Customer Reviews

The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Rubenstein does yeoman work in deflating the wild claims of post-Holocaust "Blamers." Through meticulous use of raw numbers and the context of the time, William Rubenstein demonstrates that, despite claims to the contrary, there wasn't anything the Allied powers could do to end the Holocaust save win the war. Rubenstein uses immigration numbers from around the globe to show that the world was extremely receptive of German Jews leaving repression from 1933-39. (72% of German Jews escaped Hitler's reich.) Once the war began, not one Jew who escaped Axis territory was returned to his country of origin. Treatment of escapees was not golden, but, as Rubenstein points out, that is another issue. Once war broke out, Rubenstein again shows that all that could be done by the allied powers was done. Armchair generals who offhandedly toss out suggestions that Auschwitz could be bombed should pay special attention to Rubenstein's chapter on this impossibility. Rubenstein is not a revisionist. He does not deny the Holocaust or any of the horrors that were thoroughly documented by the Allies after the war. What he does do, though, is place the blame where it belongs. With Hitler and his subordinates.

I find this work to be an incredibly off based book when looked at in light of the evidence available for the Holocaust. Countless illogical arguments are used throughout the work. At one point he assumes that because some victims inside of Auschwitz didn't know about the crematoria and didn't want us to bomb the camp we should not have bombed the camp. He bases this on the likelihood of accidentally killing prisoners. However, had we destroyed the camps we could have saved large numbers of Jews who were still being shipped their from many countries especially the Hungarian Jews. Another point can be made in that clearly the Allies were not worried about collateral damage. The U.S. and Britain both participated in terror bombing campaigns that killed thousands of innocent civilians at a time. This is just one off based argument. He also argues that the U.S. and Britain hold no blame for what happened because those killed were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. This argument universalized suggests that it is okay to be indifferent to massacres of human beings in many instances and also would serve to argue that we have no civic duty to others.

The author also continually calls well respected Holocaust historians like Wyman and Breitmann "ahistorical." His criticisms go beyond critical and into blatant insults and are completely inappropriate for a man of his level of education. To stoop to personal attacks is to give in to the fact that your argument is weak.

One of the most convincing facts presented by this book is the information on the accuracy of bomb hits by Allied bombers. From this, the author Rubinstein makes it clear that a bombing raid on Auschwitz, even if "successful" would more likely wipe out the barracks and kill many Jews (and Poles, along with inmates of other nationalities) without putting the gas chambers and crematoria out of commission. And, although the author mentions Babi Yar as proof that the Germans did not need death camps to make the Holocaust work, this could have been further developed. For instance, Albert Speer pointed out that, had the death camps been destroyed, all the Germans needed to do would be to revert to the pre-1942 method of killing Jews (and millions of gentiles also): Local roundups of victims with mass shootings on the outskirts of towns where they lived, followed by burial in mass graves (or mass cremations on pyres). Many other facts in this book could be expanded. For instance, accusations that the Polish Underground deliberately (because of alleged anti-Semitism) did not sabotage the rail lines leading to the death camps can be refuted by identical arguments against their bombings, as told by Rubinstein: Destroyed tracks can often be replaced in hours or days, and there are several alternative railroad routes to the death camps. In addition, many of the routes to Auschwitz do not even occur in German-occupied Polish territory. Finally, if the Polish Underground proved incapable of rescuing millions of Polish-gentile inmates from the German-Nazi concentration camps, it can hardly be argued that they deliberately avoided preventing the Holocaust of Jews.

There are far too many scholarly reviews panning this book to list here, but, as a scholar in this area, I felt it important to point out that this book has been roundly condemned by historians working in this area.

It is NOT exhaustively researched. Rubinstein has conducted NO archival research and has not even mastered all the secondary literature in ENGLISH, let alone that in other relevant languages.

This is not a book that tells anything new or interesting and should be read only as an example of what NOT to do as a historian.

A welcome breath of fresh air on this subject, pointing out among many other things that by the time many Jews wanted to leave Germany and/or Europe, the problem was not that other countries would not let them in, but that HITLER WOULD NOT PERMIT THEM TO LEAVE. The book includes an excellent discussion of the possibility of bombing Auschwitz, pointing out among other things that for most of the war Allied aircraft were not within flying range of Auschwitz. The book is also very good in pointing out the error of confusing what we know about the camps now with what was known during World War II. An example of this is another (editorial) review of this same book which states flatly that Allied planes routinely spared deportation trains from being bombed. How were allied airmen supposed to know, from mid-air, that they WERE deportation trains? Rubinstein points out that the aerial photographs that have been used over the years to "prove" that the US knew exactly what Auschwitz was were enhanced to that level of detail IN THE 1970S with photographic technology that was not available during World War II! He also explains that many Jews did leave Germany but CHOSE to go to other European countries closer to home (Holland, France). They never expected that both would be conquered by the Germans in a matter of weeks in 1940, trapping them under German rule. Rubinstein also provides many useful reminders, among all the anger directed at Britain and the US for not doing more, that the primary responsibility for the HOlocaust belongs, NOT to the US or Britain, but to Germany and ADOLF HITLER -- remember him, folks?

This is perhaps the only book that argues against the notion of apathy and that more Jews could have been saved, comapared to a plethora of tomes such as "While Six Million Died" or "Abandonment of the Jews"

The reason for the title of my review is that in reading a book like "Abandonement of the Jews" for example I think that Wyman is over the top with certain allegations, for example when discussing the non-boming of Auschwitz he states "By 1944 the allies ruled the skies" This of course is a total exageration which in my opinion mischaracterizes the reality of the situation and undermines his credibility. In this sense you could say I believe Wyman is BLUE.

Rubenstein addresses many of the rescue and apathy arguments in ways that are compelling at times and other times less than compelling. For example he is one of the only authors I have seen that presents totals for pre war imigration. While Wyman and others often present incomplete data. However he does not really address the non-bombing of Auschwitz very well.
With regards to the review which claims that the book is poorly researched, I have to disagree. The nature of the work is to refute other allegations and given the bias of some ofthose allegations it frankly is not hard to do. All in all you could say this book is YELLOW.

What is the truth of matter, probably somewhere between BLUE and YELLOW

I must agree with Walter Laquer and others who have panned this book. After examining The Myth of Rescue, and its narrow view, which appears to exclude important period sources to be found in the American media, the National Archives and the well-settled secondary literature, I can only conclude that the author was intent on shaping a bizarre viewpoint regardless of the historical facts. Information on Auschwitz and the details known to Allied governments and even in the media, appear to be quite wrong. Like others, I cannot recommend this book.

To someone like myself, who has been reading in military history for years, the assertion by stupid left-wing intellectuals, that the WWII Allies could have done something (but did not want to) about the Nazi death camps, other than defeat the German Army in the field, is preposterous on its face, beneath contempt, and deserves no reply. And yet, the Left proves, time and again, that no idea is too stupid to be incorporated into the socialist canon. For that reason alone, this hateful, destructive, anti-historical libel must be confronted.

Rubinstein does an excellent job confronting, and refuting, this scandalous defamation of the Allies' heroic sacrifices in WWII.

Rubinstein treats very well the purely military obstacles to Rescue. He then goes further to examine the historical record on who wrote and spoke on Jewish Rescue. I.e., not only does he treat the question of "what did they know and when did they know it", but he looks at what people, including leading Jewish intellectuals and Jewish organizations, were actually calling for, at the time.

Thus, this book is important in at least these two respects. First, it is an excellent investigation of one, small but important, neglected aspect of WWII historiography. Second, it sheds a harsh, revealing light on the internal contradictions of leftist intellectualism.

To anyone who cares about ideas, history, WWII, and the holocaust, this book is a must read.

This book restores common sense to an issue poisoned with a blame everybody paranoiac attitude common to victimized groups.

Adolf Hitler trapped Jews in Europe and his minions murdered them. The Allies were sacrificing their economies and the lives of their citizens by the thousands daily at full throttle in a life and death war to end his rule and his evil. And that was the only realistic rescue effort possible or at least conceivable to the Allies, including Jewish leaders of the time.

While this book is not comprehensive -- it is the first of its type -- it does give a fresh persepctive. One interesting detail among many is that the leadership of the Jewish Agency for Palestine originally formally opposed bombing Auschwitz for fear of killing more Jews.

The author hedges and fudges his case a little by saying that even if there was a failure of will or effort, there was nevertheless the failure of possibility as well. Not much to do except win the war as Jews were in the hands of an obsessed powerful psychopath.

But the main fact remains -- saving Jews from Hitler was a goal of the Allied war effort (and pre-war humanitarian efforts) but it was subordinated to the effort of defeating Hitler because that was seen at the time as the best means and because there was, in most cases if not all, little else to be done.

But blame the world is a common and appealing cry of victimized groups, to those who feel strangely comforted by finding racism and anti-Semitism everywhere and from everyone.

I really liked this book. It is a nicely written denial of all those assertations that pop up in various articles and books that the Allies, particularly England and the US, could have done much more to save the Jews than they did. Dr Rubinstein demolishes these arguments one by one in a systematic and historically fair manner. Other reviewers have outlined these "what-ifs" pretty well so I won't bother to.

I have two minor gripes with the book. The first is that it is too short. If Goldhagen could write some 500 pages on his ridiculous theory that the German people themselves, not Hitler and his Nazis, killed the Jews, than Rubinstein could have spent more than 216 pages (plus a ton of endnotes) on refuting them. My second complaint is that he seems to have minimized the role of Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church in saving hundreds of thousands of Jews. He only calls the Vatican's role "controversial and much debated" - he should have done his homework a little better on this topic.

Otherwise, this is a well written and well reasoned book - very highly recommended.