Why Did We Not ACT (We knew before the War)

Discussion in 'The Holocaust' started by chrisdoughty28, May 31, 2013.

  1. chrisdoughty28

    chrisdoughty28 Junior Member

  2. RCG

    RCG Senior Member, Deceased

    Not sure what you are asking for here Chris?

    The war started with the invasion of Poland, so how could the camps have been there?

    1)We did not have a force of bombers that could reach all of Germany, let alone Poland.

    2)What bomber forces we had were best employed keeping Hitler from crossing the Channel.
     
  3. Drew5233

    Drew5233 #FuturePilot 1940 Obsessive

    Hi Chris - any ideas when the letter was written, who by and who to?
     
  4. geoff501

    geoff501 Achtung Feind hört mit

  5. Tom Canning

    Tom Canning WW2 Veteran WW2 Veteran

    Chris

    It is fairly apparent that at the time of writing we had our hands full in Sicily with an Air Force incapable of stopping the Germans from escaping into Italy..let alone the bombing of Poland..it was to be another six months before we could

    bomb the Rumanian Oilfields at Ploesti - then that was only the heavy bombers of the USAAF - from Southern Italy at Foggia- rather a long return trip with awesome casualties. An appeal was made to our Allies in Moscow to allow them to land

    in Russian territory in order to rest and refuel etc - this was refused......and then as we were well aware of the various camps in Poland - and probably elsewhere - we could DO - little about it...

    Cheers
     
  6. TriciaF

    TriciaF Junior Member

    The idea of creating "camps" for dissidents started soon after the beginning of the 3rd reich in 1933. At first they were in germany only, for communists, the mentally ill or handicapped, homosexuals and any who didn't fit into the ideal of the master race. And probably the same idea existed well back in history.
    It was simple to extend their scope to Jews.
    But as others have written, there were other priorities, mainly the defense of our country from invasion.
     
  7. urqh

    urqh Senior Member

    As an aside, we do all realise that Poland had its own jewish program before ww2 don't we?
     
  8. chrisdoughty28

    chrisdoughty28 Junior Member

    Extract from a letter to Prime Minister Winston Churchill by a Polish woman living in exile in Britain July 26th 1943
    We knew before the war that there was a program to remove all who were not acceptable to Hitler. Yet we allowed them to build up there forces after WW1.
    I am 67 and have done my time in the forces in Europe etc. What happened after WW1 to allow Germany to become a super power in 25 years.

    With this police infrastructure in place, opponents of the Nazis were terrorized, beaten, or sent to one of the concentration camps the Germans built to incarcerate them. Dachau, just outside of Munich, was the first such camp built for political prisoners. Dachau's purpose changed over time and eventually became another brutal concentration camp for Jews.
    By the end of 1934 Hitler was in absolute control of Germany, and his campaign against the Jews in full swing
     
  9. chrisdoughty28

    chrisdoughty28 Junior Member

    All Commons debates on 23 Apr 1936
    . Germany deliberately defaulted in the payment of her post-War debts, and this has enabled her to re-arm. Britain's financial policy is wrapped up in this policy which has been pursued by Germany. How did Germany get into her present position? First of all she was propped up by American capital, and then, having become a Fascist State, she proceeded to refuse to pay her debts; and wages were reduced in that country until now 55 per cent. of those employed in Germany are working for less than 26s. a week. With the money with which she should have paid her debts, she first of all bought raw material, then she extended her factories, and then she rearmed.
    Who has been responsible for this? Not the Bank of England it is true, but the acceptance houses in Britain have been very largely responsible for this position. The acceptance houses in London borrowed money from the United States and others and lent it to Germany, and this is the result of that policy. Up to 1933, Germany paid the interest on her indebtedness, but in March, 1933, when the Fascists came into power, Dr. Schacht saw his chance, and he now refuses to pay more than is necessary to keep the acceptance houses from bankruptcy. Germany is now re-armed.
    In Germany they have batoned, first of all, the members of our own movement. They have dealt with the trade union movement and the co-operative movement. They proceeded to deal with all the Liberals that were left, and then with the Jews; and what they have done internally in Germany they are now prepared to do externally, internationally. Where, therefore, is it that the next aggression may take place?
    People in Europe now, and particularly students of international affairs—people representing all political parties—are very much concerned about the preparations that are being made to do in Austria and elsewhere what has already been done in the Rhineland,
     
  10. arnhem44

    arnhem44 Member

    And thus it shows there is a difference between knowing it, and being able to do something about it...even for the supposedly important political and top hierarchical people.

    Today, too, we (Presidents, MPs, UN) see atrocities in Syria--"why" don't "we" do something about it, "act" now.

    If everything in life was so simple.


    And now more in detail to the letter:
    1) Bombing (area bombing) death camps would not have that much of an effect:
    a) It would not take months but few weeks to rebuild it..by forced labourers no doubt.. who'd kill themselves by building..which is the point of the whole camp.
    The only systematic important center of it were the fast ¨processing¨ gaschamber and ovens... not the barracks.
    How long does it take to rebuild a gaschamber (closed bunker) and three ovens ? Matter of weeks.

    A surgical strike with Mosquitos on the guard towers and electrical wires and mines (? by strafing mosquitos??) plus dropping supplies and weapons for the inmates would make more sense for a number of healthy (!) and strong (!) escapees....but for them it would only extend the ordeal till the moment when they will be caught.
    Success efficiency = nill.

    b ) a deathcamp or 2 less on a continent with 100 s still operating, means diverting the trains to other death camps nearby.
    Success only when ALL camps get bombarded within a week...= impractical and impossible.
    (Compare to bombarding all air frames factories in Germany.. never 100% cover).



    2) Retaliation bombarding actually DID happen by the Allies.
    Flattening Hamburg, Köln, Dresden, ..list is endless.
    The only difference is that it did not come with a proposition to leave it when deathcamps get closed.
    a) There is no negociating with the Nazis..unconditional surrender is the only deal to be had.
    b ) How would you be able to check if there are no deathcamps anywhere ?
    c) Would the Nazis concede..but the "normal" brutal war to continue..then it would be forbidden (by whom ?) to bombard german cities and infrastructure and factories in the middle of habitation ? Impossible to ask of the allies having underwent the war by 1943.


    I wonder what answering letter she got from PM Churchil (if ever?).

    The only thing I am puzzled about is why the knowledge about the deathcamp atrocities were never used as war propaganda or as means to sell more war bonds in the USA and Britain ? Why did it have to be kept under the carpet by the allied authorities until the oh-so-big surprise in 1945 ?



    edit: And what if after the war the jewish relatives come asking for compensation for the killing by the allied bombs ?
    In legal terms: How is it certain that father joshua would not survive the camp, but did die because of a Lancaster bomb ?
    That is the only certainty there is: died by a british bomb: pay please....
    So that too was an argument not to bomb such camps.
     
  11. phylo_roadking

    phylo_roadking Very Senior Member

    Chris - actually, we didn't. The Germans marched their OWN soldiers home in 1918 and demobilised the majority of them...then AFTER they accepted Versailles we and the French proceeded to force them to smash up BOTH their large air force AND their aviation factories and accept all the prohibitions on redeveloping them in the treaty.

    Actually - only from 1933 to 1939 - SIX years!

    To be fair - one of the major planks in Germany's rearmament policy WE permitted them to do...their NAVAL rearmament courtesy of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1934.

    Stanley Baldwin thought he could do something similar for air power...peg Germany's new air force and its growth to the size of ours and other European powers...but the Air Parity talks came to nothing. Unfortunately, by THAT time Hitler had taken a different lesson out of the AGNA; we thought we were pegging Germany's naval strength to ours....but he took the AGNA simply to indicate that we were no longer respecting the Versailles Treaty from OUR side!

    Actually, we weren't respecting it, he was right in that; by 1930 London had come to think that Versailles was FAR too punitive, though the French kept strongarming...or TRYING to strongarm...Germany on the basis of it for a couple more years - but where we thought we were replacing it with a direct one-on-one treaty, Hitler interpreted it (obviously) as a sign of weakness and unwillingness to do very much else...
     
  12. chrisdoughty28

    chrisdoughty28 Junior Member

    While I was not old enough to recall the war I do recall a lot of the results ration books, War debt to the US bomb damage to places where I lived Rotherham , I went to the canal zone and Aden as a child with my father Ex W/O,AG. ETC. ETC
    I find it hard to understand why having lost so much of the young male population in 1914-1918, we allow it to happen again with the the same or worse outcome.
     
  13. Wilco Vermeer

    Wilco Vermeer Junior Member

    I think there has historcally been more to that then only having let them allow to rearm. The dictations of Versailles (the Germans were not even involved in the treaty talsk, they were only forced to sign them after they were divtated by the Allies) rushed Germany into a state of total chaos and poverty. The dictations of Versailles resulted in Germany being degraded to a state with totally no influence and having to pay wardebts they could not afford. All understandable after what happened, but so much different as how both Germany and Japan were dealt with after WW2. All this contribited to the state Germany found itself during the depression and inflation of the 1920's and helped the NSDAP to its power and influence.
     
  14. chrisdoughty28

    chrisdoughty28 Junior Member

    There were few survivors of the most intense phase of murder at Chelmno. In mid-January 1942, Yaakov Grojanowski escaped and made his way to Warsaw where he informed the ghetto leadership of what he had witnessed. As a result, fairly accurate information about the mass killings at Chelmno was transmitted via the Polish underground and reached London in June.
     

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