The evil, satanic Nazi regime and it's methods intent on the slaughter and genocide of the European Jews is well documented elsewhere.
Little is written or heard about the passive accomplices....I hesitate in using the latter word, but none other can really suffice in this context. The author has provided an extremely valuable service with this work in bringing this subject to our attention.
It is difficult to estimate how many of the six million murdered Jews could possibly have been saved through a concerted, determined Allied rescue campaign. However, suffice to say no such measures were taken and all the victims perished.
The author documents that the US State Department and the British Foreign Office has absolutely no intention of rescuing large numbers of European Jews from the Nazi genocide machine.
Indeed, the author shows that the Allies actually feared that the Nazi regime would release tens of thousands of Jews into Allied hands and the inherent responsibility that such a move would impose upon them.
Such a move by the Nazis would have inevitably placed immense pressure on the British to open Palestine to increased Jewish immigration, and the US to admit even larger numbers of Jews to their own shores.
A situation that neither Government wanted to face. The British, although allowing virtually unhindered Arab immigration from surrounding Arab nations into Palestine, had their own reasons for refusing increased Jewish entry into what is now Israel. Instead, the British provided concentration camps of their own on Cyprus for those Jews seeking what they perceived as `illegal' entry to Palestine. A damning historical indictment, which being British and a non-Jew, I still find difficult to stomach.
The author shows that there was clear, authenticated documentation available to the US State Department in 1942, that revealed unmistakable evidence that the Nazis were pursuing a systematic extermination of European Jewry. However, it is shown that nothing was done for some 14 months, and only then were limited measures eventually adopted. Even so, the US record of action is still far better than that of the British.
These limited measures of assistance adopted by the US are shown to have been impeded by rampant anti-Semitism throughout US society and the US Congress, plus the mass media's failure to publicise Holocaust details and the virtual near silence of the Church and it's own leadership.
The author also shows that appeals to bomb the Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers, railroads and bridges were refused outright amidst claims that such military action would divert essential air-power. Yet, at the very same time numerous heavy Allied bombing raids were still taking place within 50 miles of Auschwitz, only a few minutes flying time away. The value of saving Jewish lives was not worth a single Allied bomb.
This is a disturbing book about a disturbing period of history and a disturbing analysis of the integrity of our leaders together with our foreign policies & agendas during the war years. There is so much information here. Read this and Sir Martin Gilbert's `Auschwitz and the Allies' for differing approaches to the same subject, but which reveal the same conclusions. Recommended.
