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From: stuart@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Stuart Kurtz)
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: Re: Humanism, Christianity and Nazism
Message-ID: <122@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 4-May-84 10:50:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: gargoyle.122
Posted: Fri May  4 10:50:28 1984
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Organization: U. Chicago - Computer Science
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< Hi bug: FLAMES and FIRE, BRIMSTONE and HAIL!!! >

To argue, as Y. Martillo does, that the response of the Western
Democracies to the Holocaust on the basis of information unavailable to
them that their actions were inappropriate is intellectual cowardice
and thuggery.  The allies had no verifiable information that the
``relocation'' of the Jews was anything but until late in the war.  In
any event, the death camps were not even constructed until after an
active state of war existed between Germany and the Western allies.
At this point, the only effective way to end the Holocaust was the
military conquest of Germany -- which appears to have been carried out
as quickly as reasonable chance of success allowed.

(If you think Germany could have been conquered in 1942 by a cross
channel invasion, as some have suggested, remember Dieppe.  A cross
channel invasion stands a reasonable chance of success only when the
invaders have almost uncontested air superiority.  If you don't believe
this, consider the blunder of Anzio (or the Bay of Pigs).  Such air
superiority wasn't available much before the actual invasion.)

As to the argument that the Allies should have reacted just to the
proposed relocation more forcefully than they did seems unreasonable as
well.  Relocation of ethnic groups for the economic advantage of the
(or at least the powerful) has never elicited the scale of reaction
that would have materially aided the Jews. (or gypsies, or other
forgotten victims of the Reich.)  If you doubt this, consider the
relocation of the American Indian, the concentration of ethnic
Japanese during WW II, or the relocation of the Palistinians on the
West Bank that continues even now.

If you feel that Western responses to oppressed people in the process
of being merely relocated is inadequate, no doubt you favor mass
immigration of Palistinians from Israeli occupied Lebanon and the West
Bank?  No doubt you favor immigration of as many Afghani's or
Pakistani's as the local tenements can accomodate?  I'm sure that given
the surfeit :-) of jobs available in American cities for people without
high school education that we could accomodate these people without any
disruption.

In conclusion: any Monday morning quarterback can say  ``they should
have seen the blitz coming'', the real trick is to see it Sunday,
before it comes.  Any assessment of the Allied reaction to the
Holocaust which is based on the monday morning argument is cowardly.

----------------------------------------

	The truth will prevail. (According to the current mythology.)
	``I recant''	        (According to Gallileo.)

	Stuart Kurtz
	Dept. of Computer Science
	The University of Chicago