To understand the revisionist position with regard to the
Holocaust, one needs to understand historical revisionism more
generally.
The first revisionists were aptly named, as they sought to
revise the harshest elements of the Treaty of Versailles
(following World War One) and specifically the German sole
war-guilt clause. Although it was understood that the
principle objective of the earliest generation of revisionists
was to establish historical facts about the origins and methods
of World War One, it was also believed that with such
understanding future wars could be prevented. The
revisionists believed that the popular acceptance of the true
causes of the horrible conflict that came to be known as ‘The
Great War’ would generate a public reluctance to be lied into a
subsequent conflict. The revisionist movement was, and is
a peace movement.
By the 1930's the revisionists believed that they had won the
intellectual war for historical accuracy. Such a judgment,
proved to be premature however. Although many revisionists
were drawn to and otherwise supported anti-interventionist
groups in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor, the events of
that day virtually eliminated any popular acceptance of
revisionism.
Before the 1940’s would come to an end, revisionists began to
challenge various aspects of the origins and conduct of the
Allies in the second great conflict of a generation. Many
authors wrote scholarly volumes that shattered popular
myths of wartime developed propaganda.
By the 1950’s Harry Elmer Barnes, a revisionist of World War One came to be the epicenter of a new generation of
revisionists who sought to get a proper understanding of the
British role in the events of September 1939 and to establish whether Franklin Roosevelt lied in order
to get the United States into the Second World War through the
“back door” at Pearl Harbor. The revisionists were fearful of
the treatment of enemy combatants in war crimes trials for the
moral of the day appeared to be no greater than “might makes
right” and that the great crime of any modern conflict was now
to be on the losing side. The revisionists were also
fearful of the new terrible weapons that were part of the
world’s arsenals including the nuclear bomb. It was
thought that a third world conflict would result in mutual
annihilation of both sides.
Despite the depth of historical research and the number of
volumes which were written in the 1950s, the revisionists of
the Second World War found that popular acceptance of their
theories was going to be far more difficult than in the years
following World War One. In what Barnes would call the
‘historical blackout’ publishers would simply reject revisionist
writings. The liberal and left-wing magazines which led
the charge in the 1920’s wanted nothing to do with an accurate
portrayal of the Fascist, Communist or National Socialist
regimes.
Barnes developed the term “historical smotherout” to explain the
technique and strategy to prevent revisionist writing from
gaining mass acceptance. Identifying its origins at the Eichmann trial of 1961, Barnes
described the smotherout strategy “the fundamental aim has now
become to emphasize the allegation that Hitler and the national
socialist leaders were such vile, debased, brutal, and
bloodthirsty gangsters that Great Britain had an overwhelming
moral obligation to plan a war to exterminate them, and the
United States was compelled to enter this conflict to aid and
abet this British crusade because of a moral imperative that
could not be evaded to engage in a campaign of political,
social, and cultural sanitation.”
Barnes argued that revisionist theories were smothered by a
campaign of unceasing inflammatory exaggerations of Nazi
savagery. In light of the incessant tales of the murder of
six million Jews and the use of terrible weapons of mass
destruction including gas chambers that killed by the thousands
in a matter of minutes, some might even say seconds, the details
of backroom politics and diplomatic failures were hardly the
things that would fire the public’s imagination.
Barnes recognized that revisionism faced its greatest challenge
from the overwhelming smotherout of atrocity tales and what
would eventually come to be known as the Holocaust story.
The Holocaust story over the past 50 years has developed into
mythical proportions and is defended by an entire industry that
has developed around it as well as a legal system which
persecutes those who question any aspect of what has come to be
the “official” account.
Barnes properly identified the Holocaust story as the true
barrier to the acceptance of revisionist arguments and thereby
the true barrier to peace, security and prosperity among
nations. The specter of the Holocaust is marched out to
justify every modern military intervention. The media and
the government depict our ‘enemies’ as modern day Hitlers intent
on committing genocide and planning to use their secretive
arsenals of weapons of mass destruction.
Cutting through the exaggerations, lies and propaganda of the
Holocaust story has to be the starting ground for any
contemporary revisionist. Despite persecution and insults, revisionists understand that
the myths of the Holocaust have smothered out a proper and
accurate understanding of the Second World War.
Far from attempting to rehabilitate any totalitarian regime,
revisionists seek to emerge in a society that is freer than the
one we live in today. Revisionists seek to reveal the facts in an effort to avoid foreign wars
and interventionist crusades that leave tens of thousands or more dead.
With regard to the specific question, although the
Nazis killed millions of people, the Allies too killed millions
of people. Revisionists believe that the death toll of Jews largely
resulted
from conditions within the camps and mostly from the disease
Typhus which the Nazis attempted to fight.
Had the Pacific War come to US soil, the American infrastructure been bombed, supply lines in the
US broken, how would the Japanese housed in "relocation" camps have fared?
I believe that it is hateful and prejudiced to charge a people
with a crime that they did not commit. The Germans did not
attempt to kill all of the Jews of Europe. They did intend
to deport them and did not believe that they could peacefully
co-exist. The false charges including making Jews into
bars of soap and killing them in large gas chambers are a false
indictment of the German people.
Take one example -- the concentration camp at Majdanek. It
was alleged that the Germans killed two million Jews with gas
chambers at this camp. Today, the director of the camp says that no more than 58,000
Jews died there mostly from disease.
That is a matter of setting the historical record correct.
The German scientist and author Germar Rudolf published a book
in which he determined that 40,000 Jews died at that camp.
For this statement he served a 5 year prison sentence in
Germany.
The Holocaust mythology renders it unnecessary for the Allies to
consider their own atrocities. It is used to blur a proper
understanding of the firebombings of Dresden and other German
cities as well as the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. Even the most horrific war crimes become
justified in light of the Holocaust mythology.
Consider the treatment of the Palestinian people by the
Israelis. This too is justified because of the stories of
the Holocaust.
The Holocaust has become a barrier to peace and understanding as
well as a justification for military interventionism around the
world.
Only the freedom to explore this subject objectively can change
the system of perpetual wars which have been established by the
West's democracies.