The historical question of whether the Allies could have done more during the war to limit the Holocaust

Le Monde has a good, nine-minute documentary on one of the most-discussed questions about the Holocaust, which is why did the Allies not do more to directly hinder the mass killing of Jews, e.g., by bombing the gas chambers at Auschwitz: (1)

Israeli historian Tom Segev has an excellent discussion of how the “rescue” theme emerged in the postwar period in his book, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (2000).

William Rubinstein also analyzed the various arguments on the topic in The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (1997). As the title suggests, Rubinstein is skeptical that the Allies could have done substantially more to stop the Holocaust going on behind enemy lines.

Ken Burns did a three-part documentary on The U.S. and the Holocaust that dealt with the larger question of how the US responded to the Nazi persecution of Jews before and during the war. (2)

Deborah Lipstadt wrote about “America and the Holocaust” in 1990. (3) Lipstadt is an important Holocaust scholar. But as an ambassador-level “antisemitism envoy” for the Biden Administration, she also supported that administration’s policy on Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal war against Gaza civilians.

William vanden Heuvel has also written about the US and British knowledge of and reaction to the Holocaust during the war. (4)

Notes:

(1) Auschwitz, 80 years after discovery: Why didn't the Allies try to stop the Holocaust sooner? Le Monde in English YouTube channel 01/26/2025. <https://youtu.be/ZYN4tEUEp14?si=00U919ZyzVou7syt> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(2) The U.S. and the Holocaust. PBS 09/18/2025. <https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust#watch> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(3) Modern Judaism 10:3 (Oct. 1990), 283-296. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1396281>

(4) Vanden Heuvel, William J. (1999): America and the Holocaust. American Heritage 50:4 (July/Aug 1999). Text appears online under the title “FDR Was Hardly Indifferent to the Shoah”. <https://www.americanheritage.com/fdr-was-hardly-indifferent-shoah> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).