Andrzej Dabrowa, Ph.D.
14. German atrocities
German intelligence provided the Allies with both tactical and strategic information. These were the priorities and where most of the Bletchley Park manpower and other resources were allocated. However, Enigma the intelligence also provided other routine and mundane information on life under German occupation. This included, amongst others, the movement of food supplies, military personnel and civilians.
In general the Germans tolerated people in the Nordic countries of Denmark and Norway, together with the obedient Vichy France. This did not apply to Slavic countries such as Poland and the Soviet Union where there was an organised armed resistance and disobedience by the civilian population. Executions and round ups of the civilian population for forced labour, extermination in concentration camps were common.
Both Bletchley Park and the Franco-Polish Cadix unit in France intercepted Enigma intelligence on German atrocities committed in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. In August 1941 German police reported the massive execution of in excess of 30,000 partisans and Jews. These reports were delivered to Winston Churchill for his daily analysis of his "most secret source". In a calculated risk that could have exposed the Enigma secret, he publicly denounced the German atrocities that were without precedent since the Mongol invasion of Europe.
A Polish Government emissary in occupied Poland, Jan Karski-Kozielski, was able to bribe his way into a German concentration camp and witnessed the mass extermination of Jews with his own eyes. In November 1942 he arrived in London to report on German atrocities in occupied Poland. He reported to the Polish Government, Szmul Zagielboin and Ignacy Schwartzbart (Jewish members of the Polish National Council), Anthony Eden (the British Foreign Minister) and the British parliament. In America, he reported in Washington to President Roosevelt and in New York to the International Jewish Council.
As a result, the Allied governments issued a statement that the people responsible for atrocities would be punished. On 10 December 1942, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a note to Allied and neutral governments on the mass extermination of Jews in German-occupied Poland and requested retaliatory bombing of German cities. Both the British and American governments refused to act.
(c) 2003 A R Dabrowa