Two types of Holocaust Deniers?

[Dan]

Many pesticides are indeed, or have been developed for warfare. Chloropicrin is one I used to work with, and the organophospates I currently use to kill mites in my beehives are another.

Although I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

[Scott Smith]

My, glad to see the "scientific method" and the use of physics plays such a prominent role in our discussions.

Glad to see those Fred Luechter School of Engineering beanies here on campus; a quality education, long on civil engineering credits.

Hi Mark,

I think your problem is that you don't pay attention--which, in your defense, is not so easy to do with all the activity on this board and the inherent complexity of the threads.

I never said anything about "exploding basements." My comment about "500 thousand killed in a basement" refers to Leichenkeller II of Krema II at Auschwitz II, not to the argument at hand of exhaust-pressure and the above-ground concrete or wood structure(s) at Treblinka II (or Belzec in one reference) and whether exhaust-backpressure can put a 373 kilowatt load on a diesel engine. Any ideas, Mr. Civil Engineer?

My comment about the insecticide is accurate. That is exactly what Zyklon-B is! It is intended as a safe, easy and convenient way to deliver hydrocyanic acid SLOWLY to kill vermin, rats, lice, and so on. I have a photo taken from the 1950s showing the opening of a can of Zyklon-B (or some brand X) with a can-opener inside of an airplane cargo bay, and the technician is not even masked.

On the contrary, "cleverly minimalist" might be using the word "bugspray," so I have refrained from that term, as per your previous complaint. Nevertheless, "insecticide" is VERY accurate.

And no, HCN is not a wargas. It was tried unsuccessfully by the French for that purpose in WWI; it is simply not persistent enough for use on the battlefield. This, however, is not really relevant, as I have never disputed the toxicity of HCN to humans, just the use of Zyklon-B commerical insecticide to kill hundreds of thousands of humans in a basement. Of course, some would say that the mere presence of cans of insecticide in a Nazi concentration camp constitutes proof of mass-murder. I do not.

[Xanthro]

Many pesticides are indeed, or have been developed for warfare. Chloropicrin is one I used to work with, and the organophospates I currently use to kill mites in my beehives are another.

This is so true that during WWII, the Germans thought the U.S. chemical warfare capability exceeded their own, because U.S. pesticidal research was more advanced. While in fact, the Germans were very far ahead of the United States in chemical Research.

Xanthro

[Xanthro]

My comment about the insecticide is accurate. That is exactly what Zyklon-B is! It is intended as a safe, easy and convenient way to deliver hydrocyanic acid SLOWLY to kill vermin, rats, lice, and so one. I have a photo taken from the 1950s showing the opening of a can of Zyklon-B (or some brand X) with a can-opener inside of an airplane cargo bay, and the technician is not even masked.

If it were Zyklon-B, the person would be dead.

The dosage carried in Zyklon-B is much greater than is needed to kill a human, or hundreds of them.

While Zyklon-B is safe, easy, and convenient to transport, and is very effective at killing vermin, the only reason it kills them slowly is because of how the vermins metabolic rate reacts with HCN.

A louse, or any cold blooded creature, takes much longer to die, and much higher concentrations than a warm blooded creature.

All Zyklon-B is, is a delievery method. The proper amount of HCN must still be dispersed to be effective. Any amount that is effective against vermin, is exponentially more effective against humans.

In fact, it is so much more effective, I feel that the distributors of Zyklon-B were probably innocent of knowing that gas was being diverted. It would take less than 10% of the total sales to be diverted to homocidal use to kill over 1 million people.

HCN is nearly the perfect execution gas, which is why it is still used today.

Xanthro

[Tarpon27]

Scott wrote:I never said anything about "exploding basements." My comment about "500 thousand killed in a basement" refers to Leichenkeller II of Krema II at Auschwitz II, not to the argument at hand of exhaust-pressure and the above-ground concrete or wood structure(s) at Treblinka II (or Belzec in one reference) and whether exhaust-backpressure can put a 373 kilowatt load on a diesel engine. Any ideas, Mr. Civil Engineer?

No, but I do know that if, per your earlier posts on above ground structures, if 1.5 atmospheres exerts a pressure of 280 tons, than 1.0 atmospheres is ~187 tons...which it sustains from the day it was built.

And per the concrete gas chambers, basements, air raid shelters, morgues, or delousing chambers or whatever the daily use de jour is this week, you are going to need to hit pressures roughly 60 times that to crack the concrete, which STILL hardly matters.

And as far as your diesel engine obsession, I would estimate over half the threads I have read here ultimately end up with the famous diesel controversy. All under the guise of "science" and "physics".

And no, HCN is not a wargas. It was tried unsuccessfully by the French for that purpose in WWI; it is simply not persistent enough for use on the battlefield.

The Chemical Weapons Convention lists HCN as a chemical warfare agent, and it also is listed in the FOA Briefing Book on chemical weapons. While HCN, and its use has not been confirmed on any battlefield, it was a non-confirmed assertion that HCN was used in the Iran/Iraq war.

Which of course, is all rather immaterial. HCN is not some boron based insecticide, in which consumption of 7 grams directly ingested has no physical effects as listed on MSDS sheets, and comparisons of Zyklon-B and commonly used insecticides today is ludicrous. FIFRA and EPA registered pesticides and disinfectants commonly used in ordinary situations as bug sprays are hardly the physical danger to applicators or to occupants as tins of Zyklon-B were.

According to OSHA, exposure to 1/5th the level required to exterminate anachrids is lethal to humans in one minute; no new news to most here, but it is a rather telling comment on this "insecticide".

Whether or not you believe that Zyklon-B was used to gas Jews is your own belief system, but for all that Zyklon shipped to Aushwitz, it is apparent that the Nazi system of sanitation was less than effective for preventing outbreaks of disease, but then one would be a fool to believe that it was a prime concern to the camp's administration.

So, yes, I find it minimalist to refer to Zyklon-B in the manner you do. But that appears to be the point of it.

Regards,

Mark

[Scott Smith]

Mark,

Of course any structure has 1 atmosphere on it but a pressure inside of 1.5 atmospheres is a differential of 0.5 atmospheres, which even though only about 7 psi, is a lot of force for a structure of that size if it is sealed and unbraced. Some of the murder claims have involved over- and under-pressure, besides diesel exhaust.

My position is that backpressure will not put any effective load on the motor because it will just pump-up the exhaust pipe to the 15:1 compression-ratio (about 220 psi) and then stop the motor before much energy has been stored in the form of compressed air. If the chamber is a very large sealed container then it will store more energy but not support much pressure without a special design to contain the force.

Zyklon-B was commerically manufactured to kill bugs, so I'll continue calling it insecticide unless you have better nomenclature. Yes, it illustrates a fundamental problem with the reasoning on the Nazi gaschambers--and it is certainly not intended to replace argument but instead promote ideas.

I agree that the Nazis were unable to effectively control disease outbreaks in their camps. I never said they were holiday camps or anything but hell-holes. Ironically, controlling disease seems to militate against them having insecticide to spare for homicide. Even if the Nazis wanted to kill everybody who couldn't work, they still had to keep the other workers alive and protect their own personnel from epidemics. Also, most of the deaths from disease seem to have occured at the end of the war when the German transportation infrastructure was destroyed. As I am not an expert on this or questions of military sanitation, I'll let others hash it out. There were no gaschambers at Bergen-Belsen and yet it provided most of the cinematographic fodder for the Allied concentration camp propaganda upon liberation. Could the Allies have controlled the situation any better given the same circumstances? I wonder.

In any case, yes I am interested in the diesel question. If anybody doesn't like that, then that is too bad, as long as others want to discuss it. Of course, some consider discussing the scientific/engineering basis of the murder-weapon impious altogether. I do not.

If this thread has established anything it should be 1) that there is more than one side to this issue, 2) that there must have been a real-world murder-weapon for this industrialized mass-murder accusation to be real and not merely a product of atrocity-propaganda or cultural fantasy, and 3) that even the Nazis had to follow the laws of physics, all historiography, literature and testimonial aside.

Best Regards,
Scott

[Xanthro]

Of course any structure has 1 atmosphere on it but a pressure inside of 1.5 atmospheres is a differential of 0.5 atmospheres, which even though only about 7 psi, is a lot of force for a structure of that size if it is sealed and unbraced

Concrete is always braced, because it is self bracing. The load is carried in the structure itself.

Again, 7 PSI against a building is NOTHING.

You keep claiming that 80 tons of pressure against a wall is something that is so stressfull. It's NOT.

80 tons of pressure would be hard pressed to knock down a plain concrete wall, one that's not connected to other walls or a ceiling or floor.

The walls in question will weigh a substaintial portion of 80 tons.

Xanthro

[Scott Smith]

Of course any structure has 1 atmosphere on it but a pressure inside of 1.5 atmospheres is a differential of 0.5 atmospheres, which even though only about 7 psi, is a lot of force for a structure of that size if it is sealed and unbraced

Concrete is always braced, because it is self bracing. The load is carried in the structure itself.

Yes, it's reinforced with steel and it may be strong, but then why can't a bridge bear so much with a simple slab or concrete?

Again, 7 PSI against a building is NOTHING.

Or 280 tons on the floor and ceiling. I can't see a concrete box holding that much, even if you do distribute the weight evenly.

You keep claiming that 80 tons of pressure against a wall is something that is so stressfull. It's NOT.

I'm not a civil engineer and I'd rather do almost anything besides pour concrete, but I'm not really trying to blow down the wall here. I'm just saying that to contain the pressure without leaking would not be easy because of the forces involved! And if it does leak it won't contain much pressure, so it doesn't represent much load on the motor at best. Storing energy by compressing air is somewhat of interest to me because batteries are a big nuisance with wind turbines that are not connected to the power-grid, and compressed-air is a means of storing and distributing energy, or was before the advent of lightweight electric powertools.

My comment about the insecticide is accurate. That is exactly what Zyklon-B is! It is intended as a safe, easy and convenient way to deliver hydrocyanic acid SLOWLY to kill vermin, rats, lice, and so one. I have a photo taken from the 1950s showing the opening of a can of Zyklon-B (or some brand X) with a can-opener inside of an airplane cargo bay, and the technician is not even masked.

If it were Zyklon-B, the person would be dead.

It looks identical to a can of Zyklon-B with the man opening the can with a can-opener. I presume he then dumps it out and leaves. When it has degassed and remains for whatever time to do its work the area is ventilated for the required time and the inert clay pellets are swept up and thrown away or sent back for recycling. The man is not wearing a mask, which could be a posed photo, but I doubt it if safety precautions were necessary otherwise. Unfortunately, I can't prove it is really Zyklon-B since little detail is given. I'm not saying that Zyklon-B is not dangerous stuff. Perhaps Dan has some information on procedures for its use as a pesticide.

[Tarpon27]

Scott wrote: Of course any structure has 1 atmosphere on it but a pressure inside of 1.5 atmospheres is a differential of 0.5 atmospheres, which even though only about 7 psi, is a lot of force for a structure of that size if it is sealed and unbraced. Some of the murder claims have involved over- and under-pressure, besides diesel exhaust.

Without boring people to tears, and knowing that many understand this probably far better than I, but a small primer...

Imagine, for example, the "material" in question is a beam 24" x 6" x 6", or .75m x 15cm x 15cm, and yes, the geometry of the object does affect the material's strength.

Tensile strength is the ability of a material to withstand a force being applied on its axis, and trying to pull it apart. We put a cable on each end of our beam, and then measure how much force it requires to rip it in half. FIBERS need high tensile strength, for example.

Compressional strength is the ability of a material to not compress under pressure. We put our beam between two bulldozers, and attempt to push the ends towards the middle. CONCRETE is a material needing high compressional strength as it supports heavy loads on it.

Flexural strength is the ability of a material to flex without failing: breaking. We place our beam between two sawhorses, and then push down on its center with a hydraulic ram, trying to break it in two. Plastics and polymers need good flexural strength.

There is also torsional strength (attempt to twist our beam) and impact strength: our beam is hit sharply and suddenly in a small area. Ordinary glass would lack much impact strength.

There is also modulous, which is the measure of stress (our forces above in testing our beam) combined with strain, which is any deformation of the material when subjected to stress. As an example, our beam is made of a polymer (plastic), and as we attempt to check its tensile strength by pulling it apart from end-to-end (which will make it elongate, and that is strain), we measure how much force before it breaks (tensile strength) and how much force it takes to make the elongation permanent before it breaks. That is tensile modulous.

Xanthro claims standard concrete has compressional strength of around 4000 psi, flexural is around 800 psi, and tensile of around 400 psi (tensile is difficult to measure in concrete, and simply adding steel rebar or even polymer fibers makes concrete's tensile strength increase dramatically).

I know that standard 'crete is 4000 psi, and I have no argument with his figures for flexural or tensile, as they jibe with my own recollections. Now, your door argument...fir construction grade plywood has a tensile strength of around 4500-4900 psi, while sweet or yellow birch hardwood plywood is at 8500-9000 psi. Steel? 50,000 psi. The walls would shatter and be dust before breaking a steel door. Failure point would be on the fasteners and points on the door (and structural framing) where it attaches before a steel door would fail, plus these simple chambers obviously "breathed", i.e., not airtight.

While the argument is on pressurizing a concrete gas chamber with diesel exhaust, it has turned into a debate on structural integrity by pressurizing said structure. If I may, your argument is, Scott, that even increasing pressure to 1.5 atmospheres (1.0 atmosphere is the pressure exerted at sea level of air on us, our world, our structures, and is 14.7 lbs/sq inch), exerts enough pressure to cause failure in the structure or its door(s), or, in the case of Treblinka, in chambers 1.5 meters off the ground, the floor to fail.

It would take a force of over 400 psi to get the concrete to crack, and as Xanthro points out, air moves from high pressure to low, so you would lose air to the outside should you get to this level. Of course, you would have air exchange in these chambers even if inner chamber pressure and outdoor air pressure is exactly the same; the gas chambers were not airtight, they do not need to be. Even if they were airtight, and they are not, you would need huge amounts of pressure to make concrete and wood fail structurally; the victims would be dead or grievously injured most likely from the increased pressure.

In my work I make containment chambers with a two-step contact cement (glue), some staples, duct tape, and six mm plastic film, connected to PVC pipe. Sometimes I have to prove that I have maintained, say, one half of a structure (the "clean" side) at a positive pressure of 20 psi from the contaminated area, and I use a differential pressure recorder to monitor 24/7 to meet the contract's specifications. Easiest way is to duct dirty, contaminated air through a HEPA filter, reducing ("negative") air pressure on the dirty side, while increasing ("positive") air pressure on the clean...as Xanthro points out, it is now impossible for my dirty air to flow to the clean side of the building, and contaminate it, as long as the filter works.

IOW, it is simple to make a "gas chamber"; obviously my PVC and poly-film one would not work with people pushing it apart to get out of it.

I don't know about diesel engines, although I believe this whole matter rather silly, but here is a consideration for you and your rats and mice chart.

Hyperbaric oxygen treatment is a process in which available oxygen can be given a patient at 20 times the normal rate. This is done by putting the patient in a chamber, pressurizing to 2X, and using 100% pure oxygen as input "air". As a thought, imagine a 200 sq ft room, with 100--200 people in it, pressurized to 1.5 times atmospheric pressure, and input air is not a mix of 79% nitrogen and 20% oxygen, but rather the exhaust from an engine, perhaps a diesel. While I realize diesel engines are used, say, in mining work, I would be surprised that in a mine, a diesel used to provide light, power, etc., also was not specifically ventilated or ducted; i.e., I would not think they sit on the mine floor, using and exhausting into, ambient air. But I do not know. I also don't know if these engines were diesels, or what shape they were in, or what they burned for fuel, but exposure to problematic compounds in diesel exhaust would be magnified under pressurization, and then inhaled.

I have no interest in arguing diesel engines with you; I think it a point of little interest, considering the limited mount of data available. I believe your point is that CO levels too low, and O2 levels too high, for any diesel to cause death; let me say that within my own limited abilities in science and engineering, I have doubts about a small room crammed with panicked human beings, and their ability to breathe in an atmosphere becoming contaminated with exhaust fumes, of which there are numerous hazardous compounds. However, for those so convinced, I would still not suggest that they attempt "proof" by emulating such conditions...and I doubt they would, as common sense survival will probably ultimately triumph over a position taken from a limited data chart. I would also state that working in a mine, with its hundreds of thousands of cubic feet, a forced air ventilation system, a more than likely a ducted diesel engine is not the same as a 1600 cu ft structure, crammed with hyper-ventilating human beings, and supplied with exhaust direct from an engine, even a diesel.

Anyway, carry on, citizen.

Scott wrote: Zyklon-B was commercially manufactured to kill bugs, so I'll continue calling it insecticide unless you have better nomenclature.

I understand Zyklon-B is an insecticide, why it was used, and why such copious quantities were delivered to the various camps. I would also point out that as early as 1942, if I recall correctly, there was a severe outbreak of typhus at Auschwitz. I think there are some rather amusing arguments on Zyklon-B, including your mention of the transport problems in the latter stages of the war, which jibes neatly with the claim that many died because of Allied bombing raids destroying the ability of the Nazis from protecting their prisoners. If the Nazis wanted to eliminate disease and death, simple sanitation measures would have paid off dramatically; quarantine and treat new arrivals, change of clothes (old being deloused, washed and recycled), bathing, simple topical treatments on skin and in hair (not shaved off), etc. I don't think a whole lot of Germans died from typhus, or amongst the guards, but the inmates sure seemed to suffer from it.

And, of course, Aushwitz needed all those kremas to cremate all those typhus victims of which they so humanely tried to save by using copious amounts of Zyklon-B to control typhus...and what a conflicting vicious circle we have here. Seems to be a bit of conflict here, between this extraordinary effort to control typhus with tons of Zyklon-B, and yet this huge capacity for incinerating corpses for a camp with a bunch of basements...err...morgues...err...delousing chambers...err...air raid shelters. Take your pick. (And why does one need to dynamite an "air raid shelter" when retreating, or why need one when Allied bombers couldn't get there until 1944?)

My contention with you on the use of "insecticide" is that while, yes, it was a widely used insecticide (and I have posted why I think that made it a perfect murder weapon); it is also not a can of Raid (a US insecticide sold over the counter at grocers or a million other places). Or a boron based insecticide...or any one of numerous, effective insect controls, in which the manufacturers don't have to place an odorant in them to warn handlers that some of the product is escaping, as Zyklon-B was loaded with...or at least the insecticide version. Some that went to Aushwitz did not have the odorant added, and why, I wonder, was that?

What Hoess wanted, was a lethal killing agent for humans, and that is exactly what he got in Zyklon-B. The argument that Germans had, for example, Sarin, is idiotic fallacy; who cares, when you have an insecticide capable of killing humans in 30 minutes at 130 ppm? Or one minute at <3500 ppm? Cheap, easily available, requiring no special apparatus, training, dispersal equipment; the perfect agent. Not nearly the problems involved, post-use, as Sarin would be.

You don't believe Jews were killed in basements with an insecticide; neither do I.

I believe they were killed in simple concrete structures with a poison gas that was available, and received by the ton. Some of which did not have the warning odorant added (?) and used in structures apparently the retreating SS thought to be so problematic that they blew them up prior to heading west in the face of the advancing Russians, who had previously captured one camp intact. If the Holocaust's gas chambers are a hoax, then the SS and the camps' administrators sure seemed to be a bit concerned with them falling into Allied hands intact; I don't recall reading of other air raid shelters being destroyed prior to being overrun. But I am sure there is a good reason for that; I'll ask Answerman.

Regards, enjoy the rest of the weekend...

Mark

[Scott Smith]

Of course any structure has 1 atmosphere on it but a pressure inside of 1.5 atmospheres is a differential of 0.5 atmospheres, which even though only about 7 psi, is a lot of force for a structure of that size if it is sealed and unbraced. Some of the murder claims have involved over- and under-pressure, besides diesel exhaust.

Without boring people to tears, and knowing that many understand this probably far better than I, but a small primer...

Thanks for the information on material-strengths, Mark.

While the argument is on pressurizing a concrete gas chamber with diesel exhaust, it has turned into a debate on structural integrity by pressurizing said structure.

Well, some of the claims (Black Book of Polish Jewry published with Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt during the war) have been that the Treblinka victims were killed by overpressure or by underpressure--i.e., evacuating the air of a chamber like euthanasia commonly used at the dogpound.

To simplify the argument, are you saying that a simply-constructed concrete (or wood and brick in some accounts) chamber can hold an over- or under-pressure of at least 0.5 atmospheres without leaking and thus limiting the pressure?

And are you saying, as Xanthro appears to be, that the size of the chamber has no bearing on the force applied to the structure?

If I may, your argument is, Scott, that even increasing pressure to 1.5 atmospheres (1.0 atmosphere is the pressure exerted at sea level of air on us, our world, our structures, and is 14.7 lbs/sq inch), exerts enough pressure to cause failure in the structure or its door(s), or, in the case of Treblinka, in chambers 1.5 meters off the ground, the floor to fail.

"Fail" in the sense that it would LEAK and thus not load the motor by backpressure. I don't think it is important that the gaschamber leaks other than that point. In fact, I think it would be essential that it DOES leak to pump the exhaust in. But it is interesting to note at what point an ordinary structure would fail in the sense of holding pressure.

To make such a room airtight for use as a bombshelter or to protect from poison gas attacks would not be any big deal. We just have to keep carbon monoxide from seeping in during the bombing attack and resultant fires, which hopefully doesn't last longer than the available oxygen inside. Some air-raid shelters may have had a tank of bottled-oxygen inside, and there were regulations about overcrowding, which obviously were not always observed.

IOW, it is simple to make a "gas chamber"; obviously my PVC and poly-film one would not work with people pushing it apart to get out of it.

Yes, the gaschamber will work if there is carbon monoxide, but this argument was that it had to involve a lot of pressure and be sealed hermetically or sealed with a check-valve to put a load on the motor through backpressure.

I know that you could make a gaschamber with sheets of plastic, just to channel the airflow with slight overpressure in one direction only. When I was going to school in Idaho there was a population explosion of predatory jackrabbits who devastated crops. So the method of extermination was to round them up in a corral and then to beat them to death with iron pipes.

Well, naturally this was a public-relations disaster, although there was no psychological cowardice on the part of the shock troops doing it (schoolkids couldn't volunteer fast enough), so somebody tried to create a diesel gaschamber with sheets of vinyl blocking the airflow into a potato cellar. Needless to say it didn't work. Everybody knows that there isn't enough CO in diesel exhaust but even when the exhaust from a gasoline potato truck was tried this Rube Goldberg scheme didn't work much better than the clubs.

Any mass-murder scheme has to involve some process-engineering. The question is not whether one person can be killed weirdly but MANY.

I don't know about diesel engines, although I believe this whole matter rather silly, but here is a consideration for you and your rats and mice chart.

I don't think it is silly because a claim was made that hundreds of thousands were killed by a method which beggars description. I think it is worth investigating.

Hyperbaric oxygen treatment is a process in which available oxygen can be given a patient at 20 times the normal rate. This is done by putting the patient in a chamber, pressurizing to 2X, and using 100% pure oxygen as input "air". As a thought, imagine a 200 sq ft room, with 100--200 people in it, pressurized to 1.5 times atmospheric pressure, and input air is not a mix of 79% nitrogen and 20% oxygen, but rather the exhaust from an engine, perhaps a diesel.

My understanding, and I'm not a doctor or an expert in diving or space-medicine, is that if the pressure is higher the oxygen content can be lower, as say a U-boat crew which can survive at oxygen as low as 9% and with very high levels of carbon dioxide. So a modest increase in pressure would not help kill the victims and could possibly even retard the killing process. I do think that higher pressure might affect the uptake of CO in very low levels, so that could be a consideration. Also, the increased heat and dehydration would be a factor in this noisy torture scheme.

While I realize diesel engines are used, say, in mining work, I would be surprised that in a mine, a diesel used to provide light, power, etc., also was not specifically ventilated or ducted; i.e., I would not think they sit on the mine floor, using and exhausting into, ambient air.

I have no interest in arguing diesel engines with you; I think it a point of little interest, considering the limited mount of data available. I believe your point is that CO levels too low, and O2 levels too high, for any diesel to cause death; let me say that within my own limited abilities in science and engineering, I have doubts about a small room crammed with panicked human beings, and their ability to breathe in an atmosphere becoming contaminated with exhaust fumes, of which there are numerous hazardous compounds.

My position is NOT that the people wouldn't die but that it would take longer to kill them (probably several hours) by pumping in diesel exhaust (rich in oxygen and very low in carbon monoxide) than if you just let them suffocate, packed in their airtight room--which shouldn't take longer than a few minutes. And you can leave them in an hour or so longer while you go to lunch just to make sure that everybody is braindead.

A permanent diesel installation would be well-ventilated but a forklift or locomotive might not. I'm sure standards are much greater today than in the 1940s, when this problem was extensively studied by the Americans. The Germans had been doing this already in mining, and Gerstein was a mining engineer himself. A German mining engineer should have been the last person to realistically propose a "death by diesel" thesis, and I think the story is indeed a silly propaganda invention on the part of somebody. The diesel engines were probably ordinary electrical generators not murder-weapons...

Zyklon-B was commercially manufactured to kill bugs, so I'll continue calling it insecticide unless you have better nomenclature.

I understand Zyklon-B is an insecticide, why it was used, and why such copious quantities were delivered to the various camps. I would also point out that as early as 1942, if I recall correctly, there was a severe outbreak of typhus at Auschwitz. I think there are some rather amusing arguments on Zyklon-B, including your mention of the transport problems in the latter stages of the war, which jibes neatly with the claim that many died because of Allied bombing raids destroying the ability of the Nazis from protecting their prisoners. If the Nazis wanted to eliminate disease and death, simple sanitation measures would have paid off dramatically; quarantine and treat new arrivals, change of clothes (old being deloused, washed and recycled), bathing, simple topical treatments on skin and in hair (not shaved off), etc. I don't think a whole lot of Germans died from typhus, or amongst the guards, but the inmates sure seemed to suffer from it.

Well yes, prisoners are incarcerated and therefore the most vulnerable to these disruptions, which were widespread at the end of the war. In camps, the cause of disease is overcrowding and lack of clean and adequate nutrition and sanitation. Communicable disease is spread from other people; therefore a dense population, like a city or a camp will get the full effect of epidemics. These kinds of problems were virtually eliminated in the 19th century with better "diet, drugs and drains," or in other words a public-health infrastructure. Thus, we seldom see them anymore except in wartime when everything breaks down. It is really no surprise nor difficult to understand. Also the Allies had developed a simple pesticide, DDT, which could dust prisoners and was thought to be completely safe. They also developed a better typhus vaccine, IIRC.

And, of course, Aushwitz needed all those kremas to cremate all those typhus victims of which they so humanely tried to save by using copious amounts of Zyklon-B to control typhus...and what a conflicting vicious circle we have here. Seems to be a bit of conflict here, between this extraordinary effort to control typhus with tons of Zyklon-B, and yet this huge capacity for incinerating corpses for a camp with a bunch of basements...err...morgues...err...delousing chambers...err...air raid shelters. Take your pick.

It depends on how much "excess capacity" we are talking about. I don't know anything about cremation physics but I am not convinced that it was unreasonable considering the expansion planned for Himmler's model labor oblast. And in the event it was apparently not enough.

And why does one need to dynamite an "air raid shelter" when retreating, or why need one when Allied bombers couldn't get there until 1944?

Sorry but that is what you do for scorched-earth warfare, especially if it is a shelter having military value. And I don't think it has even been proved that the Germans blew it up. Majdanek was captured intact, which doesn't bode so well for its fate as a mass-gassing facility in future historiography as it has not been reconstructed and you can analyze what is there. But I am not an expert. In any case, simply blowing up the Kremas would not destroy the evidence for a forensic team that already knew the truth, and Auschwitz was no secret.

My contention with you on the use of "insecticide" is that while, yes, it was a widely used insecticide (and I have posted why I think that made it a perfect murder weapon); it is also not a can of Raid (a US insecticide sold over the counter at grocers or a million other places). Or a boron based insecticide...or any one of numerous, effective insect controls, in which the manufacturers don't have to place an odorant in them to warn handlers that some of the product is escaping, as Zyklon-B was loaded with...or at least the insecticide version. Some that went to Aushwitz did not have the odorant added, and why, I wonder, was that?

Military suppliers of commercial chemicals are likely to cut corners. If eliminating the warning-agent saved a manufacturing step and some costs for military customers the Germans likely would have done so. The military probably decided that the warning-agent was a luxury and that the technicians should simply be masked everytime they handled the material. Mark, why eliminate the odorant for homicide? Who cares if the victims can smell the gas?

What Hoess wanted, was a lethal killing agent for humans, and that is exactly what he got in Zyklon-B.

I concede that Höß could have killed some by gassing. What I am skeptical of is million(s), or "500 thousand gassed in a single basement," as it were.

The argument that Germans had, for example, Sarin, is idiotic fallacy; who cares, when you have an insecticide capable of killing humans in 30 minutes at 130 ppm? Or one minute at <3500 ppm? Cheap, easily available, requiring no special apparatus, training, dispersal equipment; the perfect agent. Not nearly the problems involved, post-use, as Sarin would be.

Maybe, but I don't make this argument. I am wondering why the Germans did not use prisoners to test their exotic chemical weapons on--considering the wartime urgency and available prisoner subject-material, and considering their supposed penchant for human medical TORTURES (torture being the term used by Francis Bacon, the inventor of the empirical method, as the scientist in his metaphor "tortures" nature for her secrets).

You don't believe Jews were killed in basements with an insecticide; neither do I.

I believe they were killed in simple concrete structures with a poison gas that was available, and received by the ton.

Now, who is being cleverly obtuse? To say that Zyklon-B is not "insecticide" is surely misleading, as you admit it was used in the camps for that very purpose, by the ton...

If the Holocaust's gas chambers are a hoax, then the SS and the camps' administrators sure seemed to be a bit concerned with them falling into Allied hands intact;

I don't like to use the "HOAX" simplification, but anyway, perhaps you are forgetting that the Soviets were calling Majdanek a factory-of-death upon its capture intact and that even Himmler had to issue a press release denying the gas-oven story. Regardless of any murder-program, why NOT blow the crematorias up?

I don't recall reading of other air raid shelters being destroyed prior to being overrun.

At one point both sides tried to destroy every hut in wintertime so that the other would have to contend without shelter and with refugees getting in the way of operations and logistics. Every bunker or pillbox was destroyed if possible upon retreat back to Germany. Auschwitz was on the periphery of the Reich and most installations were not. Peenemünde was thoroughly destroyed if memory serves, and the Kremas were the most valuable infrastructure at Birkenau.

I wonder why the (at times hysterical) resistance to investigating the physical evidence and the scientific/engineering probity of the murder-factory claims--if the Holocaust is not a "religion" that some so NEED to believe, that is...

Just mumbling out loud...

Best Regards,
Scott

[Xanthro]

Yes, it's reinforced with steel and it may be strong, but then why can't bridge bear so much with a simple slab or concrete?

A bridge can't hold as much weight because it is distributed differently. I think this is where you are becoming lost. It I applied 80 tons of force to the center of a wall, that would be alot. 80 tons spread out on the wall is not.

Or 280 tons on the floor and ceiling. I can't see a concrete box holding that much, even if you do distribute the weight evenly.

That's because you know little about buildings. Tarpon gave good examples of building materials.

Let's try a logic excerise. Take a 4 by 8 foot raised floor. Assume the wall can structurally withstand 20 tons of weight against it. Placing 16 tons on the floor wouldn't cause the floor to break. Now, have two of the same floors, but they aren't connected. Each floor can hold 20 tons. Put the floors together and make one floor. We now have a 8x8 foot floor, that can hold 40 tons. We can continue to expand infinitely the floor this way. The size of the floor doesn't matter, as long as we don't exceed 20 tons pressure by 4x8 foot area.

If we had two of the floors together, and move 25 tons pressure on one 4x8 foot section, the floor would collapse. Though the floor itself could withstand 40 tons. This is because you exceeded the structural integrity of a section of the floor.

Can a one inch square section of concrete withstand 7 lbs pressure? Yes, it can. Just like the floor example, you can continue to make the walls, floor, and ceiling bigger, because you never get higher than 7 lbs against any one section. (There are certain limits to this, caused by the walls and ceiling having to support their own weight.) This spreading of the weight makes it very easy to withstand.

"I'm just saying that to contain the pressure without leaking would not be easy because of the forces involved!"

I'm going to say this for the last time, we don't care if it leaks, in fact IT HAS TO LEAK!!

"And if it does leak it won't contain much pressure,"

Nonsense, you will always have a raise in pressure if you are venting into a closed area, even if it does leak. The leaks would have to be able to handle the same airflow as is being pumped into the room. As the pressure inside the room raises, the leaks will vent more air. This will happen until an equilibrium is reached. When the volumn vent out of the room is equal to the amount pumped into the room. But this is AFTER a raised pressure has been reached.

Xanthro

[Roberto]

I don't think it is silly because a claim was made that hundreds of thousands were killed by a method which beggars description. I think it is worth investigating.

The murder weapon in which all depositions and testimonials by defendants and witnesses at various trials coincided was the engine of a huge motor vehicle. If the type of engine on which criminal investigators at those trials concluded – a diesel engine – had been unsuitable, then the engine could only have been of the other existing type – a gasoline engine. Which means that Smith’s “investigation” would be much a do about nothing even if he could demonstrate that the method assumed “beggars description”. Which in turn would require a convincing explanation as to why the exhaust of a huge diesel engine couldn’t have been made poor in oxygen and rich in carbon monoxide by influencing the fuel-air ratio through restriction of the air intake, increase of the fuel supply or a combination of both methods, as observation of the experiments of Holtz & Elliot, Elliot & Davis and Pattle & Stretch and elementary logic suggest.

My position is NOT that the people wouldn't die but that it would take longer to kill them (probably several hours) by pumping in diesel exhaust (rich in oxygen and very low in carbon monoxide) than if you just let them suffocate, packed in their airtight room--which shouldn't take longer than a few minutes. And you can leave them in an hour or so longer while you go to lunch just to make sure that everybody is braindead.

A few minutes, Mr. Smith? Didn’t your guru “Neumaier” himself write something about an hour or so? If the gassing process took half an hour, as eyewitness testimonials indicate, then half an hour per gassing would always be saved, a rather considerable time span when you are supposed to “process” thousands of people every day. And then, experience with the gas vans as described in Just’s letter to Rauff of 5 June 1942 makes it seem rather unlikely that the Treblinka staff would have made their gas chambers airtight.

A German mining engineer should have been the last person to realistically propose a "death by diesel" thesis, and I think the story is indeed a silly propaganda invention on the part of somebody. The diesel engines were probably ordinary electrical generators not murder-weapons...

It is indeed quite possible that witnesses should have confounded the gassing engine, which was in fact a gasoline engine burning diesel fuel or gasoline, with diesel engines in the same room used for power generation. As to Smith’s “silly propaganda invention”, he still has to show us where it is supposed to have originated. I still haven’t seen any eyewitness testimonial on the Treblinka gas chambers that expressly described the engine as a diesel engine. The closest I have come across is the following passage from Eliahu Rosenberg’s deposition at the Eichmann trial:

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.

Source of quote:

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

We note that Rosenberg said nothing about the type of the engine, but described the fuel used as “Ropa, which was a kind of oil, a crude oil”. “Ropa” is a Polish term for rock oil or diesel, which means that the fuel could have been diesel fuel of the crude kind that was used in Poland before the war. Rosenberg’s interrogators obviously went as far as concluding from the type of fuel used that the engine must have been a diesel engine. However, this was not necessarily so. As Ovidius has explained to us, it could also have been a gasoline engine burning diesel fuel.

Well yes, prisoners are incarcerated and therefore the most vulnerable to these disruptions, which were widespread at the end of the war. In camps, the cause of disease is overcrowding and lack of clean and adequate nutrition and sanitation. Communicable disease is spread from other people; therefore a dense population, like a city or a camp will get the full effect of epidemics. These kinds of problems were virtually eliminated in the 19th century with better "diet, drugs and drains," or in other words a public-health infrastructure. Thus, we seldom see them except in wartime when everything breaks down. It is really no surprise or difficult ot understand. Also the Allies had developed a simple pesticide, DDT, which could dust prisoners and was thought to be completely safe. They also developed a better typhus vaccine, IIRC.

General suppositions are one thing, the documented reality of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp is another. The latter shows us that very few of the permanent inmates who died there fell victim to communicable diseases, especially typhus:

Nevertheless, the nearly 69,000 death certificates available afford researchers the opportunity to see exactly what was killing registered prisoners. It is now known on the basis of these certificates that very few prisoners died from typhus. [32] They show that only 2060 of the 68,864 deaths were from typhus. While typhus can be lethal, it need not necessarily be so. Lucie Adelsberger, a Jewish prisoner and camp doctor, got typhus, was quarantined, and resumed her duties after recovery. [33] Similarly, Ella Lingens Reiner, a German doctor, who was also a prisoner, contracted typhus and survived. [34] One of the early Auschwitz memoirs, written in 1947, recounts an episode with camp doctor Josef Mengele, later to become known as the "Angel of Death" for his medical experiments. Mengele was disturbed about the typhus epidemic. The former prisoner wrote: "Alas, typhus epidemics did rage in the camp, but at this time we had comparatively few victims. The same day he [Mengele] sent us a large quantity of serum and directed mass vaccinations." [35] Petro Mirchuk, a Ukranian prisoner, wrote that a delousing in August 1942, the worst month of the epidemic, "eliminated the epidemic and the billions of fleas and lice ceased to exist." [36]

Source of quote:
Body Disposal at Auschwitz: The End of Holocaust Denial
by John C. Zimmerman
http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschw ... -disposal/

Emphasis is mine.

It depends on how much "excess capacity" we are talking about. I don't know anything about cremation physics but I am not convinced that it was unreasonable considering the expansion planned for Himmler's model labor oblast. And in the event it was apparently not enough.

The greatest planned expansion of the camp was to 200,000 people, but that was never realized, the greatest number of inmates that Auschwitz-Birkenau had at any given time being 92,000 (see Zimmerman’s above quoted article for the details). The cremation capacity that becomes apparent from the Bauleitung memorandum of 28 June 1943 – 4,756 bodies within 24 hours – would have been enough to dispatch all 68,864 registered prisoners who died from August 1941 to December 1943 within less than two weeks, the camp’s largest permanent population at any given time within 19 days and the camp’s greatest projected population within 42 days. As demonstrated by Zimmerman in his above quoted article, no other German concentration camp had a cremation capacity that was even remotely comparable to this:

Gusen was a camp in the Mauthausen concentration camp complex. Mauthausen and Gusen are located in Austria. Gusen was comprised of three camps. In February 1941, Gusen had a Topf double muffle furnace, two ovens, installed in order to handle the deaths there. No additional ovens were added during the remainder of Gusen's existence. [66] Prior to March 1943, Auschwitz had three Topf double muffle ovens, or three times the cremation capacity of Gusen. In 1942 there were 7410 deaths in Gusen. [67] In 1942 there were 44,000 deaths of registered prisoners and an additional 1100 Soviet POWs recorded in the morgue registries. These deaths are not in dispute. [68] Non-registered prisoners who were killed upon arrival are not included in these numbers Therefore, in 1942 there were six times as many deaths in Auschwitz as Gusen and three times the cremation capacity. Also revealing is an examination of the highest three consecutive months of deaths in both camps. The highest three months of deaths of registered prisoners in Auschwitz was 21,900 for the period from August through October 1942. The highest three month period for Gusen was from December 1942 through February 1943 when 3851 prisoners died. Thus, in the highest three month period Auschwitz death totals for registered prisoners were six times the Gusen amount.

A comparison of these death statistics suggests that Auschwitz could have accommodated the excess death rate over that of Gusen by doubling its cremation capacity from 6 to 12 ovens. If Auschwitz really needed 46 additional ovens, a nearly ninefold expansion of its existing capacity, then Gusen needed to expand to at least 12 ovens. Yet, no such expansion was ever undertaken.

Source of quote: Zimmerman, as above. Emphasis is mine.

This means that the function of the 46 ovens installed at the four new Birkenau crematoria must have been another than handling the expected mortality among the camp’s permanent population actual or expected at any given time.

Sorry but that is what you do for scorched-earth warfare, especially if it is a shelter having military value.

Why, did they practice scorched-earth warfare in those areas of the former Polish republic? And what military value could those shelters possibly have had?

And I don't think it has even been proved that the Germans blew it up.

In fact they had undertaken to dismantle the installations ever since Himmler called a stop to the “Final Solution” in October of 1944. They only blew up those parts of the installations that could not be dismantled until the camp had to be evacuated in the face of the advancing Red Army. So much for “scorched earth warfare” at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Majdanek was captured intact, which doesn't bode so well for its fate as a mass-gassing facility in future historiography as it has not been reconstructed and you can analyze what is there.

Which has been done by criminal justice authorities (namely at the West German Majdanek trial that ended in 1981) and historians, with no results that would speak against the use of the Majdanek gas chambers for homicidal purposes. Historiography is not represented by Rudolf, Mattogno and other hoaxing propagandists, to Smith’s great distress.

Military suppliers of commercial chemicals are likely to cut corners. If eliminating the warning-agent saved a manufacturing step and some costs for military customers the Germans likely would have done so. The military probably decided that the warning-agent was a luxury and that the technicians should simply be masked everytime they handled the material. Mark, why eliminate the odorant for homicide? Who cares if the victims can smell the gas?

Probably this, probably that, with no evidence in sight. The irritant had an essential function as a warning agent, because prussic acid itself carries no smell and would thus have implied a high risk of accidental gassing without such warning agent added. Orders of the day issued by camp commander Höss himself suggest that he was quite concerned with the safety of his SS staff and the possibility of their suffering accidental poisoning during gassings. Under this perspective, it would have been nonsensical to order Zyklon B without the warning irritant – which was no “luxury” but part of the standard issue of the product, the “luxury” rather consisting in manufacturing custom-issued shipments without that warning agent – unless the absence of the warning agent served a given purpose. The purpose was obviously to keep people undressing to go into the gas chambers from being made suspicious by the penetrating smell of irritant substance left over from a previous gassing.

I concede that Höß could have killed some by gassing. What I am skeptical of is million(s), or "500 thousand gassed in a single basement," as it were.

What, I wonder, is that “skepticism” based on? The cremation capacity of the “basement” – i.e. Crematorium II – was 1,440 dead bodies within 24 hours, according to the above mentioned Bauleitung memorandum of 28 June 1943, which during the ca. 20 months it was in operation would make for 864,000 people who could have been cremated there. Even if, as explained by Pressac, the actual cremation capacity could not exceed 800 dead bodies per day, that would still be 800 x 30 x 20 = 480,000 dead bodies which could be cremated within 20 months. Simple mathematics. Whether that many were actually cremated in the ovens of Crematorium II only depends on the number of arrivals at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The capacity to “process” them was there.

Maybe, but I don't make this argument. I am wondering why the Germans did not use prisoners to test their exotic chemical weapons on--considering the wartime urgency and available prisoner subject-material, and considering their supposed penchant for human medical TORTURES (torture being the term used by Francis Bacon, the inventor of the empirical method, as the scientist in his metaphor "tortures" nature for her secrets).

Well, they did use prisoners to test chemical weapons and antidotes thereto. Several such experiments ordered by Himmler are documented, for instance, to have taken place at the gas chamber of Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace. But at Birkenau the issue was not experimenting but mass killing. Why use expensive and untested chemical weapons the after-effects of which might be hard to control, when the comparatively cheap and well-tested standard insecticide of the time would do the job very nicely?

Now, who is being cleverly obtuse? To say that Zyklon-B is not "insecticide" is surely misleading, as you admit it was used in the camps for that very purpose, by the ton...

Rather disingenuous, Mr. Smith. What Tarpon is obviously pointing out is that the insecticide Zyklon B happened to be one of the deadliest poisons known to man.

I don't like to use the "HOAX" simplification, but anyway, perhaps you are forgetting that the Soviets were calling Majdanek a factory-of-death upon its capture intact

Well, it seems they were right in that, even if the number of dead they considered was wildly exaggerated. The depositions of the defendants at the West German Majdanek trial dissipated any remaining doubts as to what Majdanek had been all about.

and that even Himmler had to issue a press release denying the gas-oven story.

“Even” Himmler? What’s that supposed to mean? Himmler was obviously the person most interested in making his murder factories look like products of Soviet propaganda, especially at a time when he could see the war was lost and was understandably interested in saving his own neck.

Regardless of any murder-program, why NOT blow the crematorias up?

Let’s ask the other way round: Why waste labor and TNT in dismantling and blowing up cremation installations that were of no military or economic value to either the crumbling Reich or the enemy, if not out of the understandable urge to eliminate the physical traces of the killing site, especially considering what the Soviets had made of the one they had captured intact at Majdanek?

At one point both sides tried to destroy every hut in wintertime so that the other would have to contend without shelter and with refugees getting in the way of operations and logistics. Every bunker or pillbox was destroyed if possible upon retreat back to Germany. Auschwitz was on the periphery of the Reich and most installations were not. Peenemünde was thoroughly destroyed if memory serves, and the Kremas were the most valuable infrastructure at Birkenau.

If a “scorched earth” policy was applied at Birkenau, if would also have been applied in the surrounding areas. Were towns, villages and factories in this district put to the torch, Mr. Smith? Was there any “scorched earth” in nearby Cracow and Kattowitz?

I wonder why the (at times hysterical) resistance to investigating the physical evidence and the scientific/engineering probity of the murder-factory claims--if the Holocaust is not a "religion" that some so NEED to believe, that is...

The “hysterical resistance” that Smith is talking about exists only in his own mind. The real hysteria lies in the way True Believers like himself defend themselves with claws and teeth against the inconvenient evidence by questioning the “scientific/engineering probity” of the murder weapons on the basis of demonstrably nonsensical considerations (as if it would matter a damn thing if the killing devices worked in the way described by witnesses or in another way) and trying to make believe that the documentary and eyewitness evidence not fitting into their bubble is flawed and contradicted by physical evidence. Which leads us back to my questions regarding the Treblinka extermination camp, which I have often asked Smith without ever obtaining a useful answer. Please tell us, Mr. Smith:

1. 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?

2. How many whole bodies, and how many bodies reduced to ashes and other partial remains, fit into pits 7.5 meters deep 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 memorandum, or was there not?

Just two questions for now, so as not to make things too hard for the “skeptic”. I see no reason why he should keep running away from such questions and hiding behind utterly pointless “technical” discussions about the sex of the angels – unless of course “Revisionist” propaganda is a religion that he so NEEDS to believe in.

Its just that once a topic comes up that involves his personal biases it seems he is unable to resist the temptation to run the same points again and again, no matter how bad they are, he so desperately wants to believe certain things that he just turns his brain off.

From Stephen’s assessment of Scott Smith in his post # 47 (5/30/01 3:56:00 am) on the thread

American TV Dramatization of Wannsee Conference
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... 21&stop=40

of the old forum.

Keep the Faith fellow revisionists. The Nazis and the SS were the good guys--but the anti-Nazis and the anti-revisionists dare not admit it for fear of losing their fabulous, ill gotten gains from the war.

“Hoaxbuster” Friedrich Paul Berg on the Codoh discussion forum.
http://www.codoh.org/dcforum/DCForumID9/143.html#10

[Tarpon27]

Scott wrote:To simplify the argument, are you saying that a simply-constructed concrete (or wood and brick in some accounts) chamber can hold an over- or under-pressure of at least 0.5 atmospheres without leaking and thus limiting the pressure?

No, I assume it will leak...to what degree, I have no idea. Concrete is extremely porous; a slab on the ground without a proper vapor barrier will ruin any flooring mounted on it rather rapidly; I just did a building that was less than 18 months old where this problem surfaced. If a liquid can permeate concrete, a gas most assuredly can.

The point is, will it hold 1.5 atmospheres while the "compressor" is working and running? Sure, if atmospheric pressure and the compressor's added pressurization are high enough to overcome the leaks. All structures breathe, and it is very difficult to build an airtight structure. Even clean rooms are not airtight, for the most part. A lab handling extremely infectious agents, like the Center for Disease Control or a military research lab on chemical/biological warfare agents would have airtight labs in some areas, with glove boxes, highly pressurized surrounding rooms, etc.

But it is interesting to note at what point an ordinary structure would fail in the sense of holding pressure.

The chambers, at least the concrete ones at Auschwitz would hold a tremendous pressure prior to failure; the materials used (if concrete and wooden doors) could hold far higher pressures than were used, and if you did pressurize them to say 300 psi, the victims would die from those injuries.

To make such a room airtight for use as a bombshelter or to protect from poison gas attacks would not be any big deal. We just have to keep carbon monoxide from seeping in during the bombing attack and resultant fires, which hopefully doesn't last longer than the available oxygen inside. Some air-raid shelters may have had a tank of bottled-oxygen inside, and there were regulations about overcrowding, which obviously were not always observed.

The easiest way would be to simply pressurize the interior of the shelter; air ("gas") flows from high pressure to low; outside CO or poison gas would be at 1 atmosphere (if at sea level), so anything above that, with even a fairly "airtight" shelter would prevent the outside air, with its CO or poison gas, from entering.

Crack the O2 bottle occasionally; fire hazard would probably be more of a danger. Also, at high pressure, O2 is poisonous, but you would not need that high of pressure.

My understanding, and I'm not a doctor or an expert in diving or space-medicine, is that if the pressure is higher the oxygen content can be lower, as say a U-boat crew which can survive at oxygen as low as 9% and with very high levels of carbon dioxide.

Like you, I am no expert, but do remember that our next breath comes from a build-up of CO2; I hadn't thought of your sub analogy, but, indeed, it would work. Of course, again, the problem is that any oxygen rich environment, should one try to fill a sub with O2 and with CO2 scrubbers, is that O2 is so flammable. Or that you may pressurize CO2 as well as O2.

Sorry but that is what you do for scorched-earth warfare, especially if it is a shelter having military value. And I don't think it has even been proved that the Germans blew it up.

Latter point first. Now, it is often argued that the Holocaust is a Holohoax, and propaganda. I have had this argument on whether the Germans destroyed Auschwitz or not before, and it makes no sense to me. If the Holocaust is mountain of lies made up by Jews, the Allies, and most of all, those evil Russians, why would these groups destroy, even partially, the camps? The Brits and Americans weren't there, the inmates who stayed there had no reason to destroy or cover-up the camps, and the Russians would not destroy a propaganda coup. It makes no sense.

Also, the fact that Treblinka was razed, and then basically turned back into a natural state, plus the disaster of Maidenek, indicates that the Nazis were quite concerned about what the world would find in these camps.

If it is a scorched earth policy, they were amazingly selective. Much of Auschwitz still stands today, but the gas chambers were destroyed, as were the warehouses containing the possessions of the inmates, except for four buildings. IG Farben was not destroyed, and that was certainly of huge military value.

So, sorry, I don't buy it. I think the warehouses and chambers were dynamited because the SS and the administration did not want the world to see what the reality of Aushwitz was. Plus, I find it ridiculous to see Kremas II and III as having some "military value". What, the Luftwaffe is going to bomb Auschwitz, now occupied by a few Russians, why the van sweeps towards Germany, and with the US and British coming from the west? And your average SS guard does not realize just what is happening in early 1945, per the eastern front and Germany's ability to counterattack? The Bulge was over Jan. 16th, and the Russians arrived at Auscwitz January 26, 1945.

Military suppliers of commercial chemicals are likely to cut corners. If eliminating the warning-agent saved a manufacturing step and some costs for military customers the Germans likely would have done so. The military probably decided that the warning-agent was a luxury and that the technicians should simply be masked everytime they handled the material. Mark, why eliminate the odorant for homicide? Who cares if the victims can smell the gas?

But that does not explain why some of the Zyklon was marked with the odorant, while some was not; it didn't go either way. I assume it was, to use a description from Nazi documents, to prevent the "load" from panic, but then I do not know why; I have several refernces to it in notes, so I will have to look up the source material.

Maybe, but I don't make this argument. I am wondering why the Germans did not use prisoners to test their exotic chemical weapons on--considering the wartime urgency and available prisoner subject-material,...

No, I know you don't make the sarin argument, but it is a common refrain. Per testing, how does one know prisoners weren't used?

Now, who is being cleverly obtuse? To say that Zyklon-B is not "insecticide" is surely misleading, as you admit it was used in the camps for that very purpose, by the ton...

Ahhh, I see...Zyklon-B is a carrier for 99% prussic acid. To you, apparently, this means HCN is an "insecticide" because that was the purpose for which it had a use, and it is what, an exaggeration, to state that it is a poison gas?

I find your statements that basements were used to kill Jews with insecticide as trivializing; obviously, you think they are accurate. While no one except you has ever referred to them as basements that I have seen, it is certainly a colorful phrase.

At one point both sides tried to destroy every hut in wintertime so that the other would have to contend without shelter and with refugees getting in the way of operations and logistics. Every bunker or pillbox was destroyed if possible upon retreat back to Germany.

Of which gas chambers or shelters were neither, it was not the Russian plains in winter of 1942, and the camps suffered very selective damage.

Peenemünde was thoroughly destroyed if memory serves, and the Kremas were the most valuable infrastructure at Birkenau.

Well, between Allied attacks and the weapons systems there, that is a bit of a no brainer; the Kremas are the most "valuable infrastructure"?

Certainly not for military purposes, unless they were afraid that the Russians would use them for burning up bodies. This is rather absurd. The destruction of the chambers and the warehouses in Canada (what is the military value there?) is, using Occam's Razor, the attempted cover-up of evidence linking SS policy and administration to the mass killings.

Regards, Scott,

Mark

[Scott Smith]

The point is, will it hold 1.5 atmospheres while the "compressor" is working and running? Sure, if atmospheric pressure and the compressor's added pressurization are high enough to overcome the leaks. All structures breathe, and it is very difficult to build an airtight structure. Even clean rooms are not airtight, for the most part.

Okay, I guess the important thing is that under the hypothetical scenario that the pressure put a load on the motor the pressure would have to build up and what could that pressure be? Since neither I nor anyone else seems to think this method of supposedly loading the motor with pressure to generate more CO would work anyway, it is a moot point.

But it is interesting to note at what point an ordinary structure would fail in the sense of holding pressure.

The chambers, at least the concrete ones at Auschwitz would hold a tremendous pressure prior to failure; the materials used (if concrete and wooden doors) could hold far higher pressures than were used, and if you did pressurize them to say 300 psi, the victims would die from those injuries.

So, I guess you are saying that the over- or under-pressure scenario might be possible without an overengineered structure, are you not? Not that you are making this argument, in fact, just that it COULD have worked... Correct?

To make such a room airtight for use as a bombshelter or to protect from poison gas attacks would not be any big deal. We just have to keep carbon monoxide from seeping in during the bombing attack and resultant fires, which hopefully doesn't last longer than the available oxygen inside. Some air-raid shelters may have had a tank of bottled-oxygen inside, and there were regulations about overcrowding, which obviously were not always observed.

The easiest way would be to simply pressurize the interior of the shelter; air ("gas") flows from high pressure to low; outside CO or poison gas would be at 1 atmosphere (if at sea level), so anything above that, with even a fairly "airtight" shelter would prevent the outside air, with its CO or poison gas, from entering.

Right, but I think if you pressurized the shelter you would need to filter the air as well, both from poison gases and carbon monoxide. For a good-sized shelter this would certainly be the case, but for the multitude of small gastight shelters it would be too complicated. Just an airtight seal and an oxygen bottle inside to help when needed would probably save a lot of lives, unless they burned to death or got a direct hit. I guess everything is a series of tradeoffs anyway.

My understanding, and I'm not a doctor or an expert in diving or space-medicine, is that if the pressure is higher the oxygen content can be lower, as say a U-boat crew which can survive at oxygen as low as 9% and with very high levels of carbon dioxide.

Like you, I am no expert, but do remember that our next breath comes from a build-up of CO2; I hadn't thought of your sub analogy, but, indeed, it would work. Of course, again, the problem is that any oxygen rich environment, should one try to fill a sub with O2 and with CO2 scrubbers, is that O2 is so flammable. Or that you may pressurize CO2 as well as O2.

I think you have hit upon a worthy item for experimentation: how elevated pressure would effect the execution physiology. I still don't think it would matter, however. Friedrich Berg does not say that it is impossible to use diesel for mass murder--just that it would require absurd lengths to get it to work.

“My position on the diesel gaschamber hoax has always been that although one certainly could have committed mass murder with diesels, the lengths needed to make any diesel arrangement work for such a purpose would have been “absurd” in view of the readily available alternative sources of high concentrations of CO such as gasoline engine exhaust and most importantly, the “wood-gas” from any of the hundreds of thousands of wood-gas vehicles which traveled throughout German-occupied Europe. Woodgas is poison gas with CO concentrations ranging from 18% to 35%.”

http://www.codoh.com/dcforum/DCForumID7/348.html#

Sorry but that is what you do for scorched-earth warfare, especially if it is a shelter having military value. And I don't think it has even been proved that the Germans blew it up.

Latter point first. Now, it is often argued that the Holocaust is a Holohoax, and propaganda. I have had this argument on whether the Germans destroyed Auschwitz or not before, and it makes no sense to me. If the Holocaust is mountain of lies made up by Jews, the Allies, and most of all, those evil Russians, why would these groups destroy, even partially, the camps? The Brits and Americans weren't there, the inmates who stayed there had no reason to destroy or cover-up the camps, and the Russians would not destroy a propaganda coup. It makes no sense.

Well, the Russians might if they wanted to obscure that there was nothing there. Nobody really put much faith in the Majdanek propaganda, for example, even apparently accepting Himmler's explanation for a time.

Also, the fact that Treblinka was razed, and then basically turned back into a natural state,

There wasn't much at Treblinka in the first place. I think it is quite possible that they may have tried to salvage what little was at Treblinka. The Nazis, even if they had tried, could not have destoyed all the evidence. But nobody wants to even look for evidence. The Moral Certainty keeps getting in the way. In any case, this was at an earlier phase in the war, so they had time to do more for whatever reason.

plus the disaster of Maidenek, indicates that the Nazis were quite concerned about what the world would find in these camps.

I don't think it was all that much of a disaster. The gassing story, though old, never really took off until the body-stinkpile photos from Belsen were published in Life magazine and so forth. And with the war winding down this certainly titillated the imagination afresh. Besides, this atrocity propaganda may have given the Germans incentive to blowup the Kremas so that they could NOT be used for more Soviet-spawned Greuelpropaganda.

If it is a scorched earth policy, they were amazingly selective. Much of Auschwitz still stands today, but the gas chambers were destroyed, as were the warehouses containing the possessions of the inmates, except for four buildings. IG Farben was not destroyed, and that was certainly of huge military value.

That is certainly a good argument and it would be interesting to know how scorched-earth played out in the area. In any case, the Birkenau facility may have simply been under different local command and the generalized orders played-out differently. For example, you have a corporal and a couple of privates who are told to practice scorched-earth when Birkenau is evacuated. Now, they don't have time to burn down every hut so they pick the most valuable facilities in their sphere, the Kremas, and blow them up. Whether it really makes rational sense or not all depends. There is a lot of gray-area in interpreting sets of orders.

So, sorry, I don't buy it. I think the warehouses and chambers were dynamited because the SS and the administration did not want the world to see what the reality of Aushwitz was.

I don't buy that that's why they were dynamited. It is too convenient--rather like the footprints of the Easter Bunny only being where you don't look and because someone erased the evidence where you did look. The Allies were definitely not clueless about Auschwitz before the evacuation.

Plus, I find it ridiculous to see Kremas II and III as having some "military value".

That may be true, but "destroy infrastructure" may be quite vague and uneven when ultimately executed hastily.

What, the Luftwaffe is going to bomb Auschwitz, now occupied by a few Russians, why the van sweeps towards Germany, and with the US and British coming from the west? And your average SS guard does not realize just what is happening in early 1945, per the eastern front and Germany's ability to counterattack? The Bulge was over Jan. 16th, and the Russians arrived at Auscwitz January 26, 1945.

A soldier's job is to carry out his orders, not write papers on philosophy. If his sergeant says, I asked you to blow that camp up, why didn't you? Is he going to say, well, I didn't see what "military value" it had. NO, I don't think so! Yet this is an erratic and piss-poor way to destroy evidence, IMHO. I don't know WHY it was blown-up by the hastily-retreating Germans, if that is even the case, but a better argument for coverup is made for the dismantling of Treblinka, I think. Not necessarily to hide gaschambers but for the Operation Reinhardt theft program itself.

Military suppliers of commercial chemicals are likely to cut corners. If eliminating the warning-agent saved a manufacturing step and some costs for military customers the Germans likely would have done so. The military probably decided that the warning-agent was a luxury and that the technicians should simply be masked everytime they handled the material. Mark, why eliminate the odorant for homicide? Who cares if the victims can smell the gas?

But that does not explain why some of the Zyklon was marked with the odorant, while some was not; it didn't go either way. I assume it was, to use a description from Nazi documents, to prevent the "load" from panic, but then I do not know why; I have several refernces to it in notes, so I will have to look up the source material.

I don't see how no-odorant could have prevented panic unless they smelled posion gas from previous gassings while the chamber was being loaded, and it seems to me that some chemical smell would be pretty minor anyway compared with all the other smells. Besides, one might expect some chemical smells associated with delousing, as the victims were supposedly told that is what was going to happen to them.

As far as why the Germans had two different types of Zyklon-B, it is not particularly unusual that there would be stocks of two different production runs. It is doubtful that Degesch stopped making the kind with odorant which was still sold commercially, and indeed, they may have needed to keep making it due to liability concerns. Liability concerns--in the Third Reich?

Yes, of course. SS officials may have been noted for shrewdness in negotiating business agreements but they could not ignore government regulations and contracts, nor could have any supplier for the SS. For example, after the August 17, 1943 bombing of Peenemünde, Dornberger fired rocket tests in Poland from the SS camp at Blizna to impact in the Pripyat Marshes. The Army was reluctant to allow this because firing in Poland carried greater chances of an errant impact (and therefore damage or injury) than on the Baltic seacoast. (Also, in 1944 an errant V-2 being used to test the electronics of the new Wasserfall Flak-Rocket did crash in Sweden and was then shipped off the the Allies, but the intelligence results were inconclusive and misleading.) The Army did finally allow Dornberger's Polish firings once the SS reluctantly agreed to take the blame for any mishaps, which seems ironic considering that the Germans supposedly considered Poland a cesspit of subhumanity. (The Polish underground even salvaged a lost V-2 from a marsh and shipped it back to England.)

So, long-story-short, it doesn't seem illogical for me that the camps may have used the cheaper stuff for the delousing chambers, but the safer kind with the odorant for fumigating barracks or whatever. You don't need the warning-agent for the high-tech delousing chambers because no one will ever come in contact with the gas anyway. Storage might be less safe. But then there are those infamous gas-detectors that we can use for that.

A Modern Railroad-Disinfecting Plant, by Dr. G. Peters.

No, I know you don't make the sarin argument, but it is a common refrain. Per testing, how does one know prisoners weren't used?

I tend to think that there "had" to have been some sarin or other tests on prisoners. Maybe we just haven't found any proof, but with the Nazis supposedly having such a penchant for testing human guinea pigs, this seems like a glaring oversight. Nobody has made any claims that I know of regarding the Nazis testing war-gases or biological agents on prisoners. Of course, a government coverup could account for the disappearance of the "unethical experimental data" that nobody can seem to find... The Truth Is Out There!

Now, who is being cleverly obtuse? To say that Zyklon-B is not "insecticide" is surely misleading, as you admit it was used in the camps for that very purpose, by the ton...

Ahhh, I see...Zyklon-B is a carrier for 99% prussic acid. To you, apparently, this means HCN is an "insecticide" because that was the purpose for which it had a use, and it is what, an exaggeration, to state that it is a poison gas?

Not exactly an exaggeration to call Zyklon-B poison gas, although that is not what it is; it does release a posionous gas called HCN. I do think it is an exaggeration to call Zyklon-B a war-gas or anything that misleads or obfuscates its true, nonhomicidal and highly-commerical nature.

I find your statements that basements were used to kill Jews with insecticide as trivializing; obviously, you think they are accurate. While no one except you has ever referred to them as basements that I have seen, it is certainly a colorful phrase.

I don't think it is an especially colorful phrase but it is the truth. The Leichenkeller basically was a simple basement. It may say Leichenkeller (or morgue) on the blueprints but we do not know that that is what it was ever really used for. It could have been converted to store machinery, as an air-raid shelter, or even made into a gaschamber. But we do know that it was not built as a homicidal gaschamber initially, and neither were the Kremas. They went with the camp plans before it was decided to turn Birkenau into a murder-factory, assuming it was ever so converted. So the gaschamber was a basement that was converted to a homicidal gaschamber, ad hoc. Pretty straightforward, really, but it rasies doubts in my mind. The Nazis were prone to overengineering everthing, yet in this instance Höß was just cruising around the camp and happened to hit upon Zyklon-B. Eureka!

At one point both sides tried to destroy every hut in wintertime so that the other would have to contend without shelter and with refugees getting in the way of operations and logistics. Every bunker or pillbox was destroyed if possible upon retreat back to Germany.

Of which gas chambers or shelters were neither, it was not the Russian plains in winter of 1942, and the camps suffered very selective damage.

Yes, the damage at the camp was very selective in the sense that it was the most valuable or expensive.

the Kremas are the most "valuable infrastructure"?

At Birkenau, yes. But it would be interesting to see what scorched-earth policies applied at Monowitz and the Buna and synthetic oil facotories there. Nobody blew up Krema I, which had previously been converted to an air-raid shelter. Why not? An oversight? There were allegedly homicidal gassings there; plus, as an air-raid shelter it was military or strategic infrastructure. Yet it is supposedly impossible that Kremas II and III could have had their basements converted to air-raid shelters...

Certainly not for military purposes, unless they were afraid that the Russians would use them for burning up bodies. This is rather absurd.

Maybe not so absurd. Body disposal is a big nuisance in wartime and here we have a huge crematorium facility! It depends on how far you are williing to transport the corpses. Also, if you are planning on manning the ex-Nazi labor oblast for your own purposes, you had best KEEP the sanitation infrastructure intact (if it is left behind, that is).

The destruction of the chambers and the warehouses in Canada (what is the military value there?)

Even if you or the enemy can't use something there is still salvage potential if you have time to scrap it or to deny it the enemy, even as scrap.

using Occam's Razor, the attempted cover-up of evidence linking SS policy and administration to the mass killings.

It is quite possible that the simplest answer is an attempted German coverup of homicide. But it seems to me that the simplest answer is actually the simplest--the one that is the least weird or fantastic--and that is simply the scorched-earth of the most valuable equipment at Birkenau. I could be wrong, of course.

But if we draw our conclusion that there was an attempted coverup of evidence by demolishing the Kremas, this is the simplest answer only by virtue of assuming the premise that Auschwitz was a murder-factor (i.e., by gaschambers) in the first place. So if we have assumed a premise that gets us to a conclusion, we can't then use that same conclusion to justify our original premise without circular reasoning.

Even if the Germans blewup said basement, it seems to me that blowing up the Kremas is a smoking-gun only for those who assume that "500 thousand were killed in a basement" in the first place, hence the simplest reason to destroy that basement is (obviously) a coverup attempt. If we don't make any assumptions, however, then Occam's Razor gets a little dull. An assumption may be right but it is still an assumption. The demolition argument just doesn't do much for this skeptic.

Best Regards,
Scott

Schöne Zeit! Were 500 thousand killed in this basement?

[Roberto]

“My position on the diesel gaschamber hoax has always been that although one certainly could have committed mass murder with diesels, the lengths needed to make any diesel arrangement work for such a purpose would have been “absurd” in view of the readily available alternative sources of high concentrations of CO such as gasoline engine exhaust and most importantly, the “wood-gas” from any of the hundreds of thousands of wood-gas vehicles which traveled throughout German-occupied Europe. Woodgas is poison gas with CO concentrations ranging from 18% to 35%.”

http://www.codoh.com/dcforum/DCForumID7/348.html#

Which, if accurate – and neither Berg nor his pupil Smith have so far been able to demonstrate why it would have been such a big deal to make the exhaust of a diesel engine reliably lethal by increasing the fuel supply, restricting the air intake or doing both – would mean that the Treblinka SS were not the most practical people or that the engine mentioned by witnesses to the Treblinka gassings was actually a gasoline engine. Big deal. Regarding his vaunted “wood-gas”, the genius Berg shot himself in the foot with the following statement in a Usenet discussion:

As an alternative which they were required, by law, to know was extremely deadly, the Germans had producer gas generators--18% to 35% CO--on hundreds of thousands of trucks. Those generators were extremely dangerous--everyone had to know that because gas leaks were not only toxic but also highly explosive! When the engines were shutoff, the generators would keep on generating until the internal fire could be extinguished. Can anyone really believe the Germans would have used Diesel exhaust as a source of CO, when they had 18% to 35% CO? These were essentially the same people who built the first jet and rocket-propelled fighter airplanes, the first ballistic missiles, who also invented the gasoline engine, Diesel engine and even the automobile. I can't really believe that Mullins can be that stupid--but, then again, perhaps he is? (Berg, Diesel A,B,C's)

Source of quote:

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/b/ ... -available

So the producer gas generators carried the risk of the users gassing themselves or blowing themselves up. Which is one of the explanations why the SS preferred to use engines. Thanks for that one, Freddy. I can’t really believe that Berg can be that stupid – but then again, perhaps he is?

Well, the Russians might if they wanted to obscure that there was nothing there. Nobody really put much faith in the Majdanek propaganda, for example, even apparently accepting Himmler's explanation for a time.

Getting better. Despite the installations at Majdanek having been captured intact with ashes and bone fragments lying all around, despite western correspondents being invited to view the whole thing, the Western Allies in fact continued to be skeptical about the Soviet reports on that camp. So when it came to Auschwitz, the Soviets decided to destroy their greatest propaganda asset – the physical evidence – in order to make their “story” more credible.

Rather counterproductive, don’t you think so?

Of course the Soviets were not that stupid.

Only “Revisionists” can be that stupid.

There wasn't much at Treblinka in the first place. I think it is quite possible that they may have tried to salvage what little was at Treblinka. The Nazis, even if they had tried, could not have destoyed all the evidence.

In fact they tried real hard:

Die Leichenverbrennungen erfolgten Tage und Nächte hindurch. Wenn das Feuer erlosch, blieben ganze Skelette oder vereinzelte Knochen auf dem Rost zurück. Darunter hatten sich Berge von Asche gesammelt. Ein anderes Häftlingskommando, die "Aschenkolonne", mußte sie zusammenkehren und die Überreste der Knochen auf dünne Bleche legen. Mittels runder Holzpflöcke wurden die Knochen kleingestampft und danach durch ein engmaschiges Metallsieb geschüttelt; was darin hängenblieb, wurde noch einmal zerkleinert. Unverbrannte Knochen, die schwer zu zersplittern waren, wurden ein zweites Mal ins Feuer geworfen.

Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, pages 189/190

My translation:

The incineration of the corpses lasted through days and nights. When the fire went out, whole skeletons or individual bones were left on the grid. Mountains of ashes had formed underneath. Another inmate detachment, the "ashes column", had to sweep them up and lay the rests of the bones onto thin plates. With round wooden plugs the bones were then ground and thereafter shaken through a tight-meshed metal sieve; what remained in there was ground once again. Unburned bones which were difficult to grind were thrown into the fire a second time.

But a lot was left behind nevertheless. See below.

But nobody wants to even look for evidence. The Moral Certainty keeps getting in the way.

Smith may speak for himself and his fellow True Believers, who indeed avoid the evidence like a vampire avoids the cross. He is not, however, speaking for criminal justice authorities and historians, who have carefully assessed the documentary and eyewitness evidence to the mass killings. And also the physical evidence that the Nazis didn’t manage to erase completely:

There are also other traces. For example, in the north-eastern part, over a surface covering about 2 ha. (5 acres),
there are large quantities of ashes mixed with sand, among which are numerous human bones, often with the remains of decomposing tissues.

As a result of an examination made by an expert it was found that ashes were the remains of burnt human bones. The examination of numerous human skulls found in the camp has shown that they bear no traces of external injuries. Within a radius of several hundred yards from the camp site an unpleasant smell of burnt ash and decay is noticeable, growing stronger as one approaches.

From the report by the Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes in Poland. Warsaw, 1946

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

In the area where the gas chambers were supposed to have been located, the commission's team of 30 excavation workers reportedly found human remains, partially in the process of decay, and an unspecified amount of ash. Untouched sandy soil was reached at 7.5 meters, at which point the digging was halted. An accompanying photograph of an excavated pit reveals some large bones. (note 63)

Poland's Central Commission for Investigation of German Crimes
reported that large quantities of ashes mixed with sand, among which are numerous human bones, often with the remains of decomposing tissues, were found in the five acre (two hectare) burial area during an examination of the site shortly after the end of the war. (note 64)

The investigations by the Central Commission as referred to in an article by "Revionists" Mark Weber and Andrew Allen.

Source:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... linka.9605

plus the disaster of Maidenek, indicates that the Nazis were quite concerned about what the world would find in these camps.

I don't think it was all that much of a disaster. The gassing story, though old, never really took off until the body-stinkpile photos from Belsen were published in Life magazine and so forth. And with the war winding down this certainly titillated the imagination afresh. Besides, this atrocity propaganda may have given the Germans incentive to blowup the Kremas so that they could NOT be used for more Soviet-spawned Greuelpropaganda.

Well, the “Greuelpropaganda” was confirmed to the last detail at the West German Majdanek trial that ended in 1981, at the very latest. As to the contemporary reactions to the Soviet reports, BBC war correspondent Alexander Werth wrote the following in his 1964 book Russia at War 1941-1945:

The press and radio in the West were still skeptical. Typical was the BBC’s refusal to use my story, as was also this comment of the New York Herald Tribune at the time:

“Maybe we should wait for further corroboration of the horror story that comes from Lublin. Even of top of all we have been taught of the maniacal Nazi ruthlessness, this example sounds inconceivable ...

The picture presented by American correspondents requires no comment except that, if authentic, the regime capable of such crimes deserves annihilation.”

“Further corroboration” came when the Allies saw with their own eyes what the Nazis had been capable of in the concentration camps they liberated in western Germany.

If it is a scorched earth policy, they were amazingly selective. Much of Auschwitz still stands today, but the gas chambers were destroyed, as were the warehouses containing the possessions of the inmates, except for four buildings. IG Farben was not destroyed, and that was certainly of huge military value.

That is certainly a good argument and it would be interesting to know how scorched-earth played out in the area.

Why, that’s what I asked Smith to show us. How much “scorched earth” was there in Cracow and Kattowice?

In any case, the Birkenau facility may have simply been under different local command and the generalized orders played-out differently. For example, you have a corporal and a couple of privates who are told to practice scorched-earth when Birkenau is evacuated. Now, they don't have time to burn down every hut so they pick the most valuable facilities in their sphere, the Kremas, and blow them up. Whether it really makes rational sense or not all depends. There is a lot of gray-area in interpreting sets of orders.

Feeble platitudes, as usual. Only the Birkenau staff had orders to carry out “scorched earth” and failed to do so completely. No other command in the area seems to have been under such orders. Which suggests that there was no such thing as a “scorched earth” policy in place at the time and in the area in question, and that only certain facilities at Birkenau were dismantled or destroyed on account of certain particular features thereof. What features would those have been, Mr. Smith?

So, sorry, I don't buy it. I think the warehouses and chambers were dynamited because the SS and the administration did not want the world to see what the reality of Aushwitz was.

I don't buy that that's why they were dynamited.

On what grounds, Mr. Smith, other than this obvious and logical conclusion not fitting into your ideological bubble? Let’s see.

It is too convenient--rather like the footprints of the Easter Bunny only being where you don't look and because someone erased the evidence where you did look. The Allies were definitely not clueless about Auschwitz before the evacuation.

Great reasoning. When a criminal cannot erase all evidence to his crimes, what is he more likely to do? Leave all of it intact, or at least try to destroy as much as possible? The argument seems particularly strange coming from a “Revisionist” who, among other things, argues against the occurrence of the mass killings on grounds of the alleged absence of physical evidence.

A soldier's job is to carry out his orders, not write papers on philosophy. If his sergeant says, I asked you to blow that camp up, why didn't you? Is he going to say, well, I didn't see what "military value" it had. NO, I don't think so!

The question is: Why were the “soldiers” at Birkenau the only ones in the area to receive orders to destroy certain instllations?

Yet this is an erratic and piss-poor way to destroy evidence, IMHO.

Indeed it was, because enough documentary and eyewitness evidence was left behind to prove the crimes all by itself. But that’s how criminal justice and historiography see it. Coming from a “Revisionist”, this spitting on the importance of physical evidence is not only self-contradictory but also self-defeating.

I don't know WHY it was blown-up by the hastily-retreating Germans,

Why, are there any indications that it was blown up by someone else?

if that is even the case, but a better argument for coverup is made for the dismantling of Treblinka, I think. Not necessarily to hide gaschambers but for the Operation Reinhardt theft program itself.

Theft was a part of it, for sure. Mass murder paid nicely for the killers, who by plundering their victims recovered many times their “investment” (the cost of Operation Reinhard(t)), according to the figures Globocnik presented to Himmler on 5 January 1944.

I don't see how no-odorant could have prevented panic unless they smelled posion gas from previous gassings while the chamber was being loaded, and it seems to me that some chemical smell would be pretty minor anyway compared with all the other smells.

According to Sonderkommando member Miklos Nyiszli, the residues of the gas produced a “choking irritation cough” even two hours after a gassing. This cannot have been from the Zyklon B itself, but only from the irritant mixed with it as a warning agent in some shipments. See below.

Besides, one might expect some chemical smells associated with delousing, as the victims were supposedly told that is what was going to happen to them.

They were told that they were going to take a shower, if I well remember the respective testimonials. Hence the fake showerheads mentioned in the inventory lists of the crematoria …

As far as why the Germans had two different types of Zyklon-B, it is not particularly unusual that there would be stocks of two different production runs.

Very unusual, as a matter of fact, given that the lethal poison Zyklon B was considered very dangerous precisely due to the absence of any indicative irritant effect:

Since prussic acid has practically no indicative irritant effect, it is highly toxic and very dangerous. Prussic acid is one of the most powerful poisons. 1 mg per kg of body weight is sufficient to kill a human being. Women and children are generally more susceptible than men. Very small amounts of prussic acid do not harm the human body, even if breathed continuously. Birds and fishes are particularly susceptible to prussic acid.

From the translation of the DIRECTIVES FOR THE USE OF PRUSSIC ACID (ZYKLON) FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF VERMIN (DISINFESTATION), Nuremberg document NO. NI-9912. The whole document may be read on the website of “Revisionist” Carlos Porter under

http://www.cwporter.co.uk/pg387.htm

A transcription may also be found in my post of 2/19/01 1:13:59 pm on the thread

Declaration of War II
http://pub3.ezboard.com/fskalmanforumfr ... 61&stop=67

of the old forum.

It is doubtful that Degesch stopped making the kind with odorant which was still sold commercially, and indeed, they may have needed to keep making it due to liability concerns. Liability concerns--in the Third Reich?

Of course, my dear Sir. Among worthy Aryans, liability provisions applied like anywhere else.

The Army did finally allow Dornberger's Polish firings once the SS reluctantly agreed to take the blame for any mishaps, which seems ironic considering that the Germans supposedly considered Poland a cesspit of subhumanity. (The Polish underground even salvaged a lost V-2 from a marsh and shipped it back to England.)

I’d say they were less concerned with the safety of Polish sub-humans than with the breach of secrecy and the negative propaganda effects related to an eventual “mishap”. Anyway, what does this have to do with the question why some Zyklon B had no warning irritant?

So, long-story-short, it doesn't seem illogical for me that the camps may have used the cheaper stuff for the delousing chambers, but the safer kind with the odorant for fumigating barracks or whatever.

Given Höss’ documented concern for the safety of his own men, it seems perfectly idiotic, as a matter of fact. Unless the absence of a warning irritant would have resulted in certain advantages.

You don't need the warning-agent for the high-tech delousing chambers because no one will ever come in contact with the gas anyway. Storage might be less safe.

In his special order of 12 August 1942, a facsimile of which can be viewed under the link

http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/ftp ... 420812.jpg ,

camp commander Rudolf Höss wrote the following:

Ein heute mit leichten Vergiftungserscheinungen durch Blausäure aufgetretener Krankheitsfall gibt Veranlassung, allen an Vergasungen beteiligten und allen übrigen SS-Angehörigen bekanntzugeben, daß insbesondere beim Öffnen der vergasten Räume von SS-Angehörigen ohne Maske wenigstens 5 Stunden hindurch ein Abstand von 15 Metern von der Kammer gewahrt werden muß. Hierbei ist besonders auf die Windrichtung zu achten.
Das jetzt verwendete Gas enthält weniger beigesetzte Geruchsstoffe und ist daher besonders gefährlich. Der SS – Standortarzt Auschwitz lehnt die Verantwortung für eintretende Unglücksfälle in den Fällen ab, bei denen von SS-Angehörigen diese Richtlinien nicht eingehalten wurden.

My translation:

A case of disease verified today involving symptoms of light poisoning by prussic acid leads me to communicate to all taking part in gassings and all other SS members that especially when opening the gassed rooms SS members without masks must keep a distance of 15 meters to the chamber. The direction of the wind must especially be taken into account.
The gas now used contains less added odor substances and is therefore especially dangerous. The SS site physician of Auschwitz declines responsibility for occurring accidents in such cases where SS members have not complied with these directives.

So either the “high-tech delousing chambers” were not as safe as Smith would want us to believe, or Höss was referring to another type of gassing.

I tend to think that there "had" to have been some sarin or other tests on prisoners. Maybe we just haven't found any proof, but with the Nazis supposedly having such a penchant for testing human guinea pigs, this seems like a glaring oversight. Nobody has made any claims that I know of regarding the Nazis testing war-gases or biological agents on prisoners.

How about reading my posts, Mr. Smith? In the last one I mentioned testing of chemical warfare agents and antidotes thereto at Natzweiler concentration camp, ordered by Himmler himself. The Natzweiler gas chamber was used in August 1944 to test the efficacy of a substance called Urotropin, developed by a Professor Dr, Birkenbach as a protection against phosgene gas, a substance developed and used during the First World War. These experiments consisted in sending inmates who had received Urotropin into the chamber together with a placebo control group of other inmates. The experiments were successful, i.e. those in the placebo group died of pulmonary edema, whereas those who had received Urotropin survived. (Kogon/Langbein/Rückerl et al, Nationalsozialistische Massentötungen durch Giftgas, page 277).

Not exactly an exaggeration to call Zyklon-B poison gas, although that is not what it is; it does release a posionous gas called HCN. I do think it is an exaggeration to call Zyklon-B a war-gas or anything that misleads or obfuscates its true, non-homicidal and highly-commerical nature.

Non-homicidal, Mr. Smith?

Prussic acid is one of the most powerful poisons. 1 mg per kg of body weight is sufficient to kill a human being. Women and children are generally more susceptible than men.

From the above mentioned translation of the “Directives”.

The ideal agent of homicide, I would say.

The Leichenkeller basically was a simple basement. It may say Leichenkeller (or morgue) on the blueprints but we do not know that that is what it was ever really used for. It could have been converted to store machinery, as an air-raid shelter, or even made into a gaschamber. But we do know that it was not built as a homicidal gaschamber initially, and neither were the Kremas. They went with the camp plans before it was decided to turn Birkenau into a murder-factory, assuming it was ever so converted. So the gaschamber was a basement that was converted to a homicidal gaschamber, ad hoc. Pretty straightforward, really, but it rasies doubts in my mind.

What raises doubts in my mind is why one of those alleged “mortuaries” was referred to as a “Vergasungskeller”, a gassing cellar, in Bischoff’s letter to Kammler of 29 January 1943, why “Sonderbehandlung”, i.e. “special treatment”, was stated as taking place in one of the buildings containing such “mortuaries” in a memorandum of the same day, why one of the “mortuaries” is shown in an inventory attached to the transfer deed of the crematorium to contain 14 showerheads and a gas tight door, why gas tight doors with peepholes protected on the inside were ordered for another “mortuary”, why one “mortuary” is stated in another inventory list as having “wire mesh introduction devices with wooden covers” and why, if the “mortuaries” were put to another use at any given time, there was never a change in designation in construction drawings, transfer deeds or subsequent documents. And I strongly doubt that the “intellectually curious” Mr. Smith is able to provide convincing answers to these questions or even willing to give it a try.

The Nazis were prone to overengineering everthing, yet in this instance Höß was just cruising around the camp and happened to hit upon Zyklon-B. Eureka!

The best discoveries are often made by chance. The discovery that the camp’s standard pesticide could be used for mass killing was certainly a most brilliant one, making any “over-engineering” superfluous.

the Kremas are the most "valuable infrastructure"?

At Birkenau, yes.

Indeed they were, given that the camp’s main purpose was mass murder. The flicker of reason is appreciated. But did that still apply when the camp was evacuated?

But it would be interesting to see what scorched-earth policies applied at Monowitz and the Buna and synthetic oil facotories there.

Indeed it would be. Which is why I would like to see Smith, who brought up the “scorched earth” argument, to do some research and show us just how much “scorched earth” there was in the surrounding areas at the time.

Certainly not for military purposes, unless they were afraid that the Russians would use them for burning up bodies. This is rather absurd.

Maybe not so absurd. Body disposal is a big nuisance in wartime and here we have a huge crematorium facility! It depends on how far you are williing to transport the corpses.

Absurdity knows no boundaries when it comes to Smith.

"Hey, Tovarich, we no longer need to bury our dead in mass graves because we discovered a nice Nazi cremation complex where we can cremate them. So henceforth we will no longer dig them under as soon as they get killed and put some nice gravestones on top (standard Red Army procedure) but take them all the way to Auschwitz and shove them into those Nazi ovens."

You don’t really see the Soviets thinking like that, do you?

Besides, what fighting was there in the Auschwitz-Birkenau area that produced a significant number of Soviet casualties? None, if I well remember.

Also, if you are planning on manning the ex-Nazi labor oblast for your own purposes, you had best KEEP the sanitation infrastructure intact (if it is left behind, that is).

“Sanitation infrastructure” he calls it. A concentration/extermination camp with its crematoria. And then, he’s not so far off. After all the people killed at the place were sub-human vermin, weren’t they?

using Occam's Razor, the attempted cover-up of evidence linking SS policy and administration to the mass killings.

It is quite possible that the simplest answer is an attempted German coverup of homicide. But it seems to me that the simplest answer is actually the simplest--the one that is the least weird or fantastic--and that is simply the scorched-earth of the most valuable equipment at Birkenau. I could be wrong, of course

In the absence of any demonstrable “scorched earth” policy applied in the respective area at the respective time, cover-up of homicide is actually the simplest explanation. Although a professed friend of "Occam's Razor", Smith seems to have big problems with this obvious conclusion. Why is that so?

But if we draw our conclusion that there was an attempted coverup of evidence by demolishing the Kremas, this is the simplest answer only by virtue of assuming the premise that Auschwitz was a murder-factor (i.e., by gaschambers) in the first place. So if we have assumed a premise that gets us to a conclusion, we can't then use that same conclusion to justify our original premise without circular reasoning.

No, my dear Sir. We are not assuming any premise. We are just reasoning that the most logical and simple reason for destroying certain installations was the intention of covering up “something” that had been going on in there. What needs to be covered up is nothing good, usually a crime. Thus we have another indication that what happened at the place in question was mass murder. Not that we really need such indication in the face of the conclusive documentary, eyewitness and physical evidence, you see.

The demolition argument just doesn't do much for this skeptic.

That’s because the “skeptic” is everything other than a skeptic and applies “Occam’s Razor” only when the results fit into his ideological bubble. When they do not, and in this case, he engages in hilarious mental gymnastics to make believe that what is obviously the simplest explanation is not the simplest explanation after all. There again goes Smith’s credibility.

Schöne Zeit! Were 500 thousand killed in this basement?

Whether or not they were depends on the number of people transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the killing and cremation capacity of the other facilities. But the capacity was there, even if we assume that it was little more than half the capacity stated in the Bauleitung memorandum of 28 June 1943. If 800 people could be “processed” by the ovens of Crematorium II every day, how many could be disposed during the 20 months that is was in operation, Mr. Smith?