Debate the Holocaust

[Bill Medland]

As with all debate, it would be very boring if everyone agreed with the same view at the beginning of a debate, it would just fall flat.
as long as the principle of no Holocaust denial is upheld, and I have NEVER denied the Holocaust, where is the problem?
I am interested in the Holocaust from the SS perspective, why is that a problem for some?
Will your or my views bring anyone back or change anything? I think not.
Regards,Bill.

[Rick-rs]

Understand this Bill,not every one has a distant view on the matter,if you are born and raised in the States p.e,and you only know the holocaust from books and TV,than you can discuss the issue without any personal involvement,if you on the other hand grew up between the victims of both sides than you are involved if you want to ore not,and every discussion ends the same,there was no holocaust,no gascamps no nothing,nobody says it downright,no they spread URL's around of those denialsites.

If every discussion has to end there,then what's the use?
Why wonder how the SS saw the war when everybody thinks there was no Holocaust to begin with?
In order to have a meaningfull discussion about this topic you have to do it with people who know what every normal person knows,that there was a Holocaust,gaskamps etc.

Cheers Rick

[David C. Clarke]

Hi Bill, I think that there is something disturbing about reading a fine piece of fiction and imagination such as you posted in a thread below where you imagined the impact of the incinerators on different camp personell. Especially coming from someone who, while not denying the Holocaust, appears to be in sympathy with its implementation.
There has to a rule against that somewhere.
Seriously, I think you may want to consider posting these musings on the
"What If" board, as they are not quite history. This is not to say that I am unimpressed with the thought that goes into writing them, it's just a question of whether they're appropriate in a space reserved for serious debate on the worst of twentieth century crimes. Best Regards, David

[Ron Birch]

I thought that the few people that wanted to discuss this subject had to do more with the numbers, not that it didn't happen. The problem is there ARE people who believe it didn't happen and I'm sure would post to the thread. If it was to be discussed I would rather hear about the numbers than the view or feelings of the guards at the camp......especially if it was fiction.

If there was a discussion on the numbers to me I think it should be limited to one camp at time.

I myself wouldn't have any input, but I would read the thread. And monitors would have to keep a close eye.

[Bill Medland]

Hi David,
Glad to see you are following my postings. I did not think the "what if" section would be the right place for my comments, that is why I placed them on the Holocaust section. Sometimes posts can be borderline and it can be debated as to which section they belong.
As for "sympathy" for the implementation of the Holocaust, you know me long enough, that I am interested in all aspects of the Third Reich from the Nazi viewpoint (as an historian), so it is logical this would include the Holocaust too.
Regards,Bill.

[Stuart S]

Perhaps the subject of the Holocaust could be phrased in the style of an exam question;

<Did the NSDAP regime deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within it's empire?

If yes, when, how and to what extent was the policy achieved? You should provide numbers, methods, dates and places. You should also establish that this was in pursuance of a clear government directive.

If no, explain why large numbers of civilians were held in detention and why so many seem to have perished. You should also explain the accounts of gas chambers, "experiments" on inmates, gruesome trophies (the lampshades etc), mass graves and ovens.

Try to avoid quoting huge tracts from other historians' work but support your view with reference to original documents, eyewitness reports and forensic evidence.>

I'm sure some people on the forum think they've answered this one already. However, on looking through the threads it seems that those most active in posting on this subject have spent more time debating semantics, sniping at each other and denigrating each other's sources than discussing hard facts.

In case you're wondering, I don't have an axe to grind. Frankly, I don't care if six million or five million or half a million died. I don't care if they were deliberately exterminated on Hitler's orders or if they were butchered at the whim of local camp commandants. I don't care if the Holocaust was genuinely an evil plan to eradicate an entire people from occupied Europe, a number of terrible but unofficial and/or un-coordinated murders or an elaborate piece of propaganda designed to promote the creation of Israel/justify the war/denigrate the politics of nationalism. I simply want to be pointed in the direction of the truth.

Any takers?

[Roberto]

I simply want to be pointed in the direction of the truth.

Well, the most simple answer to such a pretension would be a list of good books dealing with the subject, as it's a rather vain undertaking to ask for being "pointed in the direction of the truth" on a discussion forum, especially in regard to a phenomenon of history extensively covered by criminal investigation and historical research over the last five and a half decades.

Depite this, and although my experience is that people speaking of "the truth" are interested in everything but that, I will point out some telling documentary evidence to the decision-making process. Fellow posters familiar with primary sources, such as David Thompson, may want to add references to further evidence.

Goebbels' diary entry regading Hitler's statements on 12 December 1941:

Bezüglich der Judenfrage ist der Führer entschlossen, reinen Tisch zu machen. Er hat den Juden prophezeit, daß, wenn sie noch einmal einen Weltkrieg herbeiführen würden, sie dabei ihre Vernichtung erleben würden. Das ist keine Phrase gewesen. Der Weltkrieg ist da, die Vernichtung des Judentums muß die notwendige Folge sein.

Translation:

In respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would experience their annihilation in it. That wasn't just a catch-word. The world war is here, and the annihilation of Jewry must be the necessary consequence.

Source:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/nazis-words/

Emphases are mine.

What this "annihilation of Jewry" meant and how it was to be brought about is made clear by the recollections of Hitler's statements by another participant in the meeting, governor of Poland Hans Frank. In a speech to members of his staff on 16 December 1941, he stated the following:

"As far as the Jews are concerned, I want to tell you quite frankly, that they must be done away with in one way or another. The Fuehrer said once: should united Jewry again succeed in provoking a world war, the blood of not only the nations which have been forced into the war by them, will be shed, but the Jew will have found his end in Europe * * *
"Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews, wherever we find them and wherever it is possible, in order to maintain here the structure of the Reich as a whole. This will, naturally, be achieved by other methods than those pointed out by Bureau Chief Dr. Hummel. Nor can the judges of the Special Courts be made responsible for it, because of the limitations of the framework of the legal procedure. Such outdated views cannot be applied to such gigantic and unique events. We must find at any rate, a way which leads to the goal, and my thoughts are working in that direction.
"The Jews represent for us also extraordinarily malignant gluttons. We have now approximately 2,500,000 of them in the General Government, perhaps with the Jewish mixtures and everything that goes with it, 3,500,000 Jews. We cannot shoot or poison those 3,500,000 Jews, but we shall nevertheless be able to take measures, which will lead, somehow, to their annihilation, and this in connection with the gigantic measures to be determined in discussions from the Reich. The General Government must become free of Jews, the same as the Reich. Where and how this is to be achieved is a matter for the offices which we must appoint and create here. Their activities will be brought to your attention in due course."

Source:
http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/Frank.htm

Emphases are mine. The first is to point out the similarity with Goebbels' diary entry, which suggests that Frank was referring to the same source as Goebbels - the Führer's utterances on 12 December 1941 in which he harked back to his "prophecy" made years before. The second is to point out a passage where it becomes very clear that "annihilation" was meant in a physical, homicidal sense and that it had been decided upon on an overall and not just regional level, hence Frank's reference to "gigantic measures to be determined in discussions from the Reich". The "discussions from the Reich" that Frank referred to were the so-called Wannsee Conference that took place on 20 January 1942, in which Frank was represented by State Secretary Dr. Bühler and where the intended fate of European Jews was outlined as follows:

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able-bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.

The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as a the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

In the course of the practical execution of the final solution, Europe will be combed through from west to east. Germany proper, including the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, will have to be handled first due to the housing problem and additional social and political necessities.

Source of quote:
http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/germ/wanneng.html

While these passages expressly address only the fate of the able-bodied Jews capable of working, the intended fate of non-Jews is implicit. If the working Jews were to be "eliminated by natural causes" (i.e. worked to death) and the survivors were eventually to be "treated accordingly", there can be no doubt that the non-working and therefore useless Jews were to be "treated accordingly" right away.

The original plan to "comb" Europe from west to east suffered an alteration pursuant to the request formulated by State Secretary Dr. Bühler:

State Secretary Dr. Bühler stated that the General Government would welcome it if the final solution of this problem could be begun in the General Government, since on the one hand transportation does not play such a large role here nor would problems of labor supply hamper this action. Jews must be removed from the territory of the General Government as quickly as possible, since it is especially here that the Jew as an epidemic carrier represents an extreme danger and on the other hand he is causing permanent chaos in the economic structure of the country through continued black market dealings. Moreover, of the approximately 2 1/2 million Jews concerned, the majority is unfit for work.

Source:
http://library.byu.edu/~rdh/eurodocs/germ/wanneng.html

Contrary to the original intention, the "final solution of this problem" thus commenced in the General Government, as noted by Goebbels in his diary entry of 27 March 1942, ten days after the deportations from Lublin to Belzec extermination camp. It is worth while to read the whole of Goebbels' diary entry of that day, for Goebbels' notes make clear that the "barbaric process" of deportation and liquidation of the Jews from the General Government was but the beginning of the execution of the "final solution of this problem" outlined at the Wannsee Conference. It also leaves no room for doubt about the genocidal nature of this "final solution":

Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.

The former Gauleiter of Vienna, who is to carry this measure through, is doing it with considerable circumspection and according to a method that does not attract too much attention. A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophesy which the Fuehrer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus. No other government and no other regime would have the strength for such a global solution of this question. Here, too, the Fuehrer is the undismayed champion of a radical solution necessitated by conditions and therefore inexorable. Fortunately a whole series of possibilities presents itself for us in wartime that would be denied us in peacetime. We shall have to profit by this.

The ghettoes that will be emptied in the cities of the General Government now will be refilled with Jews thrown out of the Reich. This process is to be repeated from time to time. There is nothing funny in it for the Jews, and the fact that Jewry's representatives in England and America are today organizing and sponsoring the war against Germany must be paid for dearly by its representatives in Europe - and that's only right.

Source: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/g/goe ... 942-mar-27

Emphases are mine.

Hitler’s public statements at the same time were not as explicit, for obvious reasons. But Himmler’s statements before selected insider audiences at his speeches in Posen on 4 October and 6 October 1943 were even more explicit than Goebbels' diary entries, especially the following made before the Reichs-und Gauleiter of the NSDAP in Posen on 06.10.1943:

Ich darf hier in diesem Zusammenhang und in diesem allerengsten Kreise auf eine Frage hinweisen, die Sie, meine Parteigenossen, alle als selbstverständlich hingenommen haben, die aber für mich die schwerste Frage meines Lebens geworden ist, die Judenfrage. Sie alle nehmen es als selbstverständlich und erfreulich hin, daß in Ihrem Gau keine Juden mehr sind. Alle deutschen Menschen – abgesehen von einzelnen Ausnahmen – sind sich auch darüber klar, daß wir den Bombenkrieg, die Belastungen des vierten und des vielleicht kommenden fünften und sechsten Kriegsjahres nicht ausgehalten hätten und nicht aushalten würden, wenn wir diese zersetzende Pest noch in unserem Volkskörper hätten. Der Satz >Die Juden müssen ausgerottet werden< mit seinen wenigen Worten, meine Herren, ist leicht ausgesprochen. Für den, der durchführen muß, was er fordert, ist es das Allerhärteste und Schwerste, was es gibt. Sehen Sie, natürlich sind es Juden, es ist ganz klar, es sind nur Juden, bedenken Sie aber selbst, wie viele – auch Parteigenossen – ihr berühmtes Gesuch an mich oder irgendeine Stelle gerichtet haben, in dem es hieß, daß alle Juden selbstverständlich Schweine seien, daß bloß der Soundso ein anständiger Jude sei, dem man nichts tun dürfe. Ich wage zu behaupten, daß es nach der Anzahl der Gesuche und der Anzahl der Meinungen in Deutschland mehr anständige Juden gegeben hat als überhaupt nominell vorhanden waren. In Deutschland haben wir nämlich so viele Millionen Menschen, die ihren einen berühmten anständigen Juden haben, daß diese Zahl bereits größer ist als die Zahl der Juden. Ich will das bloß ausführen, weil Sie aus dem Lebensbereich Ihres eigenen Gaues bei achtbaren und anständigen nationalsozialistischen Menschen feststellen können, daß auch von ihnen jeder einen anständigen Juden kennt.
Ich bitte Sie, das, was ich Ihnen in diesem Kreise sage, wirklich nur zu hören und nie darüber zu sprechen. Es trat an uns die Frage heran: Wie ist es mit den Frauen und Kindern? – Ich habe mich entschlossen, auch hier eine ganz klare Lösung zu finden. Ich hielt mich nämlich nicht für berechtigt, die Männer auszurotten – sprich also, umzubringen oder umbringen zu lassen – und die Rächer in Gestalt der Kinder für unsere Söhne und Enkel groß werden zu lassen. Es mußte der schwere Entschluß gefaßt werden, dieses Volk von der Erde verschwinden zu lassen. Für die Organisation, die den Auftrag durchführen mußte, war es der schwerste, den wir bisher hatten. Er ist durchgeführt worden, ohne daß – wie ich glaube sagen zu können – unsere Männer und unsere Führer einen Schaden an Geist und Seele erlitten hätten. Der Weg zwischen den hier bestehenden Möglichkeiten, entweder roh zu werden, herzlos zu werden und menschliches Leben nicht mehr zu achten oder weich zu werden und durchzudrehen bis zu Nervenzusammenbrüchen – der Weg zwischen dieser Scylla und Charybdis ist entsetzlich schmal.
Wir haben das Vermögen, daß wir bei den Juden beschlagnahmten – es ging in unendliche Werte -, bis zum letzten Pfennig an den Reichswirtschaftsminister abgeführt. Ich habe mich immer auf den Standpunkt gestellt: Wir haben die Verpflichtung unserem Volke, unserer Rasse gegenüber, wenn wir den Krieg gewinnen wollen – wir haben die Verpflichtung unserem Führer gegenüber, der nun in 2000 Jahren unserem Volke einmal geschenkt worden ist, hier nicht klein zu sein und hier konsequent zu sein. Wir haben nicht das Recht, auch nur einen Pfennig von dem beschlagnahmten Judenvermögen zu nehmen. Ich habe von vornherein festgesetzt, daß SS-Männer, auch wenn sie nur eine Mark davon nehmen, des Todes sind. Ich habe in den letzten Tagen deswegen einige, ich kann es ruhig sagen, es sind etwa ein Dutzend – Todesurteile unterschrieben. Hier muß man hart sein, wenn nicht das Ganze darunter leiden soll. – Ich habe mich für verpflichtet gehalten, zu Ihnen als den obersten Willensträgern, als den obersten Würdenträgern der Partei, dieses politischen Ordens, dieses politischen Instruments des Führers, auch über diese Frage einmal ganz offen zu sprechen und zu sagen, wie es gewesen ist. –
Die Judenfrage in den von uns besetzten Ländern wird bis Ende dieses Jahres erledigt sein. Es werden nur Restbestände von einzelnen Juden übrig bleiben, die untergeschlüpft sind. Die Frage der mit nichtjüdischen Teilen verheirateten Juden und die Frage der Halbjuden werden sinngemäß und vernünftig untersucht, entschieden und dann gelöst.
Daß ich große Schwierigkeiten mit vielen wirtschaftlichen Einrichtungen hatte, werden Sie mir glauben. Ich habe in den Etappengebieten große Judengettos ausgeräumt. In Warschau haben wir in einem Judengetto vier Wochen Straßenkampf gehabt. Vier Wochen! Wir haben dort ungefähr 700 Bunker ausgehoben. Dieses ganze Getto machte also Pelzmäntel, Kleider und ähnliches. Wenn man früher dort hinlangen wollte, so hieß es: Halt! Sie stören die Kriegswirtschaft! Halt! Rüstungsbetrieb! – Natürlich hat das mit Parteigenossen Speer gar nichts zu tun, Sie können gar nichts dazu. Es ist der Teil von angeblichen Rüstungsbetrieben, die der Parteigenosse Speer und ich in den nächsten Wochen und Monaten gemeinsam reinigen wollen. Das werden wir genauso unsentimental machen, wie im fünften Kriegsjahr alle Dinge unsentimental, aber mit großem Herzen für Deutschland gemacht werden müssen.
Damit möchte ich die Judenfrage abschließen. Sie wissen nun Bescheid, und Sie behalten es für sich. Man wird vielleicht in ganz später Zeit sich einmal überlegen können, ob man dem deutschen Volke etwas mehr darüber sagt. Ich glaube, es ist besser, wir – wir insgesamt – haben das für unser Volk getragen, haben die Verantwortung auf uns genommen (die Verantwortung für eine Tat, nicht für eine Idee) und nehmen dann das Geheimnis mit uns ins Grab.

Source of quote:

Märthesheimer/Frenzel, Im Kreuzfeuer: Der Fernsehfilm Holocaust. Eine Nation ist betroffen, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag GmbH Frankfurt am Main 1979, pages 112 to 114. Reference of quote: Heinrich Himmler, Geheimreden 1933 bis 1945, edited by Bradley F. Smith and Agnes F. Peterson, Berlin 1974, pages 169 and following.

My translation:

I allow myself, in this context and in this most restricted circle, to point to an question that you, my fellow party members, have all taken for granted, but that for me has become the most difficult question of my life, the Jewish question. You all take it for granted and a pleasant fact that in your Gau[/] there are no more Jews. All German people – apart from some exceptions – are also clearly aware that wouldn’t have withstood or withstand the bombing war, the hardships of the fourth and maybe the fifth and sixth war year, if we still had this disintegrating plague in our body popular. The sentence >The Jews must be exterminated< with its few words, my dear Sirs, is easily pronounced. For him who must carry out what is required it is the toughest and most difficult thing there is. You see, of course they are Jews, it is very clear, they are just Jews, but consider yourselves how many, – also party members – addressed their famous request to me or any other entity wherein it said that all Jews were swine of course, that only so-and-so was a decent Jew who was not to be harmed. I dare assert that by the number of requests and the number of opinions there have been more decent Jews in Germany than nominally existed at all. This because in Germany we have so many million people who had their famous one decent Jew that this number is already larger than the number of Jews. I only want to address this because you are able to observe in respectable and decent National Socialist individuals from the living area of your own "Gau", that each of them also knows a decent Jew.
I ask you that what I tell you in this circle you will really only hear and never talk about it. The question came up to us: What do to with the women and children? – I decided to find a very clear solution also in this respect. This because I didn’t consider myself entitled to exterminate the men – that is, to kill them or to have them killed – and to let the children grow up as avengers against our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be taken to make this people disappear from the earth. For the organization that had to carry out the task if was the most difficult we had so far. It has been carried out without – as I consider myself entitled to say – our men and our leaders having taken harm to their spirit and soul. The path between the possibilities existing here, to either become crude and heartless and no longer to respect human life or to become weak and collapse to the point of nervous breakdowns the path between this Scylla and Charybdis is horrendously narrow.
The patrimony that we confiscated from the Jews – it reached endless values – we have transferred to the last Pfennig to the Reich Minister of Economics. I have always held this position: We have the duty towards our people, our race, if we want to win the war – we have the duty towards our Führer, who has been given to our people this one time in 2000 years, not to be miserly and to be consequent in this respect. We don’t have the right to take even a Pfennig of the confiscated Jewish property. I have established from the very start that SS men will be punished by death if they take as much a one mark of it. In the last days I have thus, I have no problem saying this, signed about a dozen death sentences. In these things you must be tough lest the whole be affected by them. – I have considered myself under the obligation to once speak with all openness to you as the main carriers of the will, the main dignitaries of the party, this political order, this political instrument of the Führer, also about this question and to tell you how it has been. –
The Jewish question in the countries occupied by us will be solved until the end of this year. There will remain only a few individual hidden Jews. The question as to Jews married to non-Jewish partners and the question of the half-Jews will be correspondingly and reasonably examined, decided upon and then solved.
You will believe that I had great difficulties with economic institutions. I have cleared many Jewish ghettoes in the rear areas. In Warsaw we had four weeks of street fighting in one Jewish ghetto. Four weeks! We there took out about 700 bunker. So this whole ghetto made fur coats, clothes and similar things. If you formerly tried to get at it, someone said: Stop! You are disturbing the war economy! Stop! Armament factory! – Of course this have nothing to do with fellow party member Speer, you can do nothing about it. It the part of alleged armament factories that fellow party member Speer and I will jointly clean up in the next weeks and months. We will do that as unsentimentally as everything in the fifth year of the war has to be done unsentimentally, but with a great heart for Germany.
With this I want to conclude the Jewish question. You are now informed, and you will keep it to yourselves. Maybe a long time hereafter one may think about whether the German people is to be told more about it. I think it is better if we – we all together – have done this for our people, have taken the responsibility onto ourselves (the responsibility for a deed, not for an idea) and then take the secret with us to the grave.

Emphasis is mine.

One of the rare occasions on which Hitler himself became quite explicit regarding the “Final Solution” is addressed on the following thread:

The meeting between Hitler & Horthy on 16/17 April 1943
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/phpBB2/v ... aae0ffc411

[Scott Smith]

Perhaps the subject of the Holocaust could be phrased in the style of an exam question;

<Did the NSDAP regime deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within it's empire?

Yes, but that's not the same as killing them; the policy before the war was discrimination and to encourage emigration. The policy during the war was detention in camps and ghettos and using the able-bodied for forced-labor. It seems entirely plausible to me that five-million perished or were murdered one way or another, sometimes in massacres.

If yes, when, how and to what extent was the policy achieved? You should provide numbers, methods, dates and places. You should also establish that this was in pursuance of a clear government directive.

There doesn't seem to be a smoking-gun or Hitler Order, and the sheer volume of survivors to this "murder policy" undermines the Exterminationist thesis, AFAIC. It would not have been hard to kill Anne Frank or the Ghetto Boy, New York physician Zvi Nussbaum.

If no, explain why large numbers of civilians were held in detention

For the same reason that Japanese-Americans were put into detention by FDR during wartime as a supposed Fifth Column, security. But also to exploit forced-labor for the duration of the war from the "enemy aliens lodged subversively in our midst."

and why so many seem to have perished.

It was cruel and the detention was conducted on the barest of economic margins during a Total War that Germany was unlikely to win. And even then it is questionable whether slave-labor was profitable for the SS-WVHA. Still, the SS-RSHA (which handled security and did not care about Speer and Pohl's labor and economic concerns) wanted more and more put into detention. So was the policy forced-labor and detention or extermination?

It is entirely plausible that the feeble were killed to prevent overcrowding, but whether this policy was on local initiative (although surely authorized by Himmler) or general to the Polish labor camps like Auschwitz is hard to say. The number of survivors like the Ghetto Boy who were not fit for heavy labor seems to mitigate against the Exterminationist thesis; for example, Anne Frank survived Auschwitz and only died of typhus in Belsen in western Germany during that last few months of the war when the Germans lost control of conditions in their camps.

You should also explain the accounts of gas chambers,

Nobody seems to have been able to find a working gaschamber. The one at Dachau is a fraud which is so obvious it is not claimed to have ever been used--although some on this forum think that the Nazis tossed babies alive into the crematoria at Dachau, rather like a sacrament to the fire-god Moloch.

The presumed gaschambers at Majdanek found by the Soviets and extensively used in their propaganda have similar problems and were more-likely used for delousing clothing. The Germans blew up the crematoria at Birkenau, and it is questionable based on chemical testing alone if the basements there were really used as gaschambers.

The crematorium at the Auschwitz Stammlager has been reconstructed after the war and it is difficult to say what is real and what is a prop.

No trace exists for the Reinhardt camps except that the diesel-gaschamber thesis has been thoroughly debunked. There might still have been gassings with gasoline engines or on a more modest scale with the insecticide Zyklon-B that was used in all wartime camps; more research is needed, particularly of physicial forensic evidence. The mass-grave at Treblinka cannot even be located; when it is it might reveal clues as to how many bodies were really disposed there and under what circumstances.

"experiments" on inmates,

The Luftwaffe conducted dangerous experiments with high-altitude pressures and cold-water immersion at Dachau. This data was very useful and the U.S. government apparently used it after the war in its own aerospace and maritime research.

Himmler stated that the subjects were convicted criminals, who were volunteers and who thereby received favors. Of course, Himmler could have lied to Luftwaffe pilots and Army rocket engineers. But then again, the SS and the Luftwaffe could have gotten release-forms and then it would have unquestionably been legal in democratic regimes.

It remains, however, that prisoners and soldiers are inherently vulnerable and have limited free-will, so the ethics of such dangerous human experimentation is still in question. Americans have also performed human medical experiments such as syphillis studies in negroes who were deliberately not treated without their knowledge, radiation experiments on the sex organs of prisoners, and also on ordinary soldiers during atomic testing.

It is better to use animals, even if this means vivisection, IMHO. Nazi Germany had laws against animal vivisection at both Hitler and Göring's behest, which may have discouraged this, and thus led indirectly to the Luftwaffe seeking Himmler's prisoner resources. It is incorrect that the experiments were necessarily conducted on Jews and not on other classes of prisoners.

Some other experiments were done to develop a typhus vaccine and probably on war-gases like the new nerve agents. Dr. Mengele studied identical twins. I question stories about Nazi mad-scientists, however. The hypothermia and hypoxia experiments I don't question because the data was genuine. Basically, if it sounds like a bizarre story it probably is just that, or a rumor, such as prisoners being turned into soap.

Just because something makes a good story about the Evil Nazis or the Noble Victims and Martyrs, especially Jews, does not make it true--although to question this might be illegal in some countries.

gruesome trophies (the lampshades etc),

More fraud. Any political Inquisition raiding any pathology lab will produce enough fodder to concoct a good "Chamber of Horrors" story.

mass graves and ovens.

People die even in wartime and their is nothing sinister about cremation, although it might violate Christian taboos. Crematoria don't kill people.

The debate is how much cremation-capacity was to be expected considering the growth of the labor-camp archipelago envisioned by Himmler during the war and what could have been built for a murder program. It is an interesting area of research. A lot seems to hinge on whether ovens that were designed for cremation and shipping of discrete remains in boxes could have had lots of bodies stuffed inside them and still worked properly when the Germans could have designed industrial incinerators in the first place.

In addition, there is a question of whether body disposal in open pits or on barbecue grills could have accommodated the quantities and timetables claimed by the standard stories with minimal fuel. I'm not entirely convinced either way without more data.

Try to avoid quoting huge tracts from other historians' work but support your view with reference to original documents, eyewitness reports and forensic evidence.

Nearly all of the evidence comes from eyewitness stories that have not been subjected to much critical analysis. Understandably, historians are uncomfortable treading on someone else's suffering and mythology. At Nuremberg it was claimed that 2 million were steamed to death at Treblinka. The Soviets even introduced an exhibit (USSR-393) which they called Human Soap, but it was never tested and seems to have followed Indiana Jones' Ark of the Covenant into a giant, byzantine Nazi War Crimes abyss somewhere.

If rumor and propaganda proved the truth then the Medieval Inquisition would have demonstrated the existence of witches and witchcraft to Science and not just to Law. How else does one account for the innumerable independent tales of the Devil with a red tail and horns? Or fathomless tales of abductions by gray UFO-aliens with insect eyes for that matter...

The most extensive technical analysis of the gaschambers and crematoria at Birkenau from the Exterminationist side was from Jean-Claude Pressac who was hired by the Klarsfeld Foundation; his numbers are far lower than even the standard claim of about a million. Those claims at one time were commonly held at 3-4 million gassed and cremated at Auschwitz, and not revised until 1990 with the demise of Communism.

The problem with this debate is that it is basically illegal in Germany, France, and many European countries. Where it is not illegal it is very politically-incorrect. That also skews legimate research. The supposed uniqueness of the Holocaust is a major propaganda ploy that supports Israel financially, and morally through the occupation of Palestine. I strongly object to canonical and proprietary views of History. We have seen on the forum how it is irrationally necessary to defend even absurd and problematical claims like Human Soap experiments and diesel-gaschambers, improbably burning babies alive, and the improbable gas-vans. I consider myself a Skeptic because I do not have all the answers.

Best Regards,
Scott

[Roberto]

Perhaps the subject of the Holocaust could be phrased in the style of an exam question;

<Did the NSDAP regime deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within it's empire?

Yes, but that's not the same as killing them; the policy before the war was to encourage emigration. The policy during the war was detention in camps and ghettoes and using the able-bodied for forced-labor. It seems entirely plausible to me that five-million perished or were murdered one way or another, sometimes in massacres.

The rest of Smith's beaten "Revisionist" crap I'll skip, it has been repeated a thousand times, taken apart just as often and thus draws no more than a hearty yawn at this time.

As to the above quote, here we have the breakdown by causes of death of Raul Hilberg's estimate of 5.1 million Jewish victims, which Smith has repeatedly professed to accept:

Ghettorization and general occupation over 800,000
Ghettos in German-ocupied Eastern Europe
over 600,000
Theresienstadt and privation outside of ghettos
100,000
Trannistria colonies (Romania and Soviet Jews)
100,000
Open Air Shootings 1,300,000
Einsatsgruppen, Higher SS and Police Leaders, Romanian and German armies in mobile operations; shootings in Galicia during deportation; killings of prisoners of war and shootings in Serbia and elsewhere.

Camps up to 3,000,000
German

Death Camps
up to 2,700,000
Auschwitz
1,000,000

Treblinka
up to 750,000

Belsez
550,000

Sobibór
up to 200,000

Kulmhof
150,000

Lublin
50,000

Camps with tolls in the low tens of thousands and or below
150,000
Concentration camps (Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Dachau, Stutthof, and others)

Camps with killing operations (Poniatowa, Trawaniki, Semlin)

Labor camps and transit camps

Romanian

Golta Complex Bessarabian transi camps
100,000
Croatian and other
under 50,000

Total
5,100,000

Source of quote:

http://holocaust-info.dk/statistics/hillberg_cause.htm

Now Smith may tell us which of the above he considers to have been "murdered one way or another, sometimes in massacres", which he considers to have simply "perished" and by what criteria he draws the distinction between one thing and the other.

But please make it short and concise, my dear friend.

No big sermons about your copiously known world-view, and try to leave out the bullshit rhetoric as well, if you can.

Don't bore the hell out of our audience.

See you tomorrow, Mr. "Skeptic" (if Smith is a skeptic, I'm the Führer's grandson).

[Scott Smith]

Perhaps the subject of the Holocaust could be phrased in the style of an exam question;

<Did the NSDAP regime deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within it's empire?

Yes, but that's not the same as killing them; the policy before the war was [discrimination and] to encourage emigration. The policy during the war was detention in camps and ghettoes and using the able-bodied for forced-labor. It seems entirely plausible to me that five-million perished or were murdered one way or another, sometimes in massacres.

As to the above quote, here we have the breakdown by causes of death of Raul Hilberg's estimate of 5.1 million Jewish victims, which Smith has repeatedly professed to accept: [...]

Now Smith may tell us which of the above he considers to have been "murdered one way or another, sometimes in massacres", which he considers to have simply "perished" and by what criteria he draws the distinction between one thing and the other.

But please make it short and concise, my dear friend.

I don't endorse Hilberg or his methodology. I just don't see any reason to challenge a raw number of about five-million. I am skeptical of a canonical or numerological six-million figure, however. Revisionists like Jürgen Graf who challenge Hilberg as a "giant with feet of clay" will have to do it, not me, although this is often criminalized as "Holocaust Denial." I strongly condemn Thoughtcrime, as you know. Anyway, I continue to research areas of interest to me, although I do not pretend to be a Holocaust historian by any means, and that is not even my primary area of interest.

Best Regards,
Scott

[Erik]

Stuart S wrote:

Perhaps the subject of the Holocaust could be phrased in the style of an exam question;

“…it seems that those most active in posting on this subject have spent more time debating semantics”, you write later in your posting.

You use the word semantics in a pejorative sense, presumably. And there are good and bad “semantics”, to be sure, as there is good and bad of everything.

But “the meaning of words” must be mustered to undertake the following qualifications, for example :

Try to avoid quoting huge tracts from other historians' work but support your view with reference to original documents, eyewitness reports and forensic evidence.

Avoiding quotes from “other historians’ work…” assumes that one is a historian in one’s “own right”, doesn’t it? And implies that you make yourself “unquotable” by others, by assuming the title of “historian”?

Or is the emphasis to be put on “…huge tracts..”?

Now, that’s semantics in a pejorative sense, of course; play with words.

But have you really considered the enormity of the undertaking?

The suspicion harboured by many of us reading Holocaust history is that much of it is doctored at the “sources”; the originals, the eyewitnesses, the evidence. The documents have gone through the hands of servants of regimes with a “religious” sense of History. (“Truth is on our side”).

Eyewitnesses have seen what others have seen.

The “forensic evidence” has “never been in use”, or has had “other uses”. And so on.

Your “ground zero” of un-interpreted “reference” doesn’t seem to exist. We’re left with “semantics”, one way or another.

<Did the NSDAP regime deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within it's empire?

Most political movements and ideologies do deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within their “empires”. That is their reason for existence, eventually.

So the answer is “yes”, with simple “semantics”.

If yes, when, how and to what extent was the policy achieved? You should provide numbers, methods, dates and places. You should also establish that this was in pursuance of a clear government directive.

That is the whole problem of the “final solution”, and the elusive Hitler Order. Population – census – statistics, gaschambers, decoded orders, murder camps. The “pursuance” of Functionalism or Intentionalism.

The problem of Theism or Deism and of God’s imminent will in History is a comparable arena of discussion. (And the lurking temptation of Atheism when evidence is equivocal.)

If no, explain why large numbers of civilians were held in detention and why so many seem to have perished. You should also explain the accounts of gas chambers, "experiments" on inmates, gruesome trophies (the lampshades etc), mass graves and ovens.

War and all.

What happened in ANY war? The “accounts” before, during and after? The “folklore” of it?

Try to avoid quoting huge tracts from other historians' work but support your view with reference to original documents, eyewitness reports and forensic evidence.>

I'm sure some people on the forum think they've answered this one already. However, on looking through the threads it seems that those most active in posting on this subject have spent more time debating semantics, sniping at each other and denigrating each other's sources than discussing hard facts.

Are “hard facts” hard to come by? Is that “it”?

In case you're wondering, I don't have an axe to grind. Frankly, I don't care if six million or five million or half a million died. I don't care if they were deliberately exterminated on Hitler's orders or if they were butchered at the whim of local camp commandants. I don't care if the Holocaust was genuinely an evil plan to eradicate an entire people from occupied Europe, a number of terrible but unofficial and/or un-coordinated murders or an elaborate piece of propaganda designed to promote the creation of Israel/justify the war/denigrate the politics of nationalism. I simply want to be pointed in the direction of the truth.

There are followers of facts around here who have heard that one before, and your “careless” quest for “the direction of the truth” will give out a distinct smell of fish to their trained nostrils. (I see now that they are on your tracks already!!)

Any takers?

As written:

I'm sure some people on the forum think they've answered this one already.

[Charles Bunch]

Perhaps the subject of the Holocaust could be phrased in the style of an exam question;

<Did the NSDAP regime deliberately set out to eradicate certain social and ethnic groups within it's empire?

Yes, but that's not the same as killing them; the policy before the war was discrimination and to encourage emigration. The policy during the war was detention in camps and ghettos and using the able-bodied for forced-labor. It seems entirely plausible to me that five-million perished or were murdered one way or another, sometimes in massacres.

The pre-war policy had only to do with Jews in Germany, of course. Discrimination is an odd term to use to describe policies which denied Jews their careers, businesses, wealth and even their citizenship.

The war time policy was summed up by the Nazis at Wannsee.

http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holoca ... tocol.html

Another possible solution of the problem has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the East, provided that the Führer gives the appropriate approval in advance.


These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.

Approximately 11 million Jews will be involved in the final solution of the European Jewish question, distributed as follows among the individual countries:

(delete list of countries)

Under proper guidance, in the course of the final solution the Jews are to be allocated for appropriate labor in the East. Able­bodied Jews, separated according to sex, will be taken in large work columns to these areas for work on roads, in the course of which action doubtless a large portion will be eliminated by natural causes.


The possible final remnant will, since it will undoubtedly consist of the most resistant portion, have to be treated accordingly, because it is the product of natural selection and would, if released, act as the seed of a new Jewish revival (see the experience of history.)

(end quote)

Ghettos were used as concentration points from which Jews were sent to death camps and murdered. For some Jews the ability to work provided a temporary reprieve from the Nazi's intended policy.

If yes, when, how and to what extent was the policy achieved? You should provide numbers, methods, dates and places. You should also establish that this was in pursuance of a clear government directive.

There doesn't seem to be a smoking-gun or Hitler Order, and the sheer volume of survivors to this "murder policy" undermines the Exterminationist thesis, AFAIC. It would not have been hard to kill Anne Frank or the Ghetto Boy, New York physician Zvi Nussbaum.

The fact of survivors no more argues against the Nazi intention to exterminate them than does the fact that Germany lost the war argue against their intent to win it.

If no, explain why large numbers of civilians were held in detention

For the same reason that Japanese-Americans were put into detention by FDR during wartime as a supposed Fifth Column, security. But also to exploit forced-labor for the duration of the war from the "enemy aliens lodged subversively in our midst."

But Jews were murdered, most often without any labor being extracted.

3 million Jews were murdered in camps. Suggesting this is remotely like the internment of Japanese Americans is a profanation of truth.

and why so many seem to have perished.

It was cruel and the detention was conducted on the barest of economic margins during a Total War that Germany was unlikely to win.

So many perished because of a policy of genocide.

You should also explain the accounts of gas chambers,

Nobody seems to have been able to find a working gaschamber.

The gas chamber at Mauthausan could easily we made to work. Probably Majdanek as well. The rest were more or less destroyed. But that hardly argues against the evidence for their existence and use.

The one at Dachau is a fraud which is so obvious it is not claimed to have ever been used--although some on this forum think that the Nazis tossed babies alive into the crematoria at Dachau, rather like a sacrament to the fire-god Moloch.

There is nothing fraudulent about it, and the German Institute for Contempory History believes the evidence shows it was used on a limited scale. This has been pointed out to you a number of times, but then all you have are your re-cycled denier canards which you seem incapable of updating to offer even a feigned sense of honesty.

The presumed gaschambers at Majdanek found by the Soviets and extensively used in their propaganda have similar problems and were more-likely used for delousing clothing.

Except Mr. Smith can't tell us the problems.

The Germans blew up the crematoria at Birkenau, and it is questionable based on chemical testing alone if the basements there were really used as gaschambers.

It is questionable, based on eyewitness testimony alone, that World War II occurred.

The chemical testing proves that rooms which were supposed to be morgues were exposed to Zyklon B. This evidence is combined with documentary evidence which shows these "morgues" were adapted with gas tight doors, gas tight windows, gas detectors, "introduction devices" and were referred to in documents as gassing cellars - vergasungskeller - and gas chamber - gaskammer-. Add to this the extensive testimony provided by the Nazis who were at the camp, and the Sonderkommando who worked in the Crematoria, and you have an a relatively open and shut case that these rooms were homicidal gas chambers.

The crematorium at the Auschwitz Stammlager has been reconstructed after the war and it is difficult to say what is real and what is a prop.

The gas chamber at Auschwitz was returned to its appearance before it was turned into an air raid shelter. The dividing wall which was added was removed. The holes through which the zyklon b was poured were opened. The walls, floor, and ceiling are original to the gas chamber and tested positive for HCN residue.

No trace exists for the Reinhardt camps except that the diesel-gaschamber thesis has been thoroughly debunked.

Mr. Smith is referring to the embarrrassing argument made by deniers that pumping diesel fumes into a closed room crammed with people will not kill!

The Reinhardt camps were destroyed substantially before the war ended. There are of course traces. An excavation at Treblinka just after the war revealed mass remains. At Belzec in just the last few years archeologists have discovered over 22,000 cubic meters of human remains.

"experiments" on inmates,

The Luftwaffe conducted dangerous experiments with high-altitude pressures and cold-water immersion at Dachau. This data was very useful and the U.S. government apparently used it after the war in its own aerospace and maritime research.

Note how Smith refers to cruel and inhuman experiments!

[Scott Smith]

Nowhere in the Wannsee Report is there any mention of gaschambers or gas-vans or a policy of intentional homicide. The Nazis did not care if the measures of ethnic-cleansing were harsh, however.

No trace exists for the Reinhardt camps except that the diesel-gaschamber thesis has been thoroughly debunked.

Mr. Smith is referring to the embarrrassing argument made by deniers that pumping diesel fumes into a closed room crammed with people will not kill!

No, it would keep them alive longer than if the engine were switched off because there is too much oxygen in diesel exhaust. Experiments on live animals in 1957, mice, rabbits and guinea pigs, all of which are more sensitive than humans, shows that it would take up to five-hours of exposure to thick and painful diesel-exhaust to kill from pulmonary edema--and some of the deaths in these tests occurred many days after the exposure.

But we've been through this, haven't we..

[Charles Bunch]

Nowhere in the Wannsee Report is there any mention of gaschambers or gas-vans or a policy of intentional homicide.

It didn't mention guns either!!!

The words are clear. Those capable of work would be worked to death, and the "remnant" treated accordingly.

As for those who could work:

(quote)

Beginning with Lublin, the Jews in the General Government are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is a pretty barbaric one and not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews. On the whole it can be said that about 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated whereas only about 40 per cent can be used for forced labor.

(end quote)

Goebbels Diary
Entry of March 27, 1942

No trace exists for the Reinhardt camps except that the diesel-gaschamber thesis has been thoroughly debunked.

Mr. Smith is referring to the embarrrassing argument made by deniers that pumping diesel fumes into a closed room crammed with people will not kill!

No, it would keep them alive longer than if the engine were switched off because there is too much oxygen in diesel exhaust.

But there is much else besides oxygen, and it killed people. Your denial of that is idiotic.

I note you had no comment to the many other corrections of your errors and distortions!

[Scott Smith]

There's no point in endless Is-Too/Is-Not about it, Chuck. I showed in countless debates that diesel exhaust did not kill people. It would take too long. We have animal experiments to prove this.

As far as Wannsee, I do not defend repressive policies.