said that articles focused too much on Jews would be suspicious to American Citizens. Sulzberger says they would create fears that American Jews had dual loyalties and would cause protest against the excessive attention for the Jews (Fischel). Miscommunications didn’t happen just in the medias, as “Military attaches at the American embassy in Berlin reported back to Washington that foreign media reports about the mistreatment of Jews were exaggerated” (Medoff, “Anti-Semitic Politics”). Also “in 1944, the War Refugee Jewish Board . . . was reprimanded by the director of the Office of War Information for giving the press details about the death camps. OWI claimed the information was unconfirmed and might be the result of a conspiracy by the Germans to embarrass the Allies” (Medoff, “Anti-Semitic Politics”). Also, studies were presented to the president about the impossibility of a bombing on Auschwitz concentration camp that has never been compiled (qtd. in Medoff, “New Evidence”).
One last thing we need to consider is if stopping the Holocaust would have been worth the price to pay. People argued that a bombing on Auschwitz might have been a diversion on the war intent, but the allies already diverted other actions like a bombing on Kyoto in order to save the city’s artistic treasures, a bombing on Rothenburg to save his Medieval architecture, and in April 1945 General George Patton diverted U.S. troops to rescue 150 prized Lipizzarner horses (Medoff, “New evidence”). Senator Robert Wagner said that “if horses were being slaughter as are the Jews of Poland, there would by now be a loud demand for organized action against such cruelty to animals” (qtd. in Medoff, “new evidence”). It’s then argued that even if camps were destroyed, “The Nazi could simply revert to earlier methods of slaughtering the Jews” (Grimsley). However, concentration camps were highly efficient and complicated structures, and the rate of deaths with earlier methods would have been incredibly lower. This is confirmed by the death toll, which is accepted to be of 960,000 Jews (Piper 68-72), of which a big percentage (70% - 80%) were caused by gas chambers, as many studies reveal. The argument that the attack would not have had any important effect is also false, since it would have been a strong symbolic attack, and the Allies had made symbolic attacks on other occasions. FDR ordered the April 1942 attack on Tokyo primarily to raise the American public morale. Churchill ordered air drops in support of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, an expensive diversion of effort that have scant assistance to the embattled Polish Home Army (Grimsley). “Even if bombing Birkenau had failed to slow the progress of the Final Solution, it would have sent a powerful message to the inmate of Auschwitz” (Grimsley).
In conclusion, the real reasons for the inaction of the allies are simple. Saving the Jews didn’t contribute much to the war effort, and so the Allied and the U.S. in particular didn’t care much for what was happening. Also, some generals feared a protest from the public opinion if actions would have been taken to help Jews, and some other allies generals were even in favor of the Holocaust itself. Allies had basically no interest in helping the Jews, or even supported the Holocaust, so it is no surprise that no action was ever taken to stop it.
Works Cited
Fischel, Jack. "Sins of omission: how the New York Times didn't report the Holocaust." The
Weekly Standard 11 Apr. 2005: 38+. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 21 Apr. 2011.
Grimsley, Mark. "... The allies had bombed Auschwitz?" World War II Jan.-Feb. 2010: 83+
General Reference Center Gold. Web. 21 Apr. 2011.
Medoff, Rafael. “New Evidence Concerning the Allies and Auschwitz." American Jewish
History 89.1 (2001): 91. General Reference Center Gold. Web. 21 Apr. 2011.
---. "The 'Jewish Threat': Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army." Midstream 47.3 (2001): 41.
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Pilecky, Witold. “Report by Captain Witold Pilecky.” Translat. Jacek Kucharski. PDF file.
Piper, Franciszek. The Number of Victims in Gutman and Berenbaum, 1998. Print.
