Iraq v. WW II

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/4/03 12:35:33 AM, ottosell at yahoo.de writes:

<< The difference is that the allies pretty well knew what was going on in the

nazi death camps, but WW II wasn't fought to save the European Jews & nobody

had claimed that before. But the Nürnberg-trial showed the world that the

Holocaust was the biggest crime of all in WW II.

 >>

By 1943, at the latest, Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill were debating
how to reconstruct Europe (and the world) after the defeat of The Axis. 
All the while, of course, Churchill had access to "Hitler's mail" thanks to 
Bletchley Park. The Foreword forwards Orwell's reluctance to include
the horror of the camps and what rough beast lurking in the heart of
modernity they represented. By doing so, Pynchon points to the huge
question in the background: Why didn't the allies make public, in the
strongest possible terms, the horror of the camps, of which they
knew perfectly well about? 

Part of the answer lies in Pynchon's comments about "doublethink,"
and notice the specific Orwellian quote forwarding O's concern for
the (dis)ability of British socialists to accept the simultaneous right
and wrong of "such things as concentration camps and mass
deportations" (xi). Although ostensibly about British Socialists and
their acceptance of Stalinism, P's technique here is designed as much
to draw attention to the reticence, felt or not, of the allies regarding 
The Holocaust, as it was happening.

respectfully