Auschwitz and the Allies : A Devastating Account of How the Allies Responded to the News of Hitler's Mass Murder (An Owl Book)

Rating:
Summary: Interesting View...
Review: Martin Gilbert, who writes "Auschwitz and the Allies" illustrates a very colorful picture of what the mindset of the German leader Adolf Hitler and his military leaders in the period of World War One, all the way to the end of World War Two. Gilbert uses references to many primary sources, (mostly newspaper articles) to show his point. He uses these excerpts to show that his points can be backed with historical data. Gilbert also shows how the Allies played an important role in this process at Auschwitz.The rest of the book seems to show the lack of support from the Allies to the Jews. The book takes a look as to why the allies gave the cold shoulder to a horrific time in our past. Gilbert seems to think that the mass murder of the Jewish people took place before the Allies had enough information to steam ahead on a stop to this. He does, however, carry a very sarcastic tone in this book. He claims that many of the allied leaders looked at these stories of the horrific killing of the Jews as "customary Jewish exaggeration." Gilbert claims that the extermination of the Jews was well known in Europe. He says that the knowledge of where the people where headed was the information that kept people from stopping anything. Gilbert counters the "customary Jewish exaggeration" with "typical Nazi deception". The Nazi's deceived more people than the Jews exaggerated to. Gilbert ends his book with a summary. He says that there were two major victories in the war, and many failures. He throws the blame of ignorance on the allies, and gives the victories to the Nazi's, for their ability to nearly annihilate the Jews, and for deceiving the rest of the world. (please excuse the jumping around, this is a summary of a five page paper)

Rating:
Summary: Unbelief
Review: Scepticism is a powerful force. Do not be sceptical of this book: read it. We think we know the story of the holocaust: it is a harrowing one, evil leaders duping or swaying a more or less complicit German population into killing Jews, Poles, homosexuals, the disabled in darkest Eastern Europe; the end of the war revealing an unimaginable horror. Unbelievable. Well, yes, actually. This book tells the story of those who died trying to tell the world of these 'unbelievable' events; smuggling themselves, their stories, their papers, their photographs, their evidence to neutral Switzerland and thence to the Allies. They were met with unbelief. This is believable, even understandable. The trickle of information became a torrent. Still unbelief. Finally, and this is the most unbelievable part, incontrovertable truth, testimonies, high altitude photographs are met with... no massive response. No change in war strategy. No attempt to save the thousands the Allies knew were dying every day. Only slow-thighed, stone-walling bureaucracy: timid circular memos, double-thinking, a need to know basis, no rocking of boats, a belief in desks, annotations, hierarchy, in process not in human life. Yes, they knew. No, they did nothing. Yes they kept this a secret. This is no conspiracy theory. The evidence is unbelievable. But it is incontrovertable. Undeniable, undenied, even. Churchill, Roosevelt, Washington, Whitehall, all the echelons of government, our noble western democracies, did nothing, nothing, to stop the largest act of deliberate, systematic murder the world has seen.

Read this back. That makes them complicit. That makes us complicit.

The final unbelievability: that this painstaking, unassuming, remorseless, tragic book is not more widely known. That its conclusions are not taught in schools. That it could fall out of print. (Out of print!). Clearly there are some things we would rather not know. About ourselves. I first read this when fourteen; the memory remained with me; I am reading it again now, and it has no less effect. It is unbelievable. Still.

If you consider yourself a member of western civilization, notwithstanding Ghandi's sceptical view of this paradox, you must read this book. Just for a moment put to one side scepticism, healthy or otherwise, and believe it. Believe the story of what happened and what failed to happen, or you are as culpable as those that did not, would not believe during the war. You are as culpable as those that knew, that believed, and did precisely nothing. Now, we can do little; the least is to find out, to read this book. Then you can decide what to believe.

Rating:
Summary: D. Roberts, something you left out
Review: There is NO question that the hatred of the Jews existed everywhere in the large part of Europe (especially Poland and France) and in the United States. However, OF THE ALLIES, it seems that you've skipped two of the most DIRECT examples. First, of course, was FDR turning away the ship of refugees whose last hope was the USA. They all were sent back to Europe and were murdered. Much worse was the inaction of Eisenhower (under a cloak from FDR), that caused him to refuse the simple act of bombing RR bridges on the route to the camps. ... No study is complete without Roul Hilberg's "The Distruction of the European Jews" ... Perhaps Gilbert's book is better then his first, but there are SO many MUCH better books out.

Rating:
Summary: The most comprehensive holocaust book available
Review: This book is the best and most complete reference for the study of the holocaust, and in specific the Allies complicity with Hitler's atrocities. This book has opened my eyes to the whole picture surrounding the holocaust, and has made me doubt the common wisdom that the Allies did all they could to save the Jews of Europe. Unlike in many other books on the subject Martin backs up his theories with actual State Department documents and aerial photos. His reasearch spans the whole war and leaves no stone unturned, from the events leading up to the holocaust to the "discovery" of the camps. Unfortunately for some, like myself, this book has caused a realization of how naive I was when it came to history of the holocaust. I will never be able to view the holocaust the same way again. A must read!

Rating:
Summary: Turning our backs on genocide. A disturbing study.
Review: This is an excellent study by Sir Martin Gilbert surrounding the most horrific period in Jewish history, the Holocaust, and the 'role' of the Allies.

We are confronted with the disturbing revelation that, although supplied with considerable information about the decimation of Jewish communities in the Nazi Concentration Camps & gas ovens of Europe, the Allies turned a blind and incredulous eye to the suffering and slaughter.

In relation to the British involvement (or lack of it), the book quotes from a letter by Winston Churchill to Anthony Eden dated July 1944 pertaining to the Nazi slaughter of Jews in Europe;-"...there is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible single crime ever committed in the whole history of the world..."

One would think that this expression of apparent concern would have led to the most aggressive intervention possible to rescue the vast numbers facing genocide. Not so ! The book shows that Churchill did indeed order a so-called feasibility study for possible air-strikes on Auschwitz, but subsequently did nothing. The issue was passed to the Americans who also did...nothing.

Before some say that it was too late in 1944 anyway, the book clearly illustrates the Allied possession of such knowledge of an ongoing genocide in 1942.

Hitler himself being shown to have publically announced during 1942, before an enormous crowd & film crews, that the war in Europe would result in the complete annihilation of the Jews. Some 11,000,000 in Europe. The Allied Government's all heard this, but looked away.

The book details a number of British newspaper headlines and extensive reports, some of which follow;-
"Nazis murder 700,000 Jews in Poland". - Daily Telegraph, 25 June 1942, which also included a follow up report under the heading "Travelling Gas Chambers".
Additionally, the following reports were published publically on 30 June 1942;
"Massacre of Jews - Over 1,000,000 have died since the war began". - The Times.
"Greatest pogrom - one million Jews die". - Daily Mail.

Other such references are also included, all of which show an alarming knowledge of the Nazis agenda and operations for the last 3-4 years of the war.

The contents of this study clearly show that the Allies had both the equipment and technology to bomb/destroy the railway lines and bridges leading to Nazi Concentration Camps and even the gas chambers themselves at Auschwitz. Allied aircrews and far-reaching amounts of aircraft were even risked to drop supplies to assist the Polish resistance during the Warsaw Uprising against the Germans.

Missions that even entailed overflying Auschwitz itself whilst en-route to Warsaw, yet not a single bomb or supply was dropped to assist the Jews. Having served in the British armed forces, I feel an incredible level of shame whilst writing this.

The book proceeds to examine whether it was not perhaps 'politically expedient' for the Allies to intervene on behalf of the Jews. The British situation in Palestine is studied, in particular the restrictions placed upon Jewish immigration into Palestine and British interests in the Middle East in parallel with the latter's relationship with the Arab world.

Reference is made amongst others to the incident surrounding what the British called the 'illegal' refugee ship 'Struma', carrying some 750 men, women and children, forbidden entry into Palestine and sent back to the Black Sea. Despite there being little food or sanitary provisions for these poor people and their vessel being declared as unseaworthy, no help was forthcoming. Indeed, the book shows that neither humanitarian or military considerations would change British policy towards the Jews. The 'Struma' mysteriously blowing-up in the Black Sea with all but one of the 750 refugees being allowed to perish.

This is an essential contribution towards Holocaust studies. Might I respectfully recommend another book upon this same subject entitled "The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945" by David Wyman.