Daniel Adamson
Daniel Adamson is a PhD student at Durham University. His research explores portrayals of the relationship between Britain and the Holocaust.
[Opinions are author’s own]
Introduction
Throughout the summer of 1944, in response to several aerial reconnaissance reports and proposals submitted by both the Jewish Agency and War Refugee Board, Churchill’s war cabinet entered into protracted debate regarding a plan to strategically bomb railway and supply lines proximal to Auschwitz concentration camp. Eventually, in August 1944, such a scheme was definitively rejected by the cabinet due to the supposed logistical and infrastructural difficulties of such a task. The decision was duly accepted by Churchill with little recorded remark in official or private documents.
In September 2019, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) aired a documentary entitled 1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz?. The programme purported to, “for first time on television, tell the whole of this incredible story”, and “reveal the hard questions faced by Churchill, Allied Air Command and the Jewish Agency”.[1] Despite the measured contributions of expert historians featured within the transmission, the documentary provoked a vituperative response on both social media and in the press. The failure of the Allies to take decisive action to disrupt the killing processes at the Auschwitz camp drew sharp criticism. Commentators decried the possibility that “lives could have been saved”, whilst Winston Churchill in particular attracted censure for failing to force the bombing of Auschwitz to go ahead.[2]
However, to use an anatomical metaphor, whilst Churchill may have been the head of the British wartime government, he was not its body. To equate Churchill and government is misleading. The habitual failure of Churchill’s superficial commitment to the decisive combat of the Holocaust to translate itself into any tangible governmental policy was primarily rooted in the administrative obstructions endemic within the British government. The political triage exercise that had resulted in the relegation of Jewish affairs within the context of the wartime objectives of the British government yielded an immovable result.
Throughout the Second World War, Churchill’s ministries – in particular the Foreign Office, War Office, Colonial Office and Home Office – became autonomous bodies, and thus were largely able to dictate the course of their own policies. Throughout the war, Churchill prioritised – whether involuntarily or by choice – the balance of his delicate cross-party War Cabinet above any personal political convictions relating to the Holocaust, and thus largely acceded his own individual agendas. Even if the Prime Minister did expect his government to take action in relation to the Holocaust, the structure of his administration prevented such measures from taking place.
The Auschwitz bombing debate
As an example in point, the ‘Auschwitz bombing debate’ – as it has come to be known – offers a useful case study to substantiate the hypotheses outlined above. The Auschwitz bombing debate can provide a much broader insight into the relationship between Churchill and the Holocaust – and its deficiencies – as a whole, as well as offering an explanation of why such insufficiencies existed.
In the case of the Auschwitz bombing debate, the profound chasm between Churchill’s theoretical and practical responses to affairs of European Jewry is plainly observable. The question of whether Auschwitz should be bombed was counterbalanced by the issue of whether it could be bombed. Moreover, as is the case throughout the Second World War, Churchill’s superficial promotion of the Jewish cause was stymied by a combination of his own lability, bureaucratic inefficiency and – most significantly – governmental opposition. Churchill’s handling of the Auschwitz question was synecdochic of both his wider response to the Holocaust and his wartime leadership in general.
In his initial comment on the matter, Churchill’s support for the bombing of transport lines surrounding Auschwitz was emphatic. On 7th July 1944, Churchill wrote to Eden to demand that the Foreign Secretary “get anything you can out of the Air Force and invoke me if necessary”.[3] Whether or not Eden did ‘invoke’ the Prime Minister’s opinion in private conversation is unclear. If so, the Air Force’s consequent resistance to the proposal perhaps illustrates the lack of influence truly possessed by Churchill in military affairs. If Eden did not act upon Churchill’s offer, the distinct autonomy with which the Foreign Office operated is again demonstrated.
Logistical difficulties
Either way, as is typical of much of his approach to Jewish affairs, Churchill never followed up on his enthusiastic opening statement regarding the bombing of Auschwitz. As is clear in cabinet minutes, by late August 1944, Churchill accepted the conclusion of his war cabinet that the bombing of Auschwitz was unfeasible due to the risk of collateral damage it entailed and the practical difficulties of the task. Endorsement of such justification, however, once again contradicts earlier actions taken by the Prime Minister. In February 1942, for example, Churchill had personally approved the bombing of a German prison camp in France in which members of the French resistance were incarcerated. Such a venture entailed significant risk of unintentional destruction; indeed, several French inmates were killed by Allied bombs.[4]
Arguably, Churchill’s acceptance of the argument that Auschwitz was too distant for Royal Air Force bombers to reach safely appears disingenuous. Throughout September 1944, Churchill personally authorised the emissary of 181 R.A.F bombers on 22 night missions to ensure the airdrop of 1,284 arms containers into the Warsaw ghetto to aid the uprising occurring in the occupied Polish capital, despite Auschwitz lying over 150 kilometres westwards of Warsaw.[5] Churchill appears conscious of the contradictions existent in his policy towards targeting the direct organs of the execution of the Nazi Final Solution. A full three pages of Churchill’s sixth volume of his The Second World War is devoted to sponsoring the worthiness of the Warsaw airdrops, despite their limited impact in reality.[6] The immense topic of the Holocaust, as a whole, receives far less proportionate attention in Churchill’s historical account.
The failure of Churchill’s abstract support for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in Europe to translate itself in decisive action is, in the case of the Auschwitz bombing debate, characteristically explicable in major part to the obstinacy of the bureaucratic structures that formed the framework of the Prime Minister’s administration. Churchill’s correspondence to Archbishop William Temple (1881-1944) on 13th July 1944 acknowledged how he remained governed by Eden’s stance, outlined in the Foreign Secretary’s speech before the House of Commons on 5th July 1944, that “the principal hope of terminating” the genocide of European Jews “must remain the speedy victory of the Allied Nations”.[7] Eden’s position effectively dismissed the idea of sacrificing the overarching war strategy of ‘victory at all costs’ for the creation of policy specifically addressing Jewish issues.
Meanwhile, Churchill’s failure to pursue the bombing of Auschwitz further illustrates his ultimate deferment, by 1944, to American policy on military matters following the strong public rejection by John McCloy (1895-1981) of the U.S. War Department, in early August 1944, of the World Jewish Congress’ proposals on the topic of aerial raids on Auschwitz.[8]
Personal persuasions
Nonetheless, the case of the Auschwitz bombing debate goes some way to discount the theory that the inertia of the British government – and by extension Churchill himself – towards the combat of the Holocaust was driven by any personal sentiments of antipathy towards Jewry. The proposal to bomb Auschwitz found its most ardent opponent in the form of Secretary of State for Air Archibald Sinclair (1890-1970). Sinclair, in private correspondence to Eden in July 1944, decried any plan to bomb Auschwitz as “costly”, “hazardous” and “ineffective” whilst being completely “out of the bounds of possibility for Bomber Command”.[9] Sinclair’s resistance to the bombing of Auschwitz, however, was coldly logistical and was absent of any political or moral dimension. In fact, Sinclair exhibited consistently pro-Zionist opinions throughout his career.[10]
Conclusion
Overall, therefore, the foremost historical utility of the Auschwitz bombing debate is as a demonstration of the broader wartime response of Churchill and his government to the Holocaust. Throughout the war, Churchill demonstrated an inability to consider major wartime issues simultaneously. The Auschwitz debate’s unfortunate concurrence with the immense Allied invasion of Normandy unsurprisingly resulted in the disregard of the former topic.
The episode is symptomatic of how Churchill’s impulsive rhetoric on issues regarding the extermination of Jews failed to convert itself into palpable action. Personal criticism of Churchill for this progression of events is, however, not necessarily justified. Such an incongruity found its roots in an obstructive amalgamation of administrative inefficiency, intra-governmental conflict,
Prime Ministerial insincerity and the ultimate compliance of Churchill with the wishes of the wartime governmental structures upon which he relied.
[1] 1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz?, BBC programme website, accessed at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008lj4
[2] O’Donovan, G., ‘1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz? review – A sobering account of how lives could have been saved’, The Telegraph (19 September 2019)
[3] Rees, L., Auschwitz (2005), p.307
[4] Cohen, M., Churchill and Auschwitz: End of Debate? (article, 2006), p.131
[5] Cohen, M., Churchill and Auschwitz: End of Debate? (article, 2006), p.302
[6] Churchill, W., Triumph and Tragedy (2005), p.597
[7] CHAR 20/54B/179
[8] Rees, L., Auschwitz (2005), p.308
[9] PRO FO 371/42809/147
[10] Makovsky, M., Churchill’s Promised Land: Zionism and Statecraft (2007), p.173
The British and Irish Association for Holocaust Studies 