Why didnt the allies do something?

[sapper]

Hi Ron.
Well mate your people suffered the most. Can anyone really believe that Hitlers SS, Still killing their victims as fast as they could, even up to the last days of the war....

That Hitler would listen to anyone? Not a bit of it. He would not listen to his own generals let alone someone without any power at all.
All that could be done was done. sadly it was not enough. When we did get there, we moved Heaven and Earth to try to save as many as we could, But it is true that the years of privation, starvation, and cruelty, ensured that a great many would die even after liberation.

Yet we have still not learned the lesson. I supported the war in Iraq. I foolishly thought that in this day and age, there was no place for murderous tyrants, and to save lives, and for the sake of the ordinary man we should remove them.
How wrong can you be...We removed the murdering tyrant and incurred the wrath of the people for doing it.

There is a lesson there. It would seem that in future the oppressed must seek their own salvation.
Sapper

[Slipdigit]

Bombing the rail service to interdict traffic between materials and factories also affected traffic to the camps. I see no way to have stopped what was going on without having Allied troops in the camps and how could we have done that without first defeating the enemy troops defending the periphery?

This topic of bombing the extermination camps was discussed ad nauseum here. I am fully convinced that nothing short of ending the war was going to prevent the deaths.

In all sincerity, what else could have been done other than what was done, the total defeat of the NSDAP government and the occupation of Germany?

[Marina]

Originally Posted by kfz

Also why was not policitcal force not used, The Nazis had some small degree of policitical consience attempting to hide the evidence, they may well have been less likely to continue if policitcal threats where made before the end of the war.
Kev

Churchill did warn the Nazis that there would be reprisals after the war.
As for bombing - is it true that Allied planes couldn't actually fly that distance until they had airstrips in Europe? But even if I am mistaken about that, surely the most certain way to end the exterminations was to win the war.

[40th Alabama]

Watching the Ken Burn's series on the War i recognized a picture that my dad took at a camp his company was involved in liberating-i had wondered where it was. The Camp was Wobbelin (Ludwigslutz, Germany).

The pictures are here: Hitler's Final Solution

The reason I bring this up, if you notice in the picture that the town's people were made to bury prisoners on either side of the entrance road all the way up to the castle. I am sure this was done so that the town would always remember what they did there. Well, wrong-the area has been redevolped into a nice park area and aparently all of the graves have been moved.

Today pictures are here:
Stadt Ludwigslust

Kind of defeats the purpose doesn't it!

[spidge]

Bombing of the camps would have caused more deaths. Even if the bombing had been precise and the inmates escaped, (if they were physically able) they would have been shot or just returned to their own camp or another nearby.

The only way to relieve their suffering was to defeat their tormentors and that was achieved in 1945.

[sapper]

I just sometimes wonder if some of the troops, so outraged by what they found meted out instant justice? I have no knowledge of what took place. I was back in the UK in hospital...But i know that I would have found it difficult to accept what they come across, without taking some severe action.

In those days our little piratical group were a damn sight more assertive than this old vet is today.
Sapper

[kfz]

I dont think anyone is suggesting bomb the fences to let the victims out. Rather target the essential imovable bits of infrarstructure these large camps had. Rail lines, Cremetoria.

I realise that nothing was going to stop it completly, but slowing it down, disabling the huge extirmination camps for soem degree of time.

The basic fact is that it was a strict military target.

Kev

[Herroberst]

Originally Posted by kfz

I dont think anyone is suggesting bomb the fences to let the victims out. Rather target the essential imovable bits of infrarstructure these large camps had. Rail lines, Cremetoria.

I realise that nothing was going to stop it completly, but slowing it down, disabling the huge extirmination camps for soem degree of time.

The basic fact is that it was a strict military target.

Kev

I have to agree with Sapper:

I think the idea was that any bombing of the Camps would basically do the Germans Dirty job for them, unless you were suggesting some type of tactical Air sortie, which couldn't realistically be done until 44, and then would have been a token gesture better to have gone with transport interdiction, destruction of rail stock.

[Stephen]

If the allies had issued a warning to Germany over its genocidal actions or bombed the camps it would be the same as telling them that their secret communications were being read. As the Germans were industriously murdering right up to the end when it must have been clear the war was lost it is unlikely that the killing would have stopped because the allies knew. Once the Allies decided that issuing a warning or bombing camps while it may have done some good meant giving away the greatest intelligence secret of the war and they are not going to do it what could they have done?. However I have a feeling that doing something was not a priority for the allies.

[sapper]

The idea that we could have bombed the fences to let the people escape? Not on! they could hardly walk, let alone escape.
What we should have done is extract such a horrific penalty for anyone involved, that no one ever again would contemplate doing the same atrocity.
Sapper