What kind of diesel engines where used???

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De Ruyter
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What kind of diesel engines where used???

#1

Post by De Ruyter » 30 Jun 2003, 22:40

I was wondering what kind of diesel engines where used for extermination of people in for example the Belzec death camp??? If anyone knows what kind, I would be grateful for any replies or messages you would have time to post or send me!

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#2

Post by Sotka » 01 Jul 2003, 01:47

I am not an expert, but I remember that engines were from captured T-34 tanks.


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#3

Post by David Thompson » 01 Jul 2003, 02:11

De Ruyter -- at the beginning of the 15th page of the thread "Apologia for Genocide" at:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=25141

Roberto has collected and categorized the accounts of all of the various witnesses on this subject that anyone could find, and if you read it, there is considerable doubt about whether the engines were diesel or gasoline. This subject has been extensively discussed on other threads in this section of the forum. See, for example:

Gassing Vans Revisited
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=20051

Gas Vans?
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=17133

REAL DIESEL VANS!
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=1881

Fun with DIESEL GAS-VANS at Krasnodar and Kharkov...
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=571

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Re: What kind of diesel engines where used???

#4

Post by Scott Smith » 01 Jul 2003, 07:51

De Ruyter wrote:I was wondering what kind of diesel engines where used for extermination of people in for example the Belzec death camp??? If anyone knows what kind, I would be grateful for any replies or messages you would have time to post or send me!
If it was a diesel engine captured from a Soviet tank it would have to be a W-2, which was twelve-cylinders and water-cooled of about 38 liters displacement and about 500 brake-horsepower at 1500 rpm. These were used in all heavy Soviet tanks. In 1941, the Germans could have gotten them from captured Soviet KV-1 tanks, as not very many T-34s were made until early-1942. A small quantity of W-4 diesel engines were also made in 1941, which were six-cylinders and half of a W-2, but production problems halted that project and eventually all Soviet tank engines were the trusty W-2. This was quite an accomplishment since the Germans didn't believe that the Soviets had any diesel technology, although the W-2 was patterned after European and German engines. Older Soviet tanks used gasoline engines of various sizes. The only other likely candidate for a diesel engine would be a six-cylinder diesel from a German truck of about 90 horsepower. All claims say either a Soviet tank engine, just engines, or a gasoline engine from a truck or tractor. Eichmann even suggested that a submarine diesel engine was used, which would be enormous and, of course, absurd.
:)

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#5

Post by witness » 01 Jul 2003, 08:29

In a closed chamber, of course diesel fumes will kill. There was actually a study on this, and its results are reported in "The Toxicity of Fumes from a Diesel Engine Under Four Different Running Conditions", by Pattle et al., British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1957, Vol 14, p. 47-55. These researchers ran a few experiments in which various animals were exposed to diesel fumes, and studied the results.

In the experiments, the exhaust of a small diesel engine (568 cc, 6 BHP) was connected to a chamber 10 cubic meters (340 cubic feet) in volume, and the animals were put inside it. In all cases, the animals died. Death was swifter when the intake of air to the engine was restricted, as this causes a large increase in the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) that is emitted. (See, for instance, "diesel Engine Reference Book", by Lilly, 1985, p. 18/8, where it is stated that at a high air/fuel ratio the concentration of CO is only a few parts per million but for lower ratios (25:1) the concentration of CO can rise up to 3,000 ppm. It is very easy to restrict the air intake; the British researchers did so by partially covering the air intake opening with a piece of metal.)

Even in cases where the CO output was low, the animals still died from other toxic components - mainly irritants and nitrogen dioxide.
Now, the diesel engines used in Treblinka were much larger - they belonged to captured Soviet T-34 tanks. These tanks weighed 26-31 tons (depending on the model) and had a 500 BHP engine (compared to a mere 6 BHP in the British experiments). The volume of the extermination chambers in Treblinka is, of course, a factor. But the chambers' volume was about 60 cubic meters (2040 cubic feet); this is 6 times more than those in the British experiments, but the difference in the size of the engines is much larger than a factor of 6.

It should be remembered that what matters in CO poisoning is not the concentration of CO, but the ratio of CO to oxygen. In a small room, crammed full of people, oxygen levels drop quickly, thus making death by CO poisoning faster. As noted, other toxic components in the fumes further accelerate mortality.
http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/d ... iglie.html

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#6

Post by Scott Smith » 01 Jul 2003, 09:30

witness wrote:
In a closed chamber, of course diesel fumes will kill. There was actually a study on this, and its results are reported in "The Toxicity of Fumes from a Diesel Engine Under Four Different Running Conditions", by Pattle et al., British Journal of Industrial Medicine, 1957, Vol 14, p. 47-55. These researchers ran a few experiments in which various animals were exposed to diesel fumes, and studied the results.

In the experiments, the exhaust of a small diesel engine (568 cc, 6 BHP) was connected to a chamber 10 cubic meters (340 cubic feet) in volume, and the animals were put inside it. In all cases, the animals died. Death was swifter when the intake of air to the engine was restricted, as this causes a large increase in the amount of carbon monoxide (CO) that is emitted. (See, for instance, "diesel Engine Reference Book", by Lilly, 1985, p. 18/8, where it is stated that at a high air/fuel ratio the concentration of CO is only a few parts per million but for lower ratios (25:1) the concentration of CO can rise up to 3,000 ppm. It is very easy to restrict the air intake; the British researchers did so by partially covering the air intake opening with a piece of metal.)

Even in cases where the CO output was low, the animals still died from other toxic components - mainly irritants and nitrogen dioxide.
Now, the diesel engines used in Treblinka were much larger - they belonged to captured Soviet T-34 tanks. These tanks weighed 26-31 tons (depending on the model) and had a 500 BHP engine (compared to a mere 6 BHP in the British experiments). The volume of the extermination chambers in Treblinka is, of course, a factor. But the chambers' volume was about 60 cubic meters (2040 cubic feet); this is 6 times more than those in the British experiments, but the difference in the size of the engines is much larger than a factor of 6.

It should be remembered that what matters in CO poisoning is not the concentration of CO, but the ratio of CO to oxygen. In a small room, crammed full of people, oxygen levels drop quickly, thus making death by CO poisoning faster. As noted, other toxic components in the fumes further accelerate mortality.
http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/d ... iglie.html
But what the comedian writing the article doesn't tell you is that, yes, the fumes did kill eventually, but it took HOURS to do it. And some animals still did not die after the test was halted after FIVE hours.

Also, the gas concentrations and compositions are given in the text, which makes the size of the engine and the chamber irrelevant. The concentrations can only become what they are in the exhaust pipe and no more.

This is what a diesel engine gas-table looks like. Follow the black line to the right as the horsepower increases (i.e., the engine becomes more loaded and produces more horsepower--imagine a laden truck going up a steeper and steeper hill in the same gear and the rpm held constant for the test with your foot on the accelerator). The more load you put on the engine the more CO2 is produced and oxygen is consumed. Only when the engine is overloaded and can't do more (where the black curve flattens out) does the engine produce any appreciable CO. Test B-12 is essentially 100% load but this engine has been modified to permit overloading by removing the throttle fuel-stop; still, they can't coax much more work out of it.

An unloaded engine produces 17% oxygen in the exhaust. Normal air is 21%. Unless you are asthmatic or have a heart condition you will be able to survive this ordeal of caustic smells, heat, and noise for the amount of time a gassing would need to have taken place.

No diesel-murder. Sorry, witness.
:)

Image

Data taken from 1941 paper by Holtz and Elliot for the U.S. Bureau of Mines.
Power (bhp), Speed, Fuel-air ratio, O2, CO2, N2, NOx, Aldehydes, H2, CO:

B-13—00.0hp, 1400rpm, 0.013 (77:1), 17.14%, 02.74%, 80.08%, 167ppm, 4ppm, 0%, 0.041% (410ppm).

B-14—08.8hp, 1410rpm, 0.020 (50:1), 15.13%, 04.19%, 80.65%, 267ppm, 1ppm, 0%, 0.028% (280ppm).

B-15—17.5hp, 1400rpm, 0.029 (35:1), 12.20%, 06.22%, 81.56%, 378ppm, 1ppm, 0%, 0.024% (240ppm).

B-16—26.4hp, 1410rpm, 0.039 (26:1), 09.26%, 08.36%, 82.35%, 448ppm, 1ppm, 0%, 0.027% (270ppm).

B-12—37.8hp, 1400rpm, 0.056 (18:1), 03.44%, 12.40%, 84.07%, 364ppm, 4ppm, 0%, 0.058% (580ppm).

B-70—40.2hp, 1400rpm, 0.070 (14:1), 00.80%, 13.80%, 84.5%, 346ppm, 1ppm, 0.1%, 0.7% (07,000ppm).

B-72—41.0hp, 1400rpm, 0.084 (12:1), 00.30%, 12.10%, 82.7%, 277ppm, 2ppm, 1.3%, 3.5% (35,000ppm).

B-69—40.6hp, 1400rpm, 0.094 (11:1), 00.30%, 10.20%, 80.1%, 186ppm, 0ppm, 0.4%, 6.0% (60,000ppm).
Last edited by Scott Smith on 07 Jul 2003, 05:12, edited 1 time in total.

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#7

Post by Roberto » 01 Jul 2003, 12:36

De Ruyter wrote:I was wondering what kind of diesel engines where used for extermination of people in for example the Belzec death camp??? If anyone knows what kind, I would be grateful for any replies or messages you would have time to post or send me!
It seems you're new on this forum, and it also seems you didn’t bother to check out previous threads before bursting in. Otherwise you would have realized that this question of yours was likely to draw a hearty yawn from fellow posters who have had diesel discussions, to put it bluntly, up their assholes to their armpits. Inevitably a certain fellow poster came up for the umpteenth time with a lecture on oh-how-absurd it would have been to use diesel engines for gassing. I'm sure he gave you his "load" sermon and showed you his famous, incomplete graph, incomplete because it doesn't show the dependence of the exhaust's toxicity on the fuel input, as the following table based on the same source does:

Experiment #; Power (load hp); Rpm; Fuel; volume gas; Fuel-Air ratio; CO2%; O2%; CO%; NOx (ppm); H2%:

B13; 00.0hp; 1400rpm; 04.56lbs/hr; 4500cf/hr; 0.013 (77:1); 02.7%; 17.14%; 0.041% (410ppm); 167ppm; 0.0%
B14; 08.8hp; 1410rpm; 06.89lbs/hr; 4460cf/hr; 0.020 (50:1); 04.2%; 15.13%; 0.028% (280ppm); 267ppm; 0.0%
B15; 17.5hp; 1400rpm; 09.56lbs/hr; 4180cf/hr; 0.029 (35:1); 06.2%; 12.20%; 0.024% (240ppm); 378ppm; 0.0%
B16; 24.6hp; 1410rpm; 12.45lbs/hr; 4050cf/hr; 0.039 (26:1); 08.4%; 09.26%; 0.027% (270ppm); 448ppm; 0.0%
B12; 37.8hp; 1400rpm; 18.12lbs/hr; 3950cf/hr; 0.056 (18:1); 12.4%; 03.44%; 0.058% (580ppm); 364ppm; 0.0%
B70; 40.2hp; 1400rpm; 21.29lbs/hr; 3700cf/hr; 0.070 (14:1); 13.8%; 00.80%; 0.700% (07kppm); 346ppm; 0.1%
B72; 41.0hp; 1400rpm; 24.41lbs/hr; 3650cf/hr; 0.084 (12:1); 12.1%; 00.30%; 3.500% (35kppm); 277ppm; 1.3%
B69; 40.6hp; 1400rpm; 29.63lbs/hr; 4050cf/hr; 0.094 (11:1); 10.2%; 00.30%; 6.000% (60kppm); 186ppm; 0.4%


I'm also sure he didn't address let alone convincingly exclude the possibility of achieving the effect of loading by restricting the engine's air intake, considerably increasing it's fuel supply or doing both simultaneously, as seems logical due to the fact that, as American engineers Holtz & Elliot pointed out in a study they did in 1941, the exhaust composition is chiefly a function of the fuel-air ratio, i.e. the amount of air available to burn the fuel - the less air and the more fuel, the less oxygen and the more carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide the exhaust will have. Regarding the possibility of restricting the air intake he will object that this was done in experiments performed by British scientists Pattle & Stretch on mice and other small mammals in the 1950s and did not produce lethal amounts of carbon monoxide. In doing so, he will conveniently ignore that, on the one hand, these experiments were done with a tiny 6 bhp engine and there are strong indications, derived from comparisons of the exhaust composition in engines with various sizes under similar operating conditions, that bigger diesel engines produce more toxic exhaust than smaller ones, while on the other hand the experiments of Pattle & Stretch involving a restriction of the air intake produced exhaust more toxic than their experiments with however high a load on the engine. When confronted with these arguments, he will object that a near-total restriction of the air intake would cause the engine to die off, without telling you how long this would take to happen and ignoring the possibility of combining an only partial air intake restriction with a considerable increase of the fuel supply. Last but not least, he will not tell you about the possibility of death through "CO2 narcosis" resulting from an increase in blood pressure that usually comes about when the CO2 concentration of ambient air exceeds 7 %, according to his fellow "Revisionist" Richard Miller, or rather unconvincingly try to dismiss this possibility if you point it out to him.

All the above has been the subject of numerous discussions on this forum, including but not limited to those pointed out by David Thompson.

But now to your question: what kind of diesel engines were used for exterminating people in for example the Belzec death camp? My answer is a very simple one: I don't know, I don't think I or anyone else ever will know, and I couldn't care less. I don't even know whether the engines used were diesel or gasoline engines, for most eyewitness depositions don't address the type of engine at all and those who do are either inconclusive in this respect or don't go into any detail, as you will see if you look at the testimonies in my post of Mon Jun 30, 2003 3:53 pm on the thread

Apologia for Genocide
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... &start=210

In regard to Belzec, as you expressly mentioned that camp, you will see there's one deposition from the rather unreliable witness Gerstein mentioning a diesel engine, one from a Dr. Pfannenstiel mentioning only the fuel used but not the type of engine (diesel fuel does not necessarily mean a diesel engine) and one from a camp inmate by the name of Reder, which expressly mentions a gasoline engine. So what? Independently of what type of engine was used and what exactly that engine looked like, hundreds of thousands of people were murdered at each of those camps, as is proven by conclusive documentary, eyewitness and physical evidence. That's what matters to me, and it’s also what matters to history. Discussions about what type of engine was used are pointless discussions about the sex of the angels at best, in my opinion.

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Re: What kind of diesel engines where used???

#8

Post by Charles Bunch » 01 Jul 2003, 15:49

Scott Smith wrote:
De Ruyter wrote:I was wondering what kind of diesel engines where used for extermination of people in for example the Belzec death camp??? If anyone knows what kind, I would be grateful for any replies or messages you would have time to post or send me!
If it was a diesel engine captured from a Soviet tank it would have to be a W-2, which was twelve-cylinders and water-cooled of about 38 liters displacement and about 500 brake-horsepower at 1500 rpm. These were used in all heavy Soviet tanks.
Diesel Engines (T-34 Tanks)

The first production-line models were fitted with V-2 diesel engines, but shortages meant that some of these early models were equipped with the older M-17 petrol engines.
Russian Tanks of World War II
Stalins Armored Might
Tim Bean & Will Fowler
MBI Publishing
2002
p. 100

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#9

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 01 Jul 2003, 19:47

I always wondered why nobody is taking into account rise in temperature inside the chamber connected to the engine and consequtive catalitic shift.

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I wonder why...

#10

Post by De Ruyter » 01 Jul 2003, 20:48

I wonder why many of you who know more than "the new guy" have to be nasty...? ...

Other than that I THANK everyone who contributed to my question!

The reason for me asking about whether the engines were gasoline or diesel is actually not very interesting. I just thought about it a little last summer when i passed the former location of Belzec during a small car vacation.

Thanks everyone!!! :)

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Re: I wonder why...

#11

Post by Roberto » 01 Jul 2003, 22:05

De Ruyter wrote:I wonder why many of you who know more than "the new guy" have to be nasty...? ...
My apologies if I should have been "nasty" to you, pal. Certain inevitable responses to your question bore the hell out of me and not me alone, but they are not your fault.

Cheers,

Roberto

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Re: What kind of diesel engines where used???

#12

Post by Scott Smith » 02 Jul 2003, 08:37

Charles Bunch wrote:
Scott Smith wrote:
De Ruyter wrote:I was wondering what kind of diesel engines where used for extermination of people in for example the Belzec death camp??? If anyone knows what kind, I would be grateful for any replies or messages you would have time to post or send me!
If it was a diesel engine captured from a Soviet tank it would have to be a W-2, which was twelve-cylinders and water-cooled of about 38 liters displacement and about 500 brake-horsepower at 1500 rpm. These were used in all heavy Soviet tanks.
Diesel Engines (T-34 Tanks)

The first production-line models were fitted with V-2 diesel engines, but shortages meant that some of these early models were equipped with the older M-17 petrol engines.
Russian Tanks of World War II
Stalins Armored Might
Tim Bean & Will Fowler
MBI Publishing
2002
p. 100
Hi Chuck,

Read what I wrote above again. To make it easier for you I have bolded the operative phrase and the word diesel in red.

This means that if it were a diesel engine it had to have come from a Soviet tank or a German truck. No witness says it specifically came from a T-34 tank so your point is not valid. They just say a diesel engine from a Soviet tank or a submarine (in the case of Eichmann). In the case of Fuchs at Sobibor he says an eight-cylinder gasoline engine from an LKW (Leistkraftwagen), which is the German word for truck.

So, as Ovidius (and I) pointed out a long time ago, the Germans could have salvaged a gasoline motor from a Russian tank, particularly in the earlier part of the Russian-German war when all of their tanks were gasoline except for the KV-1 and the T-34 (then beginning production).

Indeed, it would have been easier for the SS mechanics to get a gasoline motor from a tank or a truck, so I asked long ago why they went out of their way to get a diesel engine for gassing? Well, obviously they didn't--as I have long argued.

They may have salvaged a diesel engine from a KV-1 or even a T-34 or a smaller one from a German truck to use as a powerplant to generate camp power and/or to pump water. I don't know where they got the electrical generator or pump equipment, however. This is an engineering problem that I could personally solve, but it wouldn't just happed because somebody willed it or siad so afterwards; there would be lots of details to iron out. My point is that those details as related are suspiciously thin considering we are talking about a novel mass-murder weapon here.

Sailor asked me a related question on another board in Hannover's thread attempted switch from alleged diesel 'gassings' to gasoline and here is my explanation:
Scott wrote: POSTED Wed Dec 11, 2002 4:24 am Post subject: Re: SGT. FUCHS: I Know Something, Something...
Sailor wrote:By the way, I always thought that the Soviets used diesel engines in their tanks. I read that somewhere.
In the earlier part of the war the Soviets had a lot of lighter tanks like the T-24, so we could have eight-cylinder engines of either gasoline or diesel motors (more-usually gasoline) of about 200 or 300 horsepower.

The Soviet heavy tanks like the KV-1, T-34, and IS-2 all had a standard 500 brake-horsepower W-2 diesel powerplant. All Soviet tank production switched to heavier tanks and diesel engines, and they could have been salvaged to make camp powerplants if an electrical generator of about 1500 rpm were also available. (That is a lot of power, 373 mechanical kilowatts.)

However, the Germans could have salvaged anything, including truck motors of either gasoline or diesel types from either Soviet or German equipment. No German tanks switched to diesels because their tanks tended to be heavier and they needed more than the 500 horsepower of the Soviet diesel. I don't know of a better diesel that the Germans might have contemplated mass-producing (which would then have entailed disrupting existing production).

This all breaks down as follows and may help identify an engine by its description:
SOVIET

1) We can assume that any Soviet LIGHT tank or truck has a 4, or 6-cylinder gasoline engine (about 30-90 bhp).

Except:

a) Some specialty light tanks like flamethrowers had the W-2 model 12-cylinder, 500 bhp diesel engine because that was standard for the production-lines during the war.

b) The T-24 (17.8 tonnes) is the only tank with an 8-cylinder gasoline engine (200 bhp).

c) The T-50 (14 tonnes) is the only tank with a 6-cylinder diesel engine (300 bhp).

d) Some Soviet Lend-Lease trucks were probably V-8 engines.

2) All Soviet medium or heavy tanks built during the war had the standard 12-cylinder, 500 bhp model W-2 diesel engine.

(Source: http://www.battlefield.ru/specific.html )

GERMAN

1) German trucks might have either gasoline or diesel engines with varying numbers of cylinders. The Einheits Diesel, of which was about 12% of the Wehrmacht truck establishment in 1937, had a 6-cylinder diesel of about 90 bhp.

2) All German tanks had gasoline engines of up to 700 bhp for the heavies like the Panthers and Tigers.
Hope that helps.

NOTE to De Ruyter: The only stupid question is the question that is never asked.
:D

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Re: What kind of diesel engines where used???

#13

Post by witness » 02 Jul 2003, 09:27

Scott Smith wrote: However, the Germans could have salvaged anything, including truck motors of either gasoline or diesel types from either Soviet or German equipment. No German tanks switched to diesels because their tanks tended to be heavier and they needed more than the 500 horsepower of the Soviet diesel. I don't know of a better diesel that the Germans might have contemplated mass-producing (which would then have entailed disrupting existing production).
How many witnesses mentioned the diesel engines ? And how many among them had some technical expirtise on the engine subject ?

Roberto wrote
Some time ago I had a look at some of the eyewitness and documentary evidence to find out where what Smith’s guru Berg calls the “myth within a myth” comes from.

The results were the following:

1. Gas vans used by the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union

Dr. Widmann: No mention of type of engine (Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pages 81 and following)

Rauff: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 82)

Pradel: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 82)

Wentritt: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 83)

Leidig: Doesn’t mention type of engine. (Kogon et al, as above, pages 83 and following)

Just (letter to Rauff of 5 June 1942): No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 84 and following)

Gniewuch: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 87, 90, 91)

Trühe: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 87)

Mendel Vulfovich: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 88 )

Adolf Rübe: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 89)

Zalman Levinbuck: Gasoline engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 91)

Quote:
Unter den Lastwagen gibt es riesige mit hermetisch verschließbaren Türen … Diese luftdicht geschlossenen Wagen werden ‘dushegubky’ genannt, was auf russisch ‘Seelentöter’ heißt. Sie bringen bereits tote Menschen heran, die man nicht mehr erschießen muß. Die Menschen werden unterwegs vergiftet durch Gase und Abgasdämpfe, die durch das Verbrennen von Benzin im Motor entstanden sind. Denn diese Abgase werden durch ein spezielles Rohr ins Wageninnere geleitet, anstatt, wie normalerweise, frei an die Luft zu entweichen; und so werden die Menschen durch das Kohlenmonoxyd getötet.


My translation:

Quote:
Among the trucks there were giant one with doors that closed hermetically.... These hermetically closed vans are called ‘dushegubky’, which in Russian means ‘soul killer’. They already bring along dead people who don’t have to be shot anymore. The people are poisoned during the drive by gases and exhaust fumes that are created by the combustion of gasoline in the motor.[my emphasis] This because the exhaust is led through a special valve into the inside of the van instead of freely vanishing into the air as it normally would, and thus the people are killed by the carbon monoxide.


Chugunov: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 91)

Boris Dobin: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 91 and following)

Lauer: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 93)

Bauer: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 93)

Willi Friedrich: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 94 and following)

Wilhelm Findeisen: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 95)

Robert Mohr: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 96)

Ljudmila Nazarevskaya: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 97)

Kotov: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 101 and following)

Paul Zapp: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 104 and following)

Johannes Schlupper: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 105 and following)

Eugenia Ostrovec: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 106 and following)

2. Gas vans used in Yugoslavia and Eastern Poland

Dr. Harald Turner (letter to Wolff of 11 April 1942): No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 107 and following)

Hedwig Schönfein: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 108)

Benno Goldbrand: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, page 109)

3. Gas vans used at Chelmno

Walter Burmeister: Gasoline engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 115, 123 and following, 125 and following, 129 and following)

Quote:
[…]Die Wagen waren mittelschwere Renault-Lastwagen mit Ottomotor. Sie ließen sich schlecht fahren, weil sie nicht einen so großen Wendekreis hatten. Der zeitweise hinzugekommene dritte Wagen war wohl ein schwerer. Die Wagen hatten Kastenaufbau mit einer großen Zweiflügeltür an der Rückseite, ähnlich wie Möbelwagen.[…]


My translation:

Quote:
[...]The vans were medium size Renault trucks with Otto engines.[my emphasis] They were hard to drive because they didn’t have so big a turning circle. The temporarily added third van must have been a heavy one. The vans had a box-like buildup with a big two-wing door at the back side, similar to furniture vans.[...]


Johann H. and Johann P. before the Vienna County Court: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 116 and following)

Kurt Möbius: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 122 and following)

Wilfried Heukelbach: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 124 and following)

Gustav Laabs: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 126 and following)

Walter Piller: Gasoline engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 138 and following)

Quote:
[...]Während der Fahrt wurde durch den Kraftfahrer Laabs ein Ventil geöffnet, durch welches Gas einströmte, welches die Insassen in 2-3 Minuten tötete. Hierbei handelte es sich um Gase, die durch den Benzinmotor erzeugt wurden.[...]
.

My translation:

Quote:
[...]During the drive the driver Laabs opened a valve, through which gas streamed in, which killed those inside within 2-3 minutes. These were gases that had been created by the gasoline motor.[my emphasis][...]
.

4. Gas chambers of Belzec extermination camp

Karl Alfred Schluch: No mention of type of engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 167 and following)

Gerstein: diesel engine (Kogon et al, as above, pages 171 and following)

Pfannenstiel: No mention of type of engine. Speaks of a 100 BHP motor that was run with diesel fuel (“Er wurde mit Dieselkraftstoff betrieben”)

Reder: gasoline engine

Christopher Browning wrote:
[…]Gerstein, citing Globocnik, claimed the camps used diesel motors, but witnesses who actually serviced the engines in Belzec and Sobibor (Reder and Fuchs) spoke of gasoline engines.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com/e ... .asp#5.4.5

5. Gas chambers of Sobibor extermination camp

Fuchs: gasoline engine. See Kogon et al, as above, pages 158 and following and Browning, as above. Translation of Fuchs’ deposition:

Quote:
Testimony of SS Scharfuhrer Erich Fuchs, in the Sobibor-Bolender trial, Dusseldorf: (Quoted in "BELZEC, SOBIBOR, TREBLINKA - the Operation Reinhard Death Camps", Indiana University Press - Yitzhak Arad, 1987, p. 31-32). .....We unloaded the motor. It was a heavy Russian benzine engine, at least 200 horsepower.[my emphasis] We installed the engine on a concrete foundation and set up the connection between the exhaust and the tube. I then tested the motor. It did not work. I was able to repair the ignition and the valves, and the motor finally started running. The chemist, who I knew from Belzec, entered the gas chamber with measuring instruments to test the concentration of the gas. Following this, as gassing experiment was carried out. If my memory serves me right, about thirty to forty women were gassed in one gas chamber. The Jewish women were forced to undress in an open place close to the gas chamber, and were driven into the gas chamber by the above mentioned SS members and the Ukrainian auxiliaries. when the women were shut up in the gas chamber I and Bolender set the motor in motion. The motor functioned first in neutral. Both of us stood by the motor and switched from "Neutral" (Freiauspuff) to "Cell" (Zelle), so that the gas was conveyed to the chamber. At the suggestion of the chemist, I fixed the motor on a definite speed so that it was unnecessary henceforth to press on the gas. About ten minutes later the thirty to forty women were dead.


Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... /fuchs.t01

This inconvenient witness provided the most detailed description of a gassing engine available, and he expressly mentioned a gasoline engine.

So he must have been lying, “Revisionist” faith says. All the way to a four year prison sentence for assistance to murder. Proof that he lied, in the “real world” of “Revisionists”: he didn’t describe the device with the level of detail that the true believers would like to believe a “true technician” would have, or something like that.

6. Gas chambers of Treblinka extermination camp

Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland, based on the testimonials of Jankiel Wiernik, Henryk Poswolski, Abe Kon, Aron Czechowicz, Oskar Strawczynski, Samuel Reisman, Aleksander Kudlik, Hejnoch Brener, Starislaw Kon, Eugeniusz Turowski, Henryk Reichman, Szyja Warszawsski, and Leon Finkelsztejn: No mention of the type of engine.

Quote:
The aspect of the chambers in which victims were gasssed, according to statements by the witnesses Wiernik, Rajchman and Czechowicz, was as follows: Both buildings had many corridors, within the larger building the entrances to the chambers being on both sides of the corridor, but in the smaller one on one side only. The entrances were small and had tightly closing doors. In the outer wall’s of the chambers were large trap doors which could be raised in order to permit the removal of the corpses. The chambers had tiled floors, sloping towards the outer side. In the ceiling were openings connected by pipes with engines situated in adjoining buildings, which produced the CO gas with which the victims were suffocated.


Source of quote:

http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpoltreb1.htm

Ya’akov Wiernik at the Eichmann trial: No mention of type of engine.

Quote:
[…]Q. Where did the gas enter?

A. That is in the sketch. Here was the gas engine, the engine which forced the gas in. And there were pipes with valves. They would open the valve into the chamber where the people were. There was an engine of a Soviet tank standing there, and in this way the gas was introduced. Here were the doors where people entered from one side, and, on the other, this was the large door which opened along almost the entire wall. And, after forty to forty-five minutes had passed, they would stop, they would open the door, and the dead bodies would fall out. And here was a spare engine next to the three. Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 26 were the engines that generated the electricity, and there, too, there was a motor.

Q. I understand from this that the gas was produced on the spot, or was it brought in ready-made from outside?

A. The gas was produced on the spot.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.ukar.org/eichma02.shtml

Eliahu Rosenberg at the Eichmann trial: No mention of type of engine. Speaks of “Ropa, which was a kind of oil, a crude oil” as having been the fuel they put into the gassing engine. Possible conclusions see my last post on this thread.

Quote:
[…]Q. Where did the gas come from?

A. The gas came from an engine.

Q. They did not bring it from outside — it was produced on the spot?

A. It was Ropa — Ropa gas.

Q. Was it manufactured by an engine, from the exhaust of a diesel engine?

A. Yes. It was gas from an engine. They put in Ropa, which was a kind of oil, a crude oil, and the fumes entered the gas chambers. The people who were the last to enter the gas chambers, the very last, received stabs in the bodies from the bayonets, since the last persons already saw what was going on inside and did not want to enter. Four hundred people were put into one small gas chamber. And when they forced them in, they, on their part, pressed inwards and in this way reached the full capacity, so that only with difficulty could the outer door of the chamber be shut.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.ukar.org/eichma02.shtml

Otto Horn before the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, 26 February 1980: No mention of type of engine. See transcription of interrogation protocol under

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hor ... n-004.html

Adolf Eichmann: No mention of type of engine.

Quote:
[…]Höfle told the police captain to explain the installation to me. And then he started in. He had a, well, let's say, a vulgar, uncultivated voice. Maybe he drank. He spoke some dialect from the southwestern corner of Germany, and he told me how he had made everything airtight. It seems they were going to hook up a Russian submarine engine and pipe the exhaust into the houses and the Jews inside would be poisoned.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eic ... n-004.html

Rudolf Höß: No mention of type of engine.

Quote:
[…]The camp commandant at Treblinka told me that he had liquidated 80,000 in the course of half a year. He was principally concerned with liquidating all the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto. He used monoxide gas and I did not think that his methods were very efficient.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/aktion ... linka.html

Pavel Vladimirovich Leleko before the Fourth Department of the "SMERSH" Directorate of Counterintelligence of the Second Belorussian Front: diesel engine.

Quote:
[…]The road from the undressing rooms, fenced on both sides by barbed wire intertwined with branches led to the gas chamber building where people were exterminated with gas obtained from running diesel engines.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... leleko.001

Nikolai Petrovich Malagon, interrogated in Zaporozh'ye, March 18, 1978: diesel engine

Quote:
[…]Pipes carrying exhaust gas from running diesel motors were installed in the gas chambers and the people inside perished.[…]


Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... alagon.001

7. The impression conveyed by the above collection of depositions is the following:

a) Most witnesses to gassings with engine exhaust don’t mention the type of engine at all.

b) Those who do mention it casually, without making a big deal out of it.

c) Regarding the gas vans, the only depositions mentioning the type of engine expressly speak of gasoline engines.

d) Regarding Sobibor, the only deposition that addresses the type of engine expressly mentions a gasoline engine.

e) Regarding Belzec, the only deposition expressly mentioning a diesel engine is that of Gerstein, and outsider who, according to Browning, didn’t see the engine himself. Another outside observer, Pfannenstiel, speaks of an engine running on diesel fuel, which doesn’t necessarily mean that the engine itself was a diesel engine, see below. Of the depositions of camp insiders, one (Schluch) doesn’t mention the type of engine at all and the other (Reder) speaks of a gasoline engine.

f) Of the depositions regarding Treblinka, only two mention the type of engine, and these speak of a diesel engine. Both come from former Ukrainian camp guards not involved in the operation of the gassing engine, and neither is detailed enough to establish whether the witnesses based their descriptions on features they observed themselves or on what they heard from others, making it impossible to assess the accuracy of their statements ("critical" as "Revisionists" are regarding the details of the inconvenient deposition of Fuchs, they wouldn't think of even mentioning the lack of detail of the depositions of Leleko and Malagon, for obvious reasons). The depositions of the witnesses who testified before the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland seem to have left the type of engine unmentioned or to have been inconclusive in this respect, or then the Commission didn’t consider this detail worth mentioning. Eichmann and Höß do not mention the type of engine, and they obviously didn’t see the engine but described it after what they heard from others. The depositions of Wiernik and Rosenberg at the Eichmann trial and the deposition of Horn before the Ohio District Court, on the other hand, are based on what the witnesses saw themselves and constitute the most detailed descriptions of the gassing device among those collected. Neither of these two descriptions clearly points towards one or the other type of engine, however. Rosenberg’s statement that the engine ran with “Ropa”, a Polish term for rock oil or diesel oil, makes it possible that what he considered to have been the gassing engine was a diesel engine. It is equally possible, however, that the engine was a gasoline engine run on diesel fuel for gassing purposes, or that Rosenberg confounded the gassing engine, which was a gasoline engine running on gasoline, with one of a number of diesel engines used to generate electricity for the camp.

g) At any rate, there is no such thing as a convergence of eyewitness testimonials on the use of diesel engines, nor did any of the witnesses seem to have given any significance to the detail what type of engine was used. Thus the diesel engine “myth within a myth” that Berg makes such a fuss about seems to be little other than a windmill he built himself in order to have something to furiously race against. One of the many such paper dragons the valiant “Revisionist” dragon slayers like to impress their gullible followers with.

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=20051

User avatar
Roberto
Member
Posts: 4505
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 16:35
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

#14

Post by Roberto » 02 Jul 2003, 12:28

Scott Smith wrote:Indeed, it would have been easier for the SS mechanics to get a gasoline motor from a tank or a truck, so I asked long ago why they went out of their way to get a diesel engine for gassing? Well, obviously they didn't--as I have long argued.
If Smith had so argued, all these lengthy and boring diesel discussions would never have taken place.

The problem is that Smith's argument didn't go like "I don't think they used diesel engines. It is more probable that they used gasoline engines and that witnesses who spoke of diesel engines were somehow mistaken."

It went like: "It they had been serious about killing, they would have used gasoline engines rather than the diesel engines made up by hoaxing propagandists."

There's nothing wrong with pointing out the possibility of an inaccuracy regarding a certain detail, but questioning the occurrence of large-scale mass murder on account of such a possibility (assuming Smith’s "technical arguments" against diesel engines are pertinent, that is), despite all the evidence that renders it irrelevant, is an attitude that sucks.
Scott Smith wrote:They may have salvaged a diesel engine from a KV-1 or even a T-34 or a smaller one from a German truck to use as a powerplant to generate camp power and/or to pump water. I don't know where they got the electrical generator or pump equipment, however. This is an engineering problem that I could personally solve, but it wouldn't just happed because somebody willed it or siad so afterwards; there would be lots of details to iron out. My point is that those details as related are suspiciously thin considering we are talking about a novel mass-murder weapon here.
See, Smith, that's where you incur in a grievous flaw of reasoning (assuming you're not just parroting guru Berg, that is).

What on earth makes you think that historiography and criminal justice are or should be concerned with how a "novel mass-murder weapon" worked?

In the context of a criminal investigation, the details of the murder weapon, be it banal or "novel", matter only insofar as they provide hints about the identity of the murderer, like ballistics tracing the bullet found in the victim's body to a certain gun and the proverbial fingerprints linking that gun to a certain person.

In the context of a criminal trial, the details of the murder weapon only matter insofar as they are required to establish a defendant's individual deeds and guilt.

I don't see what delving into the exact construction and functioning of the gassing engine - assuming this was possible at all, which is rather questionable given that the SS completely dismantled the camps, most of the witnesses were not technical people and those from the ranks of the surviving inmates would understandably have been concerned with other things than the type and construction of the gassing engine, even if they ever got close enough to the engine room to observe it - could have contributed to either of the above during the investigations or at the trials related to the mass killings at the Aktion Reinhard(t) extermination camps, and although I have often asked you to explain to us why you think these details would have been relevant to the investigations and trials at hand, I have never seen anything even coming close to a convincing answer.

As to historiography, I don’t think this discipline sees it as it’s task to research the functioning of however "novel" murder weapons, concerned as it is with the events themselves and the question why they occurred. I don’t know of a historian who dedicated more than a few passing notes to the question whether this or that killing method was used and how exactly a given killing method functioned, in regard to any historical event. If, however, you can show us any or provide quotes from a treatise on the art and science of historiography that pronounce the investigation of such details to be an important component of historical research, feel free to do so.

To sum it up, your statement that a rather understandable lack of detail on a secondary issue is "suspicious" blinks at the realities and tasks of criminal investigation and historical research and betrays not scepticism, but a pathetic urge to grab any straw you can reach in order to question the occurrence of events inconvenient to your ideological articles of faith. The reason why you grab such straws is, quite obviously, your inability to answer questions like the following:

1. Court experts and historians who have assessed the documentary evidence concluded that all pertinent documents – correspondence among officials as well as train schedules, timetables and other transportation documents – clearly point to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka as the final destinations. There is not a single document, however detailed, that even hints at the Jews taken to these camps going any further. Why would this be so if the deportees "sifted through" these camps were being taken "to the Russian East", as was stated in the Korherr Report ?

2. The rail line leading to Treblinka was a side-track of the line going from Warsaw to Bialystok in Northeast Poland. Bialystok was the closest point to the Soviet Union, anyone from Treblinka being resettled in the Soviet occupied territory had to pass through there. Yet a German railroad table for Bialystok shows Jews being taken from there to Treblinka, with the empty cars returning to Bialystok. In other words, they were being moved away from the Soviet territories by being sent to Treblinka. Why was this so?

3. The resettlement of ca. 1.5 million people (the number of victims of the "Aktion Reinhard(t)" camps according to the Düsseldorf County Court’s judgement at the first Treblinka trial, 1965) in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union would have been a complex operation, requiring hundreds if not thousands of German officials to carry it out and at least as many people involved in building projects. Yet no one has ever come forward to testify about such a resettlement, even though this would have made an ideal defence at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and subsequent trials. Former high-ranking transportation specialists in Germany during the war did not offer Soviet resettlement as a defence in post-war trials, even though they denied having known the real purpose of the train transport. No war crimes defendant actually offered resettlement as a defence, even those who denied knowledge of the genocide. Why was this so?

4. As becomes apparent from a number of documents regarding the "economic aspects" of "Operation Reinhard" (alternatively spelled "Reinhardt" or "Reinhart", I’ll use the "Reinhard" spelling for convenience in the following), the Jews taken to Belzec, Sobibor or Treblinka were stripped of all their belongings there, including their clothing. Why would that have been done if they were going to be resettled – unless "resettlement" was to be to a place where they would need no clothing anymore?

5. Why would the Nazis, concerned as they were about preserving their own resources and robbing the Jews of everything they had, have invested large sums of money – far more than the costs of the killing operation, which are exactly known from Globocnik’s correspondence with Himmler – into a resettlement project?

6. Why were there so many dead bodies at Treblinka in October of 1942 that they could not be sufficiently buried, thus creating a stench that befouled the air as far as Ostrow, 20 kilometers away, which led the local Wehrmacht commander to raise an official complaint about that stench?

7. How many whole bodies, and how many bodies reduced to ashes and other partial remains, fit into pits 7.5 meters deep (judging by the depth to which ashes, bone fragments and other partial human remains were detected) in the burial area more than 20,000 square meters long and wide that was found after the war by the Central Commission for the Investigation of German Crimes in Poland? Was there room enough for, say, the 713,555 Jews from the General Government taken to Treblinka until 31.12.1942, according to the Höfle's report to Heim of 11 January 1943, or was there not?

Charles Bunch
Member
Posts: 846
Joined: 12 Mar 2002, 21:03
Location: USA

Re: What kind of diesel engines where used???

#15

Post by Charles Bunch » 02 Jul 2003, 14:20

Scott Smith wrote:
Charles Bunch wrote:
Scott Smith wrote:
De Ruyter wrote:I was wondering what kind of diesel engines where used for extermination of people in for example the Belzec death camp??? If anyone knows what kind, I would be grateful for any replies or messages you would have time to post or send me!
If it was a diesel engine captured from a Soviet tank it would have to be a W-2, which was twelve-cylinders and water-cooled of about 38 liters displacement and about 500 brake-horsepower at 1500 rpm. These were used in all heavy Soviet tanks.
Diesel Engines (T-34 Tanks)

The first production-line models were fitted with V-2 diesel engines, but shortages meant that some of these early models were equipped with the older M-17 petrol engines.
Russian Tanks of World War II
Stalins Armored Might
Tim Bean & Will Fowler
MBI Publishing
2002
p. 100
Hi Chuck,

Read what I wrote above again. To make it easier for you I have bolded the operative phrase and the word diesel in red.

This means that if it were a diesel engine it had to have come from a Soviet tank or a German truck.
Actually, that's not what you said.

But I'll try to make it easy for you.

You claimed the engine was a W-2. You were wrong. The engine was a V-2. From time to time you might want to offer some sources for your claims, because the occasional spot check raises some questions.

I also wanted the readers to know that the T-34 tank was not necessarily a diesel. Do you deny that deniers have claimed the T-34 was a diesel? The way you do below?
Scott wrote:

POSTED Wed Dec 11, 2002 4:24 am Post subject: Re: SGT. FUCHS: I Know Something, Something...

Sailor wrote:
By the way, I always thought that the Soviets used diesel engines in their tanks. I read that somewhere.

In the earlier part of the war the Soviets had a lot of lighter tanks like the T-24, so we could have eight-cylinder engines of either gasoline or diesel motors (more-usually gasoline) of about 200 or 300 horsepower.

The Soviet heavy tanks like the KV-1, T-34, and IS-2 all had a standard 500 brake-horsepower W-2 diesel powerplant. All Soviet tank production switched to heavier tanks and diesel engines, and they could have been salvaged to make camp powerplants if an electrical generator of about 1500 rpm were also available. (That is a lot of power, 373 mechanical kilowatts.)
Another denier canard bites the dust.

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