Bush wrongly blames America for not bombing Auschwitz

American Thinker ^ | 01/13/08 | JR Dunn

[r9etb]

Bush's suggestion is on the level of wondering why Robert E. Lee did not drop the Confederate 101st Airborne Division behind Little Round Top.

Aside from the anachronistic silliness of invoking airborne troops, lots of folks have legitimately wondered why Lee didn't press his advantages more stoutly at Gettysburg.

As for the Commander-in-chief ... I think he has earned the right to think that the opposite decision should have been made.

What's ridiculous to me is how many folks on this thread have gotten twisty-knickered about Bush's comment. Apparently some FReepers can be just as prone to BDS as any lefty you want to name.

[okie01]

if the RAILS had been bombed not so many would have been able to be transported so easily.

If you read the article, the author argued that bombing rail lines is essentially pointless. They can be repaired overnight.

Which proved to be, in fact, the case everytime we undertook bombing raids on rail beds and railroad yards. Unless a critical structure -- such as a major bridge or tunnel -- was available to target, attacks on rail targets were essentially fruitless.

Thus, any attack on the rail lines leading to the camps would've effected only a momentary pause -- at the price of a 2-to-5% attrition rate among the bomber crews.

[Polybius]

Please read what actually happened.....he said we should have bombed the RAILROAD TRACKS!

Let us assume you destroy seven entire miles of track. How long would that take to repair?

as the U.S. discovered in Korea and Vietnam, the simplest thing in the world to repair is a rail line. Far simpler than a paved road, particularly if you've got plenty of slave labor that you don't mind overworking. Fill in the craters, toss a layer of gravel on top, lay down the ties and rails, and you're back in business in less than a day. And in fact, rail lines leading to Auschwitz (though not the spurs going to the camp itself) were hit a number of times, to no discernable effect on the Final Solution.

************

The Miles Per Day Contest The competing companies raced to Promontory Summit, each trying to top the other's daily progress. Workers of the Central Pacific, who had measured progress in feet per day through the Sierra Nevada, zipped across easier terrain, laying six miles of track in one day. In response, Union Pacific workers built seven miles in a day. Then the Central Pacific regrouped for one last massive effort and laid down an astonishing ten miles in one day, April 28, 1869.

***************

Each B-17 had a crew of ten. How many B-17 bombers and how many American airmen were worth sacrificing at the extreme range of the B-17 where they would be sitting ducks without their long range fighter escorts so that those seven miles of railroad would be out of use for a single day?

Eaker launched the most daring offensive of the war, sending over one thousand bombers into the air during a one-week span in mid-October, 1943. This week culminated with the second attack against the ball bearing factories in Schweinfurt, Germany, in which over sixty B-17s and six hundred men never returned home. Despite the high losses and unspectacular bombing results, the raid on Schweinfurt did help the war cause by making the policy makers finally realize the urgent need for long-range fighters to escort the bombers deep into enemy territory. Without these fighters, particularly the P-51 Mustang, the bomber losses would continue to grow to the point at which the Eighth Air Force would be unable to continue the successful targeting of vital war assets in Nazi Germany.

[Polybius]

Aside from the anachronistic silliness of invoking airborne troops, lots of folks have legitimately wondered why Lee didn't press his advantages more stoutly at Gettysburg. As for the Commander-in-chief ... I think he has earned the right to think that the opposite decision should have been made.

My point is that Bush in 2008 seems to have very little understanding of the realities of air power in 1944 and the issues involved.

See Post 103.

Hell, Billy Mitchell complained that even the top Army brass in his own era did not know its keister from a hole in the ground when it came to air power.

As to his comment, a President of the United States, be he a Republican or Democrat, should never publicly criticize his own country on foreign soil.

[r9etb]

See the explanation of the actual event here (Thanks Ann Archy, for the link). It was an off-hand comment, and it's stupid for FReepers to get so worked up about it.

[houstonman58]

"the trains carried the Jews to the camps...if the RAILS had been bombed not so many would have been able to be transported so easily"

Ann, are you aware of how difficult it was for WWII era planes to hit narrow targets like a rail? Are you aware that they had to make low, daring runs at targets like those? Are you away of how many constant, daily passes the WWII Army Air Corp would have to have made for bombing to be effective? Are you aware that the Germans could replace railroad tracks as fast as we bombed them? Are aware that our air forces at the time were strained, and could not even give sufficient help to our ground forces in combat? Are you aware that some, or perhaps many, of our planes would have been shot down in such non-strategic runs, which would have led to a prolongation of the war, and many more American, Allied and Jewish deaths?

Bush should have known better than to make such a statement, since his father was a WWII Army Air Corp pilot who got shot down by Japanese anti-aircraft guns when flying low in a combat mission. My guess is that when GWH heard of his son's reckless statement he probably shook his head in disbelief.

[houstonman58]

"What is it, specifically, about this one comment that has got you so upset?"

1. Because it was dead wrong and casts aspersion on the intelligence, integrity and character of our WWII leaders.

2. Because it was based on PC sentiments rather than on the hard military realities of WWII.

3. Because it is just one in a long series of ill thought statements, ("the minute men are vigilantes", "I looked into Putin's soul", "Islam is a great religion - religion of peace", shamnesty/"I'll see you at the signing", etc, etc. etc. etc.

[r9etb]

1: It wasn't "dead wrong." You simply disagree with it. And it doesn't cast aspersions on anybody's intelligence, integrity, or character.

2: It wasn't based on PC sentiments, unless you want to accuse the aforementioned WWII leaders of being PC as well: they did, after all, consider the bombing for the very same reasons Bush said they should have done it.

3: "Because it is just one in a long series of ill thought statements...." Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle.

At root, I think you're reacting emotionally, rather than locially. For whatever reason, you dislike Mr. Bush, and are suffering from BDS.

[r9etb]

“locially” = logically.

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[AmericanInTokyo]

At any rate, 1 year and 3 days to go. It will go fast, hopefully.

[modican]

that cost the lives of a million and a half Jews and hundreds of thousands of other victims,

The bombing would have been unnecessary, it seems we have saved ~3 millions just by changing the statistics.

>Wiki:........The camp commandant, Rudolf Höß, testifed at the Nuremberg Trials that 3 million people had died at Auschwitz during his stay as a commandant. Later he decreased his estimate to about 1.1 million. The death toll given by the Soviets and accepted by many was 4,000,000 people. This number was written on the plaques in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The Museum revised this figure in 1990, and new calculations by Dr. Franciszek Piper now place the figure at 1.1 million about 90 percent of them Jews from almost every country in Europe. 75,000 Poles, and some 19,000 Roma (Gypsies)........<

[Ditto]

A quarter of a million Americans died in that effort. Some 60,000 of them were airmen. ... to imply that they did not do enough, that their sacrifice was lacking, that some imaginary flaw stains the victory they bought with their lives.

Ditto that. Be it remembered, that the 8th Air Force lost more men during WWII than the US Navy and Marine Corps combined.

They were some very damn fine men to even get on those planes when they knew what their odds of returning were. It's very hard for us to comprehend today the courage and dedication to service those men had.

[Ditto]

He said bomb the railroad tracks to Auschwitz, not the death camp itself. That could have been easily done.

One out of a hundred bombs might have actually hit the tracks, and if any did, it would have only taken an hour or so for the SS to have slave labor repair them.

The only way to stop the Nazis was boots on the ground.

[Tuxedo]

The bombing would have been unnecessary, it seems we have saved ~3 millions just by changing the statistics.

Ummm.... ok....

The death camps were Majdanek, Chelmno, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Oswiecim-Brzezinka. Majdanek was situated in the city of Lublin (like downtown) so bombing of any sort was out of the question. The others (besides the one mentioned by Dubya) were in very remote locations and were basically done with killings by 1943. We will never know how many died at Belzec, which had a 99.99% death rate (only two known survivors) so, quibbling over numbers is not material. At Belzec they have actually drilled core samples to locate mass graves and have uncovered stunning evidence.

[PzLdr]

Dachau wasn’t a death camp. It was a concentration camp, the difference being people were sent to Dachau to be worked to death, not killed on arrival. The death camps [Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, Madjienak, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and one other I can’t remember] were all located in the East, with only Auschwitz-Birkenau on German soil [Upper Sliesia].

[PzLdr]

From what I’ve read, the prisoners would have been happy to be carpet bombed, since it was a quicker death than what the Nazis were doing to the ones not selected for immediate gassing.

And, it should be noted, that by 1944, the Auschwitz- Birkenau complex include a hell of a lot of satellite camps, such as the IG Farben plant, that were legitimate miliary targets.

[PzLdr]

FDR had oodles of COMMIE AGENTS in his administration, including Lauchlin Currie (his assistant), Harry Dexter White (Treasury), Alger Hiss and his brother Donald (State), Judith Coplon (FBI), and the Deputy Director of the OSS (a descendant of Robert E. Lee).

[barryg]

Then why did we have an air force for?

[Types_with_Fist]

Too many of his ideas run counter to U.S. sovereignty and independence.

Amen. IMHO, it's been consistent, deliberate, counter to the presentation, not in the least conservative and mostly un-American.