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Why Wasn't Auschwitz Bombed?

gumboot said:
The attack or bombardment, by whatever means, of towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are undefended is prohibited.

Annex to the Convention Article 25
Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV), 1907
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It's certainly not as clear cut as Geneva IV, but I think it qualifies.
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Someone forgot to tell the Germans:

The gun was fired from the forest of Coucy and the first shell landed at 7:18 a.m. on March 21, 1918. Only when sufficient shell fragments had been collected was it realized that the explosion had come from a shell. It did not take long to discover the gun's location. Within a few hours of the start of the bombardment it was located by French aviator Didier Daurat.

In total, between 320–367 shells were fired, at a maximum rate of around 20 per day. The shells killed 250 people and wounded 620, and caused considerable damage to property. The worst shelling was on 29 March 1918 when a single shell hit the roof of the Church of St. Gervais, collapsing the entire roof on to the congregation then hearing Mass. A total of 88 people were killed and 68 were wounded.
 
gumboot said:
I would think so. Any guards located in the camp are there to keep the prisoners in not protect the camp from being attacked.
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Slaughtering caged and unarmed civilians is hardly the work of a "fighting force".
 
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robinson said:
Monowitz 5 kilometres (3 miles) from Auschwitz, bombed four times.
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In 1944 the Auschwitz concentration camp had been photographed by a Mosquito (PR variant) from the SAAF as it searched for the IG Farben factory.

Monowitz, was home to the IG Farben synthetic rubber factory.
 
But second guessing history is easy. I'm still not sure what the point of this is.

I suspect it is a two pronged attack on somebody, but I'm not sure who. I'm sure at some point it is going to become about "the Joos".
 
You would think they would have at least bombed the rail lines.
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Raillines are difficult targets - being only 5ft wide, with enough bombs can probably cut
them. Problem is rail lines are easy to repair if have materials (ties, rails, plates, spikes
and ballast (gravel)) and labor. Germans certainly had enough slave labor and materials.
This is why usually go after other targets on railroads - bridges, switches, marshalling
yards, roundhouses which are bigger and when hit take more time and expense to
replace/repair.
 
robinson said:
You would think they would have at least bombed the rail lines.
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Having actually laid new rail lines on the ruined and long-disused road bed of a torn up rail line, I have to tell you they are not easy to destroy with bombing. You might hit a train. You might tear up a few yards of rail.

A wrecked train can be cleared with a crane in a few hours. A hole in the tracks takes even less time, especially if you don't much care if you have to put a slow order on that one stretch.

Even if you take out a trestle, a railway engineering corps can throw a shoo-fly around the ruined trestle in just a few days, usually.

No, there were better ways to get bomber crews killed than trying to take out a rail line deep in enemy territory; Where attacking rail lines made sense was where they are near the front and bringing up vital munitions and fuel, and where you can re-attack the damaged part repeatedly, and perhaps also take out the engineers who were repairing it if you are lucky.
 
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I watched an old film about bombing train tracks. They found it more effective to bomb the train.
 
robinson said:
I watched an old film about bombing train tracks. They found it more effective to bomb the train.
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Correct!

And that deep in enemy territory, the train would be quickly cleared.

So you would have suffered heavy bomber crew losses for what? A ruined steam locomotive that should have been retired after the FIRST war, and some destroyed boxcars?

I have to tell you a Lancaster or a B-17 was worth more than that train.

And what if the train had been full of Jewish prisoners?

Not a good idea.
 
gumboot said:
Any guards located in the camp are there to keep the prisoners in not protect the camp from being attacked.
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The guards weren't even there to keep the prisoners in. They mostly acted as referees for the soccer games, provided clean towels when the prisoners swam in the luxurious olympic sized swimming pool, helped with the on-site Opera company, and provided coffee and snacks on demand during daylight hours.
 
Gumboot is probably already aware of this (I'm always impressed by your WW2 knowledge, Gum ;) ) but legally speaking, the Concentration and Death camps were undefended.

The camps were run by the Waffen-SS, which was ruled to be a criminal organization and not a legitimate military organization by the Nuremberg Tribunals following the war. Unlike the Kreigsmarine, Luftwaffe and the rest of the Whermacht, former Waffen-SS members are ineligible for veterans benefits.

An allied infantryman liberating the camps likely wouldn't have seen the difference between a truly honorable warrior serving his country and a glorified, well dressed bully. But there were never any real soldiers at those camps.
 
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BenBurch said:
I *loathe* anti-Semites.

I had a lodge brother once (he passed 7 years ago) who had been at Auschwitz (and two other camps) and who had the tattoo.

Anybody who tells me he was a liar or part of some Jewish Conspiracy to pretend there was a Holocaust when there was not is going to have a real problem with me, I have to tell you.

http://cache.viewimages.com.nyud.ne...75B5D5F9A091C83C66657022C17FFA55A1E4F32AD3138
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Sure they were in the work camps and had tattoos put on their arms, but they were not exterminated, were they?

Tattoo prisoners is proof there was no Holocaust.
 
firecoins said:
Holocaust happaned. Its a fact. i would claim its an undeniable fact but holocaust deniers are denying facts.

Allied bombings would have killed the Jews and other prisoners. So how does not doing that prove the holocaust didn't happen?

George Bush I was a lowly pilot who followed orders. George Bush II wasn't alive.
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Wasn’t the Jews themselves who where complaining after the war why the camps were not bombed, or at least the rail lines to the camps?

It just shows there is no way to please the Jews.
 
Actually it isn't a dumb statement. It is very clever statement. It insinuates that nobody would bother to label people they were going to dump directly into an oven.

What is dumb is imagining that means nobody was slaughtered by the Germans.
 
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