A question for Michael Mills.

[tonyh]

Hello Michael. In a recent thread you mentioned something about David Irvings misdemeanors in his writing. I was wondering if you could list the number of the alledged misquotes, lies and mistranslations attributed against Irving. Since the trial, it seems that a lot of people believe that every single book of his is riddled with either holo denial, mistranslations or outright lies. Most of these people have obviously not read any of the books at all, it seems and it just adds to the overall confusion of the matter.

If this is a bothersome task, then don't bother doing it. But you do have "insider information" if you will, so you you would be the perfect person to clear this up, once and for all. Again, I only ask you to do this if you have the info ready at hand, as it were.

Thanks in advance,

Tony

[Hans]

I was wondering if you could list the number of the alledged misquotes, lies and mistranslations attributed against Irving.

Tony, this is a mistranslation and misinterpretation of evidence from his webpage:

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/Fle ... 50942.html

Irving has translated "Feldöfen Aktion Reinhard" as "field kitchens for Operation Reinhard". If a field kitchen is for cooking meals for the army then this is a brilliant example for Irving's lack of knowledge on Auschwitz and dishonest use of German language, if this is not a deliberate attempt to falsify the evidence. According to Walther Dejaco and Rudolf Höß (who were ordering the car), they were inspecting a facility for open air cremation of corpses designed by the SS man Blobel in Lodz. Dejaco has even drawn a scetch of this facility at his trial in Vienna. Feldöfen has to be translated as "field oven" and interpreted in the historical context, it was a facility for destroying corpses. Linguistically, Irving's translation is misleading, historically, it is false. That's the brave "schoolar" David Irving, too.

regards, Hans

PS: Why on earth does Irving put such small images on his webpage. Does he want to damage the eyesight of his readers or is that a trick to camouflage his falsifications? I made a transcript of the document:

Code: Select all

                                        A b s c h r i f t
                                -----------------------------
Funk-Spruch Nr. 52
                                         Angekommen: 15.9.42   1744
Absendende Stelle: 
                            An: 
W.V.H.A.                      K.L. Au.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
               Betr.: Fahrgenehmigung
               Bezug: Dort. Antrag v. 14.9.42
                      Fahrgen. für einen PKW. von Au. nach Litzmannstadt
               und zurück zwecks Besichtigung der Versuchstation für Feld-
               öfen Aktion Reinhard wird hiermit für den 16.9.42 erteilt.
                     Die Fahrgen. ist dem Kraftfahrer mitzugeben.
                                   Der Chef der Amtsgr. D
                                   gez. Glücks
                                   SS-Brigadef. u. Generalmajor
F.d.R.                             der Waffen-SS, Leiter der 
gez. Belle                         Dienstst. im Range eines General-
Funkstellenleiter                   leutnants der Waffen-SS
F.d.R.d.A.:
[Unterschrift]
SS-Hauptsturmführer und Adjudant
[Stempel]

[walterkaschner]

Tonyh,

You may be asking quite a lot of Mr. Mills. I would suspect that tracking down and verifying all of David Irving's "misquotes, lies and mistranslations" would require an enormous expenditure of time and effort. For starters you might look at the Expert Witness Report of Richard J. Evans, Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, submitted for the defense in David Irving vs. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt, which can be found in its entirety at the following site:

http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.com

Evans' analysis of Irving's integrity and credibility as a historian does not purport to be exhaustive (although it is in fact exhausting), and no doubt he tried to pick out only the most egregious examples of Irving's sins as a historian, but it seems a good place to start. Irving had the opportunity to cross examine Evans at trial and tried to throw up some smoke while doing so, but was basically unable (or unwilling even to seriously try) to shake the damning evidence provided in Evans Report. I've read someplace but have forgotten precisely how much time Evans spent in researching his Report and how much he charged for it, but it was a tidy sum indeed. To comb through all of Irving's works and do the research and analysis required to compile an exhaustive tally of his sins might well be the work of a lifetime. I am sure that were Mr. Mills to take on the task he would earn the gratitude of all and sundry, but think it may be simply too much to ask. But I would be very pleased to be proven wrong.

Regards, Kaschner

[Erik]

Feldöfen has to be translated as "field oven" and interpreted in the historical context, it was a facility for destroying corpses. Linguistically, Irving's translation is misleading, historically, it is false.

Irving has translated "Feldöfen Aktion Reinhard" as "field kitchens for Operation Reinhard". If a field kitchen is for cooking meals for the army then this is a brilliant example for Irving's lack of knowledge on Auschwitz and dishonest use of German language, if this is not a deliberate attempt to falsify the evidence.

Since we are now into the subjects of misleading linguistics and historical falsification, perhaps we are here facing a concrete example that may distinguish those who are accused of following political agendas and having their view disturbed by ideological bubbles, from those who just "follow the facts"?

If Irving had translated "Feldöfen" as “field oven” then he would necessarily have implied the “grills” that Blobel invented for the “Enterdungsaktion”?

What is the difference between a “Feldofen” and a “Feldküche”? A “field oven” and a “field kitchen”? Doesn’t the latter include the former? A kitchen usually includes an oven? Even a “field kitchen”?

Irving implies that the officers inspected more than those ovens, since they necessarily had to inspect them in kitchen surroundings?

The designation “Aktion Reinhard(t)” is itself an example of the “Tarnsprache” that the Nazis used to hide their real purposes.

The designation “Feldöfen” must have been adapted as a “Tarnsprache” too. They could not possibly have written “Scheiterhaufen” or “Leichen-Rosten”!

But since every scholar of these documents agree among themselves that the terms used by the Germans must be decoded to be rightly understood to imply the Final Solution, you will arrive at the paradox that it is Irving that interpret the document as the Germans wanted them to be interpreted by an uninformed reader, that is : he is true to the original meaning and purpose of the words used.

His falsification and misleading linguistics must then consist in his failure to decode and interpret it properly, that is, as a documentary proof of the Enterdungsaktion.

“… Besichtigung der Versuchstation für Feldöfen Aktion Reinhard…”! According to “Hans”, these words must be translated as “..inspection of the experimental station of field ovens for Action Reinhard..”. (?).

Why would the Germans need something like a “experimental station” for something as common and everyday in the war fields as “field kitchens”?

Maybe to avoid the suspicion that the absurd “Tarnversuch” with an “experimental station” for “Feldküche” would raise among the enemy if the letter fell into its hands, the choise fell on the word “Feldöfen”. “Öfen”, ovens, stoves, have a definitely less commonplace association than “kitchen” – it has sinister connotations too, of course ; like “crematory ovens” etc, but the equivocation of the word could only work for its’ best.

And the reader of the report – in Berlin? – would of course know what it was all about!?!

On another thread here at “Warcrimes&the Holocaust” there has been a discussion concerning the application of the term “theology”, “the rational analysis of a religious faith” (Oxford Concise Dict.), as an abuse.

The consensus exists, at least, that the term is applicable to the opponents.

The whole world knew that the Germans were building death factories in Eastern Europe at this time. Reports were given by spies and the Resistance Movements during the whole war. Hundreds, if not thousands, of witnesses saw the mass shootings and the mass graves, and the subsequent Enterdungsaktion.

The perpetrators themselves confessed readily when they fell into the hands of the victors.

What could be the use of a Tarnsprache? To mislead whom? About what? Something that everybody knew?

Maybe the Germans were hoping for an “Honorable Peace” with the Western powers, and that they hoped that a documentary record that could be “denied” because of a successfully implemented Tarnsprache would ingratiate themselves with the public opinion in those countries? The accusations from the war areas of the East could be labelled “communist propaganda”? Their interpretation of the written record be dismissed as….theology?

Then the term “theology” could be applied to the efforts to interpret the written record to gain support for an established Order, like theology in at least one sense of the term is applied to the interpretation of the Written Words of the Fathers in order to gain support of a Church.

What does “Feldöfen” mean? Are there any “Feldöfen” left that can be interpreted?

What does the pluralis imply? Did Blobel supply different solutions to the open air cremations?

[Scott Smith]

Perhaps I have missed something here, but...

The German Army marched on its stomach and got its bread baked from field ovens pulled by horsecart. This allowed them to live off the land as much as possible. I recall reading somewhere that they had trouble with archaic ovens looted from the Polish Army, which used too much fuel.

No, the Germans didn't have steaks and Aquafina choppered out to them as Americans might expect these days.

[Hans]

Perhaps I have missed something here, but...

The German Army marched on its stomach and got its bread baked from field ovens pulled by horsecart.

The persons who went to Lodz to inspect Blobel's cremation facilities were Höß, Walter Dejaco, who designed the crematoria of Birkenau, and Franz Hössler, who emptied the mass graves later on. Dejaco and Hössler were in Auschwitz the specialists on body disposal. Dejaco wrote a report about this trip using the term "Sonderanlage", special facility to describe Blobel's ovens (Dejaco testified later that his superiour Bischoff told him not to use incriminating language in the correspondence) . He noted that Blobel ordered a mill for grinding substances for them.
Dejaco testified at his trial in Vienna that they were inspecting open air cremation facilities of Blobel, a bone grinder and added a drawing of the oven to his testimony.
Höß wrote in his manuscript that he and Hössler were inspecting "various ovens" to cremate corpses. Note that he used the same term as in the document: ovens. Höß also mentions the bone grinder mentioned in Dejaco's report.

Now, Scott, do you think that the commandant of Auschwitz and his two body disposal specialists were inspecting Blobel's (!) field oven for baking bread + bone grinder or Blobel's field oven for corpses and a bone grinder? What makes more sense, let aside that Höß and Dejaco have testified about the latter?

Hans


Paul Blobel, the "master baker" of Chelmno

[michael mills]

The date of the visit to Lodz, September 1942, suggests that it was connected to the disinterment and cremation of the bodies buried at Birkenau. That took place in the autumn of 1942.

The reason for the disinterment was that the buried bodies were polluting the groundwater, causing complaints from the nearby town of Auschwitz.

Large numbers of bodies had been buried at Birkenau since the Spring of 1942 since the crematorium in KL Auschwitz had broken down, and the crematoria planned for Birkenau had not yet been built.

At Chelmno, the bodies buried were being disinterred and cremated on open pyres. That was the method later adopted for getting rid of the accumulated corpses at Birkenau.

One question is, why was the designation "Feldoefen Aktion Reinhard" used. Chelmno was not part of Aktion Reinhardt, and was not under the command of Globocnik. It was under the command of Herbert Lange, and later Bothmann, both of the Security Police.

[Hans]

One question is, why was the designation "Feldoefen Aktion Reinhard" used.

And, what do you think?
Globocnik's note to Himmler

"Ich habe mit dem 19.10.43 die Aktion Reinhard, die ich im Generalgouvernement geführt habe, abgeschlossen und alle Lager aufgelöst."

and in contrast to that, Pohl's Auschwitz trip-report from September 1942, this radio message from the WVHA and Höss' definition in his manuscript "The final solution of the Jewish question in the KL Auschwitz" indicate that there was some kind of confusion amongst the different offices and authorities in September 1942 about the meaning of "Aktion Reinhard". What is obvious is that Pohl, the WVHA and Höss understand something different under the term "Aktion Reinhard" then Globocnik.

[Scott Smith]

Perhaps I have missed something here, but...

The German Army marched on its stomach and got its bread baked from field ovens pulled by horsecart.

Now, Scott, do you think that the commandant of Auschwitz and his two body disposal specialists were inspecting Blobel's (!) field oven for baking bread + bone grinder or Blobel's field oven for corpses and a bone grinder? What makes more sense, let aside that Höß and Dejaco have testified about the latter?

No, but all of these people were testifying in captivity and we should question everything they said. Furthermore, if you want to forge a document you start with something innocuous and make as few changes as possible to make it sinister. That is what I think happened with the Gas-Van documents. Cremation in wartime (or baking bread) is not sinister. The question is, does this prove mass-murder?

[Erik]

What is obvious is that Pohl, the WVHA and Höss understand something different under the term "Aktion Reinhard" then Globocnik.

Here is Hilberg’s discussion of the implementation of the Final Solution:

<But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.>
Quoted in: George De Wan, "The Holocaust in Perspective," Newsday (Long Island, New York), Feb. 23, 1983, p. II/3. Also quoted in the Summer 1985 Journal, pp. 170-171.

Here is Hilberg’s description of how the Nazi regime worked:


"As the Nazi regime developed over the years, the whole structure of decision-making was changed. At first there were laws. Then there were decrees implementing laws. Then a law was made saying, 'There shall be no laws.' Then there were orders and directives that were written down, but still published in ministerial gazettes. Then there was government by announcement; orders appeared in newspapers. Then there were the quiet orders, the orders that were not published, that were within the bureaucracy, that were oral. And finally, there were no orders at all. Everybody knew what he had to do."

http://www.facing.org/facing/fhao2.nsf/ ... endocument

<Endlösung : Begriff der nat.soz. Tarnsprache, mit dem ab Frühjahr 1941 die beabsichtigte Deportation und Ermordung aller Juden im nat.soz. Machtbereich umschrieben wurde.>
[Teil II: Lexikon: Endlösung, S. 1. Digitale Bibliothek Band 25: Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, S. 1291 (vgl. EdNS, S. 446) (c) Verlag Klett-Cotta]

I.e.:

“The Final Solution : a term from the national socialistic code language, with which the planned deportation and murder of all Jews within the nat. soc. power area was paraphrased.” (Benz,Graml,Weiss : Encyclopaedia of National Socialism)

From the same Encyclopaedia :

<Obwohl die Arbeitskraft der KZ-Häftlinge immer wichtiger wurde, verhinderten Pohl und das WVHA weder die »Vernichtung durch Arbeit« noch gar den Genozid an den Juden.>
[Teil II: Lexikon: SS-Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-Hauptamt (WVHA), S. 2. Digitale Bibliothek Band 25: Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, S. 2625 (vgl. EdNS, S. 744) (c) Verlag Klett-Cotta]

“Although the labor force of the KZ prisoners became more and more important, did Pohl and the WVHA hinder neither the “Extermination through Work” nor the genocide of the Jews.”

What happened? Did the “minds” fail to “meet”(Hilberg)? Was the communication via Tarnsprache, code language, not properly “codified”?

Globocnic told Gerstein (in code language?) that Hitler visited Belzec two days before Gerstein, and asked them to “hurry up” with the Final Solution!

Nobody believes this, of course, but can it be a part of the “reading of minds” that Hilberg discusses? Globocnik can have misinterpreted the “codes”? Listened to Hitler’s political speeches (“Ausrottung”) and “misread the Führer’s mind”?

Is this the unavoidable quandry emanating from a bureaucracy depending on mind-reading instead of “blueprints”? "Then there were the quiet orders, the orders that were not published, that were within the bureaucracy, that were oral. And finally, there were no orders at all. Everybody knew what he had to do."(Hilberg)

Could Pohl, Höss and WVHA have hindered Globocnik when they discovered his misreading of the codes?

Instead they decided to have the death camps destroyed (persuaded Himmler?) and implement their own interpretation of the code “Endlösung“ – supplanting “Aktion Reinhard” – at Auschwitz?

A different one from Globocnik's?

[Roberto]

No, but all of these people were testifying in captivity and we should question everything they said.

Why so, Mr. Smith? Because they had an interest in making false self-incriminatory statements? Because there were substantial contradictions between the various statements, although they were made independently and without knowledge of each other? Or because what they said does not fit into “our” ideological bubble?

Furthermore, if you want to forge a document you start with something innocuous and make as few changes as possible to make it sinister.

How does Mr. Smith know that? Has he ever been in contact with a forger of incriminating documents used for forensic purposes?

That is what I think happened with the Gas-Van documents.

On what basis, other than your discomfort with the contents of these documents?

Cremation in wartime (or baking bread) is not sinister. The question is, does this prove mass-murder?

Depends. If a camp has an installed cremation capacity out of all proportion to the expectable mortality of its permanent population, I’d say this cremation capacity alone leaves little room for that as to its intended use.

[Roberto]

Instead they decided to have the death camps destroyed (persuaded Himmler?) and implement their own interpretation of the code “Endlösung“ – supplanting “Aktion Reinhard” – at Auschwitz?

A different one from Globocnik's?

The concept of the Aktion Reinhard(t) camps Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka and of Chelmno in the Warthegau was indeed different from that of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek. The former four were merely killing centers, were people were taken for no other purpose than being killed there right away (the strongest and/or most skilled ones were spared for some time so they could help out in the killing and body disposal, for sure). The purpose of the latter, on the other hand, was not merely extermination, but also extraction of slave labor. Hence Jewish arrivals deemed as “fit to work” were granted a respite from death until they became useless due to hunger and/or disease and/or exhaustion and/or brutal treatment.

[Scott Smith]

No, but all of these people were testifying in captivity and we should question everything they said.

Why so, Mr. Smith?

Because the SYSTEM had a vested interest in German guilt. Rather simple, really. In law it is called a conflict-of-interest, and here that is an understatement.

But we've discussed this before, haven't we?
:roll:

[Hans]

No, but all of these people were testifying in captivity and we should question everything they said.

Why so, Mr. Smith?

Because the SYSTEM had a vested interest in German guilt.

Because you say so? Come on, Scott, where do you know that any west german or austrian police officer who has interrogated former SS men had an interest in German guilt? Where do know that any west german or austrian judge of these trials had an interest in German guilt?
What do you know about these trials?

Rather simple, really.

Very simple, indeed.

[Scott Smith]

No, but all of these people were testifying in captivity and we should question everything they said.

Why so, Mr. Smith?

Because the SYSTEM had a vested interest in German guilt.

Because you say so? Come on, Scott, where do you know that any west german and austrian police officer who has interrogated former SS men had an interest in German guilt? Where do know that any west german or austrian judge of these trials had an interest in German guilt?
What do you know about these trials?

Rather simple, really.

Very simple, indeed.

Nuremberg is the founding myth of modern Germany and many parts of Europe. All it takes is looking in the mirror...