In a series of articles I will attempt to chronicle the history
of Holocaust revisionism, from the end of World War II up till today.
For each year, I will provide some relevant details of historical
backgrounds, such as Holocaust related trials, major developments
in research etc. I will also append an outline of general historical
events. The main part of each entry will be devoted to the major
events of that year directly related to Holocaust revisionism. Historical
revisionist works will be mentioned only insofar they touch upon
the fate of European Jewry during World War II. This chronicle should
by no means be considered definitive. Readers who detect mistakes,
or who want to inform about events that have been neglected, are
hereby asked to contact the author via the CODOH Revisionist Library.
The author also wishes to thank Richard Widmann for the invaluable
assistance he has provided in locating some of the sources quoted
below.
1945
Background
On November 20, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg
begins. Two months before this, in September, the Bergen-Belsen
trial against Josef Kramer and others is conducted.
Events
April. German born Swedish-Jewish business man
Norbert Masur is sent to Berlin as a representative for Hillel Storch,
delegate of the Jewish World Congress. Early in the morning of April
21, Masur met with Himmler at Hartzwalde, the countryside manor
owned by Himmler's personal doctor and masseur Dr. Felix Kersten.
Their two hour conversation was recounted in the book En Jude
talar med Himmler (A Jew speaks with Himmler), which was published
later that year – after the end of the war - by Stockholm publishing
company Albert Bonniers. According to Masur, Himmler stated the
following in regards to the concentration camps:
The war brought us into contact with the proletarized masses
of Eastern Jewry, something which caused us entirely new problems.
We could not tolerate having such an enemy behind our backs.
The Jewish masses were infected with severe diseases, in particular
Flecktyphus. I myself have lost thousands of my best SS men
to these epidemics. Also, the Jews helped the partisans. (...)
The Jews passed on information to the partisans. Besides that
they shot at our troops in the ghetto. (...) In order to contain
the plagues we had to construct crematories, where the corpses
of the innumerable people who had fallen victims to these illnesses
could be incinerated. And on account of this they want to tie
a noose for us! (...) These camps got their bad reputation from
their unfortunately chosen name. (...) They should have been
called reeducation camps. Not only Jews and political prisoners
were interned there, but also criminal elements, who were not
released after serving their sentences. As a result of this
Germany in 1941, that is, during a war year, had the lowest
crime rate seen in decades. The prisoners had to work hard,
but so did the entire German people. The treatment in the camps
was harsh, but just.
To Masur's question whether he denied that ”grave misdeeds” had
been carried out in the camps, Himmler replied: ”I must admit that
some such things took place, but on the other hand I have seen to
that the guilty were punished.”[1]
April-May. Former commandant of the Auschwitz
and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, Josef Kramer, was captured
by British forces on April 17 and interned on the following day.
Sometime between April 18 and May 21 Kramer made a first statement
on his role as camp commandant. In it, we read:
I have heard of the allegations of former prisoners in Auschwitz referring
to a gas chamber there, the mass executions and whippings, the
cruelty of the guards employed and that all this took place
either in my presence or with my knowledge. All I can say to
all this is that it is untrue from beginning to end.
In a later, second statement Kramer retracted this, stating that
he had seen one gas chamber in Auschwitz, which was under the command
of Rudolf Höss. In court Kramer explained the gas chamber denial
of his first statement by claiming that he had felt bound by his
word of honour as long as Hitler and Himmler were still alive (Himmler
died, allegedly by his own hand, on May 21, 1945).
May. British writer George Orwell (Eric Blair)
writes in his essay ”Notes on Nationalism”:
Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off
of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder
and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can
often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For
example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps
even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present
war. The calamities that are constantly being reported -- battles,
massacres, famines, revolutions -- tend to inspire in the average
person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the
facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened,
and one is always presented with totally different interpretations
from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the
Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas
ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine?
Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so
dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary
reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing
to form an opinion.
June 29. Former Auschwitz staff member SS Hauptsturmführer
Hans Aumeier states in his first declaration to his British captors:
”I have no knowledge of gas chambers and during my time no detainee
was gassed.” Following this statement, Aumeier is given a questionnaire
asking him to provide testimony on ”Gassings (with all details),
numbers of daily and total victims” as well as a ”Confession about
own responsibility in case of gassings.”[2]
Historical context
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet at the Yalta Conference
in early February. Battle of Iwo Jima. Communist government formed
in Yugoslavia in March. Adolf Hitler commits suicide in Berlin on
April 30. Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms on May
7. In June, end of the Battle of Okinawa. United States charter
signed. In July, Japan rejects the Potsdam declaration calling for
their unconditional surrender. Atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. Japanese capitulation
and the end of World War II on August 15. George Orwell's novel
Animal Farm published. In September, US forces occupy the
southern half of the Korean peninsula, while Soviet forces occupy
the northern half, marking the beginning of the Korean conflict.
The first ballpoint pens are sold in New York in October. Former
Norwegian National Socialist leader Vidkun Quisling is executed
by firing squad, as is former Pierre Laval, former prime minister
of Vichy France. In December, American General George S. Patton
dies in car accident. Zionist terrorist strikes against British
military bases in Palestine.
1946
Background
The 24 accused at IMT Nuremberg are handed down their sentences.
12 of them are condemned to death by hanging. Reichsmarschall Hermann
Göring commits suicide prior to execution. On May 11, 58 members
of the Mauthausen concentration camp staff are sentenced to death
by the U.S. Military Court at Dachau.
Events
May 22. American scholar Austin Joseph App in
a letter to Time magazine question their assertion that
6.5 million Jews lived in Europe excluding Russia at the time of
the outbreak of World War II. App found this claim exaggerated and
reminded of the high number of Jews still present in Germany by
the end of the war as well as the flow of 3 million refugees, most
of them presumably Jews, into the United States prior to and during
the war years, concluding that ”What we have heard regarding the
Jewish population of Europe and its treatment is not substantiated
fact”.[3]
June. On June 13 Swiss newspaper Basler
Nachrichten carries as its headline ”How high is the number
of Jewish victims?” (Wie hoch ist die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer?).
Quoting official statistics on the Jewish populations of Europe,
the article argues that the number of Jewish victims could not exceed
3 million, and most likely amounts to less than 1.5 million. The
unnamed writer of the article puts the term ”extermination of the
Jews” within quotation brackets, implying skepticism towards the
allegations of a systematic extermination of European Jewry, but
does not discuss the gas chamber issue.[4]
Undated. British writer George Bernard
Shaw in his pamphlet Geneva criticizes the Allied bombing
campaign against Germany and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. While claiming that Hitler wrongly believed the Jews
to be ”an accursed race who should be exterminated as such” Shaw
also writes:
They [the Germans running the camps] were not fiends in human
form; but they did not know what to do with the thousands thrown
on their care. (...) They could do nothing with their prisoners
but overcrowd them within any four walls that were left standing,
lock them in, and leave them almost starving to die of typhus.
When further overcrowding became physically possible they could
do nothing with their unwalled prisoners but kill them and burn
the corpses they could not bury. And even this they could not
organize frankly and competently: they had to make their victims
die of illusage instead of by military law. (...) Had
there been efficient handling of the situation by the authorities
(...) none of these atrocities would have occurred. They occur
in every war when the troops get out of hand.[5]
Nowhere does Shaw mention the infamous gas chambers.
Historical context
Austria is divided into 4 occupation zones on January 7. Three
days later, the first meeting of the United Nations is held in London.
On February 14, ENIAC, the first general-purpose computer is unveiled.
IMT Tokyo commences on April 29. Italy declared a republic on June
10. Irgun bomb attack against King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July
22. On October 2, communists take over Bulgaria. On December 12,
a socialist government is formed in France by Jewish socialist and
former Buchenwald inmate Léon Blum.
1947
Background
Between April and August the Buchenwald Trial is conducted by
the U.S. Military Court at Dachau. On August 20, the verdict of
the so-called Doctors' Trial is announced in Nuremberg. The Auschwitz
trial in Kraków, Poland, where former camp commandant Rudolf Höss
is sentenced to death, is held between November 24 and December
22. The first edition of Anne Frank's diary, Het Achterhuis,
is published in The Netherlands.
Events
Undated. In the 1947 edition of Encyclopaedia
Brittanica, American-Jewish historian Jacob Marcus describes
the fate of the European Jews under National Socialist rule and
occupation in the following way (in the article ”Jews”):
In order to effect a solution of the Jewish problem in line
with their theories, the Nazis carried out a series of expulsions
and deportations of Jews, mostly of original east European stock,
from nearly all European states. Men frequently separated from
their wives, and others from children, were sent by the thousands
to Poland and western Russia. There they were put into concentration
camps, or huge reservations, or sent into the swamps, or out
on the roads, into labour gangs. Large numbers perished under
the inhuman conditions under which they labored. While every
other large Jewish center was being embroiled in war, American
Jewry was gradually assuming a position of leadership in world
Jewry.
No mention of gas chambers or an extermination policy targeting
Jews is made in this edition, leaving the reader with the impression
that Marcus, one of the foremost contemporary experts on Jewish
history, either did not put credence in the mass gassing allegations
or was reluctant to mention said claims in print. The text quoted
above was retained in the 1952 and 1956 editions of the encyclopedia.
Historical context
On January 31, communists take power in Poland. March 12, Truman
Doctrine proclaimed. On August 31, communists take over Hungary.
CIA created on September 18. On November 29 the United Nations General
Assembly votes to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews.
1948
Background
Verdict of the Einsatzgruppen Trial pronounced on April 10. Sentences
in the I.G. Farben Trial handed down on July 30.
Events
February. American Neo-Fascist ideologue and
political activist Francis Parker Yockey, who in 1946 had been assigned
to work in Wiesbaden, Germany, as a prosecutor in war crime trials,
publishes the book Imperium using the pseudonym of Ulrick
Varange. On page 533 of its original edition we read:
These fact-creations [concerning the Pearl Harbor incident]
were as nothing, however, to the massive, post-war, “concentration-camp”
propaganda of the Culture-distorting regime based in Washington.
This propaganda announced that 6,000,000 members of the Jewish
Culture-Nation-State-Church-People-Race had been killed in European
camps, as well as an indeterminate number of other people. The
propaganda was on a world-wide scale, and was of a mendacity
that was perhaps adapted to a uniformized mass, but was simply
disgusting to discriminating Europeans. The propaganda was technically
quite complete. “Photographs” were supplied in millions of copies.
Thousands of the people who had been killed published accounts
of their experiences in these camps. Hundreds of thousands more
made fortunes in post-war black-markets. “Gas-chambers” that
did not exist were photographed, and a “gasmobile” was invented
to titillate the mechanically-minded.
Unfortunately, Yockey did not clarify further in writing how
he had come to his revisionist conclusions.
Later half of the year.[6]
French fascist writer Maurice Bardèche publishes the book (Nuremberg
or The Promised Land) in which he criticizes the International Military
Tribunal and its verdict, especially focusing on claims made by
the French trial delegation that the German occupation forces had
sought to ”exterminate” the French population. The book, however,
does not dispute the Holocaust per se, i.e. the allegations of a
German extermination plan for the Jews and mass killings in gas
chambers (”concerning this there are numerous pieces of evidence”,
Bardèche writes). On the other hand, he notes that contemporary
German documents shows ”the solution of the Jewish problem” to have
”consisted only of an assembling of the Jews in a territorial zone
which one called the Jewish Reserve”. According to Bardèche, the
defendants at Nuremberg
could maintain that they had been unaware during the whole war
of the massive executions which took place at Auschwitz, at
Treblinka and elsewhere, that they had learned about them for
the first time by listening to their accusers, and no document
of the trial enables us to affirm that Göring, Ribbentrop, or
Keitel lied by saying that; it is very possible, indeed, that
the policy of Himmler was a totally personal policy, discreetly
carried out, and for which he alone bears the responsibility.[7]
A similar view would be expounded nearly three decades later
by the British war historian David Irving in his book Hitler's
War.
October 9. Austin J App writes a letter to the
Philadelphia Inquirer criticizing the treatment of Ilse
Koch. The letter mentions the abuse of captured Dachau guards, as
well as the torture and deceptions used to extract confessions from
them. It also contends that the discovery at Buchenwald of lampshades
made of human skin is an “unproven allegation”. In regards to the
alleged criminal use of human remains, App draws a parallel to events
in the Pacific War where US soldiers fashioned souvenirs out of
the bones of fallen Japanese.[8]
Historical context
In January Burma gets independence, Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated.
On February 25, Communists seizes control over Czechoslovakia. April
9, Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine. On May 14, the Israeli declaration
of independence is made. In June, the Berlin Blockade begins, marking
the start of the Cold War. September 17, Stern Gang assassinates
UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. November 12, the Tokyo International
Military Tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government
officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death. The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is adopted by the United Nations General
Assembly in Paris on December 10. On New Year's Eve, the Arab-Israeli
War breaks out.
1949
Background
No Holocaust related events of significance.
Events
July 16. Austin J App, at the time doing research
in Europe, once again writes to Time magazine, which had
offered to him as proof for the alleged extermination of 6 million
Jews the November 26, 1945 testimony of Wilhelm Hoettl, pointing
out the absurdity in offering witness statements as proof of genocide:
”Surely the fact that even you could quote no better authority than
that of a frightened, hysterical ”Obersturmbannfuehrer,” testifying
four years ago, must make you suspect that if his figures could
have been substantiated those who repeat the charge in order to
persecute Germans would have long ago have done so.” App further
notes the role the extermination allegation played in the creation
of the Israeli state the previous year. According to App's own estimate,
less than 1.5 million European Jews had lost their lives due to
Nazi persecution.[9]
Undated. Swiss fascist philosopher and writer
Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in his book Ubu Justicier au premier
procès de Nuremberg critizises the judicial foundations of
the Nuremberg trial as well as questions the extermination allegation
without going into details.
Historical context
David Ben Gurion elected as the first Israeli prime minister
in January. In February, American poet Ezra Pound is awarded the
first Bollingen prize, causing much controversy due to Pound's war
time activities on behalf of Mussolini's Italy. In March, more than
90,000 Baltic nationals are deported to remote areas of the
Soviet Union. In May, the Federal Republic of Germany is established.
George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-four published in
June. Apartheid laws enacted in South Africa. In August, the Soviet
Union tests its first atomic bomb. People's Republic of China established
in October. Six days later the communist controlled Democratic Republic
of Germany (East Germany or DDR) is officially established.
Commentary
During the first half decade following the end of the war a number
of war crime trials, spectacles orchestrated by the victorious powers
in cooperation as well as separately, set up the foundations of
the Jewish extermination narrative that was much later to be called
“The Holocaust”. While a number of critical voices, many of them
American, were raised against the proceedings at Nuremberg, only
a few people living through this chaotic period made the effort
to scrutinize the plausibility of the claims of genocide. We can
find at least three possible explanations for this. First of all,
most of the accused at the trials were either Third Reich bureaucrats
and “small fish”, or had simply not had any significant insight
into the handling of the “Jewish problem”. The majority of the key
movers behind the “Final Solution” were either missing or had already
met their death, sometimes in a suspicious fashion.[10]
Confronted with the powerful newsreel footage of skeletal concentration
camp inmates and corpses piled in heaps, many of the accused apparently
came to believe that Himmler and the SS had carried out a secret
policy of extermination behind their backs. Their reactions, and
especially the declaration of guilt made by “The Hangman of Poland”,
Hans Frank, might have dissuaded suspicions regarding the truth
of the allegations in the minds of many. Secondly, the claim of
an attempted extermination of European Jewry was given relatively
little time at IMT Nuremberg as well as at the subsequent NMT trials.
Especially little court time was devoted to the alleged mass gassings,
with virtually no relevant details discussed by the court and no
technical evidence displayed. Further the number of gas chamber
witness accounts publicly available in the West at the time were
rather few in number. This relative lack of interest in the details
of the alleged genocide would be reflected in the scarcity of texts
criticizing the same allegations. On the other hand, we see that
the more general question of German war guilt was addressed by a
number of writers, many of them American revisionist historians.
The political circumstances in turn makes up the third reason. The
vanquished Germany was under occupation, its press and publishers
placed under severe censorship. In central and eastern Europe, country
after country was taken over by communists with the support of Stalin's
Soviet and its Red Army. In western European nations that had been
occupied by Germany, such as France and Denmark, suspected collaborators
were killed without much ado. It is no wonder that few critical
voices were raised, and that those few emanated from countries that
either had a strong tradition of free speech, such as the United
States, or that had been neutral during the war, such as Switzerland.
In the texts quoted or referred to above, we notice that only
two post-war writers, neofascist Francis Parker Yockey and socialist
George Orwell, brings into question the existence of the gas chambers.
The rest of the texts mainly focus on the alleged death toll of
6 million Jews, suggesting that it must be exaggerated since there
was not enough potential victims within the grasp of Hitler's regime.
The reason for this is rather easy to explain. While the issue of
the number of victims could be scrutinized, at least to a certain
level, using publicly available sources, the former German concentration
camps housing the remains of the alleged gas chambers were out of
reach for critical observers, occupied as they were by detachments
of the Red Army or the Western Allies. In addition, very little
“information” was yet available on the details of the alleged killing
agents. Not knowing how exactly the gassings were carried out, or
what the gas chambers were supposed to have looked like, most individuals
otherwise inclined to skepticism would have assumed that the alleged
mass gassings likely were feasible. As will be seen in the next
part of this chronicle, it would take a skeptic who had himself
been a concentration camp inmate to start unraveling the gas chamber
narrative.
Notes:
[1]
Cf. Jürgen Graf, ”Ein Jude spricht mit Himmler. Heinrich Himmlers
nächtliches Gespräch mit Norbert Masur im April 1945”, Vierteljahreshefte
für freie Geschichtsforschung 9(3) (2005), pp. 301-309.
[2]
Cf. Carlo Mattogno, The Bunkers of Auschwitz. Black Propaganda
versus History, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago 2004,
pp. 133-136.
[3]
The full text of this letter is available at:
http://www.codoh.com/viewpoints/vpaaslain.html
[4]
The full text of this article is available at:
http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconhigh.html
[5]
The Works of Bernard Shaw. Geneva, Cymbeline Refinished,
Good King Charles, Constable and Company, London 1946 pp. 17-18
[6]
The date May 26, 1948 is mentioned within the text of the book,
implying that the book was published sometime during the latter
half of 1948.
[7]
My quote here is lifted from the AAARGH online translation
Nuremberg or The Promised Land (http://www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres7/BARDECHEnureng.pdf),
p. 64.
[8]
The full text of the letter is available online:
http://www.codoh.com/viewpoints/vpaakoch.html
[9]
The full text of this letter is available online:
http://www.codoh.com/viewpoints/vpaaproof.html
[10] Cf.
my article “A Brief List of the Conveniently
Deceased”, Smith's Report, No. 151, 2008, pp. 5-7.
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