The Allied governments knew, by the autumn of 1942, what was happening to the Jews of Europe. Detailed reports from Polish underground couriers, from Jewish escapees, and from Allied diplomatic and intelligence sources made clear that the German programme was the deliberate murder of the Jewish population of the continent. The Allies acknowledged this publicly in a joint declaration on 17 December 1942. They did not act militarily on the information until late in the war, and even then they did not bomb the death camps or the railway lines that supplied them. The argument over whether they should have, and whether bombing would have made a meaningful difference, has continued ever since.
What the Allies knew, and when
The Karski mission of 1942 brought to London and Washington a detailed first-hand account of the Warsaw ghetto and a German extermination camp at Bełżec, given by Jan Karski, a Polish underground courier who had been smuggled into both. Karski met the Polish government in exile, the British war cabinet, and President Roosevelt. He was largely disbelieved or politely dismissed. The Riegner Telegram of August 1942, sent by the Geneva representative of the World Jewish Congress to American Jewish leaders, summarised what was known about the German plan to murder all the Jews of Europe; it was treated by the State Department as unconfirmed and was held back from publication for several months. The Polish underground reports were continuous and detailed. The intelligence picture was complete by early 1943.
The 17 December 1942 joint Allied declaration, read in the British House of Commons by Anthony Eden and followed by a minute of silence, formally acknowledged the killing. From that date the Allies could not credibly claim ignorance.
The proposals to bomb
From the spring of 1944 onwards, with the Hungarian deportations underway and Auschwitz operating at full capacity, several proposals were put to the Allies to bomb either the Auschwitz killing facilities or the rail lines that fed them. The proposals came from the World Jewish Congress, from Jewish Agency representatives in Jerusalem, from Vrba and Wetzler, the two escaped Auschwitz prisoners whose detailed report on the camp had reached the Allies in April 1944, and from various other sources.
The Allies declined. The American War Department’s formal position, set out in correspondence with the World Jewish Congress, was that bombing the camps would be a diversion of forces from the war effort, that the targets were beyond effective bomber range, and that the prisoners themselves would be killed in the bombing. The British position was similar. Operationally, the proposals were considered at lower levels and rejected. No decision was made at cabinet level on either side.
The case for bombing
The case for bombing rested on three points. First, that the Auschwitz facilities were within range of British and American bombers based in Italy from mid-1944 onwards. Allied aircraft had bombed industrial targets at Monowitz, three miles from the Birkenau gas chambers, on several occasions in the summer and autumn of 1944. Second, that the disruption of the rail network feeding Auschwitz could plausibly have slowed the rate of killing, which was running at 10,000 to 12,000 Jews per day during the Hungarian deportations. Third, that the moral case was overwhelming: the Allies were fighting a war whose declared moral basis was opposition to Nazi aggression, and they were declining to interrupt the defining Nazi crime as it happened.
The Allied bombing of the Monowitz factory in August 1944 demonstrated that the camp area was operationally reachable. American photographic reconnaissance produced clear images of the gas chambers and crematoria. The argument that the Allies did not know where to bomb fails on the documentary record.
The case against bombing
The case against bombing rests on different points. First, that the Allied bombing of the day was inaccurate, and that bombs aimed at the gas chambers would have killed many of the prisoners they were intended to save. Second, that the railway lines were difficult to disable in any sustained way: bombing of railway lines elsewhere in occupied Europe had repeatedly failed to interrupt traffic for more than a few days. Third, that the deportations could have been completed by other means: by trucks, by foot marches, by other railway routes. Fourth, and most uncomfortable, that the prisoners destined for the gas chambers had on average a few hours to live; bombing the camps would have killed them more quickly than the gas chambers but would not have saved them.
The historian Richard Levy, who has examined the technical and operational record in detail, has argued that bombing would have had only a marginal effect on the rate of killing, even if it had been attempted. Other historians, including David Wyman and Martin Gilbert, have argued that even a marginal reduction would have saved tens of thousands of lives, and that the moral and symbolic significance of an Allied bombing of Auschwitz would have been substantial regardless of the operational outcome.
What the argument is really about
The bombing question has continued to be argued because it stands as a proxy for a wider question about the Allied response to the Holocaust. The Allies had set out a war whose stated purpose was the defeat of Nazi Germany. The defining Nazi crime was the murder of the Jews of Europe. The Allies treated that crime, in operational terms, as a side issue rather than as the centre of the war. The bombing of Auschwitz would have been the moment at which the Allies acknowledged, in action, what they had publicly acknowledged in words two years earlier. They did not do it. Whether bombing would have saved lives matters less, in this view, than what the refusal to bomb said about Allied priorities.
The other historical view is that the Allies were fighting a war they were not yet sure they would win, that they had finite operational resources, and that the most effective way to save Jewish lives was the fastest possible Allied victory. On this view, every aircraft diverted to Auschwitz was an aircraft not flying against the German war machine, and every day the war was prolonged was a day in which more Jews would die. The two views are not entirely reconcilable, and the argument has continued because both contain a real point.
See also
- Jan Karski
- The Hungarian Deportations 1944
- What the Allies Knew and When
- Anthony Eden and the Commons Statement December 1942
Sources
- David Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945, Pantheon, 1984
- Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, Henry Holt, 1981
- Richard Levy, The Bombing of Auschwitz Revisited, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1996
- USHMM: The Allies and Jewish Refugees