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” are 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.
The most common and disturbing trend of our day is Consensus. This topic is case in point; also anthropogenic global warming. As Michael Crichton said, Einstein didn’t invoke consensus to say E=mc2.
Thank you for posting this very provocative summary. There exists a strong need for deeper examination of history’s only alleged event requiring the force of law to “protect” it from those who merely ask questions.
The process of beginning to question the “facts” behind the so-called Holocaust is very much like the process of becoming racially aware. At first, the person involved feels guilty, even horrified that he’s actually thinking such thoughts. A little later on, he is comforted when he discovers that he’s not alone, and that there exist others who may help guide him along some of the paths. Still later, he realizes with dismay that kooks and charlatans make up part of his circle of new acquaintances. And finally (God willing), he fights off the cliquishness and infighting and determines to find and follow truth, no matter if he has one million allies or one million rabid enemies.
According to Butz, the hallmark of a hoax or fraud is a high percentage of valid facts, with a dual interpretation of them. Look at the words of the serpent in Eden–mostly valid (some not)–but the valid are given a different spin. “Distort the meaning of valid facts.”
About the Final Solution
I concluded I should contribute something on this blog post, but be forewarned that, to a degree, I’m going OT. But our moderator has reassured me it’s close enough…
I have read the history of the Third Reich with some interest as a pastime, and of course the Nazi Weltanschauung is of some philosophical interest in that whole era. And, of course, we find proponents of this Weltanschauung to this day, building on the foundation of representative writers such as Rosenberg, as he interpreted Nitzsche, Spengler and other thinkers.
This viewpoint is both morally and intellectually unacceptable to me, at the end of the day. However, concerning anything I would endorse, certainly the most honest course of action is to endorse it with the full courage of conviction – if that’s what you end up doing.
Permit me to speak in character for a moment. Were we sympathetic to National Socialism, the most authentic National Socialists – the ones we should admire – wanted to solve the Jewish Question in Europe once and for all (die Endloesung), and were proud of how very much they were able to do to accomplish that. Or if we speak of their successors after the war, the most authentic ones are they who glory in how much was done, not at all seeking to whitewash it or minimize it.
Isn’t this what Himmler was getting at in his Posen speech, when he said: “This is a page of glory in our history..”? And the Fuehrer, in his final political testament – isn’t he likewise proud of how much was accomplished?
The political testament, of course, is quite in harmony with the views he had published to the world long before (in Mein Kampf). It is this Hitler, and no other, who obtained power and was able to take the retrospect of his career in the political testament. I doubt that those who admire Hitler will be able to achieve much by adopting a less forthright course of action.
Of course, I think both Hitler and Himmler – and many others among the National Socialists – were in fact glorying in their shame. But, that gets into articulating a Reformed response to Nazi thought, which I shall say no more about for now.
Ronin — it is “off topic” but only in a way that I know is a common mistake, namely, the assumption that questioning the “holocaust” story entails embracing National Socialism in one way or another. Let’s unpack the issues as I see it.
There are two questions that one can answer independently from each other:
1. Who constitutes a nation? One can favor the idea that a nation should be built on a (a) tribal basis, or (b) an imperial or propositional basis.
2. How should the economics of a nation be organized? One can favor a (a) libertarian or (b) mixed or collectivist economic model.
As I see it these are quite independent axes. Then there are four possible combinations of yes/no that one could hold. Historically we can approximate each combination for example thusly:
1a/2a (tribal libertarian) 19th century British Liberalism
1a/2b (tribal mixed/collectivist) National Socialism
1b/2a (imperial libertarian) Lincolnism
1b/2b (imperial mixed/collectivist) Modern America/ old USSR
I mention these four possibilities because libertarians typically want to reduce everything to the second question only. Their dog fight would be, roughly speaking, between the 19th century Liberals and Lincolnites. On the other hand, the battle of WW2 was between two systems, each of which were mixed/collectivist (thus being lumped together as one in the libertarian demonology) but based on two contrary notions of solidarity, and exemplified in the pure types of National Socialism (NS) and Communism (USSR).
In each of those cases, the question arose “what to do with dissidents?” Both NS and Communists were willing to treat dissidents roughly. However, it is debatable whether either would have needed to have done so.
Separately overlaid over these axes is the jewish question. The jewish question is as old as Europe, not something unique to NS. There could be many ways to answer the jewish question within the framework of any of the four positions outlined above, including NS.
The pros and cons of NS and Communism may some day be discussable by adults without all the baggage of atrocities, persecutions, and so forth NECESSARILY being brought up, UNLESS it could be shown that such things follow necessarily from the parameters I have defined. This seems dubious to me.
Finally, we have the allegation that the NS murdered 11 million people, including 6 million jews, utilizing, chiefly, homicidal gas chambers. It is this specific claim that it was the burden of my post to examine. I don’t think an oblique statement made by Himmler in some obscure speech somewhere, or some obtuse statement in Mein Kampf twenty years earlier, lends much weight of evidence to that question.
What the Nazis Thought Then
T, You properly discern a defect in my previous post in that I tied the matter, to some extent, to what post WW2 neo-nazis think. This is not needed. What a later generation of partisans think, is no proof or disproof of what happened then.
So, to focus just on the question of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe:
Say what you will about the implausibilities of the traditional view of what happened, also a great deal of implausibility attaches to the revisionist view. On this view of things, Hitler rose to power, and when the war began mighty German armies conquered large swathes of land in the East for Lebensraum. Off they went to war, under orders to regard the Jews as their worst enemies. And most of them were sincerely convinced that the Jews were their worst enemies. And then what happened? Oh, very little, and that due to wartime conditions in general, not due to any murderous plans. Next thing you know, we will be asked to believe that the camps were actually large facilities for hosting Sunday School picnics.
What the Nazi leadership at that time said about the matter should be weighed carefully, as they knew what was happening. I find little indication that the real Nazis then had much use for the alternate/revisionist view of what they accomplished. If not trying to beat the rap, the unrepentant ones in general were quite proud of what they did. In addition to the quotes in my prior email I should mention this of Eichmann, spoken in 1945 (thus, long before the Israelis ever got him): “he would leap laughing to his grave because the feeling that he had five million people on his conscience would give him extraordinary satisfaction”. (This you can find at page 236 of the book I will cite below.)
The Posen speech of Himmler was far from unimportant. Himmler presented this message to the highest officials of the SS as a major policy statement (see “Himmler” by Willi Frischauer, which devotes the better part of a chapter to this speech (Chapter XVII)). As to the “treatment of dissidents”, interestingly enough Himmler brings up that very point in the speech, discussing the 1934 Night of the Long Knives. Perhaps it was not “necessary” for the National Socialists to treat dissidents so harshly – but Himmler, in this speech, certainly speaks as if he thought it necessary. I suspect he knew what his political creed required as well as anyone else.
Mein Kampf, written so long before the beginning of the National Socialist state, does not by itself prove what happened later. One should mention it at all, as I did, only as coneptually linked to the Political Testament retrospective view of the period. And the most natural reading of the Testament is in harmony with the traditionalist account. And this is not just my opinion. Ribbentrop in captivity after the war wrote memoirs, before he was executed, in which occurs a passage in which he interprets the Testament pretty much as I would.
How about this as a thought experiment. I have already brought up some citations which I think significant. Can statements be found by the Nazi leaders that are in basic accord with the revisionist view of things – said back then, close in time to the events in question?
Actually I have seen pictures of picnics at Auschwitz and knowing the culture, they were most likely on Sunday, though probably not in connection with Sunday School.
I’m still not sure what the form of your argument is. Perhaps if you put a summary into brief syllogistic form it would help. Let me take a stab at several possibilities.
1. “The nazis loathed and hated the effect of judaism on their aryan culture, so it only stands to reason that they would have killed as many as possible once war broke out.”
But many Europeans throughout history have loathed and hated judaism and its effects, but it does not always, perhaps never did lead to genocidal tendencies. So this can’t function as an a priori.
Yes one can gain a glimmer of understanding of how this would become a desire, when one starts to understand the extent of jewish subversion of goyish cultures, including our own — the racketeering, manipulation, pornography, debased entertainment, “jewing down” contracts, unrelenting special pleading, etc. But even when such “just anger” is not hedged by the law of God, see #3 in the original post.
2. “Himmler made a speech in which he said, ‘This is a page of glory in our history’ and the Führer, in his final political testament, is proud of how much was accomplished. Therefore, it must be that the nazis killed 6 million jews, mostly in gas chambers set up for that purpose.”
Actually this does not follow.
There was much for the nazi leadership to have been proud of besides eliminating the jew from Germany (and actually they did not succeed in doing even that, but that’s another story).
I have not studied the Himmler speech yet, though I have scanned some analyses of it. From my minimal knowledge of it, it could hardly serve to overcome the difficulties I have outlined in this post. Same with Hitler’s testament. Eichmann’s case is even more problematic, even on the face of it. I will do a full post on him one of these days. More on the hermeneutical problem below.
3. “Ribbentrop while in captivity wrote a passage consistent with my interpretation of Hitler’s testament, therefore the nazis killed six million jews in gas chambers.”
Again, this hardly follows. More importantly in this case, I completely discount any testimony given while in Allied captivity now that I know about the torture, threat of torture, and even mutilation that was applied to prisoners. Nuremburg was a show trial. The evidence for the holocaust is going to have to come from elsewhere.
4. “Statements from Nazi leaders consistent with the revisionist view of things cannot be found; therefore, the nazis killed six million jews in gas chambers.”
First, I’m not sure what the “revisionist view of things” is. For me, it is like the 9-11: we can be quite sure that the “official story” is false at least in some glaring respects. To conclude that does not require proposing an entire “view of things.” That should be the job for honest historians, if there are any left.
But, second, of course there are lots of statements consistent with the non-genodical deportation of jews, including most of Eichmann’s. Moreover, the narrative as a whole makes better sense in view of deportation.
Third, this way of putting it is prejudicial. Try this thought experiment. Let’s call the “revision view” the denial of the thesis, “The US set out to exterminate all pygmies during WW2.” You then come back with the challenge, “show me one statement from an American official that is in basic accord with the revisionist view. Oh, you can’t? Then we should stick with the view that the US was out to exterminate all pygmies during WW2.”
Statements about refraining from exterminating pygmies are admittedly hard to find amongst American diplomats and leaders of the time.
Change the thought experiment a bit. Suppose there had been a lot of “antipygmites” and in fact they had prevailed to the extent of setting up a program to deport all pygmies. This would not indicate that, unless we can find explicit denials from their mouths at the time, they should be accused of killing all the pygmies. This is crazy.
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My point is not to poo-poo any evidence you might bring. On the contrary, bring it on. Just now, I’m trying to determine first how that evidence is functioning for your thesis. That is, are you saying, “T, you have brought 24 considerations, each of which has many lines of evidence behind it, but all that is refuted by these single statements by Eichmann and Himmler respectively.” Somehow I don’t think that’s what you saying, but perhaps you could clarify.
Or are you simply saying, “make sure you have also considered such-and-such evidence before you commit to holocaust denial.”
The biggest problem I see in the speech evidence is circular reasoning:
1. The “holocaust” (killing six million jews in gas chambers) is true, it took place.
2. Therefore, phrases like “final solution” must refer to that.
3. Thus, further evidence that (1) is true is found in statements in speeches such as “final solution.”
The subtle way that circular reasoning can creep in to one’s thinking should be pondered carefully.
The subtle way that circular reasoning can creep in to one’s thinking should be pondered carefully.
Or, as I think John Frame would state it, that very narrow circular reasoning is in play. Revisionist seem to be more apt to take in all the evidence where upholders of the official story seem not to.
Revisionists
T, thanks for that philosophical distillation down to four points. But nowhere in that analysis, did the equation of People of God vs. NON-People of God enter in. Without it, any categorization that is ultimately meaningful to a Christian, is moot. Because, in ANY analysis of the ‘H,’ if we don’t take the fallacy of the Jews considering what happened to them as a result of their ‘Chosen People’ status, you don’t understand their existence as a race/religion/ethnos.
Ronin, I give for your perusal, this article:
http://johndenugent.com/jdn/hitlers-real-views-on-race/
I think it (and other articles like it) are a necessary first step in DE-demonizing a man who sought to keep jewish Bolshevism out of Europe. Remember, the Jewish Bolsheviks ANNIHILATED over 100 million via their antichrist ideology; cf. Black Book on Communism. hitler was a bad man, but for RELIGIOUS reasons, and not necessarily POLITICAL reasons. Leaning a bit toward the level of praise given (even in a backhand compliment) to Mussolini, (“He made the trains run on time in Italy”) I think like many others, we can say that Hitler did much good for Germany. But to even THINK that today, is to indulge in wanting to take away the “Bogeyman” status the Deicides have awarded him. There are benumbed minds that can’t even go THAT far… who also think Lincoln, (For instance) was a good and godly man. (NOT!)
I, for one, came to a realization that my ancestors from Germany (the ‘Fatherland’) could not have done what they did as the sub-human ‘Schweinhund’ caricatures of Hogan’s Heroes, UNLESS THEY WERE PROVOKED. And then, in issues of National Interest, corporate infrastructure, and the racial existence of one’s people, ALL BETS ARE OFF. Which brings us to the USA at the present moment. We are very close to fueling a mass movement that would enact the divine retribution against the OPPOSING mentality that has ruled us for the last sixty years…. since Hitler LOST the war, to be specific. WHo WON in WWII? CLearly Hitler lost… but which ETHNIC GROUP won? THEY are the ones who ‘write the history.’ We all learned that. But for WHAT REASON? Therein lies our necessary work of digging and research.
And, as we all know ‘Arbeit macht Frei’ (or, in another time and in another place, ‘The Truth shall set you free’).
Yes, there is a strain of Nietzschean nihilism in the Germanic psyche, because, (yes) higher criticism arose in the same VOLK. And the two are inextricably linked. Deny God and all hell is possible. But the ideology of Hate par excellence is not (no, it’s NOT) that of the NatSocs, but that of the Christ-killers, and has been for 2000 years.
I used to work as a ‘shabbas goy’ in a synagogue during my college years. I saw upfront for eight years of Friday evenings, and Saturday mornings: the ethnic racial supremacist attitudes of the ‘poor, downtrodden jews;’ I heard their Rabbis talk about their RACE and their EXCLUSIONARY PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE, and watched how they literally VIEW us as ‘sub-human.’ Racial supremacist? Hateful? Irrational? Screeching harpies bent on worldwide destruction? Please. The Nazis couldn’t hold a candle to the Khazars.
Reading “Judaism’s strange religion’ by Michael Hoffman was the KEY that opened my eyes; that, and ‘The Thirteenth Tribe’ by Koestler. That, and I have always been an iconoclast..I can’t help it, it’s my Celtic distrust of those in power. Remember Cromwell….?
The Controversy Between T and Me
I have been reviewing this friendly controversy between us. Blog posts in general should not be extremely long, so I will deal only with a few things in this item – others, as I get to them in the future. [Readers who anxiously await the logical analysis of the American pogrom against the pygmies will, unfortunately, have to wait some more.] I am not sure there will be space to cover every point on the blog – perhaps T and I should talk over some of this in a personal discussion, which we could call our “Partei-Tag”.
First, the accusation of circularity: That I assume that such and such, cite the Himmler Posen speech, and take that as further proof of such and such. Well, if you examine the formal structure of my remarks which occurred in the 2/6 post, everyone should see that I assumed no such thing as is attributed to me. I assumed no number in that post and no particular means of doing away with people. Rather, I cited the Posen speech and raised the question – isn’t Himmler here proudly taking credit for the deed? To be more prolix about it here: taking credit for the work then in progress toward “the extermination of the Jewish people”, as entailed by the party program – as involving no exceptions for good Jews, unlike the generality of German public opinion would have favored – as involving the SS men seeing great quantities of corpses as the fruit of their work and remaining “decent people” nevertheless? If you have a reasonable interpretation of such remarks as involving zero executions and only evacuations, by all means bring it on.
2. You ask: are you saying, “T, you have brought 24 considerations, each of which has many lines of evidence behind it, but all that is refuted by these single statements by Eichmann and Himmler respectively.”
No I am not saying that, and that is one reason I warned you from the beginning I was going somewhat OT with, I think, your permission. Had I been totally on topic, I should have begun writing a series of posts (First, critiquing your arguments 1 and 2 ; Second, critiquing your arguments 3 and 4 ; and so on.) But, you seem to want to know what I think of your list of 24 in a brief Cliffs Notes sort of way: so here goes. An argument about matters of fact can fail through (1) being logically invalid, or (2) involving false premises. I think a small minority of your arguments have type (1), logical invalidity problems. An example of one such would be #23, the prevalence of holocaust memorials in American cities. Such memorials are no proof or disproof concerning who died or how many of them. Again to speak “in character” for one moment, the consistent National Socialist would regard these memorials in many American cities as proof that the supposed victors have in fact been vanquished. My dissent from the majority of your arguments, which do not have logical invalidity problems, is merely that you accept certain premises to reason from that I do not.
3. I will conclude this post by examining the note that “torture, threat of torture, and even mutilation … was applied to prisoners…” Assuming for the sake of argument this to be so as much as you like, and this is does not render impossible rational belief in historical accounts in general. These 3 things were involved in the English investigation of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 – but nobody will maintain it is unreasonable to believe that event happened. Again, these 3 things were involved in the German investigation of the 7/20/1944 Plot against Hitler – but nobody will maintain it is unreasonable to believe that event happened also.
Right now, just a quick note on the logical invalidity charge, since if one person is confused about the function of my listed arguments, probably others are as well. There are topic labels that are easy to miss that organize the material as follows:
I. Plausibility of big picture and motive 1-4
II. Rules of Evidence 5-14
III. General nature of historical evidence 15
IV. Evidence of fraud 16 – 19
V. Politicized nature of subject 20-24
Thus, items under V for example are not meant to be direct evidence against the holocaust, but rather evidence for the fact that we have a political milieu in which the establishment historians, otherwise innocent, could be gulled into an incorrect view. That is, it is one thing to poke holes in the train of evidence. The common man on the jury will still wonder how, if that is so, so many smart people could be convinced. Section V indicates how that is indeed possible. Now how and why it is that the “liberators” have been brow-beaten into doing penance is the subject for another discussion.
It could be helpful for the reader to re-read the first and last paragraph of the post so as not to forget the main point.
If you have a reasonable interpretation of such remarks as involving zero executions and only evacuations, by all means bring it on.
Nobody said zero. Strawman.
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