Shattering Another Excuse For FDR’s Holocaust Apathy

Here’s how Wenzel’s story intersects with the Holocaust. Contemporary defenders of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Holocaust record argue that there was no point in bombing the railways to Auschwitz—over which hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported to their deaths—because the Germans sometimes were able to repair railway lines fairly quickly. Ken Burns promoted that claim in his recent film, “The U.S. and the Holocaust.”

The reality, however, is that the Allies constantly bombed railway lines throughout Europe, despite the possibility of the Germans repairing them. 

Bombing railways, including the bridges along their routes, consumed no less than 32% of the bomb tonnage utilized in the Allies’ entire strategic air campaign in Europe. John Wenzel was just one of more than 165,000 American pilots who graduated basic flight training in World War II. Yet the bombing of Axis railway targets in Europe was so common that when the New York Times picked one pilot’s story to spotlight, sure enough he was among those involved in the railway attacks.

When the Allies began preparing to invade Italy in 1943, they carried out extensive bombing of enemy transportation routes there. Likewise, during the months before the crucial D-Day landings in 1944, American and British pilots attacked railway targets across France, Belgium, and western Germany. By D-Day, France’s railways were functioning at just 10% of their normal capacity.

The impact of these raids was felt in many ways. The Germans were forced to divert tens of thousands of laborers from military construction in order to repair damaged railroads. Trains carrying army supplies were stranded for long periods of time, and some war materials remained in warehouses for lack of transportation to the front.

Hitler’s Ardennes offensive (the Battle of the Bulge) was repeatedly postponed because damage to transportation routes prevented resupplying German troops there. Air strikes on rail marshaling yards destroyed freight cars, locomotives, and military goods awaiting shipment. As a result, many German army units went into battle without adequate equipment or personnel.

Of the 2,100 tanks manufactured by German factories in the autumn of 1944, less than half reached German forces. The quality of their weaponry also was affected, because disruptions to the rail lines interfered with testing and modifying armaments. Army morale was affected, too; military leaves for many German soldiers were suspended for lack of trains.