Peter Black, a senior historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, said, "Even in the unlikely event that the decipherers and translators had figured out what this all meant, there was nothing the Allies could have done militarily."
I took Dr. Black's course on the history of the Nazi party, where he fleshed out this argument.
Basically it has to do with the options the Allies had. Until we liberated the countryside around the death camps, the only option we had was bombs, and how would bombs solve the problem of death camps?
Would not bombing the camps kill the very people we hoped to save?
Also, we bombed at night, and the death camps did not show up at night, they were dark.
And while we could bomb the railroads bringing people into the camps, it was better to bomb the munitions factories and the railroads carrying troops and munitions which would end the war sooner.
Dr. Black, by the way, is Jewish, and lost family in the Holocaust, so he's quite sensitive on this issue. I believe he is the chief historian at the Holocaust Museum (which is an excellent museum). |
