Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART I THE MAKING OF THE MULTIPLE TRAP
- PART II THE RESCUE DEBATE, THE MACRO PICTURE, AND THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
- PART III THE SELF-DEFEATING MECHANISM OF THE RESCUE EFFORTS
- PART IV THE BRAND–GROSZ MISSIONS WITHIN THE LARGER PICTURE OF THE WAR AND THEIR RAMIFICATIONS
- PART V THE END OF THE FINAL SOLUTION: BACK TO HOSTAGE-TAKING TACTICS
- 32 The Train
- 33 The Bombing Controversy – Speer and Zuckerman
- 34 The “Great Season”
- 35 Becher, Mayer, and the Death Marches
- 36 The “End” of the Final Solution – Budapest
- Epilogue: Self-Traps: The OSS and Kasztner at Nuremberg
- Notes on Sources
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
33 - The Bombing Controversy – Speer and Zuckerman
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of Abbreviations
- PART I THE MAKING OF THE MULTIPLE TRAP
- PART II THE RESCUE DEBATE, THE MACRO PICTURE, AND THE INTELLIGENCE SERVICES
- PART III THE SELF-DEFEATING MECHANISM OF THE RESCUE EFFORTS
- PART IV THE BRAND–GROSZ MISSIONS WITHIN THE LARGER PICTURE OF THE WAR AND THEIR RAMIFICATIONS
- PART V THE END OF THE FINAL SOLUTION: BACK TO HOSTAGE-TAKING TACTICS
- 32 The Train
- 33 The Bombing Controversy – Speer and Zuckerman
- 34 The “Great Season”
- 35 Becher, Mayer, and the Death Marches
- 36 The “End” of the Final Solution – Budapest
- Epilogue: Self-Traps: The OSS and Kasztner at Nuremberg
- Notes on Sources
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The Allies received rather exact information in real time about the final stages of the Holocaust, which had not always been the case earlier. The destination was now known, the routes known, the railroads marked, and bridges pinpointed by the Allied intelligence agencies for the purposes of the 15th U.S. Air Force, based in Italy and capable of bombing the railroads leading to Auschwitz and the gas chambers. Several overtures were made by Jewish organizations, including the Yishuv's leadership, to the Allies to bomb the railroads and the gas chambers and stop the factory of death, but they allegedly were not made rigorously enough. Sometimes, as Dina Porat tells us, the Jewish Agency's officials were in doubt among themselves whether such approaches would have any effect on the Allies or even be of any help to the inmates. In other words, the Zionists allegedly succumbed to the catastrophe rather than rising to meet it.
I have asked Albert Speer what would have been the result of an effective bombing run that would have destroyed the gas chambers in Auschwitz. He replied:
Hitler would have hit the roof. … He would have ordered the return to mass shooting. And immediately, as a matter of top priority – which it wasn't beforehand – in terms of military personnel, of allocating equipment, and the like. Instead of shipping those people to Auschwitz within months, they should have been shot on the spot within two weeks. […]
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- Hitler, the Allies, and the Jews , pp. 290 - 297Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004