Posted on 04/18/2017 10:50:44 AM PDT by nickcarraway
The Allied Powers knew about the Holocaust two and a half years before they intervened, newly accessed documents show, according to a report in the UK’s Independent newspaper.
The U.S., the UK and the Soviet governments had even prepared war crime charges against Adolf Hitler and head Nazis, aware that at least two million Jews had been killed and another five million were under threat, but in the end did little to stem the bloodletting.
“The major powers commented [on the Holocaust] two-and-a-half years before it is generally assumed,” Dan Plesch, the author of “Human Rights After Hitler,” told The Independent.
“It was assumed they learned this when they discovered the concentration camps, but they made this public comment in December 1942,” he said.
Plesch based his research on documents from the United Nations War Crimes Commission archive, which was closed to researchers for 70 years but was opened because of the work of former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers.
Plesch told the Independent that the archival material amounted to a “cartload of nails to hammer into the coffins” of Holocaust denial.
Hasn’t this been known for DECADES?
I am not saying this to be glib, but what could the allies have done? They were already at war with Nazi Germany. I know some have said they should have bomber rail lines, but would that have shut down the camps?
If they acted too.soon, the camp commanders would have killed everybody.
First released in 1984.
Occam’s Razor Answer: They feared that the not-small-number of anti-Semites living in their own countries would have looked at that and said “Oh, yeah, cool!”, turning them pro-Nazi and thus undermining their war effort.
I was never under the misinterpretations that there wasn’t information or interpretations of atrocities. I do understand, however, that there is a big, big difference between being able to do something substantive about it versus just letting it all hang out.
That generation fought the greatest battle ever fought on this earth and on so wide a scale that it boggles the mind, and they did their absolute best to overcome the worst humanity could offer in that in my opinion.
Because something is released now that tells a “couch version” of the ‘story’ for those today who most don’t even know who Hitler was is immaterial.
I agree.
I read once that the Holocaust was known to the upper echelons in the rest of the free world. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe that it was happening but that they couldn’t even consider anything so horrible was going on.
We also knew the truth about the Katyn Forest. We knew our allies, the Russians had murdered the entire Polish Officer Corps. What really is disgusting is that well after the war, Radio Free Europe was still pushing the Russian lie.
Sometimes you just have to allow evil knowing there is not much you can do about it.
Not to mention that quite a large number of them were flaming anti-Semites.
A short article which seems more of a issue to refute holocaust denial claims...
Yes...they knew within months about what was going on.
The question was: what were they going to do about it?
Answer...not much to be done. Since the means to stop it were not immediately at hand, and there was a war to be won.
I don’t think that at all. I think they didn’t want their plan and mission complicated by emotion. Cruel? Maybe....
What could the Allies have done? All those death camps were deep in Nazi territory. They couldn’t bomb them since they’d also kill hundreds of inmates; then where would they escape to? One camp had some escapes but the local population helped prison guards to hunt down and capture them; actually just shot them when found.
FWIW... Churchill was primarily concerned with retaining colonies and keeping the Empire in tact... that meant keeping India...which the Brits lost anyway.
All the allied powers had an agenda of their own and real limitations on resources.
But I do think that a wide and dramatic campaign to make the information public would have been a positive element in promoting victory for the allies.
“If they acted too.soon, the camp commanders would have killed everybody.”
Some (Many?) camps’ mission was to do just that....
The Allies didn’t effectively invade Europe untin June 1944. In my view, there was nothing they could have done before then.
Most definitely.
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