Existing comment:
"Direct Bombing" of Auschwitz?
"I strongly recommend that the War Department give serious consideration to the possibility of destroying the execution chambers and crematories in Birkenau through direct bombing action."
-- John Pehle, Director of the War Refugee Board, to Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, November 8, 1944
Throughout spring 1944, the War Refugee Board received dozens of recommendations about how to save Jews, including pleas for the Allies to bomb either the rail lines that transported Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center, its gas chambers, or the entire camp. In June and in November, board officials forwarded these requests to the US War Department, which refused. Although the US Air Force bombed nearby factories, the War Department told the WRB that bombing Auschwitz-Birkenau would divert the military from its main objective -- winning the war as quickly as possible. |