An overview of the failure of the free world to respond decisively to the Holocaust revealed a fundamental reality. The confluence of disbelief, indifference, antisemitism and above all, political expediency that obtained in Western counsels helped doom a powerless people to the Nazis' mechanized kingdom of death. Thus it never occurred to the Anglo-American alliance, which alone could have checked the tempo of slaughter and rescued thousands of Europe's Jews should be assigned any role in the war strategy