President Bush wondered and why the Allies did not bomb the Nazi extermination camps. Der Spiegel discusses this in an article Why the Allies Did Not Bomb Auschwitz.
The allies of course knew the Nazis were anti-Semitic, but first heard of the plans for the Holocaust in August 1942, In November 1942 a Polish officer, Jan Karski, was smuggled out of
But the dreadful news that he brought surpassed the possibilities of imagination of those who heard him. “Do you think that I am lying,” Karski was supposed to have asked the incredulous Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter,. “I didn’t say that you are lying,” Frankfurters answer was supposed to have been. “I said, I can’t believe you.”
Under Louis XIV the
La Reyne, at first very skeptical, looked into this, and to his horror discovered an underground in
La Reynie realized that for the criminals the very “the enormity of their crimes proved their safeguard.” No one wanted to believe that a civilized Christian society could have such crimes.