When did the USA know about the Nazi concentration camps?

Question

What year did we learn about the horrors of Hitler's concentration camps? In the U.S.A. i mean

Answer 1

As early as of 1941 summer of 1942. The Americans did nothing to stop the halt of the Jewish people and others being sent to the camps reason they said that air power was needed elsewhere and that planes couldn't get to the camps even though the Americans by the end of war did have airbases set up in reclaim countries from Nazi Occupation late in World War 2 that could didn't have to travel far to bomb these camps. As early as 1981, photos were release that were taken from American bombers showed clearly the main concerntation of Auschwitz as they did a bombing run to one of the sub-camp to destory an Nazi manufacture plant near Auschwitz. http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/auschwitz/aerials.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust#Who_knew_about_the_killings.3Fhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust#Who_knew_about_the_killings.3F

Answer 2

Well the U.S. did have a pretty good idea about the camps prior to the end of the war, but the question is what could reasonably be done, and when I was in graduate school I wrote some on this subject.

Among the options were that we could have bombed the camps, or bombed the rail and road links leading to the camps.

I think the first option can be dismissed pretty easily. While you might assert that bombing the camps would have saved lives in the long run, the short term effect would be a humanitarian catastrophe. Many people lived for months in those camps before being gassed, and as long as you are alive there is some hope. Bombing the detainees was simply unconscionable and no one in a position of authority was about to give that order. Besides, even if they had, the Germans were able to rebuild an entire underground facility to house their V-2 rocket production after the allies bombed the Pennemunde site in a mere eight months. Clearly, with such resovle and technical capabilities, rebuilding a secure death camp, which was a much simpler matter, would not have been beyond their means.

Now, what about bombing the rails and roads leading to the camps on a regular basis? Well, several considerations apply to this proposal. First of all, the repairs could be easily made, literally overnight in most cases, so the effectiveness of such bombing was very much in question.

But perhaps more importantly, one needs to look to the effectiveness of Allied bombing in general and the cost in pilots and planes that it was wreaking upon Allied Air Command. Bomb surveys in 1943 conducted by recon planes after air raids determined that only 1 bomb in 20 was landing within a mile of its target--hardly pinpoint accuracy. Compounding this deficiency, bomber crews suffered the highest percentage of losses of any Allied service branch in the war--something approaching 9 out of 10 were shot down before they could complete the mandatory number of missions required to be rotated home.

With that high casualty rate in mind, and the enormous cost in aircraft as well, diverting bombers to targets that would not in any way shorten the war was simply counter-productive. More lives could be saved in the end the sooner the Allies defeated the Germans.

Accordingly, the question of when the Allies knew about the camps does not carry much moral weight. There simply was not much to be done about it so long as Nazi Germany controlled the ground in Europe.

Answer 3

The International Committee of the Red Cross has shared responsibility for the silence of the world community. Red Cross workers seen the camps first hand and tried to intervene but were silent, feeling that their work would be compromised.

The allies heard tales of the death camps, but the scale was not known until the end of the war. Could we have gone further? Could we have done more? I don't know. What could the aerial bombardment have achieved? The allies weren't prepared to attack continental Europe until June 1944.

The US airforce knew about the Auswitz-Berkinau complex at least by April 1944 via aerial reconnaissance and reports from escaped prisoners.

Earlier warnings came from de-coded Nazis messages. The US War Dept. did nothing to prevent deportation of Italian Jews in 1943 when it meant compromises the secrets to Nazis codes...at the expense of the Italian Jews (http://www.fpp.co.uk/Hitler/Jews/CBSRome260600.html)

The earliest dates come from 1941: http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050804-083239-2172r.htm

But again, what could have been done?

Answer 4

a tough question.
yes, the USA and the rest of the world had heard rumors and even facts about the horrors of the camps very early in the war, if not before.
but, realistically, what could anyone do about it? we could not stop it physically, aside from bombing the camps; so we had to wait until we could actually get to the camps to liberate them.
on a side note, I cannot blame the common German person from pretending they did not know about what was happening in the camps. they were living in a world where your neighbor reported everything you said; if you said something off-hand or even jokingly, you were sent to the camps.
a terrible life for that generation and a horrible memory for us all
could it happen again?

Answer 5

This is a very complicated question to answer in many respects simply because you are talking about a very complex process. The Nazis had several different degrees of concentration camps used for a variety of purposes one of the largest being the mass deportation and eventual genocide of the Jewish population. It is very important to note though that the part they played in the Holocaust was only one of the many purposes these camps had. Also the Holocaust was a process that was so much bigger than just the "Final Solution" that everyone thinks of when you use the word. There was a long process of stripping European Jews of their civil rights and removing them from their homes. There was their use as slave labour, etc etc.

What I would say you need to do if you want to have a real understanding of western society's reaction to the Holocaust is you have to make a distinction between "knowing" and "understanding".

For example, the US and the western allies KNEW that Jews were being stripped of their rights in pre-war Nazi Germany pretty much as soon as it happened. Major political stories like that would have made the newpapers and movie theatre news reels. Problem was pretty much all of them allies had sub-citizens of their own (ie: the black population in the US, aboriginal populations in Canada, non-white imperial subjects in Britain and France) so this just seemed like something a white industrial power would do. It was drastic no doubt, but they didn't "understand" this was just the first step of a larger process. In turn when Jewish immigrants started showing up on Allied shores and telling their stories, the built in stereotypes these countries had kicked in. These guys were just whiners they thought. How could it be so bad there? Hitler had led Germany out of the Depression but Chamberlain (Britain) FDR (US) King (Canada) (Gotta include my country in this) were still struggling. People just looked at these Jews as the scheming manipulators their old stereotypes told them the Jews were. Again, they knew, but didn't understand.

You know, even if you go as far ahead of this as the Death Camps, look at the situation. Sure, the western allies KNEW Aushchitz was there. So what? The Nazis had been using all sorts of slave labour to keep their war effort going. From the sky they couldn't tell if the Nazis were making clothes for their soldiers, or guns, or tea kettles. Fact was, trains came in, but there wasn't alot coming out. There was other munitions factories that were shipping guns and bullets like mad that were far better targets and were in range of bombers based in Britain. To hit Aushchitz would have been stupid and risky given the logic of bomber command. It was out of reach for conventional bombers and it wasn't shipping anything out as far as they could tell. Whole trainloads of blonde haired, blue eyed German soldiers were disappearing into the quagmire of the Eastern Front. If Hitler could sacrifice them, one could hardly expect him not to send his Jewish slave labour in as well. They just didn't understand. There were no weird looking mass graves. There was no huge housing developments. There was no massive troop deployments. Just a lot of smoke.

It was not until the allies made it to the camps that people really began to understand. Given it was the Red Army the liberated all the major death camps, it took even longer for the western allies to understand what was going on. For example, when the American's liberated Dachau in 1945, they found lots of abused and totally emaciated prisoners. They told the soldiers that people had been getting on trains and not coming back. It's not like they could have known then those people were going to a nerve gas/crematorium end.

Anyway, I hope I didn't overdo it. I'd just say, remember, there's big difference between knowing about it and understanding it.

Answer 6

we liberated many camps during WW2 so we knew about them then and after the war we got reports of all the others

Answer 7

Rooseveldt knew it before the U.S.got into the war. Thats how he got his mostly Jewish cabinet to back him because he knew we needed to go to war. The U.S. citizens wanted to stay out. He also knew about pre-Pearl Harbor. Thats why there wer'nt any carriers there during the attack.

Answer 8

Roosevelt knew about them well before the end of the war, and chose to do nothing.

Answer 9

We, the people, just after Pearl Harbor!
The government before using them, either!

Answer 10

There are tales we had some ideas in 1943