Were two million lives wasted?

The idea that more than two million World War 2 concentration camp prisoners could have been saved if the Allies had bombed camp gates is explored in a book by a Queenstown author.

Semi-retired wool consultant John McIvor (72) will launch his novel The Disgrace of Two Million Unnecessary Deaths with a free barbecue at his Peninsula Rd home on Saturday.

"It had to be written," Mr McIvor said this week.

"As far as I know, no-one had given extreme detail on just how the liberation of the camps and the use of the Polish army could have been done."

Mr McIvor said Disgrace was essentially a love story between a Polish nurse, who aids escaped prisoners, and Meir, a member of his imagined "Jewish Polish Army", made up of escapees and Polish resistance fighters. The story follows the pair as they conduct covert attacks against Nazis and liberate camps, he said.

"The interesting thing is why [bombing camp fences] wasn't done. The British and Americans bombed German cities very extensively and it's questionable if this gave them any military advantage.

"I'm saying it would only have taken 1% of that aircraft capacity to release and arm prisoners and arm the Polish partisans. There could have been a fourth front from Poland on D-Day and the war could have been shortened."

Mr McIvor, who said he was half-Jewish, dictated and handwrote his manuscript over 11 months and spent hundreds of hours researching from books. He does not own a computer.

The Invercargill man, who has lived in Queenstown with his wife Ngaire for 14 years, published 1000 copies of his 273-page paperback.