PBS documentary Secrets of the Dead - Bombing of Auschwitz

[Por_sha911]

It aired last night 1/21 on PBS.

Interesting to see how the governments of the world handled the knowledge that Auschwitz existed and what it was.

Check it out the next time it comes on.

[jcommin]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

It aired last night 1/21 on PBS.

Interesting to see how the governments of the world handled the knowledge that Auschwitz existed and what it was.

Check it out the next time it comes on.

I looked at the trailer - sorry I missed this.

[Skytrooper]

I will have to watch on PBS app on my tablet. I forgot it was airing

[Rick Lee]

What were they gonna do? Bomb the place and kill everyone sooner? They didn't have precision bombing back then. And Auschwitz is a ginormous facility with many sub camps. I can't see how bombing it would have saved one prisoner's life, unless it made escape easier and was done in the warm months.

[tcar]

Originally Posted by Rick Lee

What were they gonna do? Bomb the place and kill everyone sooner? They didn't have precision bombing back then. And Auschwitz is a ginormous facility with many sub camps. I can't see how bombing it would have saved one prisoner's life, unless it made escape easier and was done in the warm months.

The idea, even supported by some Jewish groups, was to bomb the camps to take away the Nazi's ability to kill future prisoners.... at the admitted cost of current prisoners lives.

Allies command thought it would give the Germans an 'out'.... able to say that the Allies killed the Jews, not the Germans....

Others wanted the Allies to destroy the railroad network going to the camps.... but that never happened....

The immediate NEED was to destroy the Germans' ability to produce diesel, gasoline and oil. That ended the war much, much sooner as it turned out. Munitions were being transported on horse drawn carts with trucks abandoned.. And tanks. And aircraft.

[pwd72s]

A LOT of tough decisions had to be made during WWII. I try not to second guess, or look at things through the perspective of today.

[rusnak]

That's like saying that you want to stop an armed robbery by shooting the store clerk.

[Reiver]

Who validated the PBS storyline?

Bombing one of many concentration camps (if true as depicted...and I am not certain it is factual) would not cover up anything at all.

I did not see the PBS show but camp prisoners worked in military production...factories/plants and shops that supplied wartime production...just some wiki

Allied reconnaissance and bombing missions[edit]


Picture of the Birkenau (Auschwitz II) extermination camp taken by an American surveillance plane on August 25, 1944. Crematoria II and III and the holes used to throw cyanide into the gas chambers are visible.
Auschwitz was first overflown by an Allied reconnaissance aircraft on April 4, 1944, in a mission to photograph the synthetic oil plant at Monowitz forced labor camp (Auschwitz III).[35]
On 26 June, 71 B-17 heavy bombers on another bombing run had flown above or close to three railway lines to Auschwitz.[36]
On July 7, shortly after the U.S. War Department refused requests from Jewish leaders to bomb the railway lines leading to the camps, a force of 452 Fifteenth Air Force bombers flew along and across the five deportation railway lines on their way to bomb Blechhammer oil refineries nearby.[37]
Buna-Werke, the I.G. Farben industrial complex located adjacent to the Monowitz forced labor camp (Auschwitz III) located 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from the Auschwitz I camp was bombed four times, starting at 20 August 1944 until 26 December 1944.[38] On December 26, 1944, the U.S. 455th Bomb Group bombed Monowitz and targets near Birkenau (Auschwitz II); an SS military hospital was hit and five SS personnel were killed.[39]
The Auschwitz complex was photographed accidentally several times during missions aimed at nearby military targets.[40] However, the photo-analysts knew nothing of Auschwitz, and the political and military hierarchy didn't know that photos of Auschwitz existed.[41] For this reason, the photos played no part in the decision whether or not to bomb Auschwitz.[41] Photo-interpretation expert Dino Brugioni believes that analysts could have easily identified the important buildings in the complex if they had been asked to look.[41]
Bombing Auschwitz: technical considerations[edit]
The issue of bombing Auschwitz-Birkenau first attracted wide public attention in May 1978 with the publication in Commentary of the article "Why Auschwitz Was Never Bombed," by historian David S. Wyman (subsequently incorporated into his 1984 New York Times bestseller, The Abandonment of the Jews).[42] Since then, several studies have explored the question of whether the Allies had the requisite knowledge and technical capability to bomb the killing facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Since the controversy began in the 1970s, a number of military experts have looked at the problems involved in bombing Auschwitz and the rail lines and have concluded that it would have been extremely difficult and risky and that the chances of achieving significant results would have been small.[43][44][45][46]
In 2000, the edited collection The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? appeared. In the introduction, editor Michael Neufeld wrote: "As David Wyman was able to show at the outset, it is impossible to claim that Auschwitz-Birkenau could not have been bombed. In fact, the Fifteenth Air Force did drop bombs on it by accident on 13 September 1944, when SS barracks were hit by bombs falling short of their intended industrial targets. The question rather becomes one of the likelihood of hitting the four main gas chamber/crematoria complexes along the west side of Birkenau, and the likelihood that bombs would have fallen in profusion on the rows and rows of adjacent prisoner barracks. Accuracy is thus the central issue…"[47]

[Por_sha911]

Those in favor of bombing wanted to target the buildings with the tall smokestacks - the crematoriums. They could identify them from the air but targeting was crude 70 years ago and they knew there would be prisoners lives lost. The thought was sacrifice the few for the good of many (think Normandy). Tough decision.
Watch the documentary before coming to conclusions. It made me think.

[drcoastline]

Is this the documentary? 55.21 long.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwirzpTTkZznAhUuwVkKHTiIAe8QtwIILTAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fwnet%2Fsecrets%2Fb ombing-auschwitz-ksouts%2F4804%2F&usg=AOvVaw0ihlL3sXY3tsyXfyIBF0cV

[nota]

they did take out the german RR trains
but did it with fighter/bombers
they could do low level runs to hit moving trains
but did not have the range to do that in poland

the big hi-level 4 engine aircraft could get there but
did not have the precision bombing ability to hit a single building then

[Rick Lee]

Originally Posted by Por_sha911

Those in favor of bombing wanted to target the buildings with the tall smokestacks - the crematoriums. They could identify them from the air but targeting was crude 70 years ago and they knew there would be prisoners lives lost. The thought was sacrifice the few for the good of many (think Normandy). Tough decision.
Watch the documentary before coming to conclusions. It made me think.

I still don't see the point. The crematoriums were pretty far removed from the barracks and admin. bldgs. I was there for the second time last summer, so it's fresh in my mind. Even if the Allied bombers could have hit the smokestacks, what was that gonna do? I don't even think many Germans were working around there. They were all Sonderkommando prisoners. And had the crematoriums been bombed, it wouldn't have saved one prisoner's life. The killing would have continued. Maybe hitting the main railway going into the camp would have slowed things down for a short time. But there were five other large extermination camps in Poland at the time that would have taken up the overflow. The Holocaust was not going to be stopped by air raids, only boots on the ground.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by drcoastline

Is this the documentary? 55.21 long.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=video&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwirzpTTkZznAhUuwVkKHTiIAe8QtwIILTAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pbs.org%2Fwnet%2Fsecrets%2Fb ombing-auschwitz-ksouts%2F4804%2F&usg=AOvVaw0ihlL3sXY3tsyXfyIBF0cV

That's it.