The “holocaust” story connected with the narrative of World War 2 is often claimed to be “the most thoroughly documented fact in all of history.” It turns out, however, that there are a number of prima facie reasons to question the official narrative. Here, I want to succinctly list a couple dozen reasons why I have become open to holocaust research. Number 1 is what opened my mind to the possibility; the rest are based on my preliminary scan of the state of affairs over the course of the last 3 or 4 years. I speak not as a professional historian, but as it were, a Grand Jury member applying common sense as to whether a case should be pursued further. It’s an indictment, not a verdict. Some of the reasons are weaker, some are stronger. Sometimes, I indicate some of the evidence; for others, not. For leads on where to start researching a particular item, feel free to inquire via commbox or email. In my mind, the last one in particular amounts to a virtual apodictic proof that at least something about the story is seriously wrong. But taking them all in correlative relation, I think the case for questioning the official story, and for the need for further research into this question, is established beyond all doubt.
(I. plausibility of big picture and motive)
1. The logistics needed to support the official story are stupendous
The number of total victims claimed used to vary wildly. In the 1980’s, a cousin of mine returned from an official tour and proclaimed to us with wild eyes that the number exterminated was actually over 20 million! Usually, however, the number of non-jewish victims is always kept just a little below that of the jewish victims, i.e. 5 million compared to their six. So stick with that for a moment.
As a budding Physicist, I was encouraged from a young age to visualize quantities, not just memorize them. If a dinosaur is said to be 30 feet tall, I look at a building and imagine a head poking in through a third-story window. That makes it vivid. We were also trained to do “order of magnitude” sanity checks of our calculations. One of my students carried out this agenda in a clever way. He supposed that every time a tire rotated, a one- atom- thick radius of rubber was removed by contact with the pavement. He then looked up the inter-atomic spacing of rubber, and calculated how long a tire should last. To order-of-magnitude, the tire life came out to be approximately right. That is the right way to test a model in a preliminary way.
Now, the serious accounts of the holocaust suggest that it took place mainly over a period of about two years — say, mid 1942 to mid-1944. Say there were six “death camps.” Then the average camp had to dispatch about 2 million victims, or 1 million per year. That is 20,000 per week, or 4,000 per day, if weekends or other rest days are allowed for.
4,000 per day, day in, day out, gassed, incinerated, and disposed of, for two years without letup, during the time that a desperate war was being waged, in which the Wehrmacht often had to resort to horses and wagons for its own logistics. Look up how long it takes a crematorium to incinerate one body with a Google search, and continue the calculation.
Perhaps, as Rocco in Godfather 2 said, “difficult; not impossible.” But almost impossible. Maybe impossible. It staggers the imagination in any case.
It was this kind of thought that first made me, with my background, open to the possibility of holocaust research. But it took years before I could work up the courage to actually start doing it.
2. There is more than one big-picture narrative, and these are contradictory
For example:
“No one knew” about the holocaust. That’s why it was rarely or never referred to explicitly by the officials.
On the other hand, “everyone knew” (e.g. the movie Amen.) That’s why the mass destruction of the German cities is justified, and never-ending reparations.
Likewise, at Treblinka, the bodies were dug up and burned, and everything bulldozed over without a trace, to remove all evidence prior to the allied victory.
On the other hand, “exterminations continued to the last day of the war” (e.g. the film We Were So Beloved).
Listen to enough discussions of the story with ears perked up, and such contradictory covering propositions will quickly be discovered. We know from logic that once contradictions are allowed, anything can be proved.
3. If the Germans had set the goal of systematic extermination, bullets to the back of the head would have been much more efficient and cost-effective
The Judeo-Bolsheviks knew better, when they massacred the Ukrainians. Wouldn’t the Germans have learned from their superiors at the art of mass-murder?
4. The claim of having the goal of genocide — that is, completely eliminating the jew from the world — is not plausible, in that it was known that millions of jews had taken up residence in the US (for example)
Indeed, the Germans regarded the US as effectively a jewish client state.
For years the goal of the National Socialists was to induce the jews to leave, as can be seen in the film We Were So Beloved, for example. They knew many thousands of jews had emigrated to lands of safety, at the behest of the Nazis themselves. It is quite impossible to imagine rational people thinking that they could pull off a global extermination.
There is no evidence, contrary to the bar-room chatter, that Hitler had the goal of “taking over America,” let alone the world. On the contrary, Hitler envisioned a four-power division of hegemony between the Germans, the Japanese, the British, and the Americans. (See, for example, the Teaching Company’s series, World War II: A Military and Social History, conducted by Penn professor Thomas Childers.) The British indignation was not at the thought of someone “taking over the world,” but at having their own position of primacy challenged.
Thus, the idea that Hitler’s goal was to successively mop up all the remaining pockets of jewry, and thus succeed in “genocide,” is simply impossible.
(II. Rules of Evidence)
5. Much of the “evidence” comes from a group which not only had just been in a desperate war with the Germans, but was their ideological enemy.
The pictures of mountains of hair, and mountains of eyeglasses, and so forth, come almost exclusively from the Soviets. The Soviets just ten years earlier had conducted the infamous “show trials” in their own land. The Soviets had perfected the art of cinematographic propaganda in the earlier decades, led by Eisenstein. The Soviets had a visceral hatred of the Nazis exceeding even the Nazis’ hatred of them. The Soviets are now known to have blamed massacres on the Germans that were carried out by themselves — the Katyn Forest massacre, for example. They are known, documented liars.
6. Most of the “evidence” supplied by the Western allies has had to be modified or abandoned in the course of time
In the 1970s, mention of the word “Dachau” elicited the same horrified shudders that “Auschwitz” does today. But when I visited that camp in 1979, imagine my surprise to see that German historians had been permitted by their rulers to place a sign near the “gas chamber” that declared that no one was gassed to death at Dachau.
Likewise, any number of American WW2 veterans involved with the “liberation” of Buchenwald swear up and down that they “saw the evidence of the holocaust” with their own two eyes. Yes, the conditions were harsh. Yes, many perished there in the cold or due to unjustly harsh treatment — the Reformed pastor Paul Schneider for example. But no one suggests anymore that anyone was gassed to death at Buchenwald. Buchenwald was a punitive labor camp: nothing more, nothing less.
Today, the idea that jews were turned into lampshades has been exploded.
Likewise, the stories about human soap — now abandoned.
Human hair for mattresses — absurd. No mattress stuffed with human hair has been produced. Think about it. If human hair had been seen as a desirable commodity, would not the Germans have first started a program of human-hair recapture from the civilian barbers — where the hair would be clean, not lice-infested, and plentiful, coming from repeat customers? Yet no such program has ever been made public.
By an amazing coincidence, it appears that all of the camps liberated by the Western allies have now been cleared of the charge of being death camps. All the camps still listed as “death camps” were liberated by the Soviets.
7. Even the Soviet accounts have been slowly revised and otherwise rendered suspect
It is now admitted that the main gas chamber at Auschwitz was reconstructed after the fact — “to reflect how it really was,” of course. (See other details about Auschwitz in the three videos that begin here.) The number of victims at Auschwitz has been revised downward by millions, yet the total number is never affected.
8. There is precious little actual eye-witness testimony
Examining the accounts carefully, one often finds the testimony qualified by “I heard that…” or “someone said that…” This is known technically as hearsay.
9. The detailed “eye-witness” testimony is often mutually contradictory
Some of the original “eye-witnesses” claimed the death chambers worked by electrified floors. Some said the floors were designed to open up and dump the bodies into railroad cars underneath that could haul the corpses quickly to their graves. Others said they worked by evacuating the air. Others said the holocaust occurred by people being thrown alive into burning pits. None of these tales are accepted in the official account any more.
10. The detailed “eye-witness” testimony is often absurd
Adolf Eichmann spoke of blood spurting up out of the burial grounds.
The prison confession of Rudolf Gerstein, whose story is amplified in the movie Amen, is a serious case in point. His details are simply impossible. The pile of clothes would be ten stories high. The body counts would pack more than one victim per cubic foot of space. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), Gerstein died in Allied prison under suspicious circumstances before he could be cross-examined.
11. Eye-witness testimony that runs against the official story is always discounted, making the account look like a non-falsifiable dogma
Red-cross reports on camp inspections, for example.
12. Video pictures, absent verbal testimony giving the interpretation, are nearly worthless
We have all seen the footage of bulldozers pushing emaciated bodies into mass graves after the war. But who were the victims? Germans starved to death by the infrastructure destroyed by Allied napalm? Prisoners that died of typhus because the means for dealing with it was similarly destroyed? Without a narrative, including dates, times, and places, raw images are worthless.
At Buchenwald, there is a picture showing a mass of bodies. As time ran out toward the end of the unconditional-surrender destruction of Germany, these corpses could not be buried or cremated in time. It is now known that Buchenwald was not a death camp.
The maker of the Night and Fog documentary admits they were operating with little documentation. See my review for some of the absurdities in that film. Staring at the images in that “documentary” confirmed me as a skeptic. (It can be dangerous taking evidence too seriously.)
13. Doing the “numbers” by census report is unsound
First, jews are reluctant to be counted, even by themselves (see Wex’s explanation for this). Second, a reduction in number obviously does not prove foul play, let alone identify the killer. Third, some census figures I have seen show the jewish population increasing during WW2. This matter needs to be gotten to the bottom of.
14. The general German concession of guilt does not pass the smell test
Nuremburg led to a remorseful owning-up by the Germans. It was neither, “Ja, we did that, but you need to hear our side,” nor, “we didn’t know about it therefore we are not guilty.” There is just stunned, remorseful silence: a peculiar combination of assuming guilt even while incognizant.
For example, the interview of Traudl Junge that frames the movie Downfall shows that she was unaware of the holocaust, though she served as the personal secretary of Hitler. Yet she feels guilty because Sophie Scholl was her age, and Sophie “knew.” But the movie expanding on Sophie Scholl’s life does not put words in her mouth different what any pacifist might say in general terms. What is the chance that Sophie, living in Munich, “knew” while Hitler’s personal secretary did not know? How does Traudl now “know”? Because the Nuremburg Trial proved it. All the years at Hitler’s side, right up to the end, divulged not a hint of it.
(III. General nature of historical evidence)
15. The evidence for the holocaust is quite different from the evidence for other historical “facts”
Think of the difference between denying the holocaust and denying, say, the existence of George Washington, or denying that the battle of Gettysburg took place.
To do either of the latter examples, one would have to deny the entire continuity of the historical narrative, including finally one’s own existence in a coherent world. But to deny the holocaust, the rest of the narrative of history remains intact.
Suppose someone denied that the Battle of Gettysburg ever happened. But there is the field that can still be visited, with bullets still findable in the soil, and mass grave ditches. There are the official field reports. There are the thousands of soldiers’ memories, that were integrated into the shared experience of the nation and, above all, their families: widows and comrades, that lived next door to others, and whose descendants still live among us. There were the books written later by the generals that were actually there. These all match the newspaper accounts written as the event was happening. At the end of the day, there is no integrated history of the world if there was no Gettysburg: then the whole world might as well be a figment of my imagination.
This comprehensiveness and coherence that would be lost is hardly the case if it turned out there was no holocaust. The stories of the players and the newspapers are perfectly coherent and comprehensive without a holocaust: indeed, neither the newspapers nor official statements of the time even mention a holocaust in any kind of compelling way.
(IV. Evidence of fraud)
16. Many of the salient elements of the narrative were broached before the corresponding fact could have occurred
The “six million” figure was broached several times, long before it could have been a fact.
My favorite is the reference to “gassings” in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator, produced in 1940, and long before the alleged “final solution” proposal at Wannsee. (A correspondent suggests it was a reference to WW1 gas. However, since the Allies also used gas in WW1, it would have been awkward for Chaplin to bring this up in his parody of Hitler.)
17. The Nuremburg trials have many marks of a show-trial
The Soviets were major players as prosecutors and judges, coming off their own show-trials of the previous decade. The American staff was loaded with resentful and vengeful jews. There was very little cross-examination. There is evidence that torture was used and threatened.
18. The number of “holocaust survivors” is huge, and continues to grow
Just a couple months ago, our local rag trotted out another victim of suffering during the Holocaust, who had remained completely silent for sixty-five years!
Before they think about it, people think the vast number of survivors is proof of the holocaust. It is the opposite. It is evidence against.
19. The story has grown, and grown, and grown
Evidently, the memoirs of Churchill, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle make scant mention of the Holocaust by any name. The director of the movie Judgment at Nuremburg states that he found that college audiences found his material incredible at the time — the early sixties. The Holocaust only became big business in the seventies. And it continues to grow.
Normally, don’t we expect details of history to be most vivid near the event, and fade with the passage of time?
(V. politicized nature of subject)
20. Revisionists are attacked in a way that is entirely unfair, ad hominem, and even criminal
Robert Faurisson has been beaten up physically, and endlessly reviled in print. Revisionists are routinely accused, without any evidence other than the content of their conclusions, of being neo-Nazis or fascists. Above all, see also #24.
The charge of “anti-semitism” as the only motive that could lead to questioning the story is question-begging. Perhaps the attackers should entertain the converse: could it be that seeing how questioners have been ridden roughshod over is the very thing that pushes some toward “anti-semitism”?
21. Questioning the official story is usually not answered by unassailable facts, but by appeal to the authority of the establishment guild
And this is particularly weak when we realize that the guild is self-perpetuating: dissenters are not allowed in, or are forcibly removed. When discussing the identity of King Tut, we might expect some objectivity from the academic guild, but when discussing a subject for which publishing the wrong answer will lead to losing the royally-rewarded tenure track, academics themselves should be honest enough to recognize their bias. Read the story of Germar Rudolf, and ask how many other academics you have ever met would be willing to sacrifice the cushy academic life for Rudolf’s destiny. Consider this list of people fired, exiled, and persecuted in Switzerland for doubting the story. Shame, and double shame!
Now add to this the threat described in #24. It is hardly surprising that the guild is united around one story.
The appeals to authority are often coupled with a condescending sneer that suggests that only perversity could even raise the question. Compare this to how someone that believed the earth were flat and the sun revolves around it would be answered. Can you imagine how absurd it would be if the only answer ever given to such a person were, “all the university Physicists disagree with you”?
Anyone – including non-Physicists — that can’t rattle off two or three infallible proofs that the earth is round and is rotating on its axis has no right to claim those beliefs.
Anyone that can’t rattle off half a dozen infallible proofs for the holocaust has no right to scoff at the questioner.
22. The manner in which jewish suffering is highlighted, and the suffering of others minimized, smacks of propaganda
The very term “holocaust” is virtually copyrighted. The Armenians are not allowed to refer to the Armenian holocaust. Nor are the Tutsi in Rwanda. Nor, the Cambodians under the Pol Pot. All these people are only allowed to mention their story as a footnote to the One Really Important Story.
23. Likewise, the way in which the noses of the “liberators” is rubbed in the muck smacks of propaganda
Virtually every American city of any size has a holocaust memorial. I thought we were the liberators, that we should be praised. No; we are to feel guilty also.
Finally, the clincher:
24. Almost everywhere in Europe, people that question the holocaust story are thrown in prison
Pacifist artist Ernst Zundel was dragged from his home in Tennessee, shipped to Canada, and then sent to Germany, where he sits in the slammer. Note that the charge of “inciting racial hatred” is identical to the “charge” of denying that the Nazis killed millions of Jews. Note also this chilling statement: “German prosecutors were able to seek his extradition on the ground that a Web site he ran was accessible in Germany.” What site is not accessible in Germany? By this criterion, no one is safe that publishes such material on the web.
David Irving — thrown into the slammer in Austria for denying the holocaust – in a speech he had made seventeen years before!
Gerd Honsik — extradited from Spain and thrown into the slammer in Austria – for holocaust denial
Gaston-Armand Amaudruz — Swiss citizen, thrown in prison – for holocaust denial
Fredrick Toben – sentenced for publishing “anti-Semitic material” – which are detailed as (1) suggesting the Holocaust did not happen, (2) questioning whether there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp, and (3) hurting some jews’ feelings by challenging their intelligence.
Some of these have already been freed. On the other hand, the list is not complete.
Not since the Gulag Archipelago was in full swing has the expression of heretical opinion been treated this way. Does anyone suggest throwing flat-earthers in prison, or Gettysburg-deniers? This shows that the holocaust is functioning as a state religion — in an age that pretends horror at religious persecution.
What academic wants to be thrown in prison, or (if he is American) put in a position of not daring to step foot into Canada or Europe?
What young academic wants to jeopardize his chance for the life-long gravy-train known as tenure?
What academic, tenured or not, wants to face a national campaign by ADL terrorists to have him removed from office and rendered unemployable?
Academics today is all about “getting funding.” What is amusing is that in the very era, our own, when every historian is keenly tuned in to the “material factors” that might have “influenced” the Nicean Council, or even a Luther, seem totally oblivious to the material factors that are patently and undeniably steering their own work!
The “academic consensus” in any matter that is so politically and (above all) financially charged as this subject is, has no value whatsoever. It is unfortunate, but true.
When people are thrown in prison for expressing a belief, it is virtual proof that something is going on with the power-holders other than commitment to truth.
Conclusion
These considerations do not prove that the holocaust story is false, but the consideration I have outlined do prove that investigating it is not a sign of insanity or bad faith. On the contrary, the mockers and persecutors of revisionists must answer the charge of bad faith, if not outright dishonesty.
The landscape has changed for me, and I think the landscape will be changed for anyone that takes a couple years, part time, to look into these matters. For me, the burden of proof has decisively swung to the side of the received story.
