Language:
English
Year of publication:
2004
Titel der Quelle:
Yad Vashem Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
32 (2004) 351-396
Keywords:
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
World War, 1939-1945 Diplomatic history
Abstract:
Argues, contrary to the views of Richard Breitman et al., that British wartime intelligence misinterpreted the decoded signals that might have led to a comprehension of the beginning of the Final Solution. Pp. 354-373 discuss the fact that British Intelligence knew about the mass executions by the Nazi Order Police battalions in Russia, it failed to grasp that most of the victims were Jews. Pp. 373-393 deal with the failure to grasp the genocidal intentions of the deportations of German and West European Jews to death camps in the East. The British were deceived by the Nazi statements that the Jews were being taken for forced labor. Even when the British learned of the mass deaths of Jews at Auschwitz, they misunderstood the cause, attributing the deaths not to gassing but to typhus. Concludes that British lack of comprehension of the ongoing Holocaust derived not only from lack of specific information but also from failures of imagination and attempts to fit what was beyond belief into existing understandings.
Note:
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