What was the opportunity cost to bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz?
Upvote:3
There is a large difference between bombing a military target and a civilian target. And that's true even if the "same" railroad can be either one or the other.
In military bombing, the idea is not to destroy the target per se, but to "put it out of action" during a critical time period, say right before a battle. For instance, the Allies bombed a lot of roads and railroads in France in connection with the Normandy campaign. A number of German units were "delayed," but they made it to Normandy eventually. The real objective of the railroad bombings is the Allied lives and time saved by the delay of German reinforcements. Without this consideration, the difficulty and cost of bombing a target would outweigh the value of the bombing itself; most roads, railroads, and buildings are easily repaired.
In the case of the railroads to Auschwitz, there were no military "savings" to offset the cost of the bombing. The railroads would have been repaired eventually, the shipping and killing would have gone on, and the main result is that people who were "shipped" to Auschwitz would either have been killed in the bombing, or forced to detrain and walk the remainder of the way, resulting in more and earlier deaths.
Upvote:4
In regards to the first question:
There were two main bombing techniques used in World War II: area bombing and precision bombing.
Area bombing was carried out by large numbers of high-altitude bombers at a time (typically tens to hundreds of bombers). This could certainly destroy a rail line, but accuracy was abysmal: the Eighth Air Force considered any bomb that landed within a thousand feet of the aiming point to be a hit, and even with that low standard, they only managed an accuracy of 20%.
Precision bombing was typically done by ground-attack aircraft or light bombers such as the Mosquito. These aircraft had the accuracy to hit a small target such as a locomotive or a tank, so hitting a rail line would be no problem. However, they couldn't carry much of a bomb load: German forces could repair the damage in a matter of hours.
Your choice: accuracy, or effectiveness. You can't get both.
Upvote:11
There's (surprisingly to me) a rather extensive Wikipedia page on this subject.
The main takeaway I got from it is that merely bombing the rail lines without bombing the camps themselves was not considered to be a particularly effective option. Bombing the camps was fairly extensively discussed at high levels (even consulting with Jewish community representatives). It was worried that not only would that also kill the internees, but it was quite likely the Germans would turn around and try to blame all the death camp deaths on the allied bombings.
At lower levels, it appears that it was Army policy to bomb only military targets, so such requests made through military channels were typically rejected without ever going up the chain far enough to reach a politician.
More post
- 📝 What is an open city?
- 📝 Marbury vs Madison, what about other midnight judges?
- 📝 When during their construction did Bible-era Jewish temples become "holy"?
- 📝 How was whiskey made in the 1800's?
- 📝 In the 18th c., did/would China accept gold from Europe as trade payment? Why / why not?
- 📝 How do historians and linguists know how to pronounce the names from non-phonetic scripts?
- 📝 Did the Soviet army intentionally send troops (e.g. penal battalions) running over minefields?
- 📝 Was the high consumption of (red) wine in Ancient Rome preventive of scurvy?
- 📝 Why didn't Marathas rule Delhi officially?
- 📝 Could the Circus Maximus audience distract the racers?
- 📝 Why only in the last few hundred year has science and technology progressed like it has
- 📝 What do they do with corpses after a battle?
- 📝 What was the border regime between Poland and Czechoslovakia like during the 1970s and 1980s?
- 📝 What happened to the S.A. (Sturmabteilung; "Stormtroopers") after The Night of the Long Knives?
- 📝 What was the attendance at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970? Was it the largest gathering ever in the UK? If not, what was?
- 📝 Did the 'founding fathers' of the United States see Oliver Cromwell as a role model?
- 📝 How did women's roles and rights change during the early Republican period in China?
- 📝 How common is nostalgia for the colonial perod in countries which gained independence in the 20th century?
- 📝 Did the end of the British Raj in India create an economic loss for Britain?
- 📝 What type of ancient Chinese headgear is this and what more do we know about it?
- 📝 Where can I find a blank outline of Silk Road routes?
- 📝 Are there historical instances of settlers who were largely uncontacted and undisturbed after settling?
- 📝 When did China start thinking 8 was lucky and 4 unlucky?
- 📝 Why was there no solution found to Soviet famines and near-famines?
- 📝 When was the first sauna on a ship?
- 📝 Could ancient Egyptians have done origami with papyrus?
- 📝 What were the American-equipped armies of Nationalist China equipped with?
- 📝 Recorded data on crime rates
- 📝 History of calendar of different culture
- 📝 Long time to reach news in Thirty Years' War
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 What was the opportunity cost to bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz?
- 📝 What was the state of the German rail system in 1944?
- 📝 What was the effect of the Civil War on the cost of cotton?
- 📝 What was the cost of buying Silk in the Roman Empire
- 📝 What was the original cost of a Sharps Rifle?
- 📝 Where can I find what the cost of a train ticket in the USA was in 1930?
- 📝 Did Adolf Hitler ever address the fact that his own appearance was almost an exact opposite of what he considered the ideal Aryan appearance?
- 📝 What was the historical context of the 2nd amendment to the US Constitution?
- 📝 During the breakup of the Soviet Union, on what basis was citizenship granted or withheld for each of the fifteen new republics?
- 📝 What was the typical peasant's diet like in Europe during the High Middle Ages?
- 📝 What did Germany do in World War II about the different rail gauge in the Soviet Union?
- 📝 What led some people to (correctly) believe that there was no land under the ice cap at the North Pole?
- 📝 What was the status of Arab Christians during the crusades?
- 📝 What was the religion of the Arabic people before conversion to Islam?
- 📝 What was the purpose of Nazi extermination camps?
- 📝 What was the internal Soviet reaction to the moon landing?
- 📝 What was the function of the walls of Jericho?
- 📝 What was the pound (unit of weight) initially equal to?
- 📝 At what point was the Byzantine Empire's decline irreversible?
- 📝 What was the reason for Soviet troops to withdraw from Yugoslavia in World War II?
- 📝 What was the point of horse armour?
- 📝 What was the first solar eclipse that was demonstrably predicted in advance?
- 📝 What was the role of the Soviet Navy during WWII?
- 📝 What was the plan for an abort of the Enola Gay's mission to drop the atomic bomb?
- 📝 What was the economic basis for West Berlin?
- 📝 What is the evidence to claim that political order in ancient Rome was sufficiently different under "kingdom", "republic" and "empire"?
- 📝 What was the average height of Roman men and women?
- 📝 What was the longest a World War II submarine stayed at sea without being resupplied at a port?
- 📝 What was the cleanest war ever fought?
- 📝 What was the Seven Years War called at first?
