04.02.11a. Bombing the Concentration Camps, Now and Then; Auschwitz, Rwanda, Cambodia, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Turkey. I was just reading an article somewhere on the old question of whether the U.S. should have bombed out Auschwitz in 1944, which would probably have saved the lives of tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews. The Final Solution was mostly complete by the time bombing was practicable, but the Germans occupied Hungary only in 1944, and proceeded to deport and kill the hundreds of thousands of Jews there. The mechanics of killing that many people aren't easy, and if Auschwitz had been destroyed (of course replacing gassing with bombing deaths for people there at them time), it would have been harder to kill them. The Germans did shoot a lot of Jews in Russia before they built the death camps, but shooting is more difficult, and would, in fact, have been a drain on their war effort.

I don't know the situation well enough to be certain, but it does seem as if we ought to have bombed out Auschwitz. I do wonder about two things. First: By that time were the Allies bombing more important targets? For most of the War the bombing campaign was a waste and mostly was savage destruction of purely civilian targets, but the Americans did switch to targeting synthetic oil plants later, with much success, and the pre-Normandy bombings were useful too. Second: Would destroying Auschwitz and other death camps within bomber range have stopped the killing of Jews or increased its cost substantially? Maybe the Germans could have just expanded death camps that were too far away for us to bomb, or resorted to bullet, bayonet, and starvation.

If you do think that we ought to have bombed Auschwitz, though,then what of other government-sponsored murders of millions of people, e.g. Rwanda, Cambodia, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Maoist China, and Turkey? Soviet Russia in the 1930's and Maoist China are easy, in a sense--- it would have been very expensive to go to war with them, and the U.S. did make some small effort to stop each of these regimes at their beginnings. The Armenian massacres by the Turks during the First World War are a different case. The U.S. had no possibility of intervening, but the British and French made a deliberate choice to concentrate resources on the Western Front. The Armenian massacres make Churchill's idea of going after Turkey all the more attractive. North Korea is another touch nut to crack now--- but we really should be asking that question. The atrocities there do remind one of Nazi Germany. And Cambodia and Rwanda would have been relatively easy-- small countries whose regimes we could have overthrown in a matter of days.

[in full at 04.02.11a.htm . Erasmusen@yahoo.com. ]

To return to Eric Rasmusen's weblog, click http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/0.rasmusen.htm.