Posted on 01/14/2008 10:02:11 AM PST by DFG
How dare we second-guess or criticize FDR!
Exactly and that’s why if they could have got to the outside the better chance to live. Most Jews got suckered going there anyway and once there and finding out what the Nazis were doing would have given them the incentive to get away if given the chance and strength.
The Dresden bombing was in Feb 1945. Many of the death camps had been liberated by the US Army or the Russian army by then. Get your timeline correct.
Since it was where it was, why should the US have been the one bombing the tracks? Shouldn’t that have been up to Stalin?
Poland was a hell of a lot closer to Russia than US bases were.
Without track, wouldn’t the alternative have been for the Germans to either kill Jews slated for transport without taking them to the camps; or death-march them the rest of the way from as close as they could tranport them?
Given Hitler’s obsession, how often would those rail lines have been needed to be bombed, to keep them out of service?
Had the camp itself been “precision bombed” by 1944 standards, would any of the prisoners survived? If they had, where would they have gone? Who would have succored them?
Never mind. America’s fault.
FDR was slow or purposely ignorant to Hitler’s “final solution”.
No, what you said proves I’m right on point. Daddy Bush got the little one into the National Guard unit so he could avoid the war that Daddy Bush publicly supported as a congressman. Same with Yale, Harvard Business School, and GW’s purchase of the Texas Rangers backed by Daddy’s “friends”. I’m not saying that any of this was illegal, just that its a bit odd to hear “preaching” about what others “should have done” from one who did nothing himself (and relied on ole’ Daddy, his money and connections) when it was his turn to act. But then again, I’m a conservative, GW Bush has proven in the past eight years he’s not and never was.
Poland was full of Russian Jews because so many of them had fled Russia in the 1920’s to avoid being murdered by Stalin. People forget that the Russians were in the Jew killing business as well. Stalin did not care about the Jews. All he cared about was how much territory he could gobble up after Germany was destroyed.
An excellent point. One of the things I have to ask myself in reading this sort of thing is "would you have believed it?" I want to think I would have but I bet I wouldn't. Recall there was a rather excessive accusation of German soldiers bayoneting babies during WWI - that sort of accusation is common currency in warfare. But in this case it was true. Real, honest-to-God death factories. I still can't really come to a proper grip on it.
You need to read about the plane that Bush flew in the Air National Guard, the F102 Delta Dagger. The F102 was not designed for the kind of missions that were flown in Vietnam. It was designed to carry missiles to knock out Russian bombers. A few F102’s saw service early in the Vietnam War but were replaced by newer interceptors. Many Air National Guard F102 pilots were killed in accidents because it was a tricky aircraft to fly.
It is quite simply true that those people were going to die, and for the vast majority of potential bombing victims they did die: the Germans were killing them at a rate of 20,000 daily. And they continued to do so until essentially the last possible moment.
And the fact that this was going on, was already known to the Allies, even up to the highest levels of government. So a decision to bomb or not, was made in full knowledge -- albeit discounted by some -- of what was going on there.
In order for your argument to work, one would have to conclude that there is moral justification in not acting, despite the fact that you could potentially have prevented much greater loss of life by doing so.
It would not have been an easy decision at the time, and it is at least understandable. In retrospect, however, the decision was probably the wrong one. It would have been possible to mount a raid on the rail feeds, well before the end of the war.
After Bosnia’s & Iraq’s mass graves, WWII POW reports from German and jap torture cells and the “Camps” described here, Killing Fields of Cambodia, Laos, Rawanda etc . Places filled with evidence of torture I observed first hand in Kuwait City in Feb 91 and the videos of be-headings we have all seen in this current WOT........
I can now believe anything possible.
Yet during the time that Hitler was killing millions I think I would have been in the doubt column based on just the fact I had never seen such. Never heard of such and that surely the news and radio wouldn’t have lied (back then ).......
In part, their decision was (IIRC) based on an opinion that the conditions in the camps couldn't be as bad as they were portrayed.
That is exactly correct, but my point is, why be pissed at America, for not undertaking what SHOULD have been a Russian mission, if anyone’s.
Only thing worse to the Libs than criticizing FDR, is criticizing Stalin.
Instead, blame America.
Only if you ignore logic.
Daddy Bush got the little one into the National Guard unit
Nope. No one had to. There was an open requirement for pilots...no waiting.
so he could avoid the war
Nope. The evidence not only flatly doesn't support that statement, but implies the opposite.
that Daddy Bush publicly supported as a congressman. Same with Yale, Harvard Business School,
False. You presume without evidence, and against accounts.
and GW’s purchase of the Texas Rangers backed by Daddy’s “friends”.
No idea. Non sequitor.
But then again, I’m a conservative, GW Bush has proven in the past eight years he’s not and never was.
Unlike the stuff you spouted above, this is at least arguable and can be supported and denied with evidence. Want to slam Bush? Fine...but please stick to reality.
He made a back-handed slap at him last year in Eastern Europe when he referred negatively to the big 3 carving up Europe post WWII. And he got a rousing ovation for it.
Good for President Bush. FDR had oodles of socio-commies in his administration and often took their advice. Most likely why the rail lines were NOT bombed.
My grandfather was in the First Army IG group, and he spent the last year of the war collecting evidence of Nazi war crimes. He visited Belsen and other places, and brought back from the war a stack of seriously gruesome Signal Corps photographs -- things like ovens containing partially burned bodies, corpses stacked like cordwood, and so on. He had stories of the drawers filled with gold-filled teeth, rooms full of hair, human-fat soap.... And these weren't even the industrial-scale death camps.
Bombing Auschwitz before the Jews, Gypsies, blacks, gays and other people were sent there? Is that what he means?
He couldn’t have meant bombing it when the Jews, Gypsies, blacks, gays and other people were imprisoned there.
He’s not that stupid.
I just noticed the word “lawyer” in your FR name, and I understand who you really are. The DU blog site should welcome you.
“I had some admiration for Bush a few years ago. I have since lost it.”
Who out there running for president is more conservative then Bush? Don’t say Ron Paul either. You live in a bubble dude.
It is true we didn't have the capability of hitting that far east until fairly late in the war. The Russians were in Poland in 1944 and the Auschwitz chambers were shut down in October.
The Russians were not cooperative with our Air Forces. One of the Doolittle raiders landed in the Russian Far East and was interned most of the war.
Railroads were difficult for the non-precision bombs of WWII to hit, but railroads are very easy to repair. I remember seeing footage of a very long and critical railroad viaduct that we tried to hit so many times the land around looked like the Moon. We finally got it when someone invented a super bomb, like a bunker buster, that could bring the bridge down without actually hitting it.
If we somehow could have found out where all the major death camps were and destroyed the gas chambers, at great loss of life to the inmates, the Nazis simply would have reverted to shooting Jews, which is what they did before they hit on the Zyklon solution.
It's so frustrating and tragic the only way we could stop this was with ground troops seizing the camps.
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