renegadetribune--2020-12-11--A Chronicle of Holocaust Revisionism: 1945 -1960

On November 20 , the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg begins .
Two months before this , in September , the Bergen-Belsen trial against Josef Kramer and others is conducted .
April .
German born “ Swedish ” -jewish business man Norbert Masur is sent to Berlin as a representative for Hillel Storch , delegate of the Jewish World Congress .
Early in the morning of April 21 , Masur met with Himmler at Hartzwalde , the countryside manor owned by Himmler ’ s personal doctor and masseur Dr. Felix Kersten .
Their two hour conversation was recounted in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A jew speaks with Himmler ) , which was published later that year – after the end of the war – by Stockholm publishing company Albert Bonniers .
According to Masur , Himmler stated the following in regards to the concentration camps : To Masur ’ s question whether he denied that “ grave misdeeds ” had been carried out in the camps , Himmler replied : In his journal The Protestant Vanguard Scottish activist Alexander Ratcliffe speaks of the “ stupid stories about millions of massacred jews ” .
[ 5 ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps , Josef Kramer , is captured by British forces on April 17 and interned on the following day .
Sometime between April 18 and May 21 Kramer made a first statement on his role as camp commandant .
In it , we read : In a later , second statement Kramer retracted this , stating that he had seen one gas chamber in Auschwitz , which was under the command of Rudolf Höss .
In court Kramer explained the gas chamber denial of his first statement by claiming that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of honour as long as Hitler and Himmler were still alive ( Himmler died , allegedly by his own hand , on May 21 , 1945 ) .
May .
British writer George Orwell ( Eric Blair ) writes in his essay “ Notes on Nationalism ” ( published in Polemic , No .
1 , October 1945 ) : May 30 .
In his article “ Trials for War Criminals ” , James Morgan Read speaks of the necessity of an impartial investigation of atrocity allegations .
[ 6 ] June 29 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hans Aumeier states in his first declaration to his British captors : Following this statement , Aumeier is given a questionnaire asking him to provide testimony on “ Gassings ( with all details ) , numbers of daily and total victims ” as well as a “ Confession about own responsibility in case of gassings.
” [ 7 ] Churchill , Roosevelt and Stalin meet at the Yalta Conference in early February .
Hitler commits suicide in Berlin on April 30 .
Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms on May 7 .
Atomic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August .
Japanese capitulation and the end of World War II on August 15 .
In September , US forces occupy the southern half of the Korean peninsula , while Soviet forces occupy the northern half , marking the beginning of the Korean conflict .
In December , American General George S. Patton “ dies ” in car accident .
Zionist terrorist strikes against British military bases in Palestine .
The 24 accused at IMT Nuremberg are handed down their sentences .
Twelve of them are condemned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commits suicide prior to execution .
On May 11 , 58 members of the Mauthausen concentration camp staff are sentenced to death by the U.S. Military Court at Dachau .
February 17 .
Hermann Göring remarks in a conversation with prison psychologist G.M .
Gilbert that and also expresses doubt in the six million figure .
[ 8 ] April 29 .
During his interrogation at IMT Nuremberg , Julius Streicher states : Later during the same interrogation he added : May 11 .
British advocate of monetary reform C.H .
Douglas requests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million killed Jews , while noting the “ enormous numbers ” of jewish survivors in Germany .
[ 11 ] May 22 .
American scholar Austin Joseph App in a letter to Time magazine questions their assertion that 6.5 million jew lived in Europe excluding Russia at the time of the outbreak of World War II .
App found this claim exaggerated and reminded of the high number of jews still present in Germany by the end of the war as well as the flow of 3 million refugees , most of them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prior to and during the war years , concluding that “ What we have heard regarding the jewish population of Europe and its treatment is not substantiated fact ” .
[ 12 ] May 27 .
Hermann Göring states the following during an interview with Nuremberg psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn : June 13 .
Swiss newspaper Basler Nachrichten carries as its headline “ How high is the number of jewish victims ?
” ( Wie hoch ist die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer ? )
.
Quoting official statistics on the jewish populations of Europe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of jewish victims could not exceed 3 million , and most likely amounts to less than 1.5 million .
The unnamed writer of the article puts the term “ extermination of the jews ” within quotation brackets , implying skepticism towards the allegations of a systematic extermination of “ European ” jewry , but does not discuss the gas chamber issue .
[ 14 ] Undated .
British writer George Bernard Shaw in his pamphlet Geneva criticizes the Allied bombing campaign against Germany and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .
While @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be “ an accursed race who should be exterminated as such ” Shaw also writes : Nowhere does Shaw mention the infamous gas chambers .
Austria is divided into 4 occupation zones on January 7 .
IMT Tokyo commences on April 29 .
Irgun bomb attack against King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22 .
On December 12 , a socialist government is formed in France by jewish socialist and former Buchenwald inmate Léon Blum .
Between April and August the Buchenwald Trial is conducted by the U.S. Military Court at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ verdict of the so-called Doctors ’ Trial is announced in Nuremberg .
The Auschwitz trial in Kraków , Poland , where former camp commandant Rudolf Höss is sentenced to death , is held between November 24 and December 22 .
The first edition of Anne Frank ’ s diary , Het Achterhuis , is published in The Netherlands .
April .
American far right activist Elizabeth Dilling claims the six million figure to be false .
[ 16 ] Undated .
In the 1947 edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica , “ American ” -jewish @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ European ” jews under National Socialist rule and occupation in the following way ( in the article ” Jews ” ) : No mention of gas chambers or an extermination policy targeting jews is made in this edition , leaving the reader with the impression that Marcus , one of the foremost contemporary experts on jewish history , either did not put credence in the mass gassing allegations or was reluctant to mention said claims in print .
The text quoted above was retained in the 1952 and 1956 editions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communists take power in Poland .
March 12 , Truman Doctrine proclaimed .
On August 31 , communists take over Hungary .
CIA created on September 18 .
On November 29 the United Nations General Assembly votes to partition Palestine between Arabs and jews .
Verdict of the Einsatzgruppen Trial pronounced on April 10 .
Sentences in the I.G .
Farben Trial handed down on July 30 .
February .
American neo-Fascist ideologue and political activist Francis Parker Yockey , who in 1946 had been assigned to work in Wiesbaden , Germany , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , publishes the book Imperium using the pseudonym Ulrick Varange .
On page 533 of its original edition we read : This propaganda announced that 6,000,000 members of the jewish Culture-Nation-State-Church-People-Race had been killed in European camps , as well as an indeterminate number of other people .
The propaganda was on a world-wide scale , and was of a mendacity that was perhaps adapted to a uniformized mass , but was simply disgusting to discriminating Europeans .
The propaganda was technically quite complete .
“ Photographs ” were supplied in millions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been killed published accounts of their experiences in these camps .
Hundreds of thousands more made fortunes in post-war black-markets .
“ Gas-chambers ” that did not exist were photographed , and a “ gasmobile ” was invented to titillate the mechanically-minded .
Unfortunately , Yockey did not clarify further in writing how he had come to his revisionist conclusions .
October .
French fascist writer Maurice Bardèche publishes the book Nuremberg ou la Terre promise ( “ Nuremberg or The Promised Land ” , Le Sept Couleurs , Paris ) in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its verdict , especially focusing on claims made by the French trial delegation that the German occupation forces had sought to ” exterminate ” the French population .
The book , however , does not dispute the Holocaust per se , i.e .
the allegations of a German extermination plan for the jews and mass killings in gas chambers ( “ concerning this there are numerous pieces of evidence ” , Bardèche writes ) .
On the other hand , he notes that contemporary German documents shows “ the solution of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only of an assembling of the jews in a territorial zone which one called the jewish Reserve.
” According to Bardèche , the defendants at Nuremberg could maintain that they had been unaware during the whole war of the massive executions which took place at Auschwitz , at Treblinka and elsewhere , that they had learned about them for the first time by listening to their accusers , and no document of the trial enables us to affirm that Göring , Ribbentrop , or Keitel lied by saying that ; it is very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Himmler was a totally personal policy , discreetly carried out , and for which he alone bears the responsibility .
[ 17 ] A similar view would be expounded nearly three decades later by the British war historian David Irving in his book Hitler ’ s War .
October 9 .
Austin J App writes a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer criticizing the treatment of Ilse Koch .
The letter mentions the abuse of captured Dachau guards , as well as the torture and deceptions used to extract confessions from them .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Buchenwald of lampshades made of human skin is an “ unproven allegation ” .
In regards to the alleged criminal use of human remains , App draws a parallel to events in the Pacific War where US soldiers fashioned souvenirs out of the bones of fallen Japanese .
[ 18 ] On February 25 , Communists seize control over Czechoslovakia .
April 9 , Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine .
Israeli declaration of independence on May 14 .
In June the Berlin Blockade begins , marking the start of the Cold War .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mediator Count Folke Bernadotte .
On New Year ’ s Eve , the Arab-Israeli War breaks out .
July 16 .
Austin J App , at the time doing research in Europe , once again writes to Time magazine , which had offered to him as proof for the alleged extermination of 6 million jews the November 26 , 1945 testimony of Wilhelm Hoettl , pointing out the absurdity in offering witness statements as proof of genocide : “ Surely the fact that even you could quote no better authority than that of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ four years ago , must make you suspect that if his figures could have been substantiated those who repeat the charge in order to persecute Germans would have long ago have done so.
” App further notes the role the extermination allegation played in the creation of the Israeli state the previous year .
According to App ’ s own estimate , less than 1.5 million European Jews had lost their lives due to “ Nazi ” persecution .
[ 19 ] Undated .
Swiss far right philosopher and writer Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ de Nuremberg critizises the judicial foundations of the Nuremberg trial as well as questions the extermination allegation without going into details .
In March , more than 90,000 Baltic nationals are deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union .
In May , the Federal Republic of Germany is established .
George Orwell ’ s novel Nineteen Eighty-four published in June .
In August , the Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb .
In October the communist controlled Democratic Republic of Germany ( East Germany or DDR ) is officially established .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ end of the war a number of war crime trials , spectacles orchestrated by the victorious powers in cooperation as well as separately , set up the foundations of the jewish extermination narrative that was much later to be called “ The Holocaust ” .
While a number of critical voices , many of them American , were raised against the proceedings at Nuremberg , only a few people living through this chaotic period made the effort to scrutinize the plausibility of the claims of genocide .
We can find at least three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all , most of the accused at the trials were either Third Reich bureaucrats and “ small fish ” , or had simply not had any significant insight into the handling of the “ Jewish problem ” .
The majority of the key movers behind the “ Final Solution ” were either missing or had already met their death , sometimes in suspicious fashion .
[ 20 ] Confronted with the powerful newsreel footage of skeletal concentration camp inmates and corpses piled in heaps , many of the accused apparently came to believe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out a secret policy of extermination behind their backs .
Their reactions , and especially the declaration of guilt made by “ The Hangman of Poland ” , Hans Frank , might have dissuaded suspicions regarding the truth of the allegations in the minds of many .
Secondly , the claim of an attempted extermination of “ European ” jewry was given relatively little time at IMT Nuremberg as well as at the subsequent NMT trials .
Especially little court time was devoted to the alleged mass gassings , with virtually no relevant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technical evidence displayed .
Further , the number of gas chamber witness accounts publicly available in the West at the time was rather few in number .
This relative lack of interest in the details of the alleged genocide would be reflected in the scarcity of texts criticizing the same allegations .
On the other hand , we see that the more general question of German war guilt was addressed by a number of writers , many of them American revisionist historians .
The political circumstances in turn make up the third reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , its press and publishers placed under severe censorship .
In central and eastern Europe , country after country was taken over by communists with the support of Stalin ’ s Soviet and it ’ s Red Army .
In western European nations that had been occupied by Germany , such as France and Denmark , suspected collaborators were killed without much ado .
It is no wonder that few critical voices were raised , and that those few emanated from countries that either had a strong tradition of free speech , such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had been neutral during the war , such as Switzerland .
In the texts quoted or referred to above , we notice that only two post-war writers , neo-fascist Francis Parker Yockey and socialist George Orwell , explicitly brings into question the existence of the gas chambers .
The rest of the texts mainly focus on the alleged death toll of 6 million jews , suggesting that it must be exaggerated since there were not enough potential victims within the grasp of Hitler ’ s regime .
The reason for this is rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the number of victims could be scrutinized , at least to a certain level , using publicly available sources , the former German concentration camps housing the remains of the alleged gas chambers were out of reach for critical observers , occupied as they were by detachments of the Red Army or the Western Allies .
In addition , very little “ information ” was yet available on the details of the alleged killing agents .
Not knowing how exactly the gassings were carried out , or what the gas chambers were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ individuals otherwise inclined to skepticism would have assumed that the alleged mass gassings likely were feasible .
As will be seen in the next part of this chronicle , it would take a skeptic who had himself been a concentration camp inmate to start unraveling the gas chamber narrative .
On May 8 former Sobibór SS Erich Bauer , accused of having been in charge of the alleged homicidal gas chambers at that camp , is given a death sentence by a West Berlin court .
The sentence is later commuted to life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Frankfurt court sentences former Sobibór SS Hubert Gomerski to life imprisonment , while another former guard , Johann Klier , is released .
Those early trials of former Aktion Reinhardt personnel goes virtually unmentioned in the press .
October .
Paul Rassinier ’ s book Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse : regard sur la littérature concentrationnaire ( The Lies of Ulysses : a look at the concentration camp literature ) , is published by Éditions Bressanes ( Bourg-en-Bresse ) , with a preface by Albert Paraz ( 1899-1957 ) .
Rassinier ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who during the war had been imprisoned in the concentration camps Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau .
Following the war , Rassinier reacted strongly against the lies and exaggerations in the writings of former fellow inmates Abbé Renard and Eugen Kogon .
In Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse , Rassinier denies the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Buchenwald , which had been alleged by Renard and others , and likewise disputes the existence of such installations at Bergen-Belsen , Dachau and Mauthausen .
At the time of writing , however , Rassinier believed that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in reality , and that some gassings may have been carried out in Auschwitz and other camps in the east , while suggesting that such murderous actions were the work On the other hand , Rassinier points out that there is no reason to regard the gas chamber witnesses of Auschwitz as a priori more reliable than the false gas chamber witnesses of Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen .
December .
Maurice Bardèche ’ s book Nuremberg II ou les Faux-Monnayeurs ( Nuremberg , or the counterfeiters ) is published by Les Sept Couleurs ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ framework of IMT Nuremberg , the reliance on evidence presented by the USSR , the hypocrisy regarding war crimes perpetrated by the Allies , and the treatment of witnesses and accused at Nuremberg as well as in connection with the Einsatzgruppen , I.G .
Farben , Dachau and Malmédy trials .
Bardèche had read Rassinier ’ s books Passage de la Ligne and Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse and quotes extensively from them , while criticizing as unrealistic Rassinier ’ s suggestion that the authorities in Berlin did not know exactly what went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to affirming Rassinier ’ s rejection of the Buchenwald gas chamber allegations , he expresses doubt regarding the alleged gassings at Dachau , and also characterizes Höss ’ statement regarding mass gassings of jews at Auschwitz as “ surrounded by plenty of astonishing circumstances ” .
[ 1 ] Edmond Michelet initiates a lawsuit against Rassinier based on allegedly defamatory contents of Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse but soon withdraws it .
Undated .
Dr. Franz J. Scheidl reportedly finishes writing the first manuscript to his multi-volume work Geschichte Der Verfemung Deutschlands ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Germany ” ) but fails to find a publisher willing to take the risk of publishing a work of revisionist nature .
The manuscript will remain unpublished until 1967 .
In January , [ President ] Truman orders development of hydrogen bomb .
Kuomintang troops surrender in mainland China .
In February , Senator McCarthy accuses US Department of State of harboring 205 Communists .
In April , Jordan annexes the West Bank , Britain formally recognizes Israel .
On June 25 North Korean troops cross the 38th parallel , marking the beginning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Communist China invades Tibet .
On January 15 , Ilse Koch ” The Witch of Buchenwald ” is sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court .
On March 3 , former Treblinka SS Josef Hirtreiter is sentenced to life imprisonment by a Frankfurt court .
The March and April issues of Jean-Paul Sartre ’ s magazine Le Temps Modernes presents 58 pages of translated extracts from Miklos Nyiszli ’ s book in his alleged experiences in Auschwitz .
Historian Léon Poliakov ’ s book Le Bréviaire de la haine .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ published by Calmann-Lévy , Paris .
May 9 .
Three organizations of former resistance members have libel charges pressed against Rassinier but are turned down by the Bourg-en-Bresse court .
November 2 .
In an appeal trial brought on by the same former resistance members who were turned down in the May trial , Rassinier is handed down a suspended 15-day prison sentence and ordered to pay a total of 100,000 francs .
The Lyon appeal court also orders the seizure and destruction of all copies of Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Curtain Over America , John Beaty ( 1890-1961 ) disputes the Six Million figure , mainly based on figures presented by the World Almanac .
[ 2 ] Undated .
Douglas Reed publishes his book Far and Wide , in which he devotes six pages to the Six Million figure .
Reed demonstrates that there are significant incongruities to be found in the various estimates of the pre-war and post-war jewish world population presented by almanacs and statistical sources .
He remarks : In January , North Korean and Chinese forces capture Seoul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins .
In May the first thermonuclear weapon is tested by the United States .
On April 4 , Israel demands reparations worth 3 billion dollars from West Germany in the Hague Tribunal .
On June 15 The Diary of Anne Frank is first published in English .
November .
In an article for the Buenos Aires-based magazine Der Weg , Erwin F. Neubert disputes the Six Million figure .
[ 4 ] Undated .
Peter Kleist , a German nationalist of Russophile bent who during the war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Affairs , publishes the book Auch du warst dabei !
( You too were there ! )
in which he devotes a subchapter to “ The Final Solution ” .
[ 5 ] Kleist disputes neither Einsatzgruppen mass shootings of jews ( while remarking that the Soviet partisans ’ way of fighting “ deliberately erased any distinction between fighting troops and civilians ” ) nor the existence of homicidal gas chambers ( although he notes that Wehrmacht troops stationed in Lublin remained unaware of the mass gassings in Majdanek , and that “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Germany ” ) .
He states , on the other hand , that the victim figures claimed for the camps are grossly exaggerated , and that the Six Million figure can not possibly be correct .
According to Kleist ’ s calculations , the total number of perished jews could at most have amounted to 1,277,212 .
In March general Batista re-takes power in Cuba , US ratifies peace treaty with Japan .
In July East Germany forms the National People ’ s Army .
In October martial law is declared in Kenya @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In November the United States National Security Agency ( NSA ) is founded , Eisenhower is elected president .
Gerald Reitlinger ’ s The Final Solution , one of the first historiographical works on the Holocaust , is published by Beechhurst Press , New York .
Undated .
Hans Ulrich Rudel , at the time a leading member of the German Reich Party , publishes the war diary Trotzdem ( “ Nevertheless ” , translated into English as Stuka Pilot ) in which he expresses skepticism towards the concentration camp atrocity stories and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Undated .
The book Advance to Barbarism by F.J.P .
Veale is published in the United States [ 7 ] , containing skepticism towards certain allegations advanced during IMT Nuremberg : Veale also criticizes Allied hypocrisy concerning war crimes , pointing out that the expulsion of Germans from East Prussia , Pomerania , Silesia , and the Sudetenland affected 15 million people , whereof 2 million are estimated to have been killed or died from cold and hunger .
Beginning of January , President Truman announces the US development of a hydrogen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relations with Israel .
On March 5 Stalin dies and is succeeded by Malenkow , later same month Kruschev is selected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party .
In July Lavrenti Beria is deposed as head of the NKVD .
In August the USSR announces that it has the hydrogen bomb .
CIA helps install Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on Iranian throne .
In September the first German prisoners of war return from the USSR to West Germany .
May-June .
Ludwig Paulin publishes the article “ Die Lüge von den 238,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” ( The Lie of the 238,000 .
What happened in Camp Dachau ? )
in Der Weg , Vol .
8 , No .
5-6 , pp .
349-358 .
Paulin disputes the existence of a gas chamber at the camp and also argues that the Dachau cremation ovens did not have the capacity to incinerate the ( at this time ) alleged 238,000 victims .
July .
Guido Heimann publishes the article “ Die Lüge von den sechs Millionen ” ( The Lie of the Six Million ) in Der Weg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 7 , pp .
479-487 .
Maurice Bardèche spend three weeks in prison for his writings before being pardoned .
August .
The pseudonym Warwick Hester publishes the article “ Auf den Straßen der Wahrheit ” ( On the streets of truth ) in Der Weg , Vol .
8 , No .
8 , pp .
572-578 .
According to Udo Walendy , who re-published the article in 1990 [ 9 ] , the real name of its author was Stephen F. Pinter ( possibly 1888-1985 ) , an American lawyer who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The author begins by noting that none of the accused at Nuremberg had known about the alleged extermination of jews , and that the eyewitness testimonies presented were full of mendacious statements .
He also points out that no physical evidence for the so-called “ gas vans ” had been presented before the court , in spite of the claim that hundreds of thousands had been killed inside those vehicles .
Pinter writes that he visited all the former camps in the western zone of occupation , but did not find any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spoke with fourteen ( unnamed ) jewish Majdanek witnesses , who reportedly between four eyes admitted to him that they had not observed any mass gassings .
Pinter further spoke with some former ( likewise unnamed ) SS officers in Barcelona , Kairo and Rio de Janeiro and asked them about the alleged extermination .
Five of them told him that it had happened , but that two rather than six million had been killed .
At further inquiry , it turned out that four of them based their opinions on hearsay .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ shortly before the end of the war that two million Jews had been killed by “ special commandos ” .
The fifth SS man , who lived in Kairo , claimed to have partaken in a mass execution of 30,000 Jews at Crimea , but other sources maintained that the man had never been stationed there .
September .
Eva Peron Basil ’ s article “ La mentira de los seis millones ” ( The lie of the six millions ) is published in Der Weg , Vol .
8 , No .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 16 .
The Supreme Court of France has the Lyon court ’ s sentence against Rassinier annulled and the case is remitted to the court of Grenoble .
Undated .
The book The Swindle of the Six Million is published privately in New York .
Its author , Heinrich Malz , was a former Berlin police official who had worked under Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Werner Naumann .
In late January the foreign ministers of US , UK , Soviet and France meet at the Berlin Conference .
In late February , Gamal Abdel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ April Eisenhower gives his “ domino theory ” speech .
Senator McCarthy begins hearings investigating US Army for being soft on Communism .
May , French defeat at Dien Bien Phu , Vietnam .
In June CIA and United Fruits Company engineers military coup in Guatemala .
In September USSR conducts its first nuclear test .
French director Alain Resnais ’ Holcoaust film Nuit et Brouillard ( Night and Fog ) is released .
February .
The second edition of Rassinier ’ s Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse is published by Macon .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s 1949 book on his experience as a concentration camp inmate , Le Passage de la ligne .
Undated .
John Baker White , a former Director of British Military Intelligence who later worked for the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department and then the Political Warfare Executive , publishes his book The Big Lie .
During the war White had formed a unit broadcasting propaganda to the German armed forces .
As an example of what sort of propaganda was spread to the Germans , White mentions a rumor concocted about the fat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : The implication is that British propaganda triggered rumor mongering that eventually developed into the infamous “ jewish soap ” story .
In January Pentagon announces plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons .
In February Eisenhower sends first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam .
In April Churchill resigns as Prime Minister and is succeeded by Anthony Eden .
In May West Germany becomes ( formally ) a sovereign state .
In July the Geneva summit is held between the US , USSR , UK and France .
In late @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Still five years after the end of the war , few books had appeared detailing the mass gassing allegations .
The main theme of the “ Nazi ” atrocity literature was the general ill treatment of concentration camp inmates , regardless of nationality or ethnicity , rather than the supposed extermination of “ European ” jewry .
Dachau , Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen were the names most commonly appearing in Western media , and Auschwitz had yet to step into the limelight of the gas chamber horror-show , as shown by Kleist ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ located the largest of these camps of terror , called Maidanek ” ) .
Seen in retrospect , the past often seems full of missed opportunities .
One might like to think that more could have done , that certain things should have been followed up or that certain should have been scrutinized more closely .
On the other hand , it ’ s impossible to deny the immense importance of the pioneering work carried out by Paul Rassinier .
No good house can be built without a foundation , and with Le @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the ball rolling in grand fashion .
Still , very little was written by revisionists on the technical feasibility of the alleged crimes – a most central issue , since historiography must always conform to hard evidence if it is to be called truthful and scientific .
Ludwig Paulin ’ s 1954 article on Dachau is a noteworthy exception .
Here the atrocity allegations are confronted with the parameters of physical reality .
Tall tales are weighed against technical and forensic evidence , or lack of such .
It takes about 1 hour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in a crematory oven , and therefore , if the number of oven muffles is known , one can calculate whether the ovens were sufficient or not for the alleged number of victims .
The cremation of hundreds of thousands of corpses would inevitably result in a tremendous amount of ashes – where are those ashes ?
The fact is , however , that the pioneering revisionists had little to go on as far technical details about the alleged gas chambers and the disposal of the bodies of the alleged victims were concerned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the bulk of revisionist research from this era is related to documents , statistics and testimonies that were relatively easily accessible .
As will be seen in the forthcoming installments of this chronicle , the emergence of Holocaust historiography , following the early works of Reitlinger and Poliakov , would be counterbalanced by a gradually more refined , systematic and thorough Holocaust revisionism .
This is the third article in a series forming a chronicle of Holocaust revisionism and responses to it from the first years of the Post-War era up to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , we surveyed the first decade of Shoah skepticism , from the very first doubts , mainly concerning the 6-million-victim figure , to the first publications of revisionist pioneer and former concentration camp inmate Paul Rassinier , in which the alleged homicidal gas chambers came into focus as the central issue of dispute .
Below I will continue this survey with the latter half of the 1950s .
Here I am again indebted to Mr. Jean Plantin and his exhaustive documentation Anthologie chronologique de textes révisionniste des années quarante et cinquante ( A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Forties and Fifties ) .
[ 1 ] Alain Resnais ’ s Holocaust documentary Nuit et brouillard ( Night and Fog ) is released .
Lucie Adelsberger ’ s testimony Auschwitz published in Germany .
Gerald Reitlinger ’ s book The SS : Alibi of a Nation is published in London .
A German edition of Reitlinger ’ s study The Final Solution ( Die Endlösung ) is published in Berlin .
Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka ’ s book Noc a mlha , later translated into German as Nacht und Nebel ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Prague .
Helmut Krausnick ’ s Dokumentation zur Massen-Vergasung ( Documentation of Mass Gassings ) is published in Bonn .
Undated .
Leon Poliakov , in a 1956 article later appended to some reprinted editions of Harvest of Hate ( Breviaire de la haine ) , accuses fellow Holocaust historian Gerald Reitlinger of minimizing the number of jewish victims : In June , Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes president of Egypt .
In October , the Hungarian revolution breaks out , Red Army troops invade Hungary ; Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula and back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the canal .
The revolt in Hungary is quashed in mid-November .
In December , Fidel Castro returns to Cuba .
The former commandant of the concentration camp ( and alleged “ auxiliary extermination camp ” ) Stutthof , Paul Werner Hoppe , is sentenced to nine years of imprisonment at a trial held in Bochum , West Germany .
The former Dutch SS man Willem Sassen conducts a number of tape-recorded question-and-answer sessions with Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a book on the “ Final Solution ” .
Bruno Baum ’ s book Widerstand in Auschwitz ( Resistance in Auschwitz ) is published in East Berlin .
Jan Sehn ’ s documentation Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau published in Warsaw .
2 September .
Albert Paraz , who wrote the preface to Rassinier ’ s Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse , passes away , aged 57 .
In late January Israel withdraws from the Sinai Peninsula .
Eisenhower is inaugurated for a second presidential term .
The Suez Canal is reopened in March .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ April , the first conscripts join the West German Bundeswehr .
Jack Kerouac ’ s On the Road published in September .
In December all Dutch nationals are expelled from Indonesia .
On 1 March , career criminal and former Auschwitz inmate Adolf Rögner files charges against the former SS-Oberscharführer Wilhelm Boger , an event which would lead to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial .
Elie Wiesel ’ s Auschwitz memoirs , La Nuit ( Night ) , are published by Editions de Minuit in Paris .
Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss ’ s memoirs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in West Germany , edited by Martin Broszat .
On 9 October , Pius XII , alleged to have been “ Hitler ’ s Pope ” , dies .
The Zentralstelle zur Verfolgung nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen ( Central Office for the resolution of National-Socialist crimes ) is established in Ludwigsburg , West Germany .
20 November .
A letter written by Stephen F. Pinter ( 1888-1985 ) is published in the weekly Deutsche Wochenschrift .
In his letter , Pinter questions the veracity of a recent Associated Press report stating that the ashes of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Polish victims of the concentration camp Flossenbürg had been given a reburial .
Pinter states that , according on his own investigations as a judicial magistrate following the end of the war , the total number of Flossenbürg victims amounted to no more than 300 people .
Undated .
Louis ( Lajos ) Marschalko ’ s book The World Conquerors .
The Real War Criminals ( translated into English from a manuscript in Hungarian ) is published in London by Joseph Sueli .
Chapter 11 of this book is entitled “ What Has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Here the author discusses the origin of the six-million figure in the statements of Wilhelm Hoettl , as well as the Madagascar plan and the pre-war National Socialist policy of jewish emigration .
Marschalko considers it “ unlikely ” that the outbreak of the war caused a switch to a policy of extermination , while concluding that the “ Final solution of the Jewish question ” was territorial in nature .
He further suggests that especially the eastern jews suffered heavy losses due to the partisan warfare and reprisal actions linked to it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ extermination-camp allegations as propaganda .
Marschalko also points out the Allied nations ’ curious silence on the jewish “ exterminations ” during the war .
Moreover the author writes ( without , however , providing a source ) that German POWs had to “ reconstruct ” a gas chamber at Dachau and also notes that the crematorium ovens at Dachau were completely inadequate for the incineration of the number of victims claimed at that time ( 238,000 ) .
Finally , the author disputes the six-million figure from a demographic-statistical viewpoint , based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1946 Baseler Nachrichten article .
[ 2 ] Special attention is given to the “ Hungarian ” jews : jewish claims of 600,000 dead “ Hungarian ” jews are contrasted with a New York Times article stating the same number as 200,000 and official Hungarian statistics reporting losses of merely 120,000 “ Hungarian ” jews ( again the author provides no exact references ) .
Based on reported numbers of displaced “ Hungarian ” jews , Marschalko concludes that the real number of perished “ Hungarian ” jews amounted to approximately 60,000 people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ der 6-Millionen-Zahl ” ( no author given ) is published in Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung ( German High School Teacher Newspaper ) ( predecessor of Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart ) ( Germany in History and Context ) , Vol .
6 , No .
2 , p. 25 .
In February Egypt and Syria unite to form the United Arab Republic , Nasser becomes its president .
Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union in late March .
In April , Castro ’ s revolutionary army begins attacks on Havana .
On June 16 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Hungary .
In July , the Iraqi monarchy is overthrown by Arab nationalists .
British and U.S. troops sent to Jordan and Lebanon .
On December 31 , Cuban president Fulgencio Batista resigns .
The construction of the concrete-block “ memorial ” on the former site of Treblinka II begins .
Olga Lengyel ’ s Auschwitz memoirs Five Chimneys are published in London .
Rudolf Höss ’ s memoirs are published in English and French .
14 June 1959 .
A letter written by Stephen F. Pinter is published in Our Sunday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ German Atrocities ” .
In it , Pinter writes that “ there were no gas chambers in any of the concentration camps in Germany ” , and that while he and other judicial officials had been told about “ a gas chamber at Auschwitz ” , the Soviets had not allowed them to investigate that claim .
Pinter also disputes the six-million figure , suggesting that the actual number of Jewish victims was less than one million .
1 July 1959 .
Austin J. App writes a letter entitled “ The Inflated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ addressed to the Philadelphia newspaper The Inquirer , in which he states the six-million figure to be a product of Soviet propaganda and completely unproven .
It is unknown whether this letter was published .
Undated .
The article “ Dokumente zur Endlösung der Judenfrage ” is published in Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung , Vol .
7 , No .
3-4 , pp .
5-13 .
[ 4 ] The article does not dispute the alleged extermination per se , [ 5 ] but suggests that it was planned and carried out by a very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ claimed by the anonymous author to have been Catholic fifth-columnists , among them the head of Gestapo Heinrich Müller and Adolf Eichmann , out to destroy Germany ’ s honor ! )
, and that Hitler had nothing to do with them until he somehow learned of them and ordered them stopped .
The primary value of this article lies in the quotes from court material that it presents .
Undated .
A German edition of Rassinier ’ s Le Mensonge d ’ Ulysse ( Die Lüge des Odysseus or The Lies of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Verlag Karl Heinz Priester as part of the series “ Zeitgeschichtliche Dokumentation ” ( “ Historical Documentation ” ) .
Undated .
Swedish far right writer Einar Åberg publishes a brief pamphlet entitled “ Proof that the jewish allegation of Hitler having gassed 6 million jews is a big lie ” in which he disputes the six-million figure by referring to various statistical sources , primarily the World Almanac .
[ 6 ] In January Fidel Castro takes control over Cuba .
In March , an uprising against the Chinese occupiers of Tibet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to India .
Hawaii becomes the 50th US state in August .
Antarctic Treaty signed in December .
Britain starts selling heavy water ( an material for making nuclear weapons ) to Israel .
The first post-war census conducted in the USSR .
On May 11 , Adolf Eichmann , living in Buenos Aires under the alias Ricardo Klement , is abducted by Mossad agents .
A week later he is smuggled out of the country .
On May 21 he reaches Israel .
March .
Paul Rassinier ’ s article “ ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Un document historique ou le roman chez la portière ?
” is published in Défense de l ’ Occident , No .
3 , pp .
36-44 .
In this article , Rassinier analyzes the recently published memoirs of the former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and compares it with his testimony from the Nuremberg Trial , highlighting a number of internal and external contradictions , while also taking note of the fact that Höss had been tortured by his British captors .
Most significantly , Rassinier observed that Höss on one hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agent Zyklon B as being very dangerous , while on the other hand he describes the members of the “ Sonderkommando ” as removing the bodies from the gas chambers immediately after the gassings , sometimes while eating and smoking ( i.e .
not wearing gas masks ) , without any accidents ever occuring—an observation that years later would be further developed by Robert Faurisson .
24 March – 8 April .
Rassinier holds a tour of lectures on the theme “ Historical truth or political truth ?
” in Hamburg and fourteen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Vienna .
18 June .
The weekly Deutschen Wochenzeitung reports that Munich bishop and former Dachau inmate Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler during a press conference held in connection with the beginning of the construction of a chapel at the former camp site stated that no gas chamber had ever been put into use at Dachau , and that therefore the claim that 75,000 inmates had been gassed there was false .
The bishop mentioned the official victim estimate presented by the Town of Dachau , according to which 20,000 inmates had perished in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ International Tracing Service ’ s estimate of 29,000 victims , and further stated his intention to write a pamphlet entitled “ Die Wahrheit über Dachau ” ( The truth about Dachau ) to be disseminated at an upcoming ecclesiastical world congress in Munich .
July .
A German translation of three recent articles and lectures by Rassinier ( including the above mentioned one on Höss ) , an exchange of letters with Eugen Kogon ( in which Kogon threatens Rassinier , as well as his German publisher , with legal prosecution ) and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Wiesbaden by Verlag Karl Heinz Priester under the title Was nun , Odysseus ?
Zur Bewältigung der Vergangenheit ( What Now , Odysseus ?
On the Manipulation of the Past ) .
19 August .
A letter from Dr. Martin Broszat of the Institute for Contemporary History ( Institut für Zeitgeschichte ) appears in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit , stating that “ Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were jews or other prisoners gassed ” and that “ The mass extermination of the jews by gassing began in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facilities selected and equipped with appropriate technical installations , above all in the occupied Polish territory ( but at no place in the Old Reich ) ” .
[ 7 ] December .
An extract from Rassinier ’ s forthcoming book Ulysse trahi par les siens ( Ulysses Betrayed by His Own ) is published in Lectures Françaises , No .
44-45 , pp .
14-23 .
In February the CERN particle accelerator is inaugurated near Geneva .
In March , the Sharpesville massacre takes place in South Africa .
In June , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ follows .
In November , John F. Kennedy is elected president of the United States .
In December the OECD is formed in Paris .
By the late 1950s , Holocaust revisionism was still very much affected by the childhood diseases typical of pioneer criticism .
Most seriously , many texts were unfortunately marked by a lack of exact references in accordance with standard scientific criteria .
Also lacking is a focus on official reports and material deriving from court proceedings , as well as the emerging Holocaust historiography ( Reitlinger , Hilberg @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revisionist texts from this period discuss the extermination allegations as presented by the media and a relatively small number of published witness testimonies .
There are three points of special interest to be found in our survey of the years 1956-1960 .
The first is Poliakov ’ s criticism of Reitlinger in 1956 .
Despite admitting that , with regards to the jews in Eastern Poland and the Soviet Union “ estimates are complicated by population movements during and after the war ” as well as a “ total absence of reliable statistical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2 million jews exterminated at Auschwitz , [ 8 ] whereas Reitlinger puts the same figure at between 800,000 and 900,000—staunchly defended “ the ‘ classic ’ total of 6 million ” , which had emerged as a dogmatic figure already during the Nuremberg trial .
The second point is Rassinier ’ s pioneer analysis of Höss ’ s memoirs .
Here is reached a milestone in the development of Holocaust revisionism , namely the emergence of a discussion on the technical feasibility of the alleged mass gassings .
This new focus would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as the early Holocaust historians had not at all considered the physical reality behind their claims .
The third and last point is the 1960 Broszat letter .
The final paragraph of this text makes it clear that it was written as a response to early revisionism ( Broszat does not name Rassinier or any other revisionist writer , but instead speaks of “ some ineducable people ” who “ make use of a few arguments that , while correct , are polemically taken out of context ” ) .
This shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ revisionists already from the start , and that by 1960 they had already adopted the strategy of discreetly cutting out the most untenable parts of the gas chamber mythos ( without even for a moment considering the evidential foundation of the remainder ) while avoiding naming the revisionists whose writings made these tactical retreats necessary .

A Chronicle of Holocaust Revisionism: Parts 1 – 3
By Thomas Kues
Published: 2009-08-01
Part 1: Early Doubts (1945-1949)
In a series of articles I will attempt to chronicle the history of Holocaust revisionism, from the end of World War II up till today.[1] For each year, I will provide some relevant details of historical backgrounds, such as Holocaust related trials, major developments in research etc. I will also append a brief outline of general historical events. The main part of each entry will be devoted to the major events of that year as directly related to Holocaust revisionism. Historical revisionist works will be mentioned only insofar they touch upon the fate of “European” jewry during World War II. Skeptical responses to mass killing allegations made prior to 1945 have been omitted in part one, since they are too numerous to mention. [2] The author wishes to thank Jean Plantin[3] and Richard Widmann for the invaluable assistance they have provided in locating some of the sources quoted below. It should be kept in mind that this article series constitutes a history of Holocaust revisionism, and that the texts quoted may contain arguments that have later been found to be erroneous. Thus, I will generally not evaluate the validity of quoted or summarized arguments.
1945
Background
On November 20, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg begins. Two months before this, in September, the Bergen-Belsen trial against Josef Kramer and others is conducted.
Events
April. German born “Swedish”-jewish business man Norbert Masur is sent to Berlin as a representative for Hillel Storch, delegate of the Jewish World Congress. Early in the morning of April 21, Masur met with Himmler at Hartzwalde, the countryside manor owned by Himmler’s personal doctor and masseur Dr. Felix Kersten. Their two hour conversation was recounted in the book En Jude talar med Himmler (A jew speaks with Himmler), which was published later that year – after the end of the war – by Stockholm publishing company Albert Bonniers. According to Masur, Himmler stated the following in regards to the concentration camps:
The war brought us into contact with the proletarized masses of Eastern jewry, something which caused us entirely new problems. We could not tolerate having such an enemy behind our backs. The jewish masses were infected with severe diseases, in particular Flecktyphus. I myself have lost thousands of my best SS men to these epidemics. Also, the jews helped the partisans. (…) The jews passed on information to the partisans. Besides that they shot at our troops in the ghetto. (…) In order to contain the plagues we had to construct crematories, where the corpses of the innumerable people who had fallen victims to these illnesses could be incinerated. And on account of this they want to tie a noose for us! (…) These camps got their bad reputation from their unfortunately chosen name. (…) They should have been called reeducation camps. Not only jews and political prisoners were interned there, but also criminal elements, who were not released after serving their sentences. As a result of this Germany in 1941, that is, during a war year, had the lowest crime rate seen in decades. The prisoners had to work hard, but so did the entire German people. The treatment in the camps was harsh, but just.
To Masur’s question whether he denied that “grave misdeeds” had been carried out in the camps, Himmler replied:
“I must admit that some such things took place, but on the other hand I have seen to that the guilty were punished.”[4]
In his journal The Protestant Vanguard Scottish activist Alexander Ratcliffe speaks of the “stupid stories about millions of massacred jews”.[5]
Irma Grese and Josef Kramer standing in the courtyard of the Prisoner of War cage at Celle. Kramer said that the gas chamber story was “untrue from beginning to end.” Both were convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death. Aug. 8, 1945. Source Imperial War Museum collection: unrestricted access.
April-May. Former commandant of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, Josef Kramer, is captured by British forces on April 17 and interned on the following day. Sometime between April 18 and May 21 Kramer made a first statement on his role as camp commandant. In it, we read:
“I have heard of the allegations of former prisoners in Auschwitz referring to a gas chamber there, the mass executions and whippings, the cruelty of the guards employed and that all this took place either in my presence or with my knowledge. All I can say to all this is that it is untrue from beginning to end.”
In a later, second statement Kramer retracted this, stating that he had seen one gas chamber in Auschwitz, which was under the command of Rudolf Höss. In court Kramer explained the gas chamber denial of his first statement by claiming that he had felt bound by his word of honour as long as Hitler and Himmler were still alive (Himmler died, allegedly by his own hand, on May 21, 1945).
May. British writer George Orwell (Eric Blair) writes in his essay “Notes on Nationalism” (published in Polemic, No. 1, October 1945):
Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported – battles, massacres, famines, revolutions – tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion.
May 30. In his article “Trials for War Criminals”, James Morgan Read speaks of the necessity of an impartial investigation of atrocity allegations.[6]
June 29. Former Auschwitz staff member SS Hauptsturmführer Hans Aumeier states in his first declaration to his British captors:
“I have no knowledge of gas chambers and during my time no detainee was gassed.”
Following this statement, Aumeier is given a questionnaire asking him to provide testimony on “Gassings (with all details), numbers of daily and total victims” as well as a “Confession about own responsibility in case of gassings.”[7]
Historical context
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin meet at the Yalta Conference in early February. Hitler commits suicide in Berlin on April 30. Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms on May 7. Atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August. Japanese capitulation and the end of World War II on August 15. In September, US forces occupy the southern half of the Korean peninsula, while Soviet forces occupy the northern half, marking the beginning of the Korean conflict. In December, American General George S. Patton “dies” in car accident. Zionist terrorist strikes against British military bases in Palestine.
1946
Background
The 24 accused at IMT Nuremberg are handed down their sentences. Twelve of them are condemned to death by hanging. Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring commits suicide prior to execution. On May 11, 58 members of the Mauthausen concentration camp staff are sentenced to death by the U.S. Military Court at Dachau.
Events
February 17. Hermann Göring remarks in a conversation with prison psychologist G.M. Gilbert that
the newsreels depicting heaps of emaciated corpses at the concentration camps could have been fabricated by anyone.
and also expresses doubt in the six million figure. [8]
April 29. During his interrogation at IMT Nuremberg, Julius Streicher states:
I first heard of the mass murders and mass killings at Mondorf when I was in prison. But I am stating here that if I had been told that 2 or 3 million people had been killed, then I would not have believed it. I would not have believed that it was technically possible to kill so many people; and on the basis of the entire attitude and psychology of the Fuehrer, as I knew it, I would not have believed that mass killings, to the extent to which they have taken place, could have taken place.[9]
Later during the same interrogation he added:
To this day I do not believe that 5 million were killed. I consider it technically impossible that that could have happened. I do not believe it. I have not received proof of that up until now.[10]
May 11. British advocate of monetary reform C.H. Douglas requests proof for the alleged figure of six million killed Jews, while noting the “enormous numbers” of jewish survivors in Germany.[11]
May 22. American scholar Austin Joseph App in a letter to Time magazine questions their assertion that 6.5 million jew lived in Europe excluding Russia at the time of the outbreak of World War II. App found this claim exaggerated and reminded of the high number of jews still present in Germany by the end of the war as well as the flow of 3 million refugees, most of them presumably jews, into the United States prior to and during the war years, concluding that “What we have heard regarding the jewish population of Europe and its treatment is not substantiated fact”.[12]
May 27. Hermann Göring states the following during an interview with Nuremberg psychiatrist Leon Goldensohn:
I think that the atrocities, if they existed – and mind you, I don’t believe they were technically possible, or if they were, I don’t believe Hitler ordered them – it must have been Goebbels or Himmler.[13]
June 13. Swiss newspaper Basler Nachrichten carries as its headline “How high is the number of jewish victims?” (Wie hoch ist die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer?). Quoting official statistics on the jewish populations of Europe, the article argues that the number of jewish victims could not exceed 3 million, and most likely amounts to less than 1.5 million. The unnamed writer of the article puts the term “extermination of the jews” within quotation brackets, implying skepticism towards the allegations of a systematic extermination of “European” jewry, but does not discuss the gas chamber issue.[14]
Undated. British writer George Bernard Shaw in his pamphlet Geneva criticizes the Allied bombing campaign against Germany and the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While claiming that Hitler wrongly believed the Jews to be “an accursed race who should be exterminated as such” Shaw also writes:
They [the Germans running the camps] were not fiends in human form; but they did not know what to do with the thousands thrown on their care. (…) They could do nothing with their prisoners but overcrowd them within any four walls that were left standing, lock them in, and leave them almost starving to die of typhus. When further overcrowding became physically possible they could do nothing with their unwalled prisoners but kill them and burn the corpses they could not bury. And even this they could not organize frankly and competently: they had to make their victims die of illusage instead of by military law. (…) Had there been efficient handling of the situation by the authorities (…) none of these atrocities would have occurred. They occur in every war when the troops get out of hand.[15]
Nowhere does Shaw mention the infamous gas chambers.
Historical context
Austria is divided into 4 occupation zones on January 7. IMT Tokyo commences on April 29. Irgun bomb attack against King David Hotel in Jerusalem on July 22. On December 12, a socialist government is formed in France by jewish socialist and former Buchenwald inmate Léon Blum.
1947
Background
Between April and August the Buchenwald Trial is conducted by the U.S. Military Court at Dachau. On August 20, the verdict of the so-called Doctors’ Trial is announced in Nuremberg. The Auschwitz trial in Kraków, Poland, where former camp commandant Rudolf Höss is sentenced to death, is held between November 24 and December 22. The first edition of Anne Frank’s diary, Het Achterhuis, is published in The Netherlands.
Events
April. American far right activist Elizabeth Dilling claims the six million figure to be false.[16]
Undated. In the 1947 edition of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, “American”-jewish historian Jacob Marcus describes the fate of the “European” jews under National Socialist rule and occupation in the following way (in the article ”Jews”):
In order to effect a solution of the jewish problem in line with their theories, the “Nazis” carried out a series of expulsions and deportations of jews, mostly of original east European stock, from nearly all European states. Men frequently separated from their wives, and others from children, were sent by the thousands to Poland and western Russia. There they were put into concentration camps, or huge reservations, or sent into the swamps, or out on the roads, into labour gangs. Large numbers perished under the inhuman conditions under which they labored. While every other large jewish center was being embroiled in war, “American” jewry was gradually assuming a position of leadership in world jewry.
No mention of gas chambers or an extermination policy targeting jews is made in this edition, leaving the reader with the impression that Marcus, one of the foremost contemporary experts on jewish history, either did not put credence in the mass gassing allegations or was reluctant to mention said claims in print. The text quoted above was retained in the 1952 and 1956 editions of the encyclopedia.
Historical context
On January 31, communists take power in Poland. March 12, Truman Doctrine proclaimed. On August 31, communists take over Hungary. CIA created on September 18. On November 29 the United Nations General Assembly votes to partition Palestine between Arabs and jews.
1948
Background
Verdict of the Einsatzgruppen Trial pronounced on April 10. Sentences in the I.G. Farben Trial handed down on July 30.
Events
February. American neo-Fascist ideologue and political activist Francis Parker Yockey, who in 1946 had been assigned to work in Wiesbaden, Germany, as a prosecutor in war crime trials, publishes the book Imperium using the pseudonym Ulrick Varange. On page 533 of its original edition we read:
These fact-creations [concerning the Pearl Harbor incident] were as nothing, however, to the massive, post-war, “concentration-camp” propaganda of the Culture-distorting regime based in Washington.
This propaganda announced that 6,000,000 members of the jewish Culture-Nation-State-Church-People-Race had been killed in European camps, as well as an indeterminate number of other people. The propaganda was on a world-wide scale, and was of a mendacity that was perhaps adapted to a uniformized mass, but was simply disgusting to discriminating Europeans. The propaganda was technically quite complete. “Photographs” were supplied in millions of copies. Thousands of the people who had been killed published accounts of their experiences in these camps. Hundreds of thousands more made fortunes in post-war black-markets. “Gas-chambers” that did not exist were photographed, and a “gasmobile” was invented to titillate the mechanically-minded.
Unfortunately, Yockey did not clarify further in writing how he had come to his revisionist conclusions.
October. French fascist writer Maurice Bardèche publishes the book Nuremberg ou la Terre promise (“Nuremberg or The Promised Land”, Le Sept Couleurs, Paris) in which he criticizes the International Military Tribunal and its verdict, especially focusing on claims made by the French trial delegation that the German occupation forces had sought to ”exterminate” the French population. The book, however, does not dispute the Holocaust per se, i.e. the allegations of a German extermination plan for the jews and mass killings in gas chambers (“concerning this there are numerous pieces of evidence”, Bardèche writes). On the other hand, he notes that contemporary German documents shows “the solution of the jewish problem” to have “consisted only of an assembling of the jews in a territorial zone which one called the jewish Reserve.”
According to Bardèche, the defendants at Nuremberg could maintain that they had been unaware during the whole war of the massive executions which took place at Auschwitz, at Treblinka and elsewhere, that they had learned about them for the first time by listening to their accusers, and no document of the trial enables us to affirm that Göring, Ribbentrop, or Keitel lied by saying that; it is very possible, indeed, that the policy of Himmler was a totally personal policy, discreetly carried out, and for which he alone bears the responsibility.[17]
A similar view would be expounded nearly three decades later by the British war historian David Irving in his book Hitler’s War.
October 9. Austin J App writes a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer criticizing the treatment of Ilse Koch. The letter mentions the abuse of captured Dachau guards, as well as the torture and deceptions used to extract confessions from them. It also contends that the discovery at Buchenwald of lampshades made of human skin is an “unproven allegation”. In regards to the alleged criminal use of human remains, App draws a parallel to events in the Pacific War where US soldiers fashioned souvenirs out of the bones of fallen Japanese.[18]
Historical context
On February 25, Communists seize control over Czechoslovakia. April 9, Deir Yassin massacre in Palestine. Israeli declaration of independence on May 14. In June the Berlin Blockade begins, marking the start of the Cold War. September 17, Stern Gang assassinates UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. On New Year’s Eve, the Arab-Israeli War breaks out.
1949
Background
No Holocaust related events of significance.
Events
July 16. Austin J App, at the time doing research in Europe, once again writes to Time magazine, which had offered to him as proof for the alleged extermination of 6 million jews the November 26, 1945 testimony of Wilhelm Hoettl, pointing out the absurdity in offering witness statements as proof of genocide: “Surely the fact that even you could quote no better authority than that of a frightened, hysterical Obersturmbannfuehrer, testifying four years ago, must make you suspect that if his figures could have been substantiated those who repeat the charge in order to persecute Germans would have long ago have done so.” App further notes the role the extermination allegation played in the creation of the Israeli state the previous year. According to App’s own estimate, less than 1.5 million European Jews had lost their lives due to “Nazi” persecution.[19]
Undated. Swiss far right philosopher and writer Gaston-Armand Amaudruz in his book Ubu Justicier au premier procès de Nuremberg critizises the judicial foundations of the Nuremberg trial as well as questions the extermination allegation without going into details.
Historical context
In March, more than 90,000 Baltic nationals are deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union. In May, the Federal Republic of Germany is established. George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four published in June. In August, the Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb. In October the communist controlled Democratic Republic of Germany (East Germany or DDR) is officially established.
Commentary
During the first half decade following the end of the war a number of war crime trials, spectacles orchestrated by the victorious powers in cooperation as well as separately, set up the foundations of the jewish extermination narrative that was much later to be called “The Holocaust”. While a number of critical voices, many of them American, were raised against the proceedings at Nuremberg, only a few people living through this chaotic period made the effort to scrutinize the plausibility of the claims of genocide. We can find at least three possible explanations for this.
First of all, most of the accused at the trials were either Third Reich bureaucrats and “small fish”, or had simply not had any significant insight into the handling of the “Jewish problem”. The majority of the key movers behind the “Final Solution” were either missing or had already met their death, sometimes in suspicious fashion.[20]Confronted with the powerful newsreel footage of skeletal concentration camp inmates and corpses piled in heaps, many of the accused apparently came to believe that Himmler and the SS had carried out a secret policy of extermination behind their backs. Their reactions, and especially the declaration of guilt made by “The Hangman of Poland”, Hans Frank, might have dissuaded suspicions regarding the truth of the allegations in the minds of many.
Secondly, the claim of an attempted extermination of “European” jewry was given relatively little time at IMT Nuremberg as well as at the subsequent NMT trials. Especially little court time was devoted to the alleged mass gassings, with virtually no relevant details discussed by the court and no technical evidence displayed. Further, the number of gas chamber witness accounts publicly available in the West at the time was rather few in number. This relative lack of interest in the details of the alleged genocide would be reflected in the scarcity of texts criticizing the same allegations. On the other hand, we see that the more general question of German war guilt was addressed by a number of writers, many of them American revisionist historians.
The political circumstances in turn make up the third reason. The vanquished Germany was under occupation, its press and publishers placed under severe censorship. In central and eastern Europe, country after country was taken over by communists with the support of Stalin’s Soviet and it’s Red Army. In western European nations that had been occupied by Germany, such as France and Denmark, suspected collaborators were killed without much ado. It is no wonder that few critical voices were raised, and that those few emanated from countries that either had a strong tradition of free speech, such as the United States, or that had been neutral during the war, such as Switzerland.
In the texts quoted or referred to above, we notice that only two post-war writers, neo-fascist Francis Parker Yockey and socialist George Orwell, explicitly brings into question the existence of the gas chambers. The rest of the texts mainly focus on the alleged death toll of 6 million jews, suggesting that it must be exaggerated since there were not enough potential victims within the grasp of Hitler’s regime. The reason for this is rather easy to explain.
While the issue of the number of victims could be scrutinized, at least to a certain level, using publicly available sources, the former German concentration camps housing the remains of the alleged gas chambers were out of reach for critical observers, occupied as they were by detachments of the Red Army or the Western Allies. In addition, very little “information” was yet available on the details of the alleged killing agents. Not knowing how exactly the gassings were carried out, or what the gas chambers were supposed to have looked like, most individuals otherwise inclined to skepticism would have assumed that the alleged mass gassings likely were feasible. As will be seen in the next part of this chronicle, it would take a skeptic who had himself been a concentration camp inmate to start unraveling the gas chamber narrative.
Part 2: Confronting Ulysses (1950-1955)
This is the second part of an article series forming a chronicle of Holocaust revisionism from the first years of the Post-War era up to the present. In the first part, we saw that during the first five years following the Second World War, there appeared a number of articles disputing the Six Million figure, while writings skeptical of the gas chamber allegations were rare. In my commentary I offered an explanation for this circumstance, namely that the technical details of the alleged mass murders had been given very little court time at IMT Nuremberg and subsequent trials, and that witness accounts of gas chambers publicly available in the West were few in number. As a result, early revisionist writers would have felt little need to address the issue of the reality of the gas chambers, and naturally also the question whether the alleged gassings were technically feasible or not. It would take a former concentration camp inmate and his courageous confrontation with gas chamber claims he knew to be untrue to put focus on the supposed weapon of mass murder. His name was Paul Rassinier, and the publication of his book Le Mensonge d’Ulysse in 1950 signaled the real beginning of the gas chamber controversy. In this second part of the chronicle, his pioneering revisionist activity and its repercussions will be detailed. The author once again wishes to thank Richard Widmann and Jean Plantin for their assistance with locating many of the sources.
1950
Background
On May 8 former Sobibór SS Erich Bauer, accused of having been in charge of the alleged homicidal gas chambers at that camp, is given a death sentence by a West Berlin court. The sentence is later commuted to life in prison. On August 25, a Frankfurt court sentences former Sobibór SS Hubert Gomerski to life imprisonment, while another former guard, Johann Klier, is released. Those early trials of former Aktion Reinhardt personnel goes virtually unmentioned in the press.
Events
October. Paul Rassinier’s book Le Mensonge d’Ulysse: regard sur la littérature concentrationnaire (The Lies of Ulysses: a look at the concentration camp literature), is published by Éditions Bressanes (Bourg-en-Bresse), with a preface by Albert Paraz (1899-1957). Rassinier (1906-1967) was a socialist and pacifist who during the war had been imprisoned in the concentration camps Buchenwald and Dora-Mittelbau. Following the war, Rassinier reacted strongly against the lies and exaggerations in the writings of former fellow inmates Abbé Renard and Eugen Kogon. In Le Mensonge d’Ulysse, Rassinier denies the existence of homicidal gas chambers at Buchenwald, which had been alleged by Renard and others, and likewise disputes the existence of such installations at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Mauthausen. At the time of writing, however, Rassinier believed that the gas chambers rumors had some basis in reality, and that some gassings may have been carried out in Auschwitz and other camps in the east, while suggesting that such murderous actions were the work
“of one or two insane people among the SS, and of one or two concentration camp bureaucracies they were trying to please; or vice versa, by one or two concentration camp bureaucracies, with the complicity, purchased or not, of one or two particularly sadistic SS men”
On the other hand, Rassinier points out that there is no reason to regard the gas chamber witnesses of Auschwitz as a priori more reliable than the false gas chamber witnesses of Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.
December. Maurice Bardèche’s book Nuremberg II ou les Faux-Monnayeurs (Nuremberg, or the counterfeiters) is published by Les Sept Couleurs (Paris). Bardèche criticizes the legal framework of IMT Nuremberg, the reliance on evidence presented by the USSR, the hypocrisy regarding war crimes perpetrated by the Allies, and the treatment of witnesses and accused at Nuremberg as well as in connection with the Einsatzgruppen, I.G. Farben, Dachau and Malmédy trials. Bardèche had read Rassinier’s books Passage de la Ligne and Le Mensonge d’Ulysse and quotes extensively from them, while criticizing as unrealistic Rassinier’s suggestion that the authorities in Berlin did not know exactly what went on in the camps. In addition to affirming Rassinier’s rejection of the Buchenwald gas chamber allegations, he expresses doubt regarding the alleged gassings at Dachau, and also characterizes Höss’ statement regarding mass gassings of jews at Auschwitz as “surrounded by plenty of astonishing circumstances”.[1]
Edmond Michelet initiates a lawsuit against Rassinier based on allegedly defamatory contents of Le Mensonge d’Ulysse but soon withdraws it.
Undated. Dr. Franz J. Scheidl reportedly finishes writing the first manuscript to his multi-volume work Geschichte Der Verfemung Deutschlands (”The History of the Defamation of Germany”) but fails to find a publisher willing to take the risk of publishing a work of revisionist nature. The manuscript will remain unpublished until 1967.
Historical context
In January, [President] Truman orders development of hydrogen bomb. Kuomintang troops surrender in mainland China. In February, Senator McCarthy accuses US Department of State of harboring 205 Communists. In April, Jordan annexes the West Bank, Britain formally recognizes Israel. On June 25 North Korean troops cross the 38th parallel, marking the beginning of the Korean War. In October, Communist China invades Tibet.
1951
Background
On January 15, Ilse Koch ”The Witch of Buchenwald” is sentenced to life imprisonment by a West German court. On March 3, former Treblinka SS Josef Hirtreiter is sentenced to life imprisonment by a Frankfurt court. The March and April issues of Jean-Paul Sartre’s magazine Le Temps Modernes presents 58 pages of translated extracts from Miklos Nyiszli’s book in his alleged experiences in Auschwitz. Historian Léon Poliakov’s book Le Bréviaire de la haine. Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs is published by Calmann-Lévy, Paris.
Events
May 9. Three organizations of former resistance members have libel charges pressed against Rassinier but are turned down by the Bourg-en-Bresse court.
November 2. In an appeal trial brought on by the same former resistance members who were turned down in the May trial, Rassinier is handed down a suspended 15-day prison sentence and ordered to pay a total of 100,000 francs. The Lyon appeal court also orders the seizure and destruction of all copies of Le Mensonge d’Ulysse.
December. In his book The Iron Curtain Over America, John Beaty (1890-1961) disputes the Six Million figure, mainly based on figures presented by the World Almanac.[2]
Undated. Douglas Reed publishes his book Far and Wide, in which he devotes six pages to the Six Million figure. Reed demonstrates that there are significant incongruities to be found in the various estimates of the pre-war and post-war jewish world population presented by almanacs and statistical sources. He remarks:
“In a matter where nothing is verifiable, one thing seems sure: that six million jews were never even contained in German-occupied territories. Many jews left Europe before the war began and the only large communities which remained were in Poland and Russia, countries from which trustworthy statistics are not to be expected. Many of those in Poland apparently welcomed the Communist invasion of 1939 and went into the Communist zone. A jewish observer, Mr. Levine, returning to America from Russia in 1946, said. ‘At the outset of the war, as we all know, jews were among the first evacuated from the western regions threatened by the Hitlerite invaders and shipped to safety east of the Urals.’ He said these privileged ones amounted to two millions\.
Yet this massive assertion about the six millions was used by politicians in the highest places, by prosecutors at Nuremberg, and habitually by mass-newspapers which in lesser matters would print no statement unverified! In truth nobody outside Political Zionism knows how many jews the world contains, partly because jewry has always included a section which avoids prominence in statistics, partly because the numbers in the Soviet areas cannot be ascertained, partly because Political Zionism has been able to obscure population-movements. Rabbi Elmer Berger wrote in 1946, of the jews in Poland and Russia, that he did not know how many had survived ‘and no one knows’. Since President Roosevelt’s time track has been lost of the increase of jewish population in America; good observers believe it now to approach eight millions.”[3]
Historical context
In January, North Korean and Chinese forces capture Seoul. In March the trial of nuclear spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins. In May the first thermonuclear weapon is tested by the United States.
1952
Background
On April 4, Israel demands reparations worth 3 billion dollars from West Germany in the Hague Tribunal. On June 15 The Diary of Anne Frank is first published in English.
Events
November. In an article for the Buenos Aires-based magazine Der Weg, Erwin F. Neubert disputes the Six Million figure.[4]
Undated. Peter Kleist, a German nationalist of Russophile bent who during the war had served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, publishes the book Auch du warst dabei! (You too were there!) in which he devotes a subchapter to “The Final Solution”.[5] Kleist disputes neither Einsatzgruppen mass shootings of jews (while remarking that the Soviet partisans’ way of fighting “deliberately erased any distinction between fighting troops and civilians”) nor the existence of homicidal gas chambers (although he notes that Wehrmacht troops stationed in Lublin remained unaware of the mass gassings in Majdanek, and that “almost no information on these events reached Germany”). He states, on the other hand, that the victim figures claimed for the camps are grossly exaggerated, and that the Six Million figure cannot possibly be correct. According to Kleist’s calculations, the total number of perished jews could at most have amounted to 1,277,212.
Historical context
In March general Batista re-takes power in Cuba, US ratifies peace treaty with Japan. In July East Germany forms the National People’s Army. In October martial law is declared in Kenya due to the Mau Mau uprising. In November the United States National Security Agency (NSA) is founded, Eisenhower is elected president.
1953
Background
Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution, one of the first historiographical works on the Holocaust, is published by Beechhurst Press, New York.
Events
Undated. Hans Ulrich Rudel, at the time a leading member of the German Reich Party, publishes the war diary Trotzdem (“Nevertheless”, translated into English as Stuka Pilot) in which he expresses skepticism towards the concentration camp atrocity stories and denounces what he perceives as Allied hypocrisy:
“They refuse to believe me when I tell them that I have never even seen a concentration camp. I add that if excesses have been committed they are regrettable and reprehensible, and the real culprits should be punished. I point out that such cruelties have been perpetrated not only by our people, but by all peoples in every age. I remind them of the Boer War. Therefore these excesses must be judged by the same criterion. I cannot imagine that the mounds of corpses depicted in the photographs were taken in concentration camps. I tell them that we have seen such sights, not on film, but in fact, after the air attacks on Dresden and Hamburg and other cities when Allied four-engined bombers deluged them indiscriminately with phosphorus and high explosive bombs and countless women and children were massacred”.[6]
Undated. The book Advance to Barbarism by F.J.P. Veale is published in the United States[7], containing skepticism towards certain allegations advanced during IMT Nuremberg:
“Yet another discordant note was struck through the inability of the Soviet authorities to resist any opportunity to poke sly fun at their capitalist allies-for example, they solemnly adduced in evidence ‘a jar of human soap,’ alleged to have been made from the bodies of executed prisoners- a manifest gibe, in the worst possible taste, at the famous ‘Corpse Factory Myth’ put into circulation with the aid of forged documents by the British emotional engineers during the war 1914-1918”.[8]
Veale also criticizes Allied hypocrisy concerning war crimes, pointing out that the expulsion of Germans from East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland affected 15 million people, whereof 2 million are estimated to have been killed or died from cold and hunger.
Historical context
Beginning of January, President Truman announces the US development of a hydrogen bomb. In February USSR breaks diplomatic relations with Israel. On March 5 Stalin dies and is succeeded by Malenkow, later same month Kruschev is selected First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In July Lavrenti Beria is deposed as head of the NKVD. In August the USSR announces that it has the hydrogen bomb. CIA helps install Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi on Iranian throne. In September the first German prisoners of war return from the USSR to West Germany.
1954
Background
No Holocaust-related events of significance.
Events
May-June. Ludwig Paulin publishes the article “Die Lüge von den 238,000. Was geschah im Lager Dachau?” (The Lie of the 238,000. What happened in Camp Dachau?) in Der Weg, Vol. 8, No. 5-6, pp. 349-358. Paulin disputes the existence of a gas chamber at the camp and also argues that the Dachau cremation ovens did not have the capacity to incinerate the (at this time) alleged 238,000 victims.
July. Guido Heimann publishes the article “Die Lüge von den sechs Millionen” (The Lie of the Six Million) in Der Weg, Vol. 8, No. 7, pp. 479-487.
Maurice Bardèche spend three weeks in prison for his writings before being pardoned.
August. The pseudonym Warwick Hester publishes the article “Auf den Straßen der Wahrheit” (On the streets of truth) in Der Weg, Vol. 8, No. 8, pp. 572-578. According to Udo Walendy, who re-published the article in 1990[9], the real name of its author was Stephen F. Pinter (possibly 1888-1985), an American lawyer who had been involved in the Dachau trial. The author begins by noting that none of the accused at Nuremberg had known about the alleged extermination of jews, and that the eyewitness testimonies presented were full of mendacious statements. He also points out that no physical evidence for the so-called “gas vans” had been presented before the court, in spite of the claim that hundreds of thousands had been killed inside those vehicles. Pinter writes that he visited all the former camps in the western zone of occupation, but did not find any credible traces of gas chambers.
He spoke with fourteen (unnamed) jewish Majdanek witnesses, who reportedly between four eyes admitted to him that they had not observed any mass gassings. Pinter further spoke with some former (likewise unnamed) SS officers in Barcelona, Kairo and Rio de Janeiro and asked them about the alleged extermination. Five of them told him that it had happened, but that two rather than six million had been killed. At further inquiry, it turned out that four of them based their opinions on hearsay. One claimed to have heard from Eichmann shortly before the end of the war that two million Jews had been killed by “special commandos”. The fifth SS man, who lived in Kairo, claimed to have partaken in a mass execution of 30,000 Jews at Crimea, but other sources maintained that the man had never been stationed there.
September. Eva Peron Basil’s article “La mentira de los seis millones” (The lie of the six millions) is published in Der Weg, Vol. 8, No. 9, pp. 604-605.
December 16. The Supreme Court of France has the Lyon court’s sentence against Rassinier annulled and the case is remitted to the court of Grenoble.
Undated. The book The Swindle of the Six Million is published privately in New York. Its author, Heinrich Malz, was a former Berlin police official who had worked under Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Werner Naumann.
Historical context
In late January the foreign ministers of US, UK, Soviet and France meet at the Berlin Conference. In late February, Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes premier of Egypt. In April Eisenhower gives his “domino theory” speech. Senator McCarthy begins hearings investigating US Army for being soft on Communism. May, French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam. In June CIA and United Fruits Company engineers military coup in Guatemala. In September USSR conducts its first nuclear test.
1955
Background
French director Alain Resnais’ Holcoaust film Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog) is released.
Events
February. The second edition of Rassinier’s Le Mensonge d’Ulysse is published by Macon. This volume incorporates most of Rassinier’s 1949 book on his experience as a concentration camp inmate, Le Passage de la ligne.
Undated. John Baker White, a former Director of British Military Intelligence who later worked for the Foreign Office Political Intelligence Department and then the Political Warfare Executive, publishes his book The Big Lie. During the war White had formed a unit broadcasting propaganda to the German armed forces. As an example of what sort of propaganda was spread to the Germans, White mentions a rumor concocted about the fat used for cooking by the German army:
”Owing to the acute shortage of animal fats the Germans, like ourselves, had to use synthetic substitutes. One of our political warfare tasks was to spread distrust of their origins. As luck would have it, there came to our notice an order issued to all German factories to fit traps to drains to catch all grease and soap for recovery. This was elaborated quickly into a rumour that the grease recovered was used for making cooking fats. It was a particularly successful rumour and came back within six weeks via a Luftwaffe prisoner, plus a most unsavoury elaboration which had not entered our heads.”[10]
The implication is that British propaganda triggered rumor mongering that eventually developed into the infamous “jewish soap” story.
Historical context
In January Pentagon announces plan to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with nuclear weapons. In February Eisenhower sends first U.S. advisors to South Vietnam. In April Churchill resigns as Prime Minister and is succeeded by Anthony Eden. In May West Germany becomes (formally) a sovereign state. In July the Geneva summit is held between the US, USSR, UK and France. In late August the last Soviet forces leave Austria.
Commentary
Still five years after the end of the war, few books had appeared detailing the mass gassing allegations. The main theme of the “Nazi” atrocity literature was the general ill treatment of concentration camp inmates, regardless of nationality or ethnicity, rather than the supposed extermination of “European” jewry. Dachau, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen were the names most commonly appearing in Western media, and Auschwitz had yet to step into the limelight of the gas chamber horror-show, as shown by Kleist’s book (“Near Lublin is located the largest of these camps of terror, called Maidanek”).
Seen in retrospect, the past often seems full of missed opportunities. One might like to think that more could have done, that certain things should have been followed up or that certain should have been scrutinized more closely. On the other hand, it’s impossible to deny the immense importance of the pioneering work carried out by Paul Rassinier. No good house can be built without a foundation, and with Le Mensonge d’Ulysse, Rassinier set the ball rolling in grand fashion.
Still, very little was written by revisionists on the technical feasibility of the alleged crimes – a most central issue, since historiography must always conform to hard evidence if it is to be called truthful and scientific. Ludwig Paulin’s 1954 article on Dachau is a noteworthy exception. Here the atrocity allegations are confronted with the parameters of physical reality. Tall tales are weighed against technical and forensic evidence, or lack of such. It takes about 1 hour and 10 minutes to incinerate a corpse in a crematory oven, and therefore, if the number of oven muffles is known, one can calculate whether the ovens were sufficient or not for the alleged number of victims.
The cremation of hundreds of thousands of corpses would inevitably result in a tremendous amount of ashes – where are those ashes? The fact is, however, that the pioneering revisionists had little to go on as far technical details about the alleged gas chambers and the disposal of the bodies of the alleged victims were concerned. It should therefore not surprise that the bulk of revisionist research from this era is related to documents, statistics and testimonies that were relatively easily accessible. As will be seen in the forthcoming installments of this chronicle, the emergence of Holocaust historiography, following the early works of Reitlinger and Poliakov, would be counterbalanced by a gradually more refined, systematic and thorough Holocaust revisionism.
Part 3 (1956-1960)
This is the third article in a series forming a chronicle of Holocaust revisionism and responses to it from the first years of the Post-War era up to the present. In the first two parts, we surveyed the first decade of Shoah skepticism, from the very first doubts, mainly concerning the 6-million-victim figure, to the first publications of revisionist pioneer and former concentration camp inmate Paul Rassinier, in which the alleged homicidal gas chambers came into focus as the central issue of dispute. Below I will continue this survey with the latter half of the 1950s. Here I am again indebted to Mr. Jean Plantin and his exhaustive documentation Anthologie chronologique de textes révisionniste des années quarante et cinquante (A Chronological Anthology of Revisionist Texts from the Forties and Fifties).[1]
1956
Background
Alain Resnais’s Holocaust documentary Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) is released. Lucie Adelsberger’s testimony Auschwitz published in Germany. Gerald Reitlinger’s book The SS: Alibi of a Nation is published in London. A German edition of Reitlinger’s study The Final Solution (Die Endlösung) is published in Berlin. Ota Kraus and Erich Kulka’s book Noc a mlha, later translated into German as Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog), published in Prague. Helmut Krausnick’s Dokumentation zur Massen-Vergasung (Documentation of Mass Gassings) is published in Bonn.
Events
Undated. Leon Poliakov, in a 1956 article later appended to some reprinted editions of Harvest of Hate (Breviaire de la haine), accuses fellow Holocaust historian Gerald Reitlinger of minimizing the number of jewish victims:
“Finally, it should be noted that a British researcher, Gerald Reitlinger, in his work The Final Solution (London, 1953), questions the total of 6 million. He asserts that many of the figures were deliberately inflated for psychological reasons—both by the “Nazis,” who were motivated by an urge to boast of their crimes, and by the jews, who were influenced by the pessimism typical of victims. He therefore strongly questions some of the figures given by the “Nazis.” By systematically re-examining the figures given for each country, adopting the lowest figure in each case by way of hypothesis, he arrives at a total between a minimum of 4,200,000 and a maximum of 4,600,000. His heaviest corrections are in the figures for Eastern Poland and the Soviet Union proper. In the case of these two regions, estimates are complicated by population movements during and after the war, and by the total absence of reliable statistical data on the present jewish population there. “In our opinion, one who devotes time and effort to making such corrections solely on the basis of psychological considerations must be motivated by similar considerations himself. In Reitlinger’s case this could be explained by the typical British penchant for understatement. No doubt there always will be some uncertainty about the exact total of victims claimed by the racist madness. However, the estimated data available are sufficiently abundant and reliable for us to be able accept, as the most probable number, the ‘classic’ total of 6 million.”
Historical context
In June, Gamal Abdel Nasser becomes president of Egypt. In October, the Hungarian revolution breaks out, Red Army troops invade Hungary; Israel invades the Sinai Peninsula and back Egyptian forces toward the Suez Canal, the United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the canal. The revolt in Hungary is quashed in mid-November. In December, Fidel Castro returns to Cuba.
Revisionist pioneer Paul Rassinier
1957
Background
The former commandant of the concentration camp (and alleged “auxiliary extermination camp”) Stutthof, Paul Werner Hoppe, is sentenced to nine years of imprisonment at a trial held in Bochum, West Germany. The former Dutch SS man Willem Sassen conducts a number of tape-recorded question-and-answer sessions with Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina, supposedly for the purpose of a book on the “Final Solution”. Bruno Baum’s book Widerstand in Auschwitz (Resistance in Auschwitz) is published in East Berlin. Jan Sehn’s documentation Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau published in Warsaw.
Events
2 September. Albert Paraz, who wrote the preface to Rassinier’s Le Mensonge d’Ulysse, passes away, aged 57.
Historical context
In late January Israel withdraws from the Sinai Peninsula. Eisenhower is inaugurated for a second presidential term. The Suez Canal is reopened in March. Martial law declared in Indonesia. In April, the first conscripts join the West German Bundeswehr. Jack Kerouac’s On the Road published in September. In December all Dutch nationals are expelled from Indonesia.
1958
Background
On 1 March, career criminal and former Auschwitz inmate Adolf Rögner files charges against the former SS-Oberscharführer Wilhelm Boger, an event which would lead to the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. Elie Wiesel’s Auschwitz memoirs, La Nuit (Night), are published by Editions de Minuit in Paris. Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss’s memoirs, Kommandant in Auschwitz, are published in West Germany, edited by Martin Broszat. On 9 October, Pius XII, alleged to have been “Hitler’s Pope”, dies. The Zentralstelle zur Verfolgung nationalsozialistischer Gewaltverbrechen (Central Office for the resolution of National-Socialist crimes) is established in Ludwigsburg, West Germany.
Events
20 November. A letter written by Stephen F. Pinter (1888-1985) is published in the weekly Deutsche Wochenschrift. In his letter, Pinter questions the veracity of a recent Associated Press report stating that the ashes of 3000 Russian, French, Yugoslav and Polish victims of the concentration camp Flossenbürg had been given a reburial. Pinter states that, according on his own investigations as a judicial magistrate following the end of the war, the total number of Flossenbürg victims amounted to no more than 300 people.
Undated. Louis (Lajos) Marschalko’s book The World Conquerors. The Real War Criminals (translated into English from a manuscript in Hungarian) is published in London by Joseph Sueli. Chapter 11 of this book is entitled “What Has Become of Six Million Jews?” Here the author discusses the origin of the six-million figure in the statements of Wilhelm Hoettl, as well as the Madagascar plan and the pre-war National Socialist policy of jewish emigration. Marschalko considers it “unlikely” that the outbreak of the war caused a switch to a policy of extermination, while concluding that the “Final solution of the Jewish question” was territorial in nature. He further suggests that especially the eastern jews suffered heavy losses due to the partisan warfare and reprisal actions linked to it, while generally dismissing the gas-chamber and extermination-camp allegations as propaganda. Marschalko also points out the Allied nations’ curious silence on the jewish “exterminations” during the war.
Moreover the author writes (without, however, providing a source) that German POWs had to “reconstruct” a gas chamber at Dachau and also notes that the crematorium ovens at Dachau were completely inadequate for the incineration of the number of victims claimed at that time (238,000). Finally, the author disputes the six-million figure from a demographic-statistical viewpoint, based primarily on the arguments found in the 1946 Baseler Nachrichten article.[2] Special attention is given to the “Hungarian” jews: jewish claims of 600,000 dead “Hungarian” jews are contrasted with a New York Times article stating the same number as 200,000 and official Hungarian statistics reporting losses of merely 120,000 “Hungarian” jews (again the author provides no exact references). Based on reported numbers of displaced “Hungarian” jews, Marschalko concludes that the real number of perished “Hungarian” jews amounted to approximately 60,000 people.
Undated. The article “Entmythologisierung der 6-Millionen-Zahl” (no author given) is published in Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung (German High School Teacher Newspaper) (predecessor of Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart) (Germany in History and Context), Vol. 6, No. 2, p. 25.
Historical context
In February Egypt and Syria unite to form the United Arab Republic, Nasser becomes its president. Khrushchev becomes Premier of the Soviet Union in late March. In April, Castro’s revolutionary army begins attacks on Havana. On June 16, Imre Nagy is hanged for treason in Hungary. In July, the Iraqi monarchy is overthrown by Arab nationalists. British and U.S. troops sent to Jordan and Lebanon. On December 31, Cuban president Fulgencio Batista resigns.
1959
Background
The construction of the concrete-block “memorial” on the former site of Treblinka II begins. Olga Lengyel’s Auschwitz memoirs Five Chimneys are published in London. Rudolf Höss’s memoirs are published in English and French.
Events
14 June 1959. A letter written by Stephen F. Pinter is published in Our Sunday Visitor, p. 15 under the heading “German Atrocities”. In it, Pinter writes that “there were no gas chambers in any of the concentration camps in Germany”, and that while he and other judicial officials had been told about “a gas chamber at Auschwitz”, the Soviets had not allowed them to investigate that claim. Pinter also disputes the six-million figure, suggesting that the actual number of Jewish victims was less than one million.
1 July 1959. Austin J. App writes a letter entitled “The Inflated Figure of 6,000,000”[3] addressed to the Philadelphia newspaper The Inquirer, in which he states the six-million figure to be a product of Soviet propaganda and completely unproven. It is unknown whether this letter was published.
Undated. The article “Dokumente zur Endlösung der Judenfrage” is published in Deutsche Hochschullehrer-Zeitung, Vol. 7, No. 3-4, pp. 5-13.[4] The article does not dispute the alleged extermination per se,[5] but suggests that it was planned and carried out by a very small group of conspirators (who are claimed by the anonymous author to have been Catholic fifth-columnists, among them the head of Gestapo Heinrich Müller and Adolf Eichmann, out to destroy Germany’s honor!), and that Hitler had nothing to do with them until he somehow learned of them and ordered them stopped. The primary value of this article lies in the quotes from court material that it presents.
Undated. A German edition of Rassinier’s Le Mensonge d’Ulysse (Die Lüge des Odysseus or The Lies of Ulysses) is published in Wiesbaden by Verlag Karl Heinz Priester as part of the series “Zeitgeschichtliche Dokumentation” (“Historical Documentation”).
Undated. Swedish far right writer Einar Åberg publishes a brief pamphlet entitled “Proof that the jewish allegation of Hitler having gassed 6 million jews is a big lie” in which he disputes the six-million figure by referring to various statistical sources, primarily the World Almanac.[6]
Historical context
In January Fidel Castro takes control over Cuba. In March, an uprising against the Chinese occupiers of Tibet erupts; the 14th Dalai Lama escapes to India. Hawaii becomes the 50th US state in August. Antarctic Treaty signed in December. Britain starts selling heavy water (an material for making nuclear weapons) to Israel. The first post-war census conducted in the USSR.
1960
Background
On May 11, Adolf Eichmann, living in Buenos Aires under the alias Ricardo Klement, is abducted by Mossad agents. A week later he is smuggled out of the country. On May 21 he reaches Israel.
Events
March. Paul Rassinier’s article “‘Le Commandant d’Auschwitz parle’. Un document historique ou le roman chez la portière?” is published in Défense de l’Occident, No. 3, pp. 36-44. In this article, Rassinier analyzes the recently published memoirs of the former Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and compares it with his testimony from the Nuremberg Trial, highlighting a number of internal and external contradictions, while also taking note of the fact that Höss had been tortured by his British captors. Most significantly, Rassinier observed that Höss on one hand specifies the handling of the supposed killing agent Zyklon B as being very dangerous, while on the other hand he describes the members of the “Sonderkommando” as removing the bodies from the gas chambers immediately after the gassings, sometimes while eating and smoking (i.e. not wearing gas masks), without any accidents ever occuring—an observation that years later would be further developed by Robert Faurisson.
24 March – 8 April. Rassinier holds a tour of lectures on the theme “Historical truth or political truth?” in Hamburg and fourteen other West German cities, as well as Vienna.
18 June. The weekly Deutschen Wochenzeitung reports that Munich bishop and former Dachau inmate Dr. Johannes Neuhäusler during a press conference held in connection with the beginning of the construction of a chapel at the former camp site stated that no gas chamber had ever been put into use at Dachau, and that therefore the claim that 75,000 inmates had been gassed there was false. The bishop mentioned the official victim estimate presented by the Town of Dachau, according to which 20,000 inmates had perished in the camp, as well as the International Tracing Service’s estimate of 29,000 victims, and further stated his intention to write a pamphlet entitled “Die Wahrheit über Dachau” (The truth about Dachau) to be disseminated at an upcoming ecclesiastical world congress in Munich.
July. A German translation of three recent articles and lectures by Rassinier (including the above mentioned one on Höss), an exchange of letters with Eugen Kogon (in which Kogon threatens Rassinier, as well as his German publisher, with legal prosecution) and a foreword by the author is published in Wiesbaden by Verlag Karl Heinz Priester under the title Was nun, Odysseus? Zur Bewältigung der Vergangenheit (What Now, Odysseus? On the Manipulation of the Past).
19 August. A letter from Dr. Martin Broszat of the Institute for Contemporary History (Institut für Zeitgeschichte) appears in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit, stating that “Neither in Dachau nor in Bergen-Belsen nor in Buchenwald were jews or other prisoners gassed” and that “The mass extermination of the jews by gassing began in 1941-1942 and occurred exclusively in a few facilities selected and equipped with appropriate technical installations, above all in the occupied Polish territory (but at no place in the Old Reich)”.[7]
December. An extract from Rassinier’s forthcoming book Ulysse trahi par les siens (Ulysses Betrayed by His Own) is published in Lectures Françaises, No. 44-45, pp. 14-23.
Historical context
In February the CERN particle accelerator is inaugurated near Geneva. In March, the Sharpesville massacre takes place in South Africa. In June, Belgian Congo gains independence; civil war follows. In November, John F. Kennedy is elected president of the United States. In December the OECD is formed in Paris.
Commentary
By the late 1950s, Holocaust revisionism was still very much affected by the childhood diseases typical of pioneer criticism. Most seriously, many texts were unfortunately marked by a lack of exact references in accordance with standard scientific criteria. Also lacking is a focus on official reports and material deriving from court proceedings, as well as the emerging Holocaust historiography (Reitlinger, Hilberg, Poliakov); rather, most revisionist texts from this period discuss the extermination allegations as presented by the media and a relatively small number of published witness testimonies.
There are three points of special interest to be found in our survey of the years 1956-1960. The first is Poliakov’s criticism of Reitlinger in 1956. Despite admitting that, with regards to the jews in Eastern Poland and the Soviet Union “estimates are complicated by population movements during and after the war” as well as a “total absence of reliable statistical data”, Poliakov—whose victim figure includes 2 million jews exterminated at Auschwitz,[8] whereas Reitlinger puts the same figure at between 800,000 and 900,000—staunchly defended “the ‘classic’ total of 6 million”, which had emerged as a dogmatic figure already during the Nuremberg trial.
The second point is Rassinier’s pioneer analysis of Höss’s memoirs. Here is reached a milestone in the development of Holocaust revisionism, namely the emergence of a discussion on the technical feasibility of the alleged mass gassings. This new focus would naturally give the revisionists an upper hand, as the early Holocaust historians had not at all considered the physical reality behind their claims.
The third and last point is the 1960 Broszat letter. The final paragraph of this text makes it clear that it was written as a response to early revisionism (Broszat does not name Rassinier or any other revisionist writer, but instead speaks of “some ineducable people” who “make use of a few arguments that, while correct, are polemically taken out of context”). This shows that Holocaust historians were aware of the revisionists already from the start, and that by 1960 they had already adopted the strategy of discreetly cutting out the most untenable parts of the gas chamber mythos (without even for a moment considering the evidential foundation of the remainder) while avoiding naming the revisionists whose writings made these tactical retreats necessary.
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Author: Aryan - "National Socialist" - Musician Aryan - "National Socialist" - Musician