Examining History: Why weren’t Auschwitz and the other concentration camps bombed by the Allies during WWII?
On Quora, Eitan Krokowski asks: Why weren’t Auschwitz and the other concentration camps bombed by the Allies during WWII? My reply: There are several reasons why the Anglo-American Allies did not use the Eighth Army Air Force or British Bomber Command to bomb German extermination camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka during World War II. First, there was a great deal of skepticism among military and political leaders in Washington and London when European Jews began reporting on what the Germans were doing in Poland and the Soviet Union. A few American publications, including LIFE magazine, had published several illustrated articles about the plight of Poland’s Jewish population under Nazi occupation, but most newspapers of the day (the New York Times included) tended to publish “atrocity” stories in the back pages. (Editors, reporters, and publishers of the day still remembered the often-false or wildly exaggerated stories of German atrocities in France and Belg...