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Contemporary reactions to the Holocaust - Coggle Diagram
Contemporary reactions to the Holocaust
Extent to which others knew if the Holocaust at the time.
Allied responsibility
Despite German efforts to maintain secrecy - word about holocaust quickly leaked. As early as June 1942 telegraph - reported Germans had gassed 700,000 Jews
News of German atrocities continued to be reported on in Britain and the USA throughout late 1942 and until the end of the war
Prompts several questions, why was so little done to help the Jews? Were the allied leaders indifferent to the fate of the Jews, simply lacking in imagination about how to help them, or essentially helpless.
The case against the US and British leaders
Historians - Arthur Morse and David Wyman - launched attacks on allied leaders for 'abandoning the Jews'
Assert that both Britain (probs in Palestine) and US (where antisemitism was strong) feared a flood of Jewish immigrants.
Thus US state department and the British foreign office - both of which contained personnel who held disparaging attitudes towards Jews are accused of making only limited efforts to assist the Jews.
View of Historians more could have been done to pressure Germany and its satellite states to release the Jews - more might have been done to encourage neutrals to take extra Jews
More publicity could have been disseminated throughout Europe, urging Jews to hide, fight or flee.
In a poll half of Americans believed that the Jews had to much power and influence with in the USA.
The case for US and British leaders
Criticism of Morse and Wyman are probably unfair.
Some 70% of German, Austrian and Czech Jews had managed to flee from the 3 Reich before Sept 1939
Many Jews found refuge in Britain and its Empire
In fairness to Roosevelt - he didn’t appreciate the full extent of Nazi policies until late in the war. Like most contemporaries - thought that Genocidal stories were anti-German propaganda.
Once there was gov acceptance of the reality of the atrocities - still problem of what to do. Conditions of war had made the rescue of 7 million Jews in Poland and the USSR impossible.
The ransom of Jews was really a non-starter - while it was possible that the Germans might have been willing to negotiate for Jewish lives in Hungary in 1944, allied leaders were rightly suspicious of the proposals. They had no intention of being blackmailed by the Nazis or of giving Hitler war materials in exchange for Jews. This might have simply led to a lengthening of the war and more casualties. Moreover any negotiations with Hitler simply increased Stalin's suspicions and risked disrupting the anti-German alliance.
How did they react and what explains their reactions
Could have Auschwitz been bombed?
Allies lacked the military capacity to bomb Auschwitz before 1944; never mind the camp remained a well-kept secret until then. The bombing of Auschwitz in 1944, albeit feasible would have come too late to have saved most of the camps victims. Even if it had been successfully bombed in 1944, it is likely that the Germans would have found other means of killing. Moreover, giving that aerial bombing was rarely pinpoint accurate, bombing of the camp might have resulted in the death of thousands of Jews. Targeting the camp would have also diverted the allied air forces from their real mission of destroying the strategic industries that sustained the Nazi war machine. Allied leaders were convinced that the best way to help the Jews was to win the war against Germany as quickly as possible. This made sense because if the war had ended a year earlier the Hungarian Jews might have survived. If it had continued more Jews would have certainly died.
Palestine
Britain been particularly condemned for its unwillingness to allow more Jews to settle into Palestine. However, before 1936 Britain had allowed Jewish emigrants almost free access to Palestine. After 1936, aware that any further influx of Jews into Palestine would alienate both the native Palestinians and neighbouring Arab states, the British government was more circumspect. Given the importance of eastern oil could ill afford to alienate the Arab world. In May 1939 Britain limited Jewish emigrants to 75,000 over the next 5 years. However, it is unlikely that British concerns over Palestinian immigration impended efforts to rescue jews: the key fact is that there were precious few Jews who had the opportunity of escaping to Palestine.