RAF Bomber Command summer 1940, How to bomb Auschwitz?

[Admiral Beez]

Firstly, totally cutting a railway is hard to do because repairing them isn't actually very tricky....remove the old rails, haul in some ballast to make the rail bed, lay new tracks and you're off to the races.

Good point. Rail lines do seem to be a primary target for Fighter Command and partisans, but to your point they're not targeting empty rails, but the cars and engines.

Even if you could destroy the railways, the Nazis would simply march the victims to the camps...and shoot any that refused.

The trains were lightly manned, so any stopped midway would present a challenge. Were the train crews and their guards hardened SS or just regulars. But again, I see your point. Perhaps there's nothing that could have been done. Bomber Command leaflet drops perhaps, but only once the British knew what was actually happening.

 

[swampyankee]

The bulk of the death camps were in Eastern Europe, impractically far from USAAF and RAF bases before about 1944. The Soviets, on the other hand may have been close enough to make it practical for them to attack the death camps. Possibly more enticing for the Soviets would be the forced labor camps run by the Germans, as this would more directly impact the German military effort.

Drop some hints about German nuclear weapons developments -- the Soviets had some quite competent physicists -- and that may be a further incentive for some Soviet strikes on various German-run slave labor facilities.

 

[GrauGeist]

The camps fell under the Waffen SS authority and most (but not all) guards were not qualified for front line service.
The railroad lines, switchyards, locomotives and rolling stock were under the authority, and manned by, the "Deutche Reichsbahn".

It was also not uncommon for the Germans to round up civilians from local towns in occupied countries to "help" repair bombed infrastructure if prisoners were not readily available.

 

[buffnut453]

Good point. Rail lines do seem to be a primary target for Fighter Command and partisans, but to your point they're not targeting empty rails, but the cars and engines.

At the ranges involved, you can't "target" the cars and engines. There's zero chance that a long-range bomber aircraft can fly the required distance and then hit a moving target...and that's ignoring the fact that the prisoners were transported in cattle cars so there's no way to know which trains are headed for the death camps.

 

[stona]

Some would willingly take their chances, but I see your point. What about destroying the railways and means to get to the camps? Train busting is more a Fighter Command job, but until the Wallies have a foothold in Europe this needs to be Bomber Command. But level bombers can't hit anything with precision. Perhaps Mosquitos?

Read my post number 23.

 

[Admiral Beez]

Read my post number 23.

Well put.

In addition, a close examination of the tactics employed in low-level Mosquito attacks shows that, with the single exception of experimental tactics unsuccessfully used on V-1 launching sites, they always attacked above-ground facilities and then only with straight-ahead or shallow-dive approaches. Such tactics, although highly accurate against walls and the sides of buildings, would be less effective against the gas chambers at Auschwitz, which were below or only slightly above ground level.

I have to wonder what the Polish resistance wanted and thought was possible when they asked for the RAF to help in 1941, when Auschwitz was a small camp, let alone the larger place it became. That's the missing piece in the BBC podcast. What did the Poles want Britain to do?

Northing to do with the Poles, but Germany did have camps in Norway that may have been within reach of FAA precision strikes.

 

[Reluctant Poster]

Heavy bombers in WWII were bludgeons not rapiers. The Concentration camp inmates would just as likely be hit as the enemy, if any thing was hit at all. The following image is from the USSBS report on oil, showing how many bombs would actually hit an oil target. The oil plants were rather large complexes covering a lot of area.

 

[Shortround6]

Firstly, totally cutting a railway is hard to do because repairing them isn't actually very tricky....remove the old rails, haul in some ballast to make the rail bed, lay new tracks and you're off to the races. Yes, it would have diverted resources from repairing other important infrastructure components but that's just a question of priorities and availability of resources which, in the timeframe in question, weren't really a problem.

I agree completely. In the 1869 the US railroad track gangs (chinese actually) set a record laying 10 miles of track in one day, granted it was lighter rail and of rather poor alignment (slow speed track) but the idea that that rail lines could be "cut" for more than a day or two is false. Railroads always had spare rails, ties, spikes and such (including gravel) available at track maintenance yards. Rail lines are not permanent. They need maintenance and upkeep. the rails can become worn, especially near stations. The ballast can wash out, If wooden ties are used they can rot and need replacement. Granted in war time .such stocks got depleted to some extent but failing to repair or provide for repairs of normal wear and tear would be foolish.
Standards did slip during the war but I believe it was estimated that a direct hit from a 1000lb could be repaired in 24 hours?

 

[Graeme]

Send in the Russian version of the 'Dirty Dozen'....

The Dirty Dozen (1967) - IMDb

 

[stona]

Northing to do with the Poles, but Germany did have camps in Norway that may have been within reach of FAA precision strikes.

The idea to bomb Auschwitz in 1944 came as a result of its use in the Holocaust. It became the central murder factory for what remained of European Jewry. All the other extermination camps had already been shut down by the Germans or liberated in July 1944 when the requests were made. Majdanek had been evacuated that month as the Russians approached.

I'm not sure what the relevance of the various types of prison/concentration camps in Norway is to this.

With the exception of the early Polish request to bomb Auschwitz I, there was never any suggestion or request to bomb concentration camps generally, and certainly not PoW camps with the obvious risk of killing your own men.

There always seems to be confusion over the timeline of the Holocaust. Most know about Operation Reinhard which followed the 'Holocaust by bullets', but few understand its true scale or when it happened. 1.7 million people were killed between 1942 and 1943 under Operation Reinhard, about 1.32 million died in a 100-day surge between August and October of 1942.
The number of deaths during those three months is so huge, it accounts for more than a quarter of the five million known Holocaust victims, and it happened long before the Allies had the knowledge or ability to intervene.

 

[Zipper730]

1. Bombing the camps: I think it would be a huge problem: Much of the worst of the Nazi's atrocities would have gone up in smoke.
2. Arming them: Definitely would have given the Germans a shock.

 

[Admiral Beez]

2. Arming them: Definitely would have given the Germans a shock.

The uprising of the Jewish and other Poles in 1944 certainly caught the Germans by surprise. AIUI the Soviets stopped their advance on Warsaw until the Germans wiped it out. To some credit the Wallies air dropped supplies to the Poles.

 

[Snautzer01]

Send in the Russian version of the 'Dirty Dozen'....

The Dirty Dozen (1967) - IMDb

View attachment 567305

Yes and make it a "great escape" . After the commandos kill every ss present, supplies will be flown in. Guns ammo etc and enough faked id and food stamps. Now even Eisehower can see a strategic bonus with ten of thousends not death fearing posssibly armed, refenge seeking people in the backgarden of Germany. Yes most will be killed in the end, but some might make it. Just as in the movie, and for that matter in real life.

 

[Snautzer01]

To add my sugestion. In what is now called operation Sandwich Spread a few more of these camps will be attacked that way. Not only in the East but also the big collection camp like Vught, Holland. Then on the evening of June 4 1944, 50 camps will be attacked by the airbone Ruperts ( longest day explosive airborne look a like) As the german command can not have panic in the home land and the east front can not spare anything the West front will release its reserve to deal with this big problem.

 

[stona]

The uprising of the Jewish and other Poles in 1944 certainly caught the Germans by surprise. AIUI the Soviets stopped their advance on Warsaw until the Germans wiped it out.

I've bolded the relevant bit.

It's why Sinclair and others did not believe that the hairbrained scheme for dropping weapons to the inmates of Auschwitz 'would really help the victims'.

Even if some of the weapons found there way into prisoners' hands it would simply have provoked a massacre.

 

[tyrodtom]

I've bolded the relevant bit.

It's why Sinclair and others did not believe that the hairbrained scheme for dropping weapons to the inmates of Auschwitz 'would really help the victims'.

Even if some of the weapons found there way into prisoners' hands it would simply have provoked a massacre.

Provoked a massacre !!
What the heck was already going on ?

 

[pbehn]

Provoked a massacre !!
What the heck was already going on ?

Genocide, by massacre I presumed the immediate killing of everyone, some people did survive Auswitz.

 

[tyrodtom]

If they have had any method of immediately killing everybody, they would have already done it.

They went to gas chamber because they had already tried the killing by gunfire.
It wasn't fast enough. Plus not many men could stand to do it day after day.
They didn't have enough men, or schnapps.

 

[swampyankee]

Industrial targets were also pretty hard targets.

I've bolded the relevant bit.

It's why Sinclair and others did not believe that the hairbrained scheme for dropping weapons to the inmates of Auschwitz 'would really help the victims'.

Even if some of the weapons found there way into prisoners' hands it would simply have provoked a massacre.

Well, the massacre was already happening. At Sobibor, there were rarely more than 600 prisoners in the camp at any one time; 200,000 to 250,000 people were murdered in the time it operated, which was from about May 1942 to Oct 1943, about 520 days. The massacre was already occurring at a rate of 400 to 500 people per day.

It stopped operating when there was a prisoner revolt and mass escape in 1943. About 60 of the 300 prisoners that escaped survived the war, which is a much better survival rate than remaining there. Belzec had about 7 survivors out of the 400,000 to 430,000 Jews who entered the camp.

 

[stona]

Industrial targets were also pretty hard targets.

Well, the massacre was already happening. At Sobibor, there were rarely more than 600 prisoners in the camp at any one time; 200,000 to 250,000 people were murdered in the time it operated, which was from about May 1942 to Oct 1943, about 520 days. The massacre was already occurring at a rate of 400 to 500 people per day.

It stopped operating when there was a prisoner revolt and mass escape in 1943. About 60 of the 300 prisoners that escaped survived the war, which is a much better survival rate than remaining there. Belzec had about 7 survivors out of the 400,000 to 430,000 Jews who entered the camp.