Re: USA spies in Germany and Holocaust

In article <1154034188.649384.91330@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Alan Meyer <ameyer2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
David Thornley wrote:
...
Hundreds of thousands were murdered, and offhand I don't remember how
many of the deported ones survived the war. You appear to be proposing
to save maybe 10% of the Jews deported in 1944, which doesn't really
impress me.
...
I'm hoping you didn't mean this the way it is written.

No, I didn't; thank you for pointing that out.

What I meant to say is that tens of thousands of lives is proportionally
not much in a war that killed tens of millions of people. One death
is tragic, of course, but in WWII tens of thousands of deaths were
indistinguishable from statistical noise (tragic and frightening).

There are plenty of decisions in WWII that could have saved far
more. The deployment of French troops in 1940 and Stalin's actions
between the Winter War and Barbarossa probably cost millions of
lives, perhaps tens of millions.

In this thread, Andrew was suggesting that a large diversion of
resources at a critical time would be justified to save tens of
thousands of lives. Given what was going on at the time, I
think that diverting lots of Fifteenth Air Force effort in the
summer of 1944 might have cost more lives than that, considering
the massive death toll in the East and the deaths in northern Italy.


--
David H. Thornley | If you want my opinion, ask.
david@xxxxxxxxxxxx | If you don't, flee.
http://www.thornley.net/~thornley/david/ | O-

.

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