Well if this isn't a case of "I didn't get the answers I wanted" I don't know what is.

(10-13-2019, 08:41 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: That points to the fact that I've been saying and that's that it's not like we'd be redirecting our entire air force to the destruction of the tracks and it wouldn't have taken many planes or resources to bomb them.

It would, however, take men and resources away from the Germans in order to repair them.

Brad do you even know how many bombing missions were considered largely ineffective at strategic high level bombing of German and Japanese factories that had acres and acres under roof ? A bunch !

Now you're talking hitting RR tracks that are nowhere near the size of a large scale aircraft factory. You think a couple B17's could just tear up miles of track ? Every bomb is a direct hit from 25,000 feet ?

Look up how many planes attacked the Japanese Carriers at Midway then how many hits they got. Granted a moving target but still an aircraft carrier !

Take the P47 Thunderbolt in a tactical bombing role. I forget exactly but the % of hits they got on German Armor is like 10% or something, perhaps even less ?

Just as an example its roughly 930 miles from Paris France to Auschwitz Poland. Here's the max range of the P47:


The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was a World War II era fighter aircraft produced by the United States from 1941 through 1945. Its primary armament was eight .50-caliber machine guns and in the fighter-bomber ground-attack role it could carry five-inch rockets or a bomb load of 2,500 pounds. Wikipedia


Top speed: 433 mph
Wingspan: 41′ 0″
Weight: 10,000 lbs
Range: 801.6 mi
Engine type: Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp
Variants: Republic XP-72
Did you know: With over 15,600 aircraft manufactured, more Thunderbolts were built than any other fighter. warbirdsnews.com


800 hundred miles, late in the war they increased the range but still.


Again it sounds good on paper, yes just bomb the tracks. In practice it's not anywhere near as easy as you portray. 

(10-10-2019, 03:49 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Way to avoid the questions and just try and make a joke out of it instead of answering.

Way too typical.

Maybe just leave them in ghettos until they could try and repair the tracks?  Maybe we bomb more tracks by then.  

The death camps were created for the mass murdering of Jews, so how do they do it without the camps?  Just line up every Jew and shoot them one by one?  That would have taken a lot of bullets, lots of soldiers, and a lot of time.

I do appreciate the response (or lack thereof), though, because you make it obvious that I have good points 

He wasn't avoiding the question.  He's asking what would have been accomplished by denying them the use of the tracks if that were even possible.  

(10-12-2019, 10:26 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: They can be wrong but, when he's very well-educated, teaches it as a profession, and it's backed up by experts that can be found in a Google search, I feel pretty confident that he's right.

If you don't believe anyone here then just Google the question.

Lots of people out there pointing out the lack of range of bombers and resources needed to try and cut off the camps.

Also discussion about how the west lacked any "hard evidence" of the mass murders.  Ariel recon photos of the death camps did not sho any signs of a "mass extinction".  Just think about this.  If the allies had ANY uncontroverted evidence of the activities of the death camps they would have used it as propaganda throughout the war. 

(10-13-2019, 08:41 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Bengalzona's was informative on the types of bombers and things like that but didn't offer much in terms of why we didn't bomb the tracks.  

In fact, he offers that there were smaller planes that could have done it but were instead focused on tanks and the actual supply trains themselves.




I figured some people might do some research to look into it to see if they could find things that I couldn't.  That wouldn't fit your narrative, though.

The posts about using military equipment to end the war, rather than save lives, is a decent answer, but I also just found out where people in our own government were antisemitic: [url=And last but certainly not least, antisemitism. The US Department of War and Department of State were filled with antisemites, particularly at the highest levels. Jewish concerns fell on deaf ears.][/url]

And then there's also this:


That points to the fact that I've been saying and that's that it's not like we'd be redirecting our entire air force to the destruction of the tracks and it wouldn't have taken many planes or resources to bomb them.

It would, however, take men and resources away from the Germans in order to repair them.


This site says that the allies knew about the Germans' attempt to exterminate the Jews as early as 1942.



That also contradicts most people's claims in this thread that the allies were unaware.

The information I have read reinforces what I and others have relayed to you. Would you believe it if I posted any of it.

(10-13-2019, 08:41 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Bengalzona's was informative on the types of bombers and things like that but didn't offer much in terms of why we didn't bomb the tracks.  

In fact, he offers that there were smaller planes that could have done it but were instead focused on tanks and the actual supply trains themselves.




I figured some people might do some research to look into it to see if they could find things that I couldn't.  That wouldn't fit your narrative, though.

The posts about using military equipment to end the war, rather than save lives, is a decent answer, but I also just found out where people in our own government were antisemitic: [url=And last but certainly not least, antisemitism. The US Department of War and Department of State were filled with antisemites, particularly at the highest levels. Jewish concerns fell on deaf ears.][/url]

And then there's also this:


That points to the fact that I've been saying and that's that it's not like we'd be redirecting our entire air force to the destruction of the tracks and it wouldn't have taken many planes or resources to bomb them.

It would, however, take men and resources away from the Germans in order to repair them.


This site says that the allies knew about the Germans' attempt to exterminate the Jews as early as 1942.



That also contradicts most people's claims in this thread that the allies were unaware.

The information I have read reinforces what I and others have relayed to you. Would you believe it if I posted any of it?

(10-14-2019, 09:25 AM)michaelsean Wrote: Well if this isn't a case of "I didn't get the answers I wanted" I don't know what is.

I asked for logical answers and thorough answers, not the same answers over-and-over than can be refuted.

(10-14-2019, 10:02 AM)bengalfan74 Wrote: Brad do you even know how many bombing missions were considered largely ineffective at strategic high level bombing of German and Japanese factories that had acres and acres under roof ? A bunch !

Now you're talking hitting RR tracks that are nowhere near the size of a large scale aircraft factory. You think a couple B17's could just tear up miles of track ? Every bomb is a direct hit from 25,000 feet ?

Look up how many planes attacked the Japanese Carriers at Midway then how many hits they got. Granted a moving target but still an aircraft carrier !

Take the P47 Thunderbolt in a tactical bombing role. I forget exactly but the % of hits they got on German Armor is like 10% or something, perhaps even less ?

Just as an example its roughly 930 miles from Paris France to Auschwitz Poland. Here's the max range of the P47:


The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was a World War II era fighter aircraft produced by the United States from 1941 through 1945. Its primary armament was eight .50-caliber machine guns and in the fighter-bomber ground-attack role it could carry five-inch rockets or a bomb load of 2,500 pounds. Wikipedia


Top speed: 433 mph
Wingspan: 41′ 0″
Weight: 10,000 lbs
Range: 801.6 mi
Engine type: Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp
Variants: Republic XP-72
Did you know: With over 15,600 aircraft manufactured, more Thunderbolts were built than any other fighter. warbirdsnews.com


800 hundred miles, late in the war they increased the range but still.


Again it sounds good on paper, yes just bomb the tracks. In practice it's not anywhere near as easy as you portray. 

All of those targets also had a lot of planes defending them.  There were hundreds of miles of tracks.  We didn't need to let them know that we were even attacking the tracks, much-less a specific spot.  You think it's going to be easy to take planes off where they are already attacking or defending and say "quick, so guard these tracks"?

They also wouldn't need to fly as high, making it easier to bomb the tracks. 

(10-14-2019, 10:04 AM)michaelsean Wrote: He wasn't avoiding the question.  He's asking what would have been accomplished by denying them the use of the tracks if that were even possible.  

The inability of them too ship mass numbers of Jews to their deaths at camps.

(10-14-2019, 11:18 AM)fredtoast Wrote: If you don't believe anyone here then just Google the question.

Lots of people out there pointing out the lack of range of bombers and resources needed to try and cut off the camps.

Also discussion about how the west lacked any "hard evidence" of the mass murders.  Ariel recon photos of the death camps did not sho any signs of a "mass extinction".  Just think about this.  If the allies had ANY uncontroverted evidence of the activities of the death camps they would have used it as propaganda throughout the war. 

It's pretty well known that the US turned a blind eye to it all.

What else could happen to the mass numbers of Jews (and others) heading to the camps?

It also became well-known in 1941 (some day 42) what was going on, and the mass number of murders happened after that.

(10-14-2019, 03:34 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: I asked for logical answers and thorough answers, not the same answers over-and-over than can be refuted.

Again, Zona gave you a logical and thorough explanation of strategic and tactical bombing which explained why the train tracks to the concentration camps had less priority than targets which would end the war more quickly and ultimately save more lives.

You can’t refute that targets with a greater tactical or strategic importance had a higher priority to bomb. Thus they were bombed instead of what you have suggested.

Quote:All of those targets also had a lot of planes defending them.  There were hundreds of miles of tracks.  We didn't need to let them know that we were even attacking the tracks, much-less a specific spot.  You think it's going to be easy to take planes off where they are already attacking or defending and say "quick, so guard these tracks"?

The Allies didn’t let them know what they were attacking and yet they suffered losses of approximately 30%.

Quote:They also wouldn't need to fly as high, making it easier to bomb the tracks. 

Thus exposing them to more effective anti-aircraft and ground fire increasing their losses thus reducing their ability to bomb targets of greater military importance which may have increased the time it took to defeat Germany.

Quote:The inability of them too ship mass numbers of Jews to their deaths at camps.

It's pretty well known that the US turned a blind eye to it all.

What else could happen to the mass numbers of Jews (and others) heading to the camps?

It also became well-known in 1941 (some day 42) what was going on, and the mass number of murders happened after that.

In the case of Auschwitz, the Allies weren’t in a position to bomb it until April 1944 providing a window of about seven months to bomb it after most of the murders had occurred. While bombing targets near one of the concentration camps, the Allies accidentally killed or injured over 1000 of the Jewish prisoners in the camp without destroying the camp or degrading its ability to carry out its purpose.

There seems to be an overall lack of understanding the contempt for Jews globally at the time and not just in Germany. Anti Semitism wasn't just isolated to Germany or the Nazi regime. There was very little sympathy at the time for Jews most everywhere. It wasn't until after the war was over that anti semitism was frowned upon like it is today and even today Jews are hated by many especially in the middle east. Once again here we are applying the standards of today with the standards of years past. 
We could apply the same thing today to homesexual behavior then? How about racial discrimination? When the US inturned Japanese citizens few people actively objected and yet today most people see it as an outrage.
Are we to expect that in the 1940s the world would have foreseen the changes in how people view things today? Hardly. 
The simple fact of the matter is that the Nazi regime wasn't really even frowned upon by most people at the time. It took massive propaganda efforts to demonize Nazi's which thankfully finally prevailed, but in the 1920s, 30's and even into the 40's the Nazi regime wasn't viewed at the brutal system it became. Most people at the time really didn't care what was happening to Jews and without the massive propaganda efforts they probably still wouldn't today. Being a genius at hindsight is a great job...if you can get it.

(11-01-2019, 10:39 AM)grampahol Wrote: There seems to be an overall lack of understanding the contempt for Jews globally at the time and not just in Germany. Anti Semitism wasn't just isolated to Germany or the Nazi regime. There was very little sympathy at the time for Jews most everywhere. It wasn't until after the war was over that anti semitism was frowned upon like it is today and even today Jews are hated by many especially in the middle east. Once again here we are applying the standards of today with the standards of years past. 
We could apply the same thing today to homesexual behavior then? How about racial discrimination? When the US inturned Japanese citizens few people actively objected and yet today most people see it as an outrage.
Are we to expect that in the 1940s the world would have foreseen the changes in how people view things today? Hardly. 
The simple fact of the matter is that the Nazi regime wasn't really even frowned upon by most people at the time. It took massive propaganda efforts to demonize Nazi's which thankfully finally prevailed, but in the 1920s, 30's and even into the 40's the Nazi regime wasn't viewed at the brutal system it became. Most people at the time really didn't care what was happening to Jews and without the massive propaganda efforts they probably still wouldn't today. Being a genius at hindsight is a great job...if you can get it.

True. Good post.

A 1934 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden:

This article presents some insights into American thoughts on Jewish people prior to WWII:

http://thejewishvoice.com/2020/01/15/historians-unveil-new-research-on-us-response-to-the-holocaust/?fbclid=IwAR0hKhBhDFeFtUzYMKUN6xV4hvURB7YJ2aJclJ3KeUHv0pqCXBAt4k065WI

Quote:Historians Unveil New Research on US Response to the Holocaust

Quote:THE “ONE-JEW” RULE

Prof. Leff described the criteria that various U.S. university administrations applied when refugee advocates urged them to take in German Jewish scholars, who had been expelled from Nazi German universities. Dartmouth wanted only some who was not “obviously Jewish.” At Vassar, the refugee scholar could be “Jewish—but not of the disagreeable type.”

Johns Hopkins University president Isaiah Bowman, who was also an adviser on refugee matters to the President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had what Left called a “one-Jew rule.” He rejected recommendations to bring in Jewish refugee scholars to particular departments on the grounds that those departments already had one Jewish faculty member.

The details of this tragic story are presented in Leff’s new book, ‘Well Worth Saving: American Universities Life-And-Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe,’ which has just been published by Yale University Press. She previously authored the award-winning book ‘Buried by The Times,’ concerning the New York Times’ coverage of the Holocaust.

FRIENDLY RELATIONS WITH HITLER

Prof. Norwood discussed responses in the U.S. and England to the Nazi persecution of German Jews in the 1930s, based on his forthcoming book, ‘Ordinary Jews Against Extraordinary Evil: American and British Responses to Nazism.’

According to Norwood, the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany during the 1930s was much more serious than most scholars have acknowledged. He also demonstrated that the American and British governments, and the general public in both countries, were very well acquainted with the mistreatment of the Jews.

“Nonetheless, both governments chose policies of appeasement, instead of confronting, or even fully acknowledging, the menace that Hitler posed,” Norwood said. He described how the Roosevelt administration welcomed visits by Nazi warships to American ports in the 1930s, and went out of its way to maintain friendly diplomatic and trade relations with Hitler.

Prof. Norwood also discussed the efforts by many Ivy League universities to have friendly relations with Nazi universities, including student exchanges and visiting faculty members, a topic covered in detail in his earlier book, ‘The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower.’

Dr. Medoff spoke about the role of racism and antisemitism in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy of keeping Jewish immigration far below the levels that U.S. law permitted.

Medoff cited private statements by FDR concerning Jews that were extremely similar to Roosevelt’s comments regarding Japanese-Americans. The president described both groups as “domineering,” “unassimilable,” and “untrustworthy.” Those attitudes underlay both Roosevelt’s policies toward Jewish refugees and his mass internment of Japanese-Americans during the war, Dr. Medoff said.

“IMMORAL” TO BOMB AUSCHWITZ ?

Elsewhere at the conference, Daniel Greene and Rebecca Erbelding of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a presentation in which they suggested it might have been immoral for the Roosevelt administration to bomb the gas chambers in Auschwitz, because some of the prisoners could have been killed.

Greene and Erbelding, who created the exhibit on “Americans and the Holocaust” at the museum, spoke in conjunction with a new BBC film, “Secrets of the Dead,” which claims that the question of bombing Auschwitz was a “moral dilemma.” Dr. Erbelding said it is unfortunate that the public believes Auschwitz should have been bombed, and she hopes the film will serve to “complicate public opinion.”

An audience member pointed out that in 1944, there was no “moral debate” over whether bombing would have killed prisoners, since most of the discussions about the idea concerned bombing the railroad lines leading to the camp. The questioner asked why the film did not mention bombing the railways. Prof. Greene and Dr. Erbelding replied that “no film can cover everything.”

During the summer and autumn of 1944, many Jewish organizations asked the Roosevelt administration to bomb the railways and bridges between Hungary and Poland, over which hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were being transported to Auschwitz.

Interestingly enough, Brad's question from the OP is also brought up in the past last few paragraphs.

(10-06-2019, 11:26 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Does anyone know why they didn't bomb the tracks?

Stopping genocide was an interest among some, but the main issue was stopping the Nazi war machine.

We targeted military strengths, not people saving strikes.

It makes for good movies to have Americans help liberate Jews from camps, but our main targets were stopping Nazi advances because they'd beaten the crap out of people we were selling stuff to.

(01-20-2020, 03:05 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: This article presents some insights into American thoughts on Jewish people prior to WWII:

http://thejewishvoice.com/2020/01/15/historians-unveil-new-research-on-us-response-to-the-holocaust/?fbclid=IwAR0hKhBhDFeFtUzYMKUN6xV4hvURB7YJ2aJclJ3KeUHv0pqCXBAt4k065WI



Interestingly enough, Brad's question from the OP is also brought up in the past last few paragraphs.

MAYBE it wasn't such a stupid question by me after all?!

The possibility of killing prisoners while bombing the gas chambers seems stupid to me and like a cop-out because they were likely going to die anyways, especially if they could bomb the actual gas chambers, and we would have saved so many more lives.

(01-20-2020, 03:27 AM)Benton Wrote: Stopping genocide was an interest among some, but the main issue was stopping the Nazi war machine.

We targeted military strengths, not people saving strikes.

It makes for good movies to have Americans help liberate Jews from camps, but our main targets were stopping Nazi advances because they'd beaten the crap out of people we were selling stuff to.

Makes sense but it just doesn't seem like it would have detracted too much from the main war effort.

(01-20-2020, 03:58 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: MAYBE it wasn't such a stupid question by me after all?!

Personally, I never thought it was a stupid question at all. That's why I posted this and pointed that section out. I just didn't think the idea was feasible at that time for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

(01-20-2020, 03:58 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: MAYBE it wasn't such a stupid question by me after all?!

The possibility of killing prisoners while bombing the gas chambers seems stupid to me and like a cop-out because they were likely going to die anyways, especially if they could bomb the actual gas chambers, and we would have saved so many more lives.

Makes sense but it just doesn't seem like it would have detracted too much from the main war effort.

I don't think it was a cop out, I think there truly was a moral dilemma. Why is saving the life of one person worth the price of someone else's life? I get that you could have MAYBE saved more people in the long run, but there's no way of knowing that. 

Even if the camps were bombed and destroyed I find it hard to believe the Nazis wouldn't find a new way to murder thousands of more jews a different way.

(01-21-2020, 03:16 PM)WeezyBengal Wrote: I don't think it was a cop out, I think there truly was a moral dilemma. Why is saving the life of one person worth the price of someone else's life? I get that you could have MAYBE saved more people in the long run, but there's no way of knowing that. 

Even if the camps were bombed and destroyed I find it hard to believe the Nazis wouldn't find a new way to murder thousands of people.   

Because those people are likely going to die anyways, so why not save the lives of so many others?

Murdering thousands would be nothing since they killed 6 million Jews, which is the gas chambers were so useful because they were quick, efficient, and cheap, and not to mention cut-off from the outside world.

Another issue not really discussed much here is the fact there were a lot more of those camps than most people realize and they were spread all over occupied Nazi territories and some not so occupied areas as well. There were over 42,500 documented Nazi ghettos with several sub camps assigned to almost all and many were located very close to population centers. Even more that were never documented. And that number doesn't even include the notorious concentration camps most people are familiar with like Auschwitz and others. The overwhelming air support force needed to even make a dent in that system would have made strategic bombing and close air support nearly impossible. Another issue overlooked is that people still had to travel even when they had little to nothing to do with the war. They couldn't halt all rail travel everywhere in Europe which is what would have had to have been done for all intents and purposes. Remember, back then very few ordinary citizens owned cars at the time and roads were spotty at best. The system began springing up like wild fire immediately after the Nazi's took power and even before then Europe often systematically discriminated against anyone not belonging to many, many different types of groups and ethnic clan type organizations. Europe had never really recovered from the first world war so it was still in tatters throughout most of Europe  It simply took a far lower priority because the Nazi war machine was so huge. They were fighting an offensive war against a very aggressive enemy on several fronts. Even had they made huge efforts to bomb those rail lines it's very likely millions upon millions more civilians would have been killed in the process with the war dragging on far longer than needed. This doesn't even touch on the massive propaganda before and during the war against not only Jews, but many other groups such as homosexuals, gypsies, anyone with a disability deemed unuseful to society, criminals or anyone with what was seen as antisocial tendencies, etc., etc., not to mention the need for slave labor. Many camps were not organized official camps, but ad hoc systems run by paramilitary groups, by political-police forces, and sometimes by local police authorities and even local vigilante groups. They utilized any lockable larger space, for example: engine rooms, brewery floors, storage facilities, cellars, etc., all over Europe and in major metropolitan cities as well. That was a system that could only be effectively dealt with after the war was over if then and it still continued in much of the soviet system in different forms. And let's not forget that among the many groups targeted none had what we could reasonably call political power and even fewer had effective advocacy groups like we have today. Human rights at the time were pretty much non-existent. Being on just about anyone's shitlist was reason enough in most cases.

(11-01-2019, 10:39 AM)grampahol Wrote: There seems to be an overall lack of understanding the contempt for Jews globally at the time and not just in Germany. Anti Semitism wasn't just isolated to Germany or the Nazi regime. There was very little sympathy at the time for Jews most everywhere. It wasn't until after the war was over that anti semitism was frowned upon like it is today and even today Jews are hated by many especially in the middle east. Once again here we are applying the standards of today with the standards of years past. 
We could apply the same thing today to homesexual behavior then? How about racial discrimination? When the US inturned Japanese citizens few people actively objected and yet today most people see it as an outrage.
Are we to expect that in the 1940s the world would have foreseen the changes in how people view things today? Hardly. 
The simple fact of the matter is that the Nazi regime wasn't really even frowned upon by most people at the time. It took massive propaganda efforts to demonize Nazi's which thankfully finally prevailed, but in the 1920s, 30's and even into the 40's the Nazi regime wasn't viewed at the brutal system it became. Most people at the time really didn't care what was happening to Jews and without the massive propaganda efforts they probably still wouldn't today. Being a genius at hindsight is a great job...if you can get it.

Very true

I remember watching a show probably 10 years ago about the plight of a ship loaded with Jews that sailed from Belgium perhaps ? I think it was just days before WW2 broke out. Hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazi's. And during the course of the show they mentioned other ships and examples of Jews fleeing overland that got denied entry into whatever country, anyways.

They were turned away time and again at every port of call they landed at. There were several countries, not just the U.S. They were at sea for some time before they were finally given asylum in South America somewhere IIRC.

Point is, it wasn't just a German thing. Now that doesn't mean every country was about to kick off their own holocaust. But basically worldwide there was a bias towards Jews for whatever reasons. Even hatred ! It goes way back through history many times in many places.

Does any of this make it right ? NO

But anytime you're studying history you have to take into account the times, it's often hard to do. 

I've been studying the American Civil War a lot lately. It's hard for us today to understand the mindset of the people of that era. In those days your state, your hometown, was your country. The bulk of the population of both the North and South were hardly ever more than a few miles from home. Alabama was your "country" Ohio was your "country". And no I'm not arguing states rights was the reason for the civil war it was about slavery.

Just trying to point out how public opinion, mindset, beliefs, are very different at different times in history.

What was the main objective in WWII? Was it, beat the Axis or save the Jews? The main objective was to beat the Axis power. Until that was done, the Jews were secondary.

(01-22-2020, 02:59 PM)sandwedge Wrote: What was the main objective in WWII? Was it, beat the Axis or save the Jews? The main objective was to beat the Axis power. Until that was done, the Jews were secondary.

I don't think there was ever a stated objective to save Jews during or after the war. That whole thing (save the Jews) was an outgrowth of a couple of things. The concentration camps outraged people around the world of course, but there's also been an entire industry spring up of Holocaust museums as well as Holocaust denial. Those issues take massive campaigns to even get noticed and LOTS of money pouring in. Not all Jews are thrilled to see Holocaust museums and some are actually openly opposed to them. While there are arguments for and against them there are many other groups of people who have endured genocide and persecution who have never gotten genocide museums in nearly every major metropolitan city.