CHAPTER TWOCONTEMPORANEOUS DOCUMENTS[NOTE: Many of the German language portions still contain scanning errors. 3/5/99] AS WE MAKE a detailed examination of documents of the most diverse kinds from the period of the Third Reich we shall see that the Auschwitz mythologists are able to draw from them the conclusions they desire -- if indeed at all -- only by resorting to forced logic, conjecture, and the creation of fictive, or at least dubious, associations. That is to say, there are gaps in the chain of "proof," and the individual pieces of circumstantial evidence are far from unambiguous.1 Such argumentation is no more acceptable to the historian than it is to the jurist. With reference to the question of whether Hitler "knew" about the "gassing" of the Jews, the distinguished British historian David Irving has stated, in no uncertain terms, that none of the available documents contains any solid information, and historians cannot go by speculation alone.2 Only in a very few contemporaneous "eyewitness accounts" is it ex pressly claimed that "gas chambers" existed at Birkenau. These reports, however, are so questionable and contradictory that after the war one hardly ever dared invoke them as proof, or quoted them only in part. In the following chapter, I shall deal with the contemporaneous documents according to subject matter as well as importance. Basic Documents from German Official RecordsThe "Göring Decree"In nearly all the historical accounts of the "extermination of the
Jews," a directive Reichsmarschall Göring issued to SS-Gruppenführer
Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security Service and the Secret Police,
on July 31, 1941, is cited as a fundamental document. It supposedly
alms at consolidating and co-ordinating "extermination actions" planned
earlier and already partially executed. As a rule, the great "extermination
action" that allegedly culminated in the Auschwitz "death camp" is dated
from the time of this "decree." The document, placed in evidence at
the Nuremberg IMT trial (Nuremberg Document 710-PS), reads as follows:
For the glib Nuremberg prosecutor Robert M.W. Kempner it was a foregone conclusion that:
To the unbiased reader of the document this remark is simply astonishing. Nothing in the "Göring Decree" has any direct bearing on a "murder plan." From the wording it is obvious that this order concerns measures for evacuating or promoting the emigration of Jews out of the German sphere of influence in Europe, not physically exterminating them. The document takes on the latter meaning only when the expression final solution" is given the forced interpretation treatment, as almost invariably happens.5 To give but one example, Andreas Hillgruber, in his essay "Die Endlösung und das deutsche Ostimperium" ("The Final Solution and the German Eastern Imperium"), published in the Viertel jahreshefte fir Zeitgeschichte in 1972, goes so far as to designate the "Final Solution," by which he means, of course, the "extermination of Jews," as the cornerstone of the racial-ideological program of National Socialism." 6 None of those who attribute this meaning to "Final Solution" have taken the trouble to ascertain when, where, and, most important ly, by whom it was attached to the term. In the literature on our topic, Heydrich's long involvement with organizing the emigration of Jews from Reich territory (a project for which the agency headed by SS Obersturmbannffihrer Eichmann, Bureau IV B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office [RSHA], had primary responsibility), is conveniently viewed as preparation for his later assignment of "exterminating the Jews."7 Any other possible correlations between the "Göring Decree" and Heydrich's previous tasks are studiously ignored. Sometimes it is even claimed that the "Final Solution" went back to an order Hitler gave Himmler, and was already in progress. According to this theory, the "Göring Decree" was a "mere formality," simply granting Heydrich the authority to "engage other State agencies" in the "Final Solution."8
Here we have quite a good example of the reckless speculation that attends so many discussions of this subject. An "order" Hitler may never have given -- that he did so has yet to be proved -- is combined with the arbitrary definition of the term "final solution" to create the impression that Göring's rather commonplace directive is evidence of a scheme to murder the Jews. How Göring, in particular, came to transmit to Heydrich an order Hitler supposedly gave Himmler (Heydrich's immediate superior), providing to some extent the modus operandi for its execution, is a secret known only to these artificers of explication. Evidently Robert H. Jackson, the American Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg IMT trial, was not quite satisfied with the document in its original form. At any rate, he introduced a retroversion of the English translation that had already been submitted by the prosecution in which, among other things, the term "total solution" ("Gesamtlösung"), in the first paragraph of the original text, was changed to "final solution" ("Endlösung"), presumably so that the document would fit in better with the charges in the indictment. Göring energetically and successfully con tested this attempt at falsification.9 Ever since, only the text of the "decree" he acknowleged (the version that appears above) has been cited. The real reason for the issuing of this directive is to be found, simply and indubitably, in the first sentence, where it is stated that the Reich Government's policy of deporting or promoting the emigration of Jews, which until then directly involved only Jews in Germany, would be ex tended to include all Jews residing in the German sphere of influence. Considering that the German sphere of influence had recently been expanded, the measures previously applied to Jews in the Reich could be regarded only as a "partial solution" to the Jewish question. Thus it was quite appropriate to refer to their application to Jews in the occupied territories as a "total solution." Something that doubtless played an important role in this policy was the fact that the Jews in the lands occupied by the German armed forces in 1940-41 represented a security risk not to be taken lightly, especially in view of the countless threats, provocations, and incitements against the Reich then emanating from various leaders of international Jewry.'10 This state of affairs must have suggested the necessity of evacuating all Jews from German-occupied territory in Europe, insofar as their removal was not possible through emigration. Heydrich's assignment was simply to extend to other parts of Europe the policy of emigration and evacuation already in effect in the Reich.11 In this respect, the "Göring Decree" brought nothing new, except that it empowered Heydrich to enlist the participation of other governmental agencies in applying these measures, if their "competency" were "touched in this connection."12 Although Heydrich was basically to continue a pre-existing policy ("namely to solve the Jewish question by emigration and evacuation"), he clearly had to take into account certain objective changes in the preconditions and possibilities for it. The outbreak of war set strict limits to the policy of emigration, which had been the solution of first choice. Even before, however, the countries to which it was thought the Jews might emigrate proved increasingly reluctant to admit them. This fact was illustrated by the "Evian Conference" of July 1938. Each of the states participating in this conference brought forth reasons why it no longer could or would take in Jews.13 Nevertheless, the emigration policy was pursued -- even during the war -- until all the possibilities were exhausted, as the Jewish author Hannah Arendt had to admit. It was only in the autunm of 1941 that Himmler prohibited all further emigration of Jews, though numerous dispensations appear to have been granted.14 According to Jürgen Rohwer, even as late as 1944 several shiploads of Jewish emigrés left Rumania via the Black Sea under the protection of the German Navy.15 All this contradicts the extermination claim. Every Jewish emigré is living proof that the physical destruction of the Jewish people was not the aim of the Reich Government. Besides emigration, the settlement of all Jews in some out of the way place was considered a possible solution, even before the war, and not just by the German Government. The term "evacuation" was applied to this plan, too. On a practical level, the German govermnent first contemplated, in or about 1938, the island of Madagascar as a settler-colony for the Jews. Here Germany was in accord with the initial plan for the establishment of a Jewish "homeland" put forth by the founder of the Zionist movement, Theodor Herzl.16 The Madagascar Plan, which the proponents of the extermination thesis seem to have great difficulty in bringing themselves to mention, and seldom take seriously, did not appear within the realm of possibility until the defeat of France in 1940, since Madagascar was a French colony.17 There were repeated discussions on this proposal between Germany and France, but the Madagascar plan ultimately fell through, owing to the resistance of the Vichy Government.18 On the other hand, the recently annexed territories in Eastern Europe afforded new opportunities for the evacuation of the Jews from the West, and this development is something Göring may also have had in mind when he issued his "decree." If so, that would explain why he directed Heydrich to submit a "draft showing the organizational, factual, and financial measures already taken for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question." One must not forget that to the National Socialists the term "Final Solution" had always meant colonization and isolation of the Jews in one particular territory. As early as 1933, the well-known political scientist Dr. Johann von Leers wrote, in his book 14 Jahre .Judenrepublik [Four teen Years of the Jewish Republic]:
That is how a prominent National Socialist viewed the Jewish question. No one can claim that his statements contain the slightest hint of an embryonic plan to exterminate the Jews. The promotion of the Madagascar Plan, before and even during the first years of the war, proves that von Leer's conception of the solution to the Jewish problem simply reflected the policy of the German Government. All the many at tempts to show that the Madagascar Plan was never given serious consideration have no basis in fact. Even Heydrich, who is constantly represented as a particularly un compromising advocate of "exterminating the Jews," was quite obviously interested in a "territorial solution." From a letter dated June 24, 1940, in which he requests Foreign Secretary Ribbentrop to take part in forth coming discussions on the final solution of the Jewish question, his views on the matter are clear:
And Himmler, in a memorandum accompanying a policy report to Hitler, probably from around May 1940, stated:
It is worth noting, by the way, that in the same document Himmler expressly rejects "from inner conviction" the idea of physically exterminating a people as "un-Germanic and impossible" ("aus innerer Uberzeugung als ungermanisch und unmöglich"). Hitler found this report to be "very good and correct" ("sehr gut und richtig") 22 He is also supposed to have stated at the time that he intended to "evacuate all Jews from Europe" ("silmtliche Juden aus Europa zu evakuieren") 23 According to Hitlers Tischgespräche [Hitler's Table Talk], a volume of selections from stenographic records of Hitler's private conversations, edited by one of the stenographers, Dr. Henry Picker, the accuracy and authenticity of which no one has ever disputed, Hitler declared, on July 24,1942, that the evacuation of the Jews was among his plans for the post-war era.24 If nothing else, Heydrich's statement proves that the term "Final Solution" was indeed used in connection with the plan of removing the Jews to a territory where they could live as a separate community in their own state. But all the remarks by leading National Socialists quoted above show this is how they really viewed the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." Utterances of equal clarity in which the term "Final Solution" points, either directly or even indirectly, to the "extermination of the Jews" simply do not exist. The plan of the National Socialist authorities generally corresponded to the Zionists' demand for their own Jewish state, the main difference being that Zionist aspirations focused exclusively on Palestine. Furthermore, the term "Final Solution" was used in this sense in an official document even after the so-called Wannsee Conference, at which -- so the story goes -- it was decided to "exterminate" the Jews and details of that project were worked out. On February 10, 1942, Franz Rademacher, head of Department "Deutschland III" of the Foreign Of fice (the bureaucratic liaison between the Foreign Office and the SS), issued a directive on the "Final Solution," of which the part that interests us here reads as follows:
It is evident that in this context, too, the term "Final Solution" can only mean the resettlement and segregation of the Jews in a distinct territory. Whenever you find some scribbler claiming this policy was a "cloak to hide the real plans for the Final Solution" -- to use Reitlinger's phrase -- you may be sure he is totally biased.26 In view of all these facts, not to mention the unambiguous wording of the document, the "Göring Decree" cannot be said to contain the slightest indication that Heydrich was being "officially entrusted with the administration of murder," as the Jewish-American Nuremberg prosecutor Kempner so melodramatically put it. The obvious purpose of the "decree" was to consolidate and extend throughout the whole German sphere of influence in Europe the pre-existing policy of "forcing out" Jewry by means of emigration and deportation. To that end, Heydrich was ordered to submit a plan outlining preliminary measures for accomplishing the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," which was still conceived as resettlement of the Jews in a territory of their own -- something on the order of Theodor Herzl's Judenstaat -- not as the physical extermination of the Jewish people, that recurrent but undocumented and indemonstrable allegation. In passing, be it noted that the claim that the "Nazis exterminated 6,000,000 Jews" is nonsensical simply because the Reich Government never had even a remote possibility of doing so. At the beginning of the war, the world Jewish population amounted to 16,000,000.27 Of that the number of Jews living in areas under German control at the time of its greatest extent was -- as Richard Harwood has shown -- no more than 3,000,000.28 Significantly, the New York Jewish paper Aujbau reported, in its issue of June 30, 1965, that the Bonn Government had already received 3,375,000 applications for "restitution."29 Any commentary would be superfluous. The "Wannsee Protocol"Leaving aside the "Göring Decree," the "key document" for the extermination thesis is the alleged record of discussions said to have been held on January 20, 1942 at the offices of the German section of Interpol (No. 56/58 Gross Wannsee Road, Berlin), under the chairmanship of Heydrich. Among the participants reportedly were a number of ministerial and other high-ranking officials whose administrative "competency" was "touched" by the projected "total solution of the Jewish question in Europe." The "minutes" of this conference, usually designated the "Wannsee Protocol," were presented in evidence by Chief Prosecutor Robert M.W. Kempner at the NMT "Wilhelmstrasse Trial" (Case XI; U.S. vs Weizsaecker) as document NG-2586. Given the importance generally attributed to the "Wannsee Protocol," I thought it necessary to reproduce the entire document here, despite its length, so that each line may be studied in its proper context (see Appendix I) 30 The version of the "Wannsee Protocol" we shall be discussing is the "facsimile" that appears in Kempner's book Eichmann und Komplizen [Eichmann and Accomplices] 31 First of all, it should be noted that these "minutes" are not a protocol in the true sense of the word. According to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, they must actually be notes made after the conference by Eichmann and his colleague Roll Günther.32 It is rather peculiar that even the more scholarly members of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte use the term "protocol."33 For this designation is usually thought to apply only to minutes recorded during a particular session of a trial, hearing, conference, etc., which the responsible participants guarantee to be a true and accurate report by their signature. Only such a protocol can be considered a more or less valid record of the proceeding. Jottings from memory -- known in German officialese as "Aktenvermerke" ("notes for the files") -- may, on the other hand, be designated "Erinnerungsniederschriften" ("aides mémoire" or "memoranda"). To these one assigns very little probative value, since there is always a possibility of lapses of memory on the part of the writer. As a rule, they have the force of proof only when combined with other circumstantial evidence. There can be little doubt that this aide-mémoire has been described as a "protocol" in order to create the impression that the information it contains about the subject and conclusions of the Wannsee Conference is trustworthy in every respect. At any rate, its authenticity and accuracy were simply taken for granted in the "Wilhelmstrasse Trial," and the proponents of the extermination theory have adhered to that assumption ever since. Yet it is questionable that the document, in its present form, was prepared by Eichmann or any other participant in the conference, if indeed it is genuine. Even the format of the document gives rise to suspicions about its authenticity. As Professor Rassinier has noted, the "Wannsee Protocol" bears no official imprint, no date, no signature, and was written with an ordinary typewriter on small sheets of paper. This latter fact cannot, of course, be readily gathered from the "facsimile" in Kempner's book (the original is not available for examination). What strikes one first about the document, as reproduced there, is indeed that it does not bear the name of an agency, nor the serial number under which an official record of the proceedings would have been kept by the agency that initiated them. That is totally out of keeping with official usage, and is all the more incomprehensible because it is stamped "Geheime Reichssache" ("Top Secret"). One can only say that any "official record" of governmental business without a file number or even administrative identification -- especially a document classified "Top Secret" -- must be regarded with the utmost skepticism. Kempner's "facsimile" of the "Wannsee Protocol" does bear the designation "D. III. 29. g. Rs," on the first page, which may be taken as some kind of official record number. However, the German bureaucracy did not normally classify documents in that way. All these oddities should be enough to arouse suspicion that the "Wannsee Protocol" is a forgery -- especially since there are numerous relevant examples of such fabrications.'5 Nevertheless, it does not appear that any of the "court historians" have bothered to check the authenticity of the document, or perhaps have even seen the original. In any case, when Heinrich Hurtle raised this question at a historians conference held on the 30th anniversary of the Nuremberg IMT trial, he received no answers 36 It is worth noting that even in his Auschwitz Trial deposition Helmut Krausnick cites merely a photocopy of the"Wannsee Protocol," from the files of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte."37 The "Wannsee Protocol" does not clearly outline an "extermination plan." Of course, the absence of any reference to such a plan in this document has not stopped the proponents of the extermination thesis from citing it for support. However, so many participants in the Wannsee Conference survived the fall of the Third Reich that at first the extermination mythologists could not risk making grossly false charges about the subject and outcome of the conference. Hence they limited themselves to more or less vague statements about "preparations" for an "extermination program." Otherwise, the document could not be reconciled with the testimony of the surviving participants in the conference, who unanimously disputed the charge that it was held to plan the "extermination of European Jewry." The only discussion they could recall concerned the deportation of Jews for a labor force in the occupied Eastern territories. In his book Eichmann und Komplizen, Kempner presents selected passages from transcripts of his interrogations of surviving participants in the conference, and, of course, maintains that they "resorted to denials" for "fear of being identified with the murder plan."38 Certainly, that is nothing more than an allegation, and he can "support" it only by going back to the "Wannsee Protocol." Just as telling as this begging of the question are the low and brutal methods of intimidation that Kempner -- a former Prussian senior civil servant -- employed in his interrogations of these and other Reich officials. Even the interrogation transcripts he quotes -- which he has, no doubt, "doctored" -- testify to those methods. Yet he failed to induce any of the surviving participants in the Wannsee Conference to serve as a key witness for the prosecution. The very fact that the "Wannsee Protocol" does not clearly outline an "extermination plan" speaks against the theory that it is entirely a forgery. Also opposing the total forgery hypothesis is the fact that the particulars of the document are essentially correct, though the population statistics on the Jews (see p. 286) are certainly overestimates. 39 Of course, even a substantially forged document does not have to be false in every detail. No doubt forgers could have obtained without difficulty the needed assurance about numerous points that actually were discussed at the conference, and incorporated them into a forgery. While it remains to be seen whether the document is entirely a forgery, I am convinced that segments of certain paragraphs were either subsequently added, deleted, or altered to suit the purposes of the Nuremberg trials and the kind of "historiography" that followed in their footsteps 40 Obviously, it is easy to falsify an unsigned document written on an ordinary typewriter. A piece of writing not identified by one or more signatures at its conclusion could be altered in part, abridged, or created out of thin air. Entire paragraphs could be easily inserted or excised, without that being recognizable at first glance, since a machine with a typeface corresponding to that of the one on which the original was written would not be hard to obtain, and, if necessary, could be specially constructed for the desired purpose. Only by recourse to the techniques of criminological investigation can such fabrications be exposed beyond a shadow of a doubt, unless -- as in the case of the "Wannsee Protocol" -- the content alone is enough to serve as proof of forgery. Despite its generally dubious character -- in particular, the fact that even its format is quite at variance with German official usage -- nobody seems to have undertaken to examine the content of the "Wannsee Protocol" with a view to determining whether the document is authentic. Even in their Auschwitz Trial depositions, the "historians" of the Institut für Zeitgeschichte failed to address themselves to this obvious question, though as advisors to the court it was incumbent upon them to do so. They simply took it for granted that the "document" was genuine in its entirety, and proceeded with a reckless interpretation of it. Their treatment of the "Wannsee Protocol" was at odds with the methods of scholarship, especially since they could not have been unaware that the French historian Paul Rassinier had expressed some well-founded doubts about its authenticity.41 The scholarly method demands that one come to grips with opposing views and not merely gloss over them, as those who have almost succeeded in portraying the "extermination of the Jews" as an established fact habitually do. Assuming that an official memorandum was prepared after the conclusion of the Wannsee Conference, a critical examination of the document Kempner presents as that record shows it is not a complete and accurate report of the meeting. Several passages do not fit into the overall picture. Even if much of the document is genuine, those passages can only be subsequent interpolations. According to Section II of the "Wannsee Protocol," Heydrich gave the conference participants a review of the measures that had been thus far employed to "force the Jews out of the living space of the German people 42 In the report of his statements, however, only the policy of encouraging their emigration is mentioned, not the Reich Government's many attempts to create a homeland for the Jews on Madagascar. That omission seems a particularly significant datum when one reflects that the plan for creating a Jewish homeland had for some years played a role in the policy deliberations of the German Government, and had even then by no means been abandoned (see p. 29 above). Heydrich would not have forgotten to mention this plan in reviewing Germany's Jewish policy to date. Of course, Eichmann -- assuming he composed the memorandum -- could have neglected to record any discussion of the Madagascar Plan, but that is most unlikely, since it was a project with which he was deeply involved.43 Thus one cannot rule out the possibility that a portion of the original typescript dealing with the Madagascar Plan was omitted in order to prevent the obvious identification of the term "Final Solution," which appears repeatedly in the "Wannsee Protocol," with the plan of founding a Jewish homeland. Heydrich is supposed to have concluded his review with the statement that Himmler had prohibited any further emigration of Jews in view of . . . the possibilities in the East." Most likely, this vague and in sinuating reference to unspecified "possibilities" was also slipped into the document to facilitate its interpretation as an "extermination plan." For would not Heydrich have mentioned here that the Jews were -- as numerous documents attest -- desparately needed as manpower for the projected armaments industry in the East? In the first paragraph of Section III, the evacuation of the Jews to the East is, in fact, mentioned as a "further possible solution" ("Lösungsmöglichkeit") and in the next paragraph it is stated that "here practical experience has already been gained which is of great importance for the coming Final Solution" ("doch werden hier bereits jene praktischen Erfahrungen gesammelt, die im Hinblick auf die kommende Endlösung der Judenfrage von wichtiger Bedeutung sind")* If one bears in mind that the German Government never thought of "extermination" as the "Final Solution," but, at least since the beginnings of the Madagascar Plan, understood it as settlement of the Jews in an independent state, then this passage seems hardly remarkable. The colonization of all Jews in a state of their own entailed numerous problems, and its feasibility had to be tested in the ghettos of the occupied Eastern ter ritories. Nevertheless, one should not reject out of hand the possibility that the second paragraph of Section III was subsequently inserted into the document, in order to make it seem as though the testing of various methods of killing were under consideration -- after all, the term "Final Solution" is usually equated with the "systematic extermination of the Jews." Thus Krausnick, in his Auschwitz Trial deposition, conjectures that "this euphemistic speech may have been intended to conceal the idea of using some of the Jews condemned to be deported in an experiment in extermination . . . which might prove useful for the large-scale liquidation plans."44 Krausnick's remarks are, by the way, an outstanding example of the kind of suppositions, conjectures, and facile leaping to conclusions that one so frequently encounters in the attempts to "prove" the extermination thesis. Moreover, with this paragraph omitted, the document sounds more plausible, especially if one brings in the Rademacher directive (see pp. 30-31 above).
None of these questionable points is of decisive importance, however, since the extermination thesis is principally based on two other paragraphs in the document, which are usually quoted separately and out of context. If one views the "Wannsee Protocol" as a whole, these passages, especially, stand out as foreign entities; hence at least this portion of the document may very well be a forgery. It seems appropriate here to return to these two paragraphs. They read as follows:
With the exception of the initial sentence of the first paragraph, these two paragraphs do not fit into the framework of the document, and that quite apart from the obscurity of the second paragraph, which for the record of such an important conference is unusual, to say the least. Rassinier has raised doubts about the authenticity of this passage.45 He maintains that the second of these two paragraphs does not follow the first in the original text, noting that when the "Wannsee Protocol" is quoted in the press, the first paragraph is separated from the second with ellipses. That would, of course, suggest that something has been omitted from the passage. However, the original of the "Wannsee Protocol" was apparently not at his disposal, or else he would have quoted the missing part to support his thesis. I myself have not been able to find any corroboration for this claim. Nevertheless, should it be true, then, in addition to the version of the "Wannsee Protocol" put in circulation by Kempner, there must be another, dissimilar version in circulation. Moreover, Rassinier holds that the two paragraphs are not written in the same style. That they do not stem from the same writer would be difficult to prove, though the second paragraph, in particular, seems even more vague and verbose than the rest of the "Wannsee Protocol." Taken as a whole, Rassinier's arguments for the manipulation of this passage are, by themselves, not sufficiently convincing. Nevertheless, there can be no mistaking the incompatibility of these two paragraphs with the rest of the document. Hence it is not at all surprising that they should be quoted out of context. Only by means of such devices can critical readers be deceived about the actual content of the "Wannsee Protocol." The need for them bespeaks great laxity on the part of the forgers. They simply were not careful enough to bring their forgeries in line with the rest of the text. The statement, in the first of the two paragraphs, that the Jews capable of work would be brought "to these areas" while building roads is disconcerting, for it has not been mentioned previously to which "areas" the Jews were to be sent. In fact, nothing in the preceeding text prepares us for this statement. Moreover, it does not correspond to what actually happened: There is not one known case of Jews being "evacuated to the East while building roads." Likewise, it conflicts with the first statement in the paragraph, that the Jews should be "brought to the East in a way suitable for use as labor." That this was the real plan is substantiated -- as we have already noted several times -- by numerous documents on the incorporation of the Jews into the war economy, an objective that would have ruled out the intentional decimation of able- bodied Jews through an excessively rigorous trip to the Eastern ter ritories, let alone the liquidation of the survivors. The phrase "given treatment accordingly" ("entsprechend behandelt"), from which the pro ponents of the extermination thesis invariably infer that the survivors were to be killed, obviously lends itself to other interpretations.46 Even from these few discrepancies one can tell the passage is of dubious authenticity, but when one considers the following paragraph (Appendix I, p. 287), it seems utterly spurious.
"Transporting" Jews to the East is certainly something quite different from having them build roads on their way to that destination.* In fact, one of the participants in the conference, State Secretary Bühler, brought up the "transport problem" a second time (see Appendix I, page 290). If one planned on having the Jews march to the East while building roads, transportation would not have been that much of a problem. This glaring contradiction would not appear in a completely authentic record of such an important conference. From it alone one must conclude that these two paragraphs (page 287 below) of the "Wannsee Protocol," which are constantly invoked as proof of the extermination thesis, did not exist in the original document. Moreover, no plans for this combined death march and construction project are discussed in any other part of the "Wannsee Protocol." Simply because of its muddied language, the paragraph beginning with "the remnant that is able to survive all this" ("der allfäIlig endlich verbleibende Restbestand" -- what a mouthful!) seems of dubious authenticity.
Time and again, it has been asserted -- for example, by Kempner -- that all participants in the conference knew perfectly well that the subject under discussion was the "extermination of the Jews." But if that is so, then why did Heydrich talk in riddles? In this connection, Albert Wucher makes an interesting remark:
In other words, only Heydrich knew what he wanted, but didn't come out with it. So what was the point of holding this conference? Once again, let us put the "Wannsee Protocol" to the test, this time by omitting the dubious sentences from it. If one simply removes the passage from "in big labor gangs . . ." to "(See experience of history.)," the continuity is in no way disrupted. On the contrary, only then does the text make sense. From the last paragraph of page 7 to the third paragraph on page 8 it would now read:
Only this reading is consistent with the numerous documents from the period indicating that all internees -- including Jews -- were regarded as a source of urgently needed manpower for the war economy, and, after the conquest of the Eastern territories, were to be transported there in successive stages. Here it would be impossible to treat all these documents at length.48 Only one of them merits special attention, owing to its unmistakable connection with the Wannsee Conference, a wire from Himmler to the Inspector-General of Concentration Camps, 55- Gruppenfüfihrer Richard Glüiicks, dated January 26, 1942. It was presented in evidence at the NMT "I.G. Farben Trial" (Case VI; U.S. vs Krauch) as document NI-500, and is quoted by Reitlinger:
Reitlinger makes a clumsy attempt to contrast Himmler and Heydrich by attributing responsibility for initiating the "extermination of the Jews" to Heydrich, while portraying Himmler as interested only in pooling Jewish labor.50 In his Auschwitz Trial deposition, Dr. Martin Broszat of the Institut f¸r Zeitgeschichte argues in more or less the same vein. Apparently, he found it hard to come to terms with this document: On the one hand, he expresses the opinion that Himmler only temporarily exempted able-bodied Jews from "extermination." On the other, he speaks of "two conflicting aims with two different authorities in charge," namely, the alleged plan to "exterminate" the Jews and the well-documented plan to use their labor.51 These are, of course, very feeble attempts to explain away a fact that does not fit in with the extermination thesis. Even Krausnick, in his Auschwitz Trial deposition, has to admit that Jews were still being employed in the munitions factories during the final year of the war. As late as 1944, he says, "tens of thousands of Jews were forcibly removed from the Polish camps to Germany."52 Leaving aside the rather melodramatic expression "forcibly removed," his statement is completely accurate, and simply confirms the fact that the realities of the time made it necessary to bring Jews back from the East to work in the armaments industry. In such exegetics as those of Reitlinger and Krausnick, one senses the utter embarrassment which the numerous documents on the conscription of Jewish labor cause all proponents of the extermination thesis. By 1944, there would have been hardly a Jew alive in the German Reich had "Final Solution" actually meant "extermination of all Jews." The fact that the Jews deported to the East were to be employed in war industries there53 also accords with the proposal, ascribed to Heydrich in the "Wannsee Protocol," that Jews over the age of 65 not be evacuated to the East, but removed to a "ghetto for the aged" (p. 287, seventh paragraph). Had the extermination of all Jews been intended, it is inconceivable that elderly Jews would have been spared, much less accorded privileges, especially since in the mass executions allegedly planned a few thousand victims would not have mattered one way or the other. However, if the conscription of Jewish labor were planned -- and there can be no doubt of that -- it certainly would have made sense to exempt Jews over the age of 65, for one could hardly expect much of their performance. Likewise, the fact that the exemption would apply to Jews who were "serious war wounded cases and Jews with war decorations (Iron Cross, First Class)" (p. 287, paragraph eight) does not fit in with the allegation that the Wannsee Conference was held to plot the "extermination of all Jews." This part of the "Wannsee Protocol" is decidedly at odds with the extermination thesis. Faced with these facts, the extermination mythologists argue that exemptions and other preferential treatment were merely "tactical measures." That is the position Krausnick takes. He alludes, moreover, to the "significant distinction" Heydrich supposedly makes between "evacuation" (in this context, allegedly, "killing") and removal to a "ghetto for the aged."54 This kind of intellectual legerdemain, whereby one expression is arbitarily defined as "killing," has nothing whatsoever in common with scholarship. The rest of the "Wannsee Protocol" is obviously irrelevant to the extermination question. One may dispute the feasibility or morality of the approach to the Mischling problem set forth in Section IV, but our subject is the "extermination plan," and that passage has no direct bearing on it. This also applies to the next to last paragraph of the document (p. 290), which proponents of the extermination thesis occasionally cite for support. Here, as always, one must keep in mind that the "Wannsee Protocol" is basically questionable in its entirety. According to this paragraph, the conference ended with a discussion of the "various kinds of solutions" ("die verschiedenen Arten der L6sungsm6glichkeiten"), in which two of the participants advocated that "certain preparatory tasks in the course of the Final Solution should be performed immediately in the territories concerned" and that in this "any disturbing of the population must be avoided." Quite naturally, the term "Final Solution" is used again in this context, and it has been taken by the proponents of the extermination thesis as a synonym for "annihilation of the Jews," which it certainly was not. The expression "L–sungsm–glichkeiten" ("possibilities for a solution") has likewise been interpreted as "possibilities for killing," although there is no point of reference for that interpretation either. To be sure, Krausnick maintains in his Auschwitz Trial deposition that Eichmann interpreted the expression "L–sungsm–glichkeiten" in this way, during the Jerusalem "trial," but he has yet to produce a shred of evidence for this implausible definition.55 Since at this stage of the conference the "solution of the Jewish problem in the Government General" was discussed, one would not be amiss in assuming that the term "L–sungsm–glichkeiten" was used with reference to the possibilities for evacuating the Jews in that area. That the populace of the territories involved could have become restless on account of the evacuations is obvious, and actually proves nothing about an "extermination plan." In the course of the evacuation, one could form an estimate of the problems the "Final Solution" would entail. The ability of the Jews to live as a community in a state of their own could be put to the test in the Eastern ghettos. As is well known, the Warsaw ghetto did for some time constitute a community of sorts.56 In conclusion, it can be said that the "Wannsee Protocol" -- if one does not choose to view it as a total forgery -- contains some passages which are at least substantially genuine, along with sentences that do not fit into context, and so must have been subsequently forged into the document. Likewise, several authentic passages may have been excised, for example, details of the Madagascar Plan. Leaving aside any possible manipulations, the document remains questionable simply because its origin is so obscure. In form it hardly corresponds to German official usage, and the original has yet to be submitted to impartial experts who could perhaps determine whether or not it is authentic.57 As such, the document is hardly adequate proof that a plan existed to exterminate all Jews residing in German-controlled territory. Even in its present form, it does not constitute sufficient proof of that allegation. For in the entire document there is not a word about "exterminating," much less "gassing," the Jews, and the portions of it cited to prove this claim are seen in a different light when one refrains from taking "Final Solution" as a synonym for "extermination." Further Documents Regarding DeportationNaturally, the technique of arbitrarily defining terms and concepts, which the extermination mythologists have applied to the "G–ring Decree" and the "Wannsee Protocol," has been extended to all other documents pertaining to the deportation of the Jews. Not a single document of this kind makes reference to an "extermination plan" or to "mass gassings" in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Otherwise, the extermination mythologists would not have to resort to the technique of verbal and conceptual falsification. Thus it seems hardly necessary to treat in detail all the various decrees, orders, wires, and such. From the general content of the most commonly cited ones it is easy to see that they actually have nothing to do with an extermination plan and its execution. Quite the contrary: Many of these documents make it clearer than ever that the deported Jews were to be integrated into the war economy.58 In addition to the previously mentioned terms "Final Solution," and evacuation," the expressions "Jewish resettlement," "colonization of the Jews in the East," and, of course, "deportation" itself are continually interpreted as "annihilation" and "extermination" of the Jews, or, at least, represented as denoting preparation for that. The redefinition of these words is usually justified on the grounds that they were only "euphemisms" or "code words" with which one sought to cover up what was actually happening.~~ By means of this trick -- one can hardly call it anything else -- which even certain "scholars" have been known to employ, it is easy to furnish most any document with the desired meaning, though conscientious and earnest historians could never be fooled. For not a single document has been found to date that shows when, where, or by whom these alleged "code words" for murder were devised. The "expert witnesses" in the Auschwitz Trial were at a loss to explain the origin of these terms, and they even availed themselves of this dubious mode of argumentation.60 Whether the governmental agencies and functionaries concerned with the Jewish matter actually "knew" the "real" meaning of the "code words" is a pressing question that is generally not asked and has never been answered. The expression "special treatment" ("Sonderbehandlung"), which appears in some documents concerning the transport of Jews to concentration camps in the East, deserves particular consideration. This term is not readily understandable. Supposedly, it is also a "code word" for "killing" or "gassing" Jews within the framework of the "extermination program." But for this definition, too, no credible sources have been found. The actual meaning is not quite so evident as in the case of the terms "Final Solution," "evacuation," and "resettlement." In all probability, "special treatment" had, from time to time, various meanings, known only to the agencies involved, and today it is often no longer possible to determine exactly what it meant on a given occasion.61 Used in connec tion with deportations, it might have meant, for example, "special billeting," which could have been ordered for some compelling reason. One has only to think of the disease carriers among the deportees. In fact, it is well known that a special quarantine camp existed at Auschwitz 62 At the Nuremberg IMT trial, Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, successor to Heydrich, testified that in certain cases the term "special treatment" actually referred to billeting prominent internees in luxury hotels and otherwise granting them special privileges.63 Theresienstadt was a preferential treatment camp, intended, above all, for elderly or disabled Jewish war veterans, who were accorded good living conditions and exempted from labor service -- exactly as specified in the "Wannsee Protocol." In May 1945, a delegate of the International Red Cross who had been sent to inspect the camp stated in his report that the Germans could not be blamed for the violent death of even one Jew at Theresienstadt.64 To be sure, none of this rules out the possibility that under certain circumstances -- for example, in the operations of the Einsatzgruppen -- the term "special treatment" could also have meant "execution without trial." Since the liquidation of Soviet commissars and active partisans,* or even those suspected of collusion with them, Jews and non-Jews alike, did take place, sometimes in nearby concentration camps, the term could have meant "execution" in this exceptional case 65 Nevertheless, such executions had nothing to do with any systematic extermination of Jews on account of their race. Specifically, no documentary evidence has ever been presented to show that in Birkenau "special treatment" was equated with death in the "gas chambers" that allegedly existed at the camp.
"Extermination Camp" DocumentsSince there are no documents from German official files which directly substantiate the existence of "gas chambers" at Auschwitz, the extermination mythologists have attempted to deduce the presence of "gas chambers" indirectly, from other documents. Cited in this regard are, above all, documents relating to the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau, of which there are supposed to have been four. It is usually contended that these crematoria were built specifically for the "extermination program," and so had adjoining "gas chambers." However, the documents thus far presented contain no indication of that. For other reasons, too, they are suspect. At the Nuremberg IMT trial, Soviet prosecutor Alexander Smirnov asserted, during the early morning session of February 19, 1946, that "in the office records of Auschwitz camp there was discovered a voluminous correspondence between the administration of the camp and the firm of Topf and Sons" on the construction of "four powerful crematoria and gas chambers in Birkenau," and that these facilities had been completed by the beginning of 1943. Nevertheless, he presented the Tribunal with only a single "document" in this regard, a letter from the contractor, which lacks any mention of "gas chambers." Thereafter, nothing more was heard or seen of this "voluminous correspondence." The document upon which Smirnov based his allegations reads as follows:
Leaving aside the fact that Birkenau was not a prisoner of war camp at that time, this letter is so confusedly worded as to be unintelligible. If one takes the text read by Smirnov literally, it would seem that the firm of "I.A. Topf and Sons" had ordered cremation equipment from the Central Construction Office! Moreover, one finds it hard to imagine exactly what is meant by "triple furnaces" or a "practical installation for stoking coal."
In the "Report of the Soviet War Crimes Commission, 6 May 1945," which we shall discuss in more detail later, another version of this letter is to be found. There the wording is "fuenf dreiteilige Verbrennungsoefen" ("five tripartite cremation ovens") and "eine brauchbare Einrichtung fuer die Beheizung mit Kohle" ("a workable contrivance for heating with coal"). And this version includes a final sentence missing from the Smirnov text: "Die Einrichtung muss am 10. April 1943 betriebsfertig sein" ("The installation must be ready for use by April 10, 1943") 67 It goes without saying that this document is very suspicious and -- despite Smirnov's assertion to the contrary -- it was obviously the only document of its kind the Soviets could produce. This "document," with its two rather disparate versions, is a good example of the type of "evidence" presented at the Nuremberg trials. That is the main reason I chose to bring it up here. Basically, its contents are insignificant. Hence we may leave aside the question of whether it is a miserable Soviet forgery or merely an inaccurate and faulty retroversion of a Russian translation. Incidentally, it is also uncertain whether the Nuremberg Tribunal actually accepted this document in evidence. In its verdict, the Tribunal based its "finding" that mass extermination of Jews by gassing was carried out in Birkenau not on this document, but on some equally dubious witness testimony, in particular, that of the former Auschwitz comman dant Rudolf Höß, which we shall treat at length elsewhere. More noteworthy than the document itself is the remark Smirnov made after reading it:
Later in the same session, he declared, with astonishing naïveté that the Tribunal already had sufficient knowledge of such matters, though -- as we explained in our first chapter -- this was hardly the case. Significantly, the court did not venture to disagree.68 This withholding of "facts" about a concentration camp in Soviet-occupied territory, a camp of which the Nuremberg Tribunal basically knew only what could be gleaned from previous witness testimony, is simply amazing. For if one may believe Smirnov, here at last was a document that contained direct information about the legendary "gas chambers." But it never became an issue in the proceedings, nor was it mentioned in the judgement of the Tribunal. Was this "document" so patently fraudulent that one dared not present it even to these hardly impartial judges? So far as I know, it was not submitted as evidence in any of the subsequent "war crimes trials." Yet Smirnov's claim that the Birkenau "gas chambers" were disguised as shower rooms is accepted even today, and trotted out whenever the occasion presents itself. As proof that "gas chambers" were structually part of the crematory installations, the proponents of the extermination thesis often cite a letter from the Central Construction Office of the SS and Police in Auschwitz to SS-Brigadeführer Hans Kammler, Chief of Amtsgruppe C of the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office. This report, dated January 29, 1943 and signed by SS-Sturmbannf¸hrer Karl Bischoff, head of the Central Construction Office in Auschwitz, reads as follows: [Uncorrected scanning errors from this point on. 3/5/99]
To the best of my knowledge, this document is the only one in which the term "gassing" ("Vergasung") is used in connection with the crematoria. Of course, one cannot say for certain whether the "Vergasungskeller" was actually part of the crematorium or whether it was located in another building. According to all reports, the "gassings" took place inside the crematorium buildings. Since the German text refers only to a "Vergasungskeller" ("gasification cellar" or "carburation cellar"), and not a "Gaskammer" ("gas chamber"), this could not be one of the rooms supposedly used for "extermination," which are always called "gas chambers." For this reason, it is significant that at the NMT "Concentration Camp Trial" (Case IV; U.S. vs Pohl), the word "Vergasungskeller" was rendered as "gas chamber" in the English translation of the document (NO-4473), as Dr. Butz has noted.70 Ever since, the wording has been misinterpreted, even in the German language literature on our subject. Dr. Butz gives a convincing explanation of the function of this part of the crematoria. Except for electrically powered units, which do not figure in the Auschwitz controversy, all crematoria, including those which use coal, coke, or wood as fuel, are fired with gas. According to his research, the space in which the primary fuel is converted into combustible gas before being fed into the hearth is known in German as the "Vergasungsraum" or "Vergasungskeller." Hence these terms have nothing whatsoever to do with the "gassing" of human beings 71 Another plausible explanation is that this room was intended for the fumigation of clothing and other personal effects, a common practice in all concentration camps. The proprietary hydrocyanic fumigant Zyklon B used for this purpose is supposed to have been used for the "extermination of the Jews" as well. Never has there been any question that these "Vergasungskeller" were used as "gas chambers" for exterminating Jews. When it is claimed that the "gas chambers" were underground installations, they are iden tified with the "Leichenkeller," i.e., "corpse cellars" or subterranean mortuaries, of the crematoria.72 The document under consideration here makes it clear, however, that the "Leichenkeller" and the "Vergasungskeller" were two different things. The equation of "corpse cellar" with "gas chamber" has resulted from the assumption that the "scale model" on display at the Polish State Auschwitz Museum is based on building plans of the crematoria. But these plans have never been made public. (They are gathering dust in the Auschwitz Museum archive under catalogue number 519). Through a fortunate set of circumstances, I came into possession of a photocopy of the plans of crematoria II and III.73 I shall return to them later. Since Bischoff's letter of January 29, 1943 is the only known document from the Auschwitz camp files in which the word "Vergasung" is used in connection with the crematoria, one should now realize that there is no documentary evidence for the allegation that chambers for killing people by means of lethal gas were part of the crematoria. Nor does the charge, made by various Auschwitz mythologists, that the construction of crematoria resulted from the necessity of disposing of the corpses of the thousands of people "gassed" daily at the camp find any support in the crematoria documents. Hence we may well ask the question: When did the Birkenau crematoria -- or the Birkenau crematorium -- first go into operation and how long did it or they remain in operation? We may also ask: What was the actual capacity for incineration of the individual crematoria? Only one, highiy questionable document touches on this last point. With nothing solid to go by, we can only make conjectures as to the incineration capacity of the crematoria from what few clues are available. Our conclusions are very different from the estimates that so often appear in the literature on this topic. It is usually maintained that, owing to the commencement of "mass exterminations" in 1942, four crematoria were constructed at Birkenau in the winter of 1942-43, and went into operation in the spring of 1943. This is the version attributed to Rudolf Höß.74 Even Rassinier and Scheidl have given credence to it, on the basis of two NMT documents (NO-4401 and NO-4463) 75 These documents state that the ovens for all four crematoria were ordered either on August 3 or August 8, 1942 from the firm of Topf & Söhne, installed in February, 1943, and went in operation on May 1, 1943. I have not consulted the documents mentioned by Rassinier and Scheidl, but other documents, at least in part, contradict this story. Even the Smirnov document of February 12, 1943 does not support it. In still greater contradiction to this story is a preliminary cost estimate from the firm of Topf & Söhne for the delivery of a cremation oven to Birkenau, dated April 1, 1943.76 A preliminary cost estimate is, of course, always given before an order is placed. On the other hand, the Central Construction Office letter of January 29, 1943 cited above leads one to the conclusion that the ovens for the crematorium II were already installed and in operation by January, 1943, which is also in contradiction to the two previously mentioned documents. Finally, in Reinhard Kühnl's collection of documents, there is a facsimile of a letter from Topf & Söhne to the Central Construction Office in Auschwitz dated April 10, 1943, in which the firm promises to repair cracks that had "recently" appeared in the "8-muffle oven of crematorium IV."77 From this one would assume that crematorium IV was in operation by March 1943. Part of another letter Bischoff wrote to Kammler, reproduced in Adler, Langbein, and Lingens-Reiner's book Auschwitz: Zeugnisse und Berichte, also seems to substantiate the current version of the inaugura tion of theBirkenau crematoria. The document in question is an excerpt from a purported list of finished "construction projects" presented to the Auschwitz camp administration. In it the completion dates of the crematoria are recorded as follows:
However, the authenticity of this document must be questioned until it can be shown where it was discovered and a full text is made available. The only indication as to its origin is a rubber-stamped imprint on the upper left-hand side: "Bauleitung der Waffen-SS u. Polizei [There follow three undecipherable letters] Auschwitz." This is obviously not in accord with the usual official designation: "Zentralbauleitung der Waffen-SS und Polizei 78Faced with all these discrepancies and obscurities, even Gerald Reitlinger, who certainly cannot be suspected of doubting the extermination thesis, concludes that Bischoff's letter of January 29, 1943 is not a reliable source of information: In fact Crematorium No. 2 was not ready till March 13th. On June 13th it was still the only crematorium of the four which was actually working, and the carpentry work was incomplete. On November 6th, 1943, an order for young trees to form a green belt between the crematoria and the camp only mentions Nos. 1 and 2. The working of all four crematoria was not put to the test till May, 1944, when the massive transports arrived from Hungary.79 According to Reitlinger, then, the crematoria were not in full operation until exactly one year later than is officially claimed today. Given all these discrepancies, one can only say that to this day there is still no reliable evidence on the completion dates of the Birkenau crematoria. With some assurance, one may even dispute whether there really were four crematoria at Birkenau. In 1972, a book was published containing sketches of everyday life at various concentration camps, drawn by an inmate named Alfred Kantor. None of the many views of Birkenau he sketched shows more than one crematorium or one crematorium chimney. A person who toured the grounds of the former Birkenau camp without a guide and who is unquestionably reliable, so far as I am concerned, told me he saw the ostensible remains of crematoria II and III, but could find no trace of crematoria IV and V. Nor are there any reliable data on the incineration capacity of the Birkenau installations. In the literature on the camp, yet another report by SS-Sturmbannführer Bischoff, dated June 28, 1943, is frequently cited. It states that the individual crematoria were capable of incinerating the following number of corpses daily:80
Where this report was discovered is not mentioned. On the subject of the incineration capacity of the crematoria one usually cites as the authority a "Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau" ("Chronology of the Events in the Auschwitz Birkenau Concentration Camp"), compiled by Danuta Czech, Custodian of the Polish State Museum at Auschwitz.81 I have been unable to deter mine whether this lady was ever interned at the camp or what her source of information may be. The estimates listed above strike one as absurd. The sheer punctiliousness of the accounting -- right down to the very last corpse -- is suspicious, for cremation is a complicated technical process, involving so many variables that the incineration capacity of a crematorium is not always the same. Some indication of the actual capacity of the crematoria may be found in a letter from the firm of Topf & Söhne to the Mauthausen concentration camp. It states that in the "coke-fuelled Topf dual-muffle cremation ovens . . . about ten to thirty-five corpses" could be cremated "in about ten hours," and that as many could be "cremated daily without overloading the ovens," even if the "cremations took place one after the other, day and night."82 Presumably, the cremation ovens manufactured by Topf & Söhne were of uniform design, and thus the same type of oven was sent to Auschwitz as to Mauthausen and other camps. (The firm received the German patent number 861,731 for its cremation ovens). 83 The ovens might have differed slightly in the number of cremation chambers; one cannot otherwise account for any variation in their capacity. Starting with the premise that there really were four crematoria in Birkenau, and that each crematorium contained one oven capable of cremating at most 35 corpses per diem, then the highest capacity of all four crematoria would be a total of 140 corpses daily. That does not seem excessive for a complex the size of Auschwitz, each component camp of which was planned for over 100,000 inmates -- all the more so, since contagious diseases were rampant there.84 Leaving aside the nor mal mortality rate, epidemic and other diseases undoubtedly claimed numerous victims. Dr. Scheidl has reported that, during certain periods, there were between 69 and 177 deaths each day.85 While these are no more than purely hypothetical estimates, they are probably closer to reality than the absurd figures given in the letter at tributed to SS-Sturmbannführer Bischoff -- even if one assumes that all four crematoria had 46 cremation units, as is claimed in an official bulletin of the Polish State Auschwitz Museum, dated November 29, 1977. Butz also starts from this premise, and, based on the fact that it should take at least one hour to incinerate each corpse, calculates that the total incineration capacity per diem would be 1,058 corpses. Actually, this is still too many.86 Even today, in the most modern facilities, it takes from one and a half to two hours to cremate human remains.87 One can hardly imagine that better results could have been achieved with the cremation techniques of forty years ago. The claim that the Birkenau crematoria were built "only for use in a mass extermination program" thus proves to be totally false. In passing, I should like to remark that, according to the official publication of the Polish State Auschwitz Museum to which I have referred above, crematorium I (the old crematorium in the Auschwitz parent camp), was in operation only until July 1943, so there was no reason for Bischoff to include it in his alleged report, which is dated June 28, 1943. It is worth noting that Bischoff, who resided in Bremen under his own name until his death in 1950, escaped the usual post-war harrassment.88 He was never prosecuted as a "war criminal," nor, so far as I know, was he ever called to testify as a witness in any "war crimes trial." That is strange indeed when one considers that the former head of the Auschwitz Central Construction Office would have been an ideal witness on the Birkenau "death factory," since he supervised the building of the camp crematoria. Was someone afraid that he could have proved, maybe with documents still at his disposal, that all the allegations about the crematoria were baseless? The prosecution at the NMT "Concentration Camp" Trial, for instance, instead of Bischoff, made do with the testimony of one Wolfgang Grosch, who obviously had never laid eyes on the buildings about which he gave "evidence."89 Likewise, it is worth noting that in the entire post-war "re-education" literature almost nothing is said about the building plans for the crematoria. Professor Rassinier alone mentions that the plans for crematoria II through V were presented in evidence at the NMT "Wilhelmstrasse" and "Concentration Camp" trials.90 These plans, show ing that the alleged "gas chambers" were really "corpse cellars" and shower rooms, have been consigned to oblivion, and so we may assume that Professor Rassinier's statement is correct. There can be no doubt that such building plans existed. (With their famous thoroughness, the Germans certainly would not have under taken any building project without a well-laid plan!) In fact, as I have stated above, there are building plans for the crematoria in the archives of the Polish State Auschwitz Museum, but they are unavailable to the public.91 Instead, visitors are shown a "scale model" of crematorium II -- complete with "gas chambers" -- that is purportedly based on "technical plans that were saved from destruction."92 As I have mentioned, I have copies of these plans, and there can be no doubt as to their origin, since they bear the official stamp of the Polish State Auschwitz Museum. These copies show that the model differs from the building plan in several important details and no provision was made for anything like a "gas chamber." The area marked "corpse cellar," which is supposed to have measured 7 meters by 30 meters (210 square meters or about 2,260 square feet) would not have been suitable for the "gassings" to which some "eyewitnesses" have testified. In particular, it could not have held from 2,000 to 3,000 people at once, as has been claimed. According to the Auschwitz Museum, three smaller rooms in crematoria IV and V, with a total space of 236.78 square meters (2,550 square feet), were used as "gas chambers." The plans lend no support to this allegation, and, in any case, such use of the rooms would have been impossible because of their position. Significantly a model of these rooms has not been prepared for display to visitors of the Auschwitz Museum. In all the literature on this camp, then, there is no exact description of the "gas chambers" of crematoria IV and V. I must cut short my discussion of this piece of evidence, since my purpose is to examine the evidence concerning the Auschwitz legend that has been presented, not documents that are -- for whatever reason -- being withheld, of which there are doubtless more. Our "contemporary historians" should at least take a closer look at these plans. Even today, visitors to the Auschwitz Museum are shown a "gas chamber" in the old crematorium of the parent camp. But this is -- as the French scholar Robert Faurisson discovered -- merely a "reconstruction," something of which Auschwitz Museum tourists are, of course, not informed.93 This "reconstruction" has little in common with the structure that actually existed. For one thing, a "gas chamber" has been made out of what were originally several rooms, as can be seen from the surviving ground-plan. The larger of these rooms is designated in the ground-plan as a "morgue" ("Leichenhalle"), a necessary adjunct to a crematorium. This is exactly the same kind of hoax the Americans perpetrated at Dachau. Since the crematorium was no longer standing when the Soviets occupied Birkenau, no one will ever know just how the previously mentioned building plans were executed -- if indeed they were. Hence all we can say with absolute certainty is that the attempt to prove the existence of "gas chambers" at Birkenau from the presence there of one or more crematoria simply has not come off. Even more questionable is the attempt to use deliveries of Zykion B to Auschwitz as proof that the camp had "gas chambers" in which Jews were murdered with this highiy toxic gas. At the various Nuremberg trials, the prosecution submitted invoices for these deliveries as "evidence" that "gassings" had occurred. One of these invoices, dated March 13, 1944, appears in Reimund Schnabel's book Macht ohne Moral [Power without Morals], as "Document 134." This invoice attests to the delivery of 14 crates of Zyklon B, containing a total of 420 canisters (210 kilograms altogether), to the "Department of Disinfestation and Disinfection" at Auschwitz.95 The task of this department -- as of such units everywhere -- was the disinfection of living quarters, clothing, and personal effects. According to the testimony of Arthur Breitwieser, a defendant in the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, it had nothing to do with exterminating human beings. Breitwieser, who for some time served as the director of this department, and so ought to be well-informed about its activities, was acquitted by the Auschwitz Trial court.96 This is one of the many absurdities in that "trial." For the disinfectors were undoubtedly responsible for the storage and application of Zyklon B, and without their cooperation it would have been impossible to use this preparation to "gas" Jews. Rassinier points out the well-known fact that Zyklon B had been used by the German Army since 1924. During World War II it was employed as a disinfectant in every branch of the service and in all the concentration camps. Invoices have been found for deliveries of Zyklon B to the Oranienburg and Bergen-Belsen camps, where -- as has been proved -- gas chambers for exterminating human beings did not exist.97 One cannot deny that this preparation could have been used to exterminate people. Of course, that does not mean that it was. After all, nobody could be accused of being a murderer simply because he owned an axe, an instrument extraordinarily well-suited to homicide. Such an accusation would be laughed out of any court. But to "prove" the existence of "gas chambers" at Birkenau -- something for which real evidence is utterly lacking -- no argument, however idiotic, is disdained, even by certain "scholars." For example, Professor Krausnick, in a footnote to his Auschwitz Trial deposition, cites an NMT document (NO-4465) that is so am biguous that most of the other writers on this subject do not venture to mention it. This is an order that the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz allegedly placed with the Deutsche Ausriistungswerke GmbH, an SS industrial firm near Auschwitz, for the manufacture of "three gas-tight towers . . . of exactly the same dimensions and type as the towers previously supplied"* ("drei gasdichte Türme . . . genau nach den Ausmaßen und der Art der bisher angelieferten Türme") 98 One asks oneself in vain what these towers might have to do with "gas chambers" -- a question Krausnick, of course, does not answer. None of the "eyewitnesses" to the "gas chambers" has anything to say about such towers.
In this order, dated March 31, 1943, there is also a reference to the filling of another order, placed on March 6, 1943, for a "gas door 100 x 192 cm for corpse cellar I of crematorium III . . . of exactly the same type and size as the cellar door of the crematorium opposite it, crematorium II, with a peep-hole made of double-strength 8-mm glass, with rubber gasket and [metal?] cap" ("Gastür 100/192 für Leichenkeller I des Krematoriums II. . . genau nach Art und Maß der Kellertürdes gegenüberliegenden Krematoriums II mit Guckloch aus doppeltem 8-mm-Glas mit Gummidichtung und Beschlag"). Could this be the famous peep-hole through which the SS physicians who allegedly supervised the "gassing" of inmates are said to have observed the death-throes of the victims? Probably not. Like the other documents of its kind, this order really proves nothing. At that time, gas-tight doors were not uncommon, since every cellar had to double as an air raid shelter. The peep-holes in these doors were a source of light and a means of observing the outside. Through such a peep-hole it would have been quite impossible to view the whole interior of a "gas chamber," especially if it were as large as these rooms are usually claimed to have been (i.e., had a capacity of 3,000 or more people). Air raid shelters had to be secure not oniy against explosives, but against gas as well. Considering that Birkenau had no other fortified places, it would only have been common sense to make the cellars of the crematoria into air raid shelters. Perhaps these "gas-tight towers" were intended as some kind of aboveground shelter. In nearly all the collections of documents on Auschwitz, papers containing only routine information about the billeting and employment of inmates, their transfer to other camps, and similar matters are adduced as evidence of the alleged gassings. The commentators explain that seemingly innocuous words and phrases in these papers really denote the "gassing" of inmates. For such conjectures there is not the slightest factual basis. Not only does the term "special treatment," which we have already discussed (see p. 42 above), play a role in this connection, but phrases like "given special accommodation" ("gesondert untergebracht"), which is used in a wire from the Commandant's Office at Auschwitz in regard to a newly arrived group of Jews, are also interpreted as "murdered in the gas chambers.99 Similarly, in their commentary on a list of prisoners being transferred from Monowitz to Birkenau, Adler, Langbein, and Lingens-Reiner state that the persons listed had been designated for "gassing," even though the document itself does not con tain the slightest indication of that.100 All these attempts to read such things into both vaguely and unequivocally worded documents shamelessly capitalize on a critical ineptitude, gullibility, and prejudice that have resulted from years of brain washing. As any person with the capacity to think must admit, these "documents" on the alleged gassings have no value whatsoever as evidence. Even the fait accompli of some of them having been accepted in evidence at the Nuremberg trials cannot alter this fact. Consider the transfer list mentioned above, which was used in the NMT "IG-Farben Trial" (Document NI-14997). No historian who holds to the traditional scholarly methods of researching and evaluating sources would accept a mode of argumentation based on the premise that documents can be made to serve a desired end by the use of unwarranted assumptions and arbitrary interpretations. It is hardly necessary to go into every little detail of such documents, without which the legend of the "extermination of the Jews" would have gotten nowhere. What has just been said applies equally to the exhibits of clothing and human hair from concentration camps, which in the post-war "re education" literature are frequently invoked as proof of the "extermina tion of the Jews."'0' It is claimed that these articles came from prisoners who had been "gassed," even though that cannot be so much as inferred from any document. What is never mentioned is that, for hygienic reasons, the hair was cut off all incoming prisoners before they were sent to the showers. Afterwards, they were given a uniform to wear. Their street clothes had to be turned over to the authorities, as is stand ard procedure in all prisons. Our survey of official documents from recent German history shows that there is no documentary evidence that proves the existence of "gas chambers" in Birkenau or a plan to "exterminate the Jews," or that would even cause one to suspect there might be something to such charges. It also shows that the statement recently made by one of the vilest members of the Nuremberg lynching party, the Jewish-American pro secutor Robert M.W. Kempner, that the "historical assessments" on the "extermination of the Jews" are based "almost exclusively on official Ger man documents of the Hitler regime that have been preserved by an ex perienced bureaucracy" is totally unfounded.'02 Kempner's statement contradicts facts that must be well known to the man himself. The famous "Wannsee Protocol," which he may have had in mind when he made his remarks, has proved to be -- at least in part -- a crude forgery. We may pass over the recent conjectures that Kempner was responsi ble for that forgery -- it was he who "discovered" the "document." The validity of this charge cannot be established, though Kempner's general conduct as chief of the American prosecution team at Nuremberg might seem enough to warrant it. The only document from the German official files in which the term "gassing" ("Vergasung") is used in connection with the Birkenau crematoria (Nuremberg Document NO-4473; see p. 46 above), owes its interpretation as "proof' that a "gas chamber" for killing Jews existed at Auschwitz to a mistranslation. As Butz has shown, the word "Vergasungskeller" ("carburation cellar") was rendered into English as "gas chamber." That even German scholars have adopted this misinter pretation testifies to how far removed our historical scholarship is from a free and objective examination of "Auschwitz" and everything that word connotes. Since it has been established that the Auschwitz Myth does not rest on official documents, let us see in the following pages what other evidence" has been prepared for us. Speeches and Other Public Statements by Political Leaders of the Third ReichAs soon as one turns to the topic of the "extermination of the Jews," one finds that fragments of speeches made by the leading political figures of the Third Reich, in particular, Hitler and Himmler, are fre quently cited as evidence. The rather strong language used with regard to the Jews in certain passages of these speeches is simply taken at face value, and, therefore, assumes an importance it really does not deserve. Often such passages are taken out of context, and their significance in relation to the whole text ignored. That has also been done with spoken and written statements the German leaders of the period made on subjects other than the Jewish Question. Especially in the case of Hitler, such statements were made largely in response to the numerous threats to exterminate the German people uttered by Allied leaders and Jewish spokesmen. Perhaps the most vociferous of the latter was Theodore Nathan Kaufman. In a book entitled Germany Must Perish (1941), he expounded a plan to wipe out the Ger man people by sterilizing German men and women.103 Even better known is the "Morgenthau Plan." Henry Morgenthau, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and a personal advisor to President Roosevelt, thought starvation and economic strangulation were the best means of getting rid of the German people, and Roosevelt himself endorsed this plan.104 Nor should one forget that it was Professor Friedrich Alexander Lindemann -- later Lord Cherwell -- who devised the plan on which the carpet bombing that annihilated countless German civilians was largely based."105 Finally, the Soviet "expert on international law," A.N. Trainin, set forth a plan aimed at wiping out the German "ruling class" and intelligentsia. His plan led to the London Charter, the basis for the "jurisdiction" of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, which actually did condemn German leaders to death and imprisonment.106 With the exception of Kaufmann's scheme, all these plans were at least partially executed. If they were not carried out in full, it was more for practical than humanitarian reasons. Besides these very concrete extermination plans, which had no counterpart on the German side, numerous general statements were made along the same lines. Only a few of these will be mentioned here. Perhaps the most famous exhortations to murder are those of Stalin's Jewish propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, who expressed such sentiments as the following:*
That Ehrenburg's exhortations to murder were not without their ef fect is well known. What is not so well known is that these homicidal messages were translated into English for the benefit of the onward marching "Christian Soldiers."108 To be sure, his incitements to murder appeared at a time when the war was at its greatest intensity. But long before the outbreak of war threats to exterminate the German people were being broadcast around the world. That is something, by the way, which one ought to take into account when considering the question of "war guilt. 109 As early as January 1934, Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, declared in the Jewish paper Tatscha Retsch: "Our Jewish interests require the final destruction of Germany; the Germans, each and every one of them, are a danger to us." Likewise, on May 24, 1934, the publisher of The American Hebrew, a leading Zionist, reportedly told the American publicist Robert E. Edmondson that Jewry was "going to bring a war on Germany." And on April 16, 1936, the Youngstown Jewish Times (Youngstown, Ohio), commented that after the next war there would no longer be a Germany. It predicted that "on signal from Paris," France and Belgium, as well as the peoples of Czechoslovakia, would be set in motion to attack the "German colossus," and, in a "deadly pincer-movement," sever Prussia from Bavaria, thus bringing Germany to extinction. (The only difference be tween this fantasy and the reality of post-war Germany is that the new borders were set elsewhere and the German people are not yet extinct, though they certainly seem to be heading in that direction.) Not long after this article was published, The American Hebrew, in its issue of April 30, 1937, expressed the same idea in a more general way when it stated that Germany deserved to be eliminated from the family of nations. This statement was echoed by the British newspaper The People, which, on September 3, 1939, described the German people as the "mad dog of Europe," and demanded their destruction. On the very same day, Churchill declared in the House of Commons that this war was England's war and its aim the destruction of Germany, ending his outburst with the paradoxical battle-cry: "Onward Christian Soldiers!" No German statesman ever spoke of another people in such terms as the British hate-monger Lord Vansittart used against the Germans when attempting to justify the terror bombings: "The only good Germans are dead Germans, so let the bombs fall!" Those bombs fell, exactly as intended, on women, children, and old people alike. This is the background against which one must consider the angry statements made by German leaders. Although they have in evitably been associated with the "extermination of the Jews," these statements were mostly made in response to a torrent of hatred against the German government and threats to annihilate the German people that was unleashed even before the war. Wie man in den Wald hinein ruft, so schallt es heraus. * What is more, some of the remarks attributed to the German leaders are either spurious or have been misrepresented.
There is a vast difference between words and deeds. The atrocities committed against Germans before, during, and after the war have been impeccably documented. They even received publicity at the time they occurred.110 The same cannot be said of the alleged murder of the Jews -- especially since the most prominent Jews, leaders of the Jewish intellectual elite and political leadership, who would have been the first victims of an actual extermination plan, survived internment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps."' But enough of these preliminary remarks. We shall now examine the relatively few declarations relating to Germany's supposed ambition to "exterminate the Jews" that come directly from German leaders of the time. As we shall see, their statements were no worse than any made against the Germans by the other side. Adolf HitlerHitler quotations are usually introduced with the claim that Hitler an nounced his goal of exterminating the Jews by means of lethal gas in Mein Kampf. To support this claim, one cites the following sentences from his book:
These statements are found in Chapter 15 of Volume II, which is entitled "The Right of Emergency Defense." Here Hitler was attacking international Marxism, in Germany then led primarily by Jews. He was not attacking the Jews per se, still less advocating their general destruction. These lines, written in 1925, refer exclusively to a situation that existed at the end of World War I. From them one cannot infer that Hitler had some "general idea" of exterminating, let alone gassing, the Jews, as Karl Dietrich Bracher, for example, would have us believe.113 To interpret them objectively, one must bear in mind that Hitler is referring to the past, and, moreover, is discussing a specific situation. These remarks can be explained only in terms of Hitler's view of why Germany collapsed at the end of World War I, as well as his own experience of gas warfare (which the English, by the way, initiated).114 They should be taken as an emotional outburst, not as an embryonic plan. Indeed, Mein Kampf is for the most part more propagandistic than programmatic.115 This passage from Hitler's book recalls the humanitarian sentiments that Kurt Tucholsky, a Jew, expressed towards members of the Ger man middle-class who did not share his peculiar "pacifism":
Now, we certainly are not charging that Tucholsky planned or preached the murder-by-gassing of the German people. Yet it would be interesting to see how those who accuse Hitler, on the basis of the passage quoted above, of promoting the murder-by-gassing of the Jewish people would react to Tucholsky's far more drastic outburst. The first remarks in which Hitler specifically uses the words "annihilation" ("Vernichtung") and "eradication" ("Ausrottung") in relation to "the Jews" or "Jewry" were made in 1939. They were a reaction to world Jewry's anti-German campaign, which, by that time, had reached a pitch of frenzy, as shown at the beginning of the this section. In particular, Hitler's Reichstag speech of January 30, 1939 is often cited. There he declared, inter alia:
Obviously, this statement is nothing more than a response to the war threats that were constantly being made by influential Zionists. It was meant as an admonition to those war-mongers. Heinrich Hartle inter prets this text as a sign of Hitler's deep committment to peace. He believes Hitler did not intend to cause a war in order to annihilate the Jews, but raised the spectre of their annihilation in order to prevent a war118 In using the word "annihilation," Hitler was oniy borrowing from the vocabulary of his Zionist foes. Even if one rejects Hartle's interpretation, one must not jump to the conclusion that the opposite interpretation is correct. As noted above, angry words were part of the vocabulary of the times. The rhetoric of Churchill and Roosevelt was no less vehement. When quoted in context -- as they seldom are -- these remarks show that Hitler was not really suggesting the physical annihilation of the Jews. This is how he continued his speech:
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