Western Allies

[angie999]

As WWII and the Holocaust progressed, the British and American govenments gained an increasing understanding of what was going on. Yet the level of direct action to prevent it was miniscule.

Could they have done more?

Do they belong among the heroes for defeating the Germans, or among the villains for not doing more to save the Jews?

[laufer]

As for me, the most obvious example of the lack of determination to prevent the holocaust is that they didn't use theirs air supremacy to destroy the communication lines and slowed down the German "death machine". All those murdered people from France, Holland, Hungary etc. had to be transport in to the Poland somehow... Even bombing the camps could be the lesser of two evils. What do you think?

[angie999]

Certainly by the time of the Warsaw uprising of 1944, much of Poland was within range for bombers based in Italy, particularly Auschwitz in southern Poland, about which the allies had access to reasonable intelligence, particularly from Rudolf Vbra, for instance, who managed to escape. There are also good quality air reconnaisance photographs which remain in existence.

I don't think it would have been feasible before 1944, but this was the year in which the Hungarian Jews were murdered and I think more could have been tried at least. Whether it would have saved them we cannot know, but it was worth a try, I would say.

[Kiwiwriter]

I regard certain segments of Allied leadership, like MacKenzie King and Breckinridge Long, as villains for not allowing Jews to get in, other segments of Allied leadership as heroes for leading the drive on Germany or their role in ensuring the Holocaust got known about -- Ike at Ohrdruf, for example -- and all the fighting service members as heroes for getting in there to risk and expend their lives to do the job.