Roberto, Witness & Maple01 Critique Scott Smith's Reason

[witness]

[. Who have I not criticized?

This is simple - Nazis and Revisionists
You are always happy with them, are not you ?
Well if not always then mostly

Well, you must be blind because I have been critical of them too. Only seeing what you want to see, I guess.

Well then you must have been extremely coyish in critisizing them ..
Such a subtle must your critical points have been .. that it was very hard to notice them..
Really Scott - very hard to notice.. Particularly on the background of your fierce attacks of those rotten Western Democracies..

[Maple 01]

Maple 01 wrote:
As Mr Smith has stated the whole point of the 'revisionist' movement is to try and act as a counter-balance to those who point-out the evils of the Nazi system rather than as a review of historical evidence.

I don't believe I ever said that, Mape.

Here's a homework assignment for you: What does historical revisionism (small r) mean?

Well I've done my homework, and the answer is still what I wrote above, however here is what I think you think it is (capital R)

From an earlier conversation elsewhere

From Mr Smith

Quote:
If his Revisionist journal is to be successful it must incorporate lots of different viewpoints.

Me

Mr Smith forgot the line 'that all exonerate Nazi Germany'

Mr Smith

Well, considering that the Holocaust™ Industry is devoted to painting a certain picture, I think that some corrective is in order. For example, there has been an increase in Holocaust-related TV programming lately. Unless there is another Holocaust™ Holy-Day to celebrate, I think it has to do with the imminent Gulf War II and conditioning the people to see the "importance" of Interventionism. Of course, that is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

That doesn’t sound as if you disagree with my summary of Revisionism

As we are handing out homework assinements why don't you read a wonderful book called 'Telling Lies about Hitler' I'm sure you'll find it informative.

Regards




_Nick

[Roberto]

I noticed a lot of anti American attitude in here.

I mean, you don't hear me trashing Europeans for allowing Iraq to play cat and mouse with chemical and biolgical weapons.

What's the deal?

/S/ ReconMarine

Leave us Europeans alone.

The greatest America-basher on this forum, by your standards at least, is a compatriot of yours.

Stay tuned and you will meet him.

If you're referring to me, don't worry, I slam EVERYBODY. Nobody gets off, not even plastic-spoon generation Germans. Who have I not criticized?

Why, Smith, you spoiled to surprise!

I was hoping that our leatherneck might find his birthday cake by himself.

[Roberto]

[. Who have I not criticized?

This is simple - Nazis and Revisionists
You are always happy with them, are not you ?
Well if not always then mostly

Well, you must be blind because I have been critical of them too.

Certainly so, but Smith's criticism(!) is more like "Hitler's anti-Semitism was a mistake" or "David Irving should have taken the high road rather than suing Lipstadt", unless I've missed something.

[Scott Smith]

[. Who have I not criticized?

This is simple - Nazis and Revisionists
You are always happy with them, are not you ?
Well if not always then mostly

Well, you must be blind because I have been critical of them too.

Certainly so, but Smith's criticism(!) is more like "Hitler's anti-Semitism was a mistake" or "David Irving should have taken the high road rather than suing Lipstadt", unless I've missed something.

Thanks for giving me credit, Roberto. I would also add that I do feel that anti-Semitism is morally wrong, and so is censoring other people's ideas, in which case Irving and Lipstadt share the blame, IMHO.

[Scott Smith]

Well, considering that the Holocaust™ Industry is devoted to painting a certain picture, I think that some corrective is in order. For example, there has been an increase in Holocaust-related TV programming lately. Unless there is another Holocaust™ Holy-Day to celebrate, I think it has to do with the imminent Gulf War II and conditioning the people to see the "importance" of Interventionism. Of course, that is just my opinion. I could be wrong.

That doesn’t sound as if you disagree with my summary of Revisionism.

The above is my view (unspun by you) and some Revisionists (large R) might even agree with it. They are not a monolithic consensus by any means.

However, I asked for YOUR definition of historical revisionism (small r). There is a difference. Even Roberto understands it somewhat by now.

For one thing, revisionism is absolutely part of the critical-historical method. To some extent that applies to large-R Revisionism as well.

Many traditional historical-Revisionists like Barnes and Beard believed that the only way to understand conflict (in this case the world wars) was to cut past the lies and propaganda of the belligerents and especially the Victors. Democracy is a fraud if the people are easily manipulated into Intervention and policies based on atrocity-propaganda. This "Revisionist" school-of-thought was quite successful "bringing history into accord with the facts" regarding WWI, but with WWII, instead of Congressional investigations on the "Merchants of Death" we got the charade called the Nuremberg trials--an attempt by superpower governments to christen an historical orthodoxy in tune with Allied propaganda. It morphs but also stays fundamentally the same, in pure Orwellian fashion. Barnes called such establishment historians, the "Court Historians" of the New Deal, and saw them as Reds, pinkos and totalitarian-liberals.

Nevertheless, the truth on German war-guilt and other Greuelpropaganda was not absolute or monolithic, and many intelligent people actually doubt some of the staple stories like Human Soap and Human Lampshades--but ultimately the Big-H just tends to throw a monkey wrench into most people's cognitive processes for some reason. The Big-H is the great trump card of totalitarian-liberalism. "Saddam is Hitler."

Some social pundits have even called the 20th century the Auschwitz Century. And The Diary of Anne Frank is the top selling book in the world, according to the History Channel. Clearly our entire society revolves around the Big-H trademark somehow. It is an interesting phenomenon, AFAIC. Like I said, I don't have all the answers but I am suspicious of Victimology and its impact upon democratic processes in general and especially upon the nature of Interventionist War.

In my view, true-Peace is forged by mutual-understanding and mutual-respect, starting with fitful but open dialog and then leading to a long history of trust-relationships. But I don't see how that is possible waving what after the American Civil War was called the "Bloody Shirt," i.e., a moralistic club to flail the losers with (except their modern leaders and the younger generation, perhaps). The Big-H is the Bloody Shirt of Interventionist "Globaloney," (Barnes' word) as I see it. In his day the word holocaust had not even been trademarked yet.

As we are handing out homework assinements why don't you read a wonderful book called 'Telling Lies about Hitler' I'm sure you'll find it informative.

In due time, my good man. Nonetheless, I don't think you have a leg to stand on as far as Irving being a poor historian. His books stand for themselves, regardless of what you think about him.

Here's some Greuelpropaganda from the Spanish-American war, when Yellow Journalism was coming of age. Revisionism seeks to continuously revise the historical record and test it against the best available body of facts and viewpoints. Whether Revisionism (large R) actually seeks and manages to do that is another matter.

In any case, nobody today believes that the Spanish blew-up the Maine, thus propelling the nation into the Spanish-American war to "liberate" Cuba from those (proto-Nazi) Spanish imperialists. (Anglo-Saxon imperialists are good-imperialist of course, bearing, according to Kipling, the "White Man's Burden." Or, in Orwellian terms, Four Legs Goood--Two legs, Baaad.)

And I don't know if Spanish customs officials ever really disrobed American female travellers in Cuba or not, according to the Hearst papers and cowboy artist Frederick Remington--I highly doubt it--but historical revisionism would certainly call for less sensationalistic perspectives regarding grave matters like death, disrobing, and war.


Remington's Disrobing Propaganda... (This facsimile hardly does justice to the original drawing with its leering Latin faces.)

[witness]

an attempt by superpower governments to christen a historical orthodoxy in tune with Allied propaganda.

So the Nuremberg trials were just execise in Allied propaganda.
And such people as Goering ,Kaltenbrunner etc. had nothing to be indicted for..?
By the same token the Eisatzgruppen trials were also nothing else but Allied propaganda shows ,right ?
Rudolf Hoess had nothing to be indicted for ?
Now perhaps you can show us that these trials can somehow be equated with the Soviet show trials ?
For example that the accused didn't have adequate defence at their disposal ?
That the evidence against them was fabricated ?

BTW .Don't you think that if these people had been summarily executed
the Nazi sympatizers would have had much more reasons to whine about
the "Victors' justice " then they have at present
That they would have made much nicer matryrs out of those shot ?

[Scott Smith]

an attempt by superpower governments to christen a historical orthodoxy in tune with Allied propaganda.

So the Nuremberg trials were just execise in Allied propaganda.

In my opinion, yes.

And such people as Goering ,Kaltenbrunner etc. had nothing to be indicted for..?

They were leaders of a sovereign State. They may or may not have acted morally. But that is besides the point.

By the same token Eisatzgruppen trials were also nothing else but Allied propaganda shows ,right ?

I didn't say that.

Rudolf Hoess had nothing to be indicted for ?

SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höß (former commandant of Auschwitz) testified at Nuremberg but he was not tried at Nuremberg. He was tortured by the British and hanged by the Poles. I never said that he wasn't a mass-murderer.

If you mean Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy-Führer prior to his defection in 1941, then the answer is unequivocally, yes. Hess should not have even been tried of War Crimes, but he was and died in Spandau prison (murdered?) in 1987. (Hess was acquitted of War Crimes but convicted of political-crimes and sentenced to Life imprisonment, btw.)

Now perhaps you can show us that these trials can somehow be equated with the Soviet show trials ?

Yes, for reasons previously mentioned on other threads. The trials were held by the Victors not neutral courts or courts of jurisdiction, the Soviets supplied "evidence," the tu quoque defense was not generally allowed (so these "legal standards" did not apply to the Allies themselves in the context of fighting a bitter world war), there were no rules-of-evidence, and ex post facto "law" was employed. Furthermore, Unconditional Surrender and Victor's Justice sets back the peace-process to the Middle Ages.

For example that the accused didn't have adequate defence at their disposal ?

No, the defense, in the initial IMT Show-Trials at least, were German lawyers and Germany was a captive-nation at the time. In later trials torture was routinely used until uncovered by American critics of the process. In postwar West German trials the Bundestablishment obviously has an investment in the status quo; they have generally been lenient with perpetrators but have been focused on not rocking the boat--if not actively reinforcing the general mythology with wispy evidence like the testimony of SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs. And defense attorneys cannot challenge "facts" that have been recognized by the Court from previous trials.

That the evidence against them was fabricated ?

Some of it was.

BTW .Don't you think that if these people had been summarily executed the Nazi sympatizers would have had much more reasons to whine about the "Victors' justice " then they have at present

Irrelevant to my points as I am not defending the Nazis in court but making points about the Allied "Peace" and the aftermath of that today.

That they would have made much nicer matryrs out of those shot ?

Ironically, Stalin's plan of summary-executions might have been less damaging to the future peace-process as it would have certainly been cruel but at least honest.

Historical orthodoxy requires a canonical belief-system from somewhere, and the Nuremberg trials (collectively) provide that, which is illegal to doubt in many countries today such as France and Germany. Without the Cold War, especially, we need some kind of hobgoblins to Fear.

This means that establishment-historians will necessarily operate according to certain parameters, like a baby tethered to his crib; their jobs and sinecures are at stake. Even in countries like the USA, which has free-speech, you have to be careful. As one minor example, you can hardly even get a model airplane with a historically-correct swastika decal on the tail because these symbols are banned in Germany. And Revisionists have actually been imprisoned in Germany because their websites, legal in their own countries, are accessible to Germans. Irving is banned from Germany and many other nations because someone has dubbed him a Holocaust Denier, whatever this means. It is nothing more than Holo-McCarthyism if you ask me.

Since Germar Rudolf is forced to live in the USA in exile from Germany for his Thoughtcrimes, I am willing to write reviews of books that interest me for his new Revisionist (large-R) journal, called The Revisionist. I may or may not agree with his views. But I believe that he has the right to free-speech like any other human being. If he can get a diversity of revisionist/Revisionist viewpoints, then his journal will be a success, intellectually or otherwise.

Some may already be planning damage-control, but that is their problem. If Rudolf is a Holocaust Denier, then deal with his ideas, and why you think they are in error, and not his Thoughtcrimes.

[Roberto]

However, I asked for YOUR definition of historical revisionism (small r). There is a difference. Even Roberto understands it somewhat by now.

For one thing, revisionism is absolutely part of the critical-historical method. To some extent that applies to large-R Revisionism as well.

I don't understand what the "even" is doing there. The difference between revisionism and "Revisionism" I understand it very well. Historical revisionism ("small r") is a legitimate method of historiography. The "Revisionism" of Smith's gurus, on the other hand, has nothing to do with revisionism or historiography at all. It's just ideologically motivated propaganda thinly disguised as a "school of thought".

An article explaining the differences in more detail can be found under

http://www.holocaust-history.org/revisionism-isnt/

[Roberto]

an attempt by superpower governments to christen a historical orthodoxy in tune with Allied propaganda.

So the Nuremberg trials were just execise in Allied propaganda.

In my opinion, yes.

An opinion for which Smith has nothing to show and which is therefore irrelevant.

And such people as Goering ,Kaltenbrunner etc. had nothing to be indicted for..?

They were leaders of a sovereign State. They may or may not have acted morally. But that is besides the point.

They were not judged for having acted immorally, but for having acted criminally, violating international law, fundamental rules of conduct codified or customary agreed upon among civilized nations. Although this was not the subject of the trial, those of them found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity also violated the contemporary provisions of German law against murder, manslaughter and other attacks on the physical integrity of human beings.

Rudolf Hoess had nothing to be indicted for ?

SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höß (former commandant of Auschwitz) testified at Nuremberg but he was not tried at Nuremberg. He was tortured by the British and hanged by the Poles.

Was his testimony at Nuremberg (as opposed to his initial statements upon arrest) extracted by torture, Smith ?

And is there any indication that the Poles may have influenced what he wrote in his autobiography ?

I'd say his writings contain strong indications to the contrary.

I never said that he wasn't a mass-murderer.

No, Smith just maintains that he wasn't responsible for the systematic killing of ca. one million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which despite all evidence he would like to believe never occurred. Ain't that so, Smith ?

If you mean Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy-Führer prior to his defection in 1941, then the answer is unequivocally, yes. Hess should not have even been tried of War Crimes,

He was acquitted of the charge of war crimes, as you may read under

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judhess.htm

So why the fuss ?

but he was and died in Spandau prison (murdered?) in 1987. (Hess was acquitted of War Crimes but convicted of political-crimes and sentenced to Life imprisonment, btw.)

Hess was convicted of violations of international law. His crimes were "political" only in the mind of propagandists with a political agenda.

Now perhaps you can show us that these trials can somehow be equated with the Soviet show trials ?

Yes, for reasons previously mentioned on other threads.

What other threads, Smith ? I must have missed something.

The trials were held by the Victors not neutral courts or courts of jurisdiction,

Big deal. Criminal trials are usually held by the "victorious" state which apprehended the defendant.

the Soviets supplied "evidence,"

I don't understand those silly quote marks, especially as the evidence provided by the Soviets largely coincided with German documentary and eyewitness evidence.

the tu quoque defense was not generally allowed (so these "legal standards" did not apply to the Allies themselves in the context of fighting a bitter world war),

If I remember correctly, none of the defendants was convicted on account of unrestricted submarine warfare or unrestricted air bombing, methods of warfare regarding which the Allies had no clean hands themselves. As to the systematic starvation and slaughter of prisoners of war and innocent civilians unrelated to any military actions, allowing tu quoque would have amounted to giving any murdering tyrant carte blanche for slaughtering its citizens, and those of other countries, outside the scope of anything that may be considered an act of war. Smith conveniently forgets that tu quoque, a defense argument out of the very international law the existence of which he denies, can be applied only to the conduct of warfare by either side, not to acts of violence outside the scope of combat actions.

there were no rules-of-evidence,

There are no such rules in the legal systems of Germany, France and other European countries either, which doesn't exactly mean that the criminal justice of these countries is not in accordance with the principles of a constitutional state committed to the rights of the defendant. As Mr. Kaschner once explained, the absence of technical rules of evidence, as they are known but not always applied in US criminal law, even favored the defense, made up as it mostly was of continental European lawyers unfamiliar with such rules.

and ex post facto "law" was employed.

Assuming Mr. Smith can convince us that the defendants were entitled to consider their acts of aggression and mass murder legal at the time they engaged in them. Statements like this one from his beloved Führer on 22.08.1939:

[...]Auslösung: Mittel gleichgültig. Der Sieger wird nie
interpelliert, ob seine Gründe berechtigt waren. Es handelt
sich nicht darum, das Recht auf unserer Seite zu haben,
sondern ausschließlich um den Sieg.[...]

Source of quote:

http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/22-08-1939-halder.shtml

My translation:

[...]Unleashing: means make no difference. The victor is never asked if his reasons were justified. This is not about having right on our side, but exclusively about victory.[...]

clearly show that his heroes were well aware of being in violation of existing legal provisions.

Furthermore, Unconditional Surrender and Victor's Justice sets back the peace-process to the Middle Ages.

Baloney. The demand for unconditional surrender and the trials that, however often Smith calls them "Victor's Justice", were remarkably fair, must be seen as a consequence of Nazi aggression and mass murder, which took an enormous leap after the attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. And for which Smith, while strongly condemning the policies of his Allied black beasts, has shown nothing but very illustrative condescension.

For example that the accused didn't have adequate defence at their disposal ?

No, the defense, in the initial IMT Show-Trials at least, were German lawyers and Germany was a captive-nation at the time.

Smith's repetition of this junk reminds me that he hasn't yet provided any evidence whatsoever that the Nuremberg defense attorneys had anything to fear from the Allies due to the spirited and skillful defense performance of at least some of them.

In later trials torture was routinely used until uncovered by American critics of the process.

Again, evidence in support of these allegations has never been provided. On the contrary, I have shown that the allegations of torture at the so-called Dachau trials resulted from the manipulations of a skillful and unscrupulous German defense attorney by the name of Rudolf Aschenauer, who doesn't seem to have suffered any disadvantages due to these below-the-waist tactics of his.

In postwar West German trials the Bundestablishment obviously has an investment in the status quo; they have generally been lenient with perpetrators but have been focused on not rocking the boat--if not actively reinforcing the general mythology with wispy evidence like the testimony of SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs.

Can Smith demonstrate that any West German criminal justice authority violated its legal duties regarding the obtaining and assessment of evidence for the sake of "reinforcing the general mythology" (thereby also violating defendants' rights under German procedural law, which call for a guilty verdict being supported by evidence not "wispy" but leaving no room for reasonable doubt), or is that just one of those articles of faith he may uphold in a "Revisionist" sewer, but not on a critical discussion forum ?

And defense attorneys cannot challenge "facts" that have been recognized by the Court from previous trials.

Smith seems to know pretty little about criminal justice in general and German criminal justice in particular. Otherwise he would know that, at every one of the numerous trials against Nazi defendants, West German criminal justice authorities established the relevant facts, both against and in favor of the defendants (contrary to what is the case in Anglo-Saxon law, in Germany the prosecution is also bound to look for evidence favoring the defendant, not only for incriminating evidence) on the basis of their own assessment of eyewitness and/or documentary evidence including the defendants' own depositions, and not on the basis of the findings of fact from previous trials.

That the evidence against them was fabricated ?

Some of it was.

Really? Show us an example of fabricated evidence from a West German trial against Nazi criminals. Definitely curious.

Historical orthodoxy requires a canonical belief-system from somewhere, and the Nuremberg trials (collectively) provide that,

Why, and I thought that a "canonical belief system" would be something unsupported by historical or forensic evidence. Which is not what can be said of the findings of the Nuremberg trials.

which is illegal to doubt in many countries today such as France and Germany.

Making nonsense illegal is wrong, but it doesn't make the outlawed nonsense any less nonsensical.

This means that establishment-historians will necessarily operate according to certain parameters, like a baby tethered to his crib; their jobs and sinecures are at stake.

What are "establishment historians", Smith? Those who base their contentions on evidence, as opposed to the "Revisionist" gurus, who base them on what they would like to believe?

And how does Smith know that "establishment historians" are guided by fear for "their jobs and sinecures", rather than by peer control and their own professionalism ?

Since Germar Rudolf is forced to live in the USA in exile from Germany for his Thoughtcrimes,

Read: "for his anti-Semitic and Nazi-apologetic propaganda lies".

I am willing to write reviews of books that interest me for his new Revisionist (large-R) journal, called The Revisionist. I may or may not agree with his views.

Smith seems to believe that a lying propagandist's having run afoul of the misguided laws against hate speech applied in some countries make that fellow any less of a lying propagandist. Interesting attitude. A liar is a liar even if the "Bundesestablishment" has busted him on account of the hate-speech context of his lies.

But I believe that he has the right to free-speech like any other human being.

So we all do, I dare say. Stop making a fool of yourself by crashing into open doors.

If he can get a diversity of revisionist/Revisionist viewpoints, then his journal will be a success, intellectually or otherwise.

A pious dream as long as a "diversity" of "Revisionist" viewpoints is only to be observed within this box outside which the "truth-seekers" are unable to think, the one that Smith's favorite guru once brilliantly summed up as follows:

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

Some may already be planning damage-control, but that is their problem.

What exactly is "damage-control", Smith?

Exposing Nazi-apologetic propaganda nonsense as what it is ?

And why "damage" ? Does Smith really believe that the crap his gurus produce can do any "damage" to a historical record based on solid evidence ?

If Rudolf is a Holocaust Denier, then deal with his ideas, and why you think they are in error, and not his Thoughtcrimes.

Why, I thought that's what we're doing on this forum all the time: exposing the fallacy of the contentions and arguments of Rudolf et al, as they are dished up by faithful and uncritical followers of theirs such as the "skeptical" Mr. Smith.

[chalutzim]

Great post, Roberto. Thanks.

[Roberto]

Great post, Roberto. Thanks.

Thank you, Wintceas.

[witness]

And such people as Goering ,Kaltenbrunner etc. had nothing to be indicted for..?

They were leaders of a sovereign State. They may or may not have acted morally. But that is besides the point.

"Besides the point ".. For you maybe. But they were bastards guilty in the deaths of millions of people . Why should I care if they were leaders of the sovereign nation ?

They may or may not have acted morally. But that is besides the point.

"May not" ...? is what you would like to believe.
There is a Russian saying. "Blazhen kto veruet - teplo emu na svete " -"Blessed be the one who believes cause it is warm for him on this earth "

[Scott Smith]

an attempt by superpower governments to christen a historical orthodoxy in tune with Allied propaganda.

So the Nuremberg trials were just execise in Allied propaganda.

In my opinion, yes.

An opinion for which Smith has nothing to show and which is therefore irrelevant.

Which, however, is of great concern for Roberto just the same.

And such people as Goering ,Kaltenbrunner etc. had nothing to be indicted for..?

They were leaders of a sovereign State. They may or may not have acted morally. But that is besides the point.

They were not judged for having acted immorally, but for having acted criminally, violating international law, fundamental rules of conduct codified or customary agreed upon among civilized nations. Although this was not the subject of the trial, those of them found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity also violated the contemporary provisions of German law against murder, manslaughter and other attacks on the physical integrity of human beings.

Nonsense. As I mentioned, Hess was not even convicted of War Crimes and the the criminal basis of the trials was ex post facto under standards that did not even apply to the Allies (including the Soviets) in their fighting of the Holy War.

Rudolf Hoess had nothing to be indicted for ?

SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Höß (former commandant of Auschwitz) testified at Nuremberg but he was not tried at Nuremberg. He was tortured by the British and hanged by the Poles.

Was his testimony at Nuremberg (as opposed to his initial statements upon arrest) extracted by torture, Smith ?

I don't know but that is irrelevant to any point that I was making. I said once before that I mostly found the Höß memoirs believable. I do think he embellished and "standardized" the story a bit on cue.

And is there any indication that the Poles may have influenced what he wrote in his autobiography ?

As to some of the details for the particular canon, yes, but I found most of it believable, like I said. I would like to cross-examine the guy, for sure. I could think of many questions.

I'd say his writings contain strong indications to the contrary.

To the contrary of my considering his memoirs "mostly believable" or you considering his memoirs contrary with the facts?

I never said that he wasn't a mass-murderer.

No, Smith just maintains that he wasn't responsible for the systematic killing of ca. one million people at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which despite all evidence he would like to believe never occurred. Ain't that so, Smith ?

No, I'd say that Rudy was more or less responsible for what went on in the camp, whatever that was. In particular I find his claim that Hitler/Himmler put him up to mass-murder rather lame. More likely, I think, Höß found a handy way to eliminate undesirables (those who could not work) to Himmler's tacit approval. But I have no evidence for this and it is just an opinion. I never claimed to be an expert on Auschwitz but I do remember when the standard-claim was not one-million but four-million. Funny what an Iron Curtain coming down will do. Curious that Western journalists and anti-Defamation types preferred the higher number.

If you mean Rudolf Hess, Hitler's Deputy-Führer prior to his defection in 1941, then the answer is unequivocally, yes. Hess should not have even been tried of War Crimes,

He was acquitted of the charge of war crimes, as you may read under

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/judhess.htm

So why the fuss ?

Well, he was sentenced to Life imprisonment for Thoughtcrime. Putting people in jail for political "crimes" ought to make those who believe in democratic values pause to ponder a bit.

Maybe instead of a momument to the Scholls or Bomber Harris in Dresden they should build one to Hess. He tried to stop a war. If the British had ended the war then Stalin would have come to Hitler with hat in hand. Hard to say that this wouldn't have been better than turning half of Europe and Asia over to the Communists and letting them develop nuclear weapons. Better? Worse? Imponderable. No-War/No-Holocaust. And No-Holocaust/No-Israel, but that is not my concern. Anything that kept the USA out of world war would have been better in my book. Anyway, Hess was a Nazi so he had to be crucified--a symbol of the better Allied Peace.

but he was and died in Spandau prison (murdered?) in 1987. (Hess was acquitted of War Crimes but convicted of political-crimes and sentenced to Life imprisonment, btw.)

Hess was convicted of violations of international law. His crimes were "political" only in the mind of propagandists with a political agenda.

Germany was a sovereign nation and a sovereign nation can make its own laws and international agreements. Hess violated no treaty agreements and was not sworn to uphold the UN flag.

Now perhaps you can show us that these trials can somehow be equated with the Soviet show trials ?

Yes, for reasons previously mentioned on other threads.

What other threads, Smith ? I must have missed something.

The issue has been discussed extensively on the forum and witness even accuses me of repeating myself--although I accuse him (with a smile) of mocking you.

The trials were held by the Victors not neutral courts or courts of jurisdiction,

Big deal. Criminal trials are usually held by the "victorious" state which apprehended the defendant.

Criminals are subject to competent jurisdictions, the law of the land. Sovereigns are the law. The officials may be held accountable for violating their own laws and their nation's treaty obligations IF they were not under higher authority by their own legal government.

the Soviets supplied "evidence,"

I don't understand those silly quote marks, especially as the evidence provided by the Soviets largely coincided with German documentary and eyewitness evidence.

You don't? Well they culled the German government documents for "evidence" if not supplied it themselves, as in the case of the Demjanjuk/Ivan the Terrible ID-card fraud. All Soviet-supplied evidence should be seen as suspect. But here is an illustration of Exhibit USSR-393 to help you:

the tu quoque defense was not generally allowed (so these "legal standards" did not apply to the Allies themselves in the context of fighting a bitter world war),

If I remember correctly, none of the defendants was convicted on account of unrestricted submarine warfare or unrestricted air bombing, methods of warfare regarding which the Allies had no clean hands themselves.

To their credit--but they had over-arching propaganda to consider as well.

As to the systematic starvation and slaughter of prisoners of war and innocent civilians unrelated to any military actions, allowing tu quoque would have amounted to giving any murdering tyrant carte blanche for slaughtering its citizens, and those of other countries, outside the scope of anything that may be considered an act of war. Smith conveniently forgets that tu quoque, a defense argument out of the very international law the existence of which he denies, can be applied only to the conduct of warfare by either side, not to acts of violence outside the scope of combat actions.

No, it simply means that any nitty-gritty that was waged to win has to be seen in context. If the Soviets (the Allies) were using bare-knuckles then the Germans can't very well be blamed likewise. With Total War everything must be seen in the continuum, including internal politics unrelated directly to the war. If the Soviets built labor camps for SIOC to put Europe under the Red boot, and this is merely a matter of internal politics, then the same with the Germans and the management of their empire. In any case, Victor's courts are not the place to be settling grievances fairly. The peace-process was retarded not advanced by Nuremberg.

there were no rules-of-evidence,

There are no such rules in the legal systems of Germany, France and other European countries either, which doesn't exactly mean that the criminal justice of these countries is not in accordance with the principles of a constitutional state committed to the rights of the defendant. As Mr. Kaschner once explained, the absence of technical rules of evidence, as they are known but not always applied in US criminal law, even favored the defense, made up as it mostly was of continental European lawyers unfamiliar with such rules.

And evidence which cannot be challenged is very handy evidence indeed--for the prosecution. The defense didn't have a liberating army at its disposal to look for incriminating/exculpatory documents, or authentic printing presses to supply it for that matter.

and ex post facto "law" was employed.

Assuming Mr. Smith can convince us that the defendants were entitled to consider their acts of aggression and mass murder legal at the time they engaged in them.

And as Roberto knows well the IMT was mostly not about mass-murder but starting the war out of wholecloth. Of course some theories suggest that mass-murder was Germinated from the German soul spontaneously. But Evil can fill neither a bucket nor an ocean. It is History that cannot be quantified. There is no defense for the Indefensible. And there is no way that any trial held by the Victors to showcase the perfidy of the vanquished would be disappointing.

Statements like this one from his beloved Führer on 22.08.1939:

[...]Auslösung: Mittel gleichgültig. Der Sieger wird nie
interpelliert, ob seine Gründe berechtigt waren. Es handelt
sich nicht darum, das Recht auf unserer Seite zu haben,
sondern ausschließlich um den Sieg.[...]

Source of quote:

http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/22-08-1939-halder.shtml

My translation:

[...]Unleashing: means make no difference. The victor is never asked if his reasons were justified. This is not about having right on our side, but exclusively about victory.[...]

clearly show that his heroes were well aware of being in violation of existing legal provisions.

No, it shows that Hitler was a realist without illusions. If the Allies believed their own propaganda then they were Orwellian fools.

Furthermore, Unconditional Surrender and Victor's Justice sets back the peace-process to the Middle Ages.

Baloney. The demand for unconditional surrender and the trials that, however often Smith calls them "Victor's Justice", were remarkably fair, must be seen as a consequence of Nazi aggression and mass murder, which took an enormous leap after the attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. And for which Smith, while strongly condemning the policies of his Allied black beasts, has shown nothing but very illustrative condescension.

Globaloney. If you are willing to kill for principle rather than necessity then you are a killer. My quarrel is that the Allies were/are hypocrites and liars, not that the Germans (some of them) deserved less.

For example that the accused didn't have adequate defence at their disposal ?

No, the defense, in the initial IMT Show-Trials at least, were German lawyers and Germany was a captive-nation at the time.

Smith's repetition of this junk reminds me that he hasn't yet provided any evidence whatsoever that the Nuremberg defense attorneys had anything to fear from the Allies due to the spirited and skillful defense performance of at least some of them.

Well it's as obvious as a witches wart, but don't think about it or she might turn you into a toad.

In later trials torture was routinely used until uncovered by American critics of the process.

Again, evidence in support of these allegations has never been provided. On the contrary, I have shown that the allegations of torture at the so-called Dachau trials resulted from the manipulations of a skillful and unscrupulous German defense attorney by the name of Rudolf Aschenauer, who doesn't seem to have suffered any disadvantages due to these below-the-waist tactics of his.

I think the credibility of Justice van Roden and others speaks for itself. I have never really been want to dwell on this seamy forgetton episode because it was the American system itself that provided a corrective once the hysteria started to wind down. Mistakes happen. Wars are a nasty business and the aftermath is not always a clean and happy ending, not even for the Victors. As Senator McCarthy, who launched his career investigating the Malmedy trials, complained, the impropriety of using OGPU-tactics drastically undermined American anti-Communist credibility abroad. Thus the "Ugly American" syndrome was born.

In postwar West German trials the Bundestablishment obviously has an investment in the status quo; they have generally been lenient with perpetrators but have been focused on not rocking the boat--if not actively reinforcing the general mythology with wispy evidence like the testimony of SS-Scharführer Erich Fuchs.

Can Smith demonstrate that any West German criminal justice authority violated its legal duties regarding the obtaining and assessment of evidence for the sake of "reinforcing the general mythology" (thereby also violating defendants' rights under German procedural law, which call for a guilty verdict being supported by evidence not "wispy" but leaving no room for reasonable doubt), or is that just one of those articles of faith he may uphold in a "Revisionist" sewer, but not on a critical discussion forum ?

Well, at the Air-Photo forum we demonstrated the B.S. nature of the Fuchs testimony. At the very least the Bundestablishment courts did not care about the truth, just sticking to the standard-story. I never said that Franz and Stangl and others didn't get the least of what they deserved.

And defense attorneys cannot challenge "facts" that have been recognized by the Court from previous trials.

Smith seems to know pretty little about criminal justice in general and German criminal justice in particular. Otherwise he would know that, at every one of the numerous trials against Nazi defendants, West German criminal justice authorities established the relevant facts, both against and in favor of the defendants (contrary to what is the case in Anglo-Saxon law, in Germany the prosecution is also bound to look for evidence favoring the defendant, not only for incriminating evidence) on the basis of their own assessment of eyewitness and/or documentary evidence including the defendants' own depositions, and not on the basis of the findings of fact from previous trials.

Again missing the point by furrows and furlongs. My concern, unlike that of the lawyers, is not convicting or getting the defendants off but on what really happened. Trials fail in that regard, especially political ones. Trials to Historiography are like the Inquistion to Science. So I object to the notion that warcrimes trials establish canonical truths that are in epistemological accord with the facts.

So arguing that the Human Soap and Human Lampshades must be "true," for example, because the defense did not object to the "indefensible" neither proves the Holocaust one monolith at a time nor the existence of Allah. As I've said repeatedly like a mantra in hopes that the thickest brick in the wall will get the idea eventually, the Holocaust is not a monolithic fact to be Believed or Denied. It is many facts, millions of experiences and viewpoints, and unless we mythologize grandiloquently, we can hopefully learn much from it.

That the evidence against them was fabricated ?

Some of it was.

Really? Show us an example of fabricated evidence from a West German trial against Nazi criminals. Definitely curious.

Well, calling postwar props like Gaschambers "evidence" is political-fabrication if not fraud. But the Bundestablishment courts borrowed heavy from the previous doctrinal canon and one could not challenge these "facts" later. Certainly anything provided by the Communists should automatically be suspect; that is just common-sense. If they are willing to lie once then they are willing to lie many times.

It is only prudent to be skeptical--and that is all that I ask.

Historical orthodoxy requires a canonical belief-system from somewhere, and the Nuremberg trials (collectively) provide that,

Why, and I thought that a "canonical belief system" would be something unsupported by historical or forensic evidence. Which is not what can be said of the findings of the Nuremberg trials.

I beg to differ. We have seen USSR-393, the bottle of Nazi Human Soap--or germs allegedly used by the Americans in the Korean War. "The same damn bottle" one veteran told me from the photo he had seen in Prava or wherever, but I haven't been able to find that piece so I can't confirm that they actually used the same exact photo for proof of the germ-warfare accusation. Crude Greuelpropaganda if true.

which is illegal to doubt in many countries today such as France and Germany.

Making nonsense illegal is wrong, but it doesn't make the outlawed nonsense any less nonsensical.

True but one has to make up one's mind and that must be done with access to both sides. One has to wonder at the motives and sheer stupidity of those who would try to legislate their Truth.

This means that establishment-historians will necessarily operate according to certain parameters, like a baby tethered to his crib; their jobs and sinecures are at stake.

What are "establishment historians", Smith? Those who base their contentions on evidence, as opposed to the "Revisionist" gurus, who base them on what they would like to believe?

No, those whose professional dedication to expanding intellectual frontiers is limited by their career prospects. Court historians always do better than naysayers in that regard. But in the end the truth will out--or perhaps I am being naïvely optimistic.

And how does Smith know that "establishment historians" are guided by fear for "their jobs and sinecures", rather than by peer control and their own professionalism ?

In most cases I think they are. But when the truth strats becoming too monolithic then I think someone needs to look a little deeper. Newtonian physics worked well before the modern era, and the Ptolemaic system worked fine for its intended purposes as well. But we can do better. Saying that you cannot hear anything but "the" side, as Lipstadt does, is no help from an academic viewpoint. At least Evans tries to put his views into the intellectual context of a plaintive wail against "postmodernist-deconstructionist" historiography.

Since Germar Rudolf is forced to live in the USA in exile from Germany for his Thoughtcrimes,

Read: "for his anti-Semitic and Nazi-apologetic propaganda lies".

Maybe. But a better explanation is that the Bundestablishment has a guilty collective conscience and can't stand the heat of scrutiny. Why fear the village fool?

I am willing to write reviews of books that interest me for his new Revisionist (large-R) journal, called The Revisionist. I may or may not agree with his views.

Smith seems to believe that a lying propagandist's having run afoul of the misguided laws against hate speech applied in some countries make that fellow any less of a lying propagandist. Interesting attitude. A liar is a liar even if the "Bundesestablishment" has busted him on account of the hate-speech context of his lies.

Roberto doesn't know that; he just doesn't like Rudolf's ideas. I would rather advocate that people make up their own minds and that they should be allowed to hear what Rudolf has to say for himself, not what his critics say about him.

But I believe that he has the right to free-speech like any other human being.

So we all do, I dare say. Stop making a fool of yourself by crashing into open doors.

Then why the fuss, Roberto?

If he can get a diversity of revisionist/Revisionist viewpoints, then his journal will be a success, intellectually or otherwise.

A pious dream as long as a "diversity" of "Revisionist" viewpoints is only to be observed within this box outside which the "truth-seekers" are unable to think, the one that Smith's favorite guru once brilliantly summed up as follows:

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

Well, we shall see, shant we. The Hoaxbuster's views here are a bit too generalized for my taste, but I can well understand where they come from, and an attitude that was especially appropriate during the Cold War. We can move a little forward now and admit that nobody was an unalloyed saint during the war and that nobody was an unalloyed devil. That is just part of intellectual maturity, which with most wars comes soon, but with the wars-to-end-all-wars of the last century this becomes very elusive indeed. Peace begins by shelving the bloody-shirt and putting the musket back over the fireplace where it belongs.

Some may already be planning damage-control, but that is their problem.

What exactly is "damage-control", Smith?

Man the pumps! Batten down the hatches! Let no barbed-truths spoil your cherished mythologies. Professors Evans and Lipstadt will serve as our navigator and lodestar!

Exposing Nazi-apologetic propaganda nonsense as what it is ?

As Bill Cosby used-to say, Riiight.

And why "damage" ? Does Smith really believe that the crap his gurus produce can do any "damage" to a historical record based on solid evidence ?

The "historical record" is not monolithic, Roberto. Historians disagree. We should be suspicious of those who want an orthodox history--obviously interpreted in Orwellian fashion by establishment Truth-Ministers.

If Rudolf is a Holocaust Denier, then deal with his ideas, and why you think they are in error, and not his Thoughtcrimes.

Why, I thought that's what we're doing on this forum all the time: exposing the fallacy of the contentions and arguments of Rudolf et al, as they are dished up by faithful and uncritical followers of theirs such as the "skeptical" Mr. Smith.

Nice try, Roberto. But Rudolf could not post here as he does, IIRC, admit himself to being a Denier. And I have rarely tried to promote his views other than his right to free-speech. Not being a chemist I am not really qualified. Since I am a Certified Electronics Technician with a History degree who has lots of practical experience with diesel engines, that problem did interest me. It may not be earth-shattering but it is one brick in the wall.

And all bricks should get a look-see, even Holo-bricks.

[Roberto]

Great post, Roberto. Thanks.

Thank you, Wintceas.

P.S.

As I expected, our first and foremost Nazi spokesman got pissed as hell and put together another collection of his lengthy and boring drivel.

I have more important things to do this morning, but I'll get to that junk as soon as I can.