History notes

[ibneko]

WRB-
Henry Morganthou Jr. - Sec. of Treasury
C. Hull - Sec. of State
Henry Stimson - Sec. of War (important, has access to ships, planes, etc.)

Morganthou appoints John Pehle - young person to make arrangements for WRB.
John McCloy - Assistant Sec. of War. He is against rescue op. writes a secret memo which is later used for wording excuses.
Reasons: ignorance, anti-semitism, etc.

What WRB will do:
1. Use documents and money to get individuals out.
2. Bomb railroads

Examples:
1. Try to rescue some of the hungarian jews.
Swedish (neutral country!) diplomat assistant person named Wallenberg, got WRB money, blank identification papers, went to Budapest right after Eichmann.
He would intemidate SS - goes as far as to go down to the railroads and pulled people out - said This is a Swedish citizen!
When he ran out of blank identification papers, brought together a group of skilled forgers and made over 70K papers, saving 20% of Hungarian Jews
Also, he tried to save entire families, not just single people.
Eventually, these Jews became the largest group of Swedish citizens outside of Sweden.

Opponents:
Iron cross - Hunagrian Facists. Tied up jews and shot them over some bridge or other..

2. Bombing: railroads and Camps - example Auschwitz
There are 3 auschwitz:
1 was original, later used as sorting point
2 was the main camp, held people and killing centers
3 was Factory area, 4 miles down river.

[ Auschwitz map ]
Auschwitz 2 named Birkenau, name of the original Polish village.
Why Germans need synthetic oil from factory? Africa oil's lost, never got Russia oil supply, and Romania might be bombed by the allies.
So, developed coal to oil, but process is very hot. Average life expectancy in factory was 2-6 weeks.

But, because it's now a major oil supply, we want to bomb it. Not yet in range though...

June 6, '44 D-day, Normandy. We fear German tanks, so remove oil supply and bomb Romania and Auschwitz.
We're in range now, conquered S. Italy, have Foggia Air Base and can fly that way.

Bombing has 3 photograph/series - Before bombing, during bombing, and after bombing.
Why? we have Photograph Intelligence (P.I.), who are really good at spotting details
(they were able to notice hidden bunkers, just because the leaves patterns were wrong!)

Feb '44 - Photo recon returns.
Pehle- Bomb railroads!
McCoy- No, don't know where it is.
Pehle- Yes you do!
McCoy- Ok, maybe we do, but it won't do anything. They'll just fix it.
Pehle- Then bomb the camps! We have Vrba & Wexler!
|Sidenote:
| Vrba & Wexler: Sanderkommandos who escaped Auschwitz with pictures and maps and reports and are eyewitnesses. Escaped under woodpile by killing the tracker dog's noses with oil and pepper.
| By June, their report is out all over the place.
McCoy- Too vague! Need to interview them! (impossible thing to do, since they're still in some place or other..)
Pehle- Just bomb the back of the camp!
McCoy- Can't reach it. (lie, complete and utter lie.)

Operation Franic(sp?) - fly to bomb, then land in safe Russia, refuel, then bomb and return. It is possible.
Plus, they _can_ spare the planes - 400 planes were diverted to help Polish civilian uprisings against German rule.

In the end, Auschwitz was bombed, but only Auschwitz III and never Auschwitz II.

crossposted to IBCorner so people can access it at school.