Now I know I am not the most objective when it comes to the French, but...WTFO?

[MAJOR_Baker]

Okay,

so I read that a french TV station says that if the Jews were taken out of france and Germany during WWII to the death camps it was because the US did not bomb the railways and train stations to stop it.   What the heck kinda logic is that?

 

[aesop081]

I echo you sentiments in saying WTF ?

Do you have a link to this ?

 

[RCA]

Revisionist history to spread the guilt.

IIRC this came upon a number of news cast during the  60th Anniversary of Auschwitz's liberation.

 

[aesop081]

When I say French, I dont mean Quebec.   I believe he said the French TV Station Arte, ring a bell?

LOL...i knew what you meant.......even if i had to translate it in french first  ;D

 

[Wizard of OZ]

And maybe if the French did not surrender in one day the Americans and Canadians and Brits would not have had to save their ass.

 

[winchable]

Can't find any reference to this anywhere Major, do you have a link?

Before the thread turns into a "Gee I hate the french" session I think we should at the very least see some sources.
Just because they're French doesn't excuse a rant based on hearsay, that's a pre-emptive warning as it's not quite there yet.

 

[buzgo]

The 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp is haunted by the knowledge that Allied pilots had Auschwitz in their gun sights yet were never given the order to attack.
By Stephen J. Solarz and Rafael Medoff

World leaders gathered Wednesday at Auschwitz, site of the former Nazi death camp, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Allies' liberation of the camp.

The event will help focus needed attention on the horrors of genocide -- then and now. But it will be haunted by the knowledge that in 1944, Allied bomber pilots had Auschwitz in their gun sights yet were never given the order to attack.

George McGovern was one of those pilots. McGovern, the former U.S. senator and 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, recently spoke on camera for the first time about his experiences as one of the American pilots who flew over Auschwitz.

In a meeting with interviewers from Israel Television and the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, McGovern recalled his days as the pilot of a B-24 Liberator in the 455th Bomb Group, targeting German synthetic-oil plants in occupied Poland -- many of them within a few miles of the Auschwitz gas chambers.

After the Allies gained control of the Foggia Air Base, in Italy, in December 1943, Auschwitz was for the first time within striking distance of Allied planes. In June 1944, U.S. diplomats and Jewish leaders in Switzerland received a detailed report about Auschwitz, prepared by two escapees. They described the mass-murder facilities, and drew diagrams showing where the gas chambers and crematoria were located.

As a result, Jewish organizations repeatedly asked the Roosevelt administration to order the bombing of Auschwitz and the railroad lines leading to the camp.

The U.S. War Department rejected the proposals as "impracticable," asserting that such raids would require "considerable diversion" of planes needed for the war effort. The U.S. officials claimed to have conducted a "study" that found that bombing Auschwitz was not militarily feasible, but no evidence of the alleged study has ever been found.

The U.S. administration's "diversion" argument was just "a rationalization," McGovern said in the interview. How much of a "diversion" would it have been, when he and other U.S. bomber pilots were already flying over the area? In the summer and fall of 1944, the Allies repeatedly bombed the oil refineries near Auschwitz -- at a time when hundreds of Jews were being gassed daily in the camp. On Dec. 26, for instance, McGovern's squadron dropped 50 tons of bombs on oil facilities in Monowitz, an industrial section of Auschwitz, located less than 5 miles from the site where 1.6 million people were murdered from 1942 to 1944.

"There is no question we should have attempted ... to go after Auschwitz," McGovern said. "There was a pretty good chance we could have blasted those rail lines off the face of the earth, which would have interrupted the flow of people to those death chambers, and we had a pretty good chance of knocking out those gas ovens."

Even if there was a danger of accidentally harming some of the prisoners, McGovern said, "it was certainly worth the effort, despite all the risks," because the prisoners were already "doomed to death" and an Allied bombing attack might have slowed down the mass murder and saved many more lives.

"Franklin Roosevelt was a great man, and he was my political hero," said McGovern, "but I think he made two great mistakes in World War II: One was the internment of Japanese-Americans; (the other was) not to go after Auschwitz. ... God forgive us for that tragic miscalculation."

One hopes that the world leaders who met at Auschwitz will reflect not only on the savagery of the Nazis but also on the role of bystanders -- then and now.

As George McGovern emphasized, the Auschwitz experience should produce "a determination that never again will we fail to exercise the full capacity of our strength in that direction ... we should have gone all out against Auschwitz, and we must never again permit genocide."

Stephen J. Solarz served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1993, and Rafael Medoff is director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in Melrose Park, Pa. They wrote this column for Scripps Howard News Service.


Found this in a few places:
http://www.dailybreeze.com/opinion/articles/1370721.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1072-1458049,00.html
http://www.encyclopediabritannica.com/eb/article?tocId=9342910

It doesn't appear to be the French...

 

[Gunnerlove]

To put the french defeat in perspective we should all remember that they were defeated by the most powerfull force in the world at the time. The same military that defeated and occupied almost every nation in Europe.

If you want to spread the guilt why not look at why western nations were unwilling to accept the masses of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

 

[Infanteer]

Stupid revisionism if you ask me.

So they bomb Auschwitz.   That leaves Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek (the extermination camps) plus the numerous Concentration camps scattered across the European continent.   As well, the Germans were very capable of rebuilding whatever the Allies managed to flatten within a short amount of time.

The best thing the Allies could (and did) do was to hasten the collapse of the Third Reich.

 

[Kirkhill]

You are right Che.  Not suitable for piling on.

Removing my post now.

Cheers.

 

[winchable]

Oh nono Kirkhill I was just saying that before we got carried away we should see something, you hadn't said anything too out of line.

And it seems it wasn't French in the end, but still it's silly revisionism in the end.
They bombed the oil refineries which to me makes more sense.
Fight the disease not the symptoms.

 

[Kirkhill]

I am not piling on the French because fo their military defeat by the Germans in WWII.

What I object to is the revisionist theories that come out trying to shift blame from the guilty to someone else.  As far as I know the French never said no to the Germans when they wanted jews deported, however the Italians did, not withstanding; the Germans who committed the crimes in the first place didn't have to. 

Alas, enough of this, as always the blame seems to shift............................... 

I was watching some of the coverage of the Gomery Inquiry into the Sponsorship Scandal and one of Chretien's lawyers cited some case law to support his position.  He quoted at length from his notes which in turn were quotations of previous rulings on judicial indiscretions. (Curiously one of the studies pertained to Beano's testimony before the Somalia inquiry).  The quote bore out his contention that Justice Gomery should step down because he might possibly on a good day be considered biased against Jean Chretien.

So far so good.

Later one of the many other lawyers supporting Justice Gomery stood up and offered this commentary on the Case quoted by Chretien's lawyer.  The quote Chretien's lawyer used had been edited, presumably for brevity and to prevent confusion.  One passage was deleted and recorded in the written submission in as "three dots".  Apparently the lengthy, complicated, confusing passage effectively amounted to the word "NOT".  As in "this does .... apply" versus "this does NOT apply".

People making arguments choose the information they need to bolster the story they wish to tell.  The narrative often comes before the evidence.

This is true of Chretien and the Sponsorship, Bush and Iraq, French and Anglo-Saxon relations and Germany and the Jews.

Don't expect your opponent to make your case for you.  It is up to you to defeat your opponents case and make your own.

The target is the third party that has no horse in the race and maybe trying to understand the situation so as come to an opinion.

I don't really have a problem with this.

I do have a problem with the "Media" ( Medium - a means through which a message is conveyed ) proclaiming at one and the same time to be both impartial reporter of events and at the same time proclaiming that it has a Cronkite-given duty to hold the Government (any government) and the Privileged to account.  Their position is that they are impartial, have reviewed the events and have decided that this is what you must believe, otherwise you are not a rational impartial observer like them.  You are a crank.

The fact that the French and the Germans seek solace to justify the actions and inactions is not surprising (especially as it is now moving on towards 3 generations since the incinerators at Auschwitz were lit - the average 17 year old German can't be held to account for his great-grandfathers' actions - that serves no one well - by "giving a dog a bad name" it will likely live down to expectations ).  The counter to that is to argue our case and point out the fallacy of the argument and appeal to those self-same 17 year olds.

That is if the "media" will allow it.

Cheers.

 

[x-grunt]

And maybe if the French did not surrender in one day the Americans and Canadians and Brits would not have had to save their ***.

Bull. The French fought the toughest, best equipped armed forces in the world for 6 weeks (May 10 to June 22 1940) and got pummelled.
The Allies built up huge forces for 3 years before committing troops in an invasion, the French didn't have that luxury. And all the while the Soviets were dying in the millions bleeding the German army dry before the European campaigns by Commonwealth and US forces.

Regardless of how you want to argue this topic, get your facts more or less straight.

 

[Baloo]

Can I just ask a question, and I guess I will put this out to everyone. Why is it that you remember only the French defeat, but not the BEF being thrown off the continent in the same offensive. The Belgian fortresses falling to a few dowzn men in glider planes? The fact that Hitler could have destroyed the British Army and RAF in one word, but his impactical war goals / ideas were idiotic? The fact that not only the French were collaborating in deporting Jews, but Poles, and virtually every other occupied nation? Canada and the United States did not exactly welcome the Jews or refugees with open arms, but why settle for that when we can blame the French, again. Frankly, Wizard, I am thoroughly disgusted by your comments, as not only have you shown a lack of respect for the dead, including my family members, but that you have successfully shown what is wrong and ignorant about so many people without knowledge of history. 

 

[48Highlander]

It has nothing to do with a lack of knowledge about history.  The French are just fun to pick on