Poison Gas “Über Alles”

Twenty years ago I had the good fortune to spend many hours with Austin J. App who was one of the first Holocaust revisionists and an American of German descent. Almost as soon as the war had ended, he had begun to speak out and write against the anti-German atrocity claims. He admitted to me decades later during our long talk around 1980 and with great frankness that he had had little to go on in the way of strong evidence or arguments against the horror stories that were filling the newspapers, books and media outlets of that time. What drove him, however, was – and these were his exact words to me – “his faith in the inherent goodness and decency of the German people.” I was moved by those words and recognized that the same kind of faith had driven me and many others who I knew. The inherent decency of the Germans has a serious downside which has, I believe, made them especially vulnerable to the propaganda. For the ordinary decent Germans, how could the stories not be true when there were all those trials and eyewitnesses and confessions and so on? In any event, my faith in Germany is shaken by what one sees there today. Years of Americanization and re-education and terror have had their effect. The moral breakdown and loss of self-pride of the Germans which had not been achieved by the enormous destruction and defeat of two world wars were finally achieved by the holocaust propaganda campaign of which the Nuremberg Trials were only a small part. A major reason for why the propaganda campaign succeeded is precisely because the Germans are a moral people. Americans by contrast would have been far more tenacious because they are surrounded by the kinds of corruption and accommodating to corruption which Germans found almost unimaginable.

Within the revisionist message there is an implied, unstated message, which shocks most listeners and should therefore be recognized and dealt with by revisionists. When a revisionist says the Holocaust story is a hoax or substantially false he or she is, in effect, also saying there is something seriously wrong with America. This wonderful, greatest of all countries with boundless freedoms and what to many seems like a brilliant, totally free press where all ideas are thoroughly thrashed out in the open so that the country as a whole continues on the path to near perfection could not possibly have made such an enormous, collective error. The revisionists must be wrong on that basis alone. We may as well spit it out for all to hear: there is a lot that is seriously wrong with this country. When people like Tom Brokaw write best selling books about America's wartime generation being “the greatest generation,” they are criminally insane.

Twenty-five years ago Arthur Butz referred to the Jewish extermination claims as a hoax in order, as he explained, to suggest that those claims constituted something “cheap and vulgar.” I share that view and would add that the Holocaust story is also obscene and racist and downright crazy. The mass gassings were carried out supposedly with either Diesel engine exhaust or cyanide. Although mass gassings with either diesel exhaust or cyanide are certainly possible – a critical examination of the details shows the claims to be either totally impossible or so absurd that they are unbelievable. But one must be cautious with one's technical analysis and arguments. It does no good to insist that impossibly large fans would have been required to ventilate a pile of corpses, or to insist that one could not possibly have used cyanide for murder because of the proximity to crematory ovens or to insist on any number of other quickie arguments that have no real merit. One fools hardly anyone except the faithful and sooner or later their faith is thoroughly shaken as well, as the truth emerges. Prosecutors who are brought against us are well armed against the quickie, false arguments. The point is that the Germans certainly could have committed mass gassings with technology that was readily available to them throughout German-occupied Europe, even within the concentration camps. The terrible problem for the exterminationists is however in the details – which are generally technical in nature. The devil for them is in the technical details.

The Abundance of Survivors

The Holocaust story is a hoax because no one was murdered by the 'Nazis' in gas chambers or gas vans. and because the total number of Jews who could have possibly died in German-occupied territory is minuscule compared to what is alleged. Just a few years ago, Steven Spielberg proudly announced to the world in an Academy Award acceptance speech that “there are 350,000 survivors of the Holocaust alive today.”[1] Other sources, including Israeli sources, have in recent years given even higher numbers.[2] All such numbers more than fifty years after the war would be impossible if there had been any kind of physical extermination of the Jewish people under German control. It never happened!

The Killers

Most of the alleged three million gassings were supposedly carried out with Diesel exhaust which is technically absurd since Diesel exhaust contains hardly any carbon monoxide. This is well-known to anyone who owns a Diesel-driven car or truck from their own state vehicle inspection results (just check the auto emission inspection procedures for diesel cars or trucks in any state.) Zyklon-B was only used by the 'Nazis' to keep people alive using well-designed gas chambers rather than the makeshift, Rube-Goldberg-like[3] confabulations alleged for mass murder at Auschwitz for example. Although the US Army War Crimes Branch assigned doctors such as Dr. Charles P. Larson to perform autopsies on many of the thousands of dead found in Germany's concentration camps at the end of the war, those doctors never found any forensic evidence of deaths from poison or poison gas. No such evidence was ever presented at the Nuremberg trials where precisely such evidence would have been expected. The killer had been disease, especially typhus, brought on primarily as an indirect but inevitable result of Allied bombing.[4]

The Choices

In the book for which Elie Wiesel is most famous, namely “Night,”[5] which is recommended reading in public schools across this country, Wiesel paints an horrendous picture of life in Auschwitz from April 1944 to January 1945 when he was there. Although many hundreds of thousands of Jews were supposedly gassed there during this time, Wiesel makes no mention of gassings or gas chambers anywhere in his book, as Jürgen Graf and Robert Faurisson have pointed out to us.[6] He does however claim to have seen flames from the chimneys and Dr. Mengele wearing a monocle. Both claims are clearly lies.

When the Russians were about to overrun Auschwitz in January 1945, both Elie and his father “chose” to go west with the retreating 'Nazis' and SS rather than be “liberated” by America's greatest ally. They could have told the whole world about Auschwitz within days – but, both Elie and his father as well as countless thousands of other Jews chose instead to trek west with the 'Nazis' on foot at night in the middle of one of the coldest winters and continue working for the defense of the Reich thereafter. In effect, they chose to collaborate.

Some of Wiesel's exact words in “Night” are:[7]

Elie's tale in this regard is corroborated by other “survivor” accounts including that of Primo Levi. In Levi's book Survival in Auschwitz, we have his words for January 17^th, 1945:

But he's talking here about running away with the 'Nazis' – and not 'Nazis' who were mere rank and file party members but supposedly the worst of the worst. He's talking here about running away with the same 'Nazis' and SS who had supposedly carried out the greatest imaginable mass murders of Jews and others in the entire history of the universe. He's talking about running away with the people who supposedly did the actual killings of thousands daily for several years. But, according to his own words he would probably have gone with them nonetheless, except that he was not feeling good that day; he was feeling weak. The “fear” that he overcame was clearly fear of the Russians and not the 'Nazis;' there is no mention of fear of what the 'Nazis' and SS might do when the evacuees entered the forest or sometime later.

The choices that were made here in January 1945 are enormously important. In the entire history of Jewish suffering at the hands of gentiles what moment in time could possibly be more dramatic than this precious moment when Jews could choose between, on the one hand, liberation by the Soviets with the chances to tell the whole world about the evil 'Nazis' and to help bring about their defeat – and the other choice of going with the 'Nazi' mass murderers and to continue working for them and to help preserve their evil regime. In the vast majority of cases, they chose to go with the 'Nazis'.

The momentous choice brings Shakespeare's Hamlet to mind:

So what was the final score – here a drum roll seems fitting in the background as Vanna White comes onto the stage with the sealed envelope and the answer to the great riddle. The envelope is torn open and the choice is – drum roll again – according to Levi himself 800 choose to remain in Auschwitz, but 20,000 choose to go and collaborate with the 'Nazi' mass murderers. Wow! Such a surprise – already!

We see the same deliberate pro-'Nazi' collaboration in the “survivors” from Schindler's List. In their well-known story, as the Russians were about to overrun Plaszow just thirty miles down the road to the east from Auschwitz in November 1944, Schindler and more than a thousand Jews chose to go west with the retreating 'Nazis' rather than hang back and be “liberated” by the Soviets. Some even spent the next several weeks at Auschwitz – and none were gassed, not even in the movie. The hoax has certainly had its day. If there had been any kind of extermination of Jews at all Auschwitz, all of the Jews in Cracow and Plaszow would have known about it as well. All of the Jews who went west in effect also denied the Holocaust albeit only with their hands and feet. The Jews themselves were the first true Holocaust deniers, and it is about time they get all the credit they deserve.

The rather simple analysis of Holocaust survivor tales I have given here is an easy to understand refutation of the hoax in general. I urge all readers to reexamine the survivor accounts for themselves but critically and systematically. The internet with search engines like Google allows anyone to analyze literally thousands of survivor accounts in seconds for major flaws of the type I have discussed. Just search for keywords like “evacuation” or combinations of words like “holocaust survivor Auschwitz.”

One last piece of literature for this discussion is the highly acclaimed book Sophie's Choice by William Styron. What does Styron have to say about Sophie or any other Auschwitz survivor going west in January 1945? The book is a novel, but it is an historical novel by a great writer and intellect – or so we are told – and where we might find an explanation or insight for Elie's kind of choice. But there is really nothing there. The important choice Sophie made in the book was between her two children; which one should be killed in the gas chamber and which one should live? Certainly that would have been a heart-wrenching choice and worthy of a great novel – but as to the later choice to go west with the 'Nazi' mass murderers, even the murderers of one of those same precious children, there was nothing except for the following:

If anything like that had actually happened, it would have been all the more reason to stay in Auschwitz and wait for the Soviets to arrive rather than go west with the 'Nazis' and the SS. I dare say there is absolutely no serious corroboration of Styron's tale of the freezing children. Although Styron does not tell us, Sophie apparently chose to trek west with the Nazi murderers as well.

An implied Message

There is an implied but unstated message in Holocaust revisionism which we should address because that message is so shocking that it is actually a major hurdle for our work in general and, therefore, we should deal with it. When we say the Holocaust story is not true, I believe we are, in effect, also saying that there is something seriously wrong with America. Most Americans firmly believe that America is still far and away the most wonderful, most nearly perfect society in every possible way that the world has ever seen. If the Holocaust is not true, then there must be something seriously wrong here because the accepted story is almost universally embraced by the media, press and institutions generally. Since America is so wonderful, the revisionists must therefore be wrong – or so the pseudologic goes.

The real Holocaust

Holocaust victims of
Allied mass murderers

Japanese and German women and children were murdered by the US by the most excruciatingly horrible means imaginable – by roasting them alive. If the 'Nazis' had murdered people in gas chambers, although criminal it would nonetheless have been humane and painless and even civilized compared to what Americans actually did even when, in the very last months of the war, there was no real danger to the US. To this day in America, there is still no sense of shame or apology. Please do not be taken in by the false argument that it was the Germans who started the bombing of civilian targets and therefore have nothing to complain about. It was the British who began the deliberate bombing of civilian targets already in May of 1940, to which Germany, after much restraint, only responded in kind in September of 1940. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor was clearly aimed only at military targets without any consultation with the women and children of Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Tokyo or any other Japanese city.

Biography

As many of you know, I am an engineer by profession. I received a degree in mining engineering from Columbia University in 1965. I never worked as a mining engineer as such but rather as a mechanical engineer first for a number of consulting design engineering companies and later as a technical writer and even as an environmental specialist for a government agency at a major New York airport. For a time I had designed poultry processing plants and slaughterhouses. That experience had prompted Keith Stimely to introduce me to an IHR audience in 1983 as a person who had actually worked on the Final Solution to the chicken problem.

The AIDs Disaster

Keith Stimely was a great editor who is unfortunately no longer with us. He died of Aids which is well worth mentioning here because in this terrible worldwide epidemic we actually see one of the horrible consequences of holocaust propaganda. The logical countermeasures such as quarantine of carriers and other restrictive controls have been known and used effectively for centuries for many diseases from plague to measles, but ever since WW2 they have also been so closely associated with the supposedly fiendish work of 'Nazi 'doctors that public health officials and doctors dare not recommend any of these controls. They fear for their careers and reputations as tens of millions die. This cowardly behavior will certainly contribute enormously to the AIDS disaster – but the key is the Holocaust hoax and its power to intimidate.

This grandmother of Malawi has to provide for her nine grandchildren, since their parents had died of AIDS. Meanwhile, some 10% of all children in Africa are half or full orphans, many of them are HIV positive.[8]

We all know how hard it is to breakthrough with our views. The establishment has an aura of respectability that is hard to shake – but it is an aura that it certainly does not deserve at all.

Even if the Holocaust story were true and even if we revisionists were completely wrong, the crimes by the Allies in World War 2, especially the United States are still far worse. The United States murdered well over a million totally innocent civilians, mostly women and children, by deliberately roasting them to death. If the 'Nazis' had ever committed mass murder of millions of innocent people in gas chambers – as horrific and criminal as that would truly be, it would still have been relatively humane, and painless and even civilized compared to the mass murder by incineration that the US inflicted deliberately upon well over a million civilians. That the numbers of innocent people murdered in America's incendiary and nuclear attacks is less than the mythical six million attributed to the 'Nazis' was certainly not for lack of trying on the part of Americans nor from any lack of popular support – even to this day. Those crimes were as cowardly as they were evil. They actually grew in ferocity as the war approached its inevitable end and long after there was any danger to the United States.

The truly horrible scenes at Bergen-Belsen and Dachau and elsewhere in Germany at the end of World War 2 are falsely and routinely presented as if they were typical of conditions in Germany's wartime concentration camps; they were not typical at all – far from it. On the contrary, they were a direct, albeit unintended result of American and British bombing of German civilian targets. The real wartime mass murderers were the Americans.

The fire-bombing of entire German cities was generally a specialty of the British but those attacks would not have been possible without American financing beginning with Lend-Lease in March of 1941. From that point on, the entire British war effort was subject to control from the US and that continued even long after World War 2 as Eisenhower demonstrated in 1956 when he brought the entire British, French, Israeli invasion of Egypt to a speedy halt when he simply threatened to call on the British to pay off American government bonds that had been issued during the war to finance Britain's war effort. The deliberate, terror bombing of civilians was begun by the British in World War 2 in May, June and July of 1940 and not by the Germans lest anyone is uninformed about that fact – furthermore, lest one think it was inevitable that all sides would take up this practice, we have the example of the French military leaders who refused to go along with the British and actually denounced this kind of mass murder from the skies. The German air response only began in August of 1940.

Cigarettes

I find it useful in some of my verbal confrontations to ask someone questions which I recommend to all of you for your own missionary work. I ask the true Holocaust believer whether they believe the Germans murdered millions of innocent people in gas chambers and what do they think about that – after they finish their usually quite pious answer, I ask them how they feel about roasting people to death? They are usually a bit stunned by the question and so the answers vary – but then I remind them that roasting people to death was just what nice, happy-go-lucky all-Americans were actually doing with almost unanimous support from their fellow, happy-go-lucky Americans. Here the responses often turn quite ugly and I have to explain that the women and children and old men of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Tokyo and every other Japanese city were not responsible for or even aware of the planning of the attack on Pearl Harbor – and that the attack on Pearl Harbor was only upon military installations and not on civilians.

Before Americans condemn anyone else in the world for crimes of any sort – whether it be Saddam Hussein or Hitler – they should look at themselves in the mirror. With the World Trade Center bombing in 2001, Americans got a small taste of their own medicine!

The counter-argument to some of what I have said is that it really doesn't matter how you murder people – murder is murder, regardless of whether it is done with poison gas or with flames. At this point, I recommend a simple “cigarette experiment” and here I can also begin to get into my more technical arguments. I suggest that the true Holocaust believer smokes a cigarette by taking a few long, deep breaths. In those deep breaths the CO concentration may be as high as 3% which, if they continue to inhale much longer, should kill them rather quickly – in about a minute or so. But, the whole experience may not be all that agonizing. Dr. Kervorkian admitted that he preferred death by CO for his euthanasia patients over lethal injection and over death from any other gas.[9] It caused the least amount of stress on the patient was the way he put it. Usually, the true believer is surprised but willing to admit that death from cigarette smoke may not be that unpleasant. I then suggest they try the other end of the cigarette; place the burning end of the cigarette on their lip or on any other part of their body. At that point the argument is over. It does make a difference how one murders people.

Bergen-Belsen and the Horrific Photographs

Mass grave of typhus victims in the camp Bergen Belsen at war's end.

The picture from Bergen-Belsen which appears with this text was taken after the SS had turned the camp over to the British by mutual agreement. It is typical of many pictures that were used to condemn the SS as an organization and many individual members of the SS – often to death. It is also used in the endless racist hate campaign to condemn Germans and Germany in general even to this very day. The medical reality is quite different because none of the victims in any of these photos died in gas chambers but from disease. I once had a terrible argument with a Czech émigré doctor of some renown about this subject which I brought to an end by challenging him to let me go to his favorite, major hospital anywhere in America – but, with the authority to line up all of the patients according to how near they were to dying. And then, after they were all lined up – have them take the tops off their pajamas so that I could photograph them. The Czech doctor understood my point instantly – and, needless to say, he could not accept my challenge. If we do not die quickly, we die slowly – often from cancer or aids. In such cases, we do not look any better than the victims of Belsen or anywhere else as we meet our ends – that is a fact of life which we should recognize before we condemn anyone. In January of 2001 I was severely ill with cancer. In two weeks I lost more than 25 pounds and did not look much better than the poor souls in this picture.

The following pictures are of innocent German civilians who were murdered in the British firebombing attack on Hamburg in 1943. They did not die from disease. Are these photos any less horrible than any Holocaust type pictures?

It was not cigarette smoke that the 'Nazis' are accused of having used for mass murder for most of their gassings – but Diesel exhaust. Diesel exhaust does smell quite terrible at times – but that has nothing whatever to do with the presence or absence of carbon monoxide which is totally odorless. But, the smell alone has given rise to the widely held, false belief that diesel exhaust must also be highly toxic – and that the Diesel holocaust claims are plausible. The fact is that it is far from easy to kill people with diesel exhaust – it is so difficult in fact that I regard the claims as absurd, especially when one considers the alternative technology that was available with the gasoline engine – and furthermore, with an additional form of technology which the Germans had readily available at that time but which is no longer readily. That additional technology was the producer gas technology which is enormously important to unraveling the entire hoax. I have never claimed that it is impossible to commit mass murder with Diesel exhaust or Zyklon-B – although there have been a number of people who have tried to get me to say precisely that.

The title of my chapter in Dissecting the Holocaust is I believe an excellent title – it only took fifteen years to formulate it: “Diesel Gas Chambers: Ideal for Torture – Absurd for Murder.”[10] I might have expanded on the subtitle by adding “… and Unbelievable.” It is impossible for me to believe that the 'Nazis', otherwise so clever and technically sophisticated, would have ever been so stupid as to use Diesel exhaust to even try to murder anyone.

ERAN SHER

Let us see what experts on Diesels and diesel emissions are saying today. A major engineering textbook from 1998, which should contain just about everything one would need to know about diesel emissions, is entitled: Handbook of Air Pollution from Internal Combustion Engines – subtitle: Pollutant Formation and Control. The book is more than 550 pages and is co-authored by a dozen of the world's leading experts on emissions from internal combustion engines. It should an excellent source of information on how one might kill people with Diesel exhaust. But in this entire book, which is typical of all other books one can find, there is only one sentence which is relevant to our subject – and here it is from page 288:[11]

In other words, the entire subject of toxic effects from carbon monoxide in diesel exhaust, including long-term effects, is just not worth bothering with. What is ironic is that the editor of this major work on engine emissions and pollution is an Israeli professor of engineering. His name is Eran Sher and he is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. Someone should reach out to him and ask if he actually believes the 'Nazis' murdered people with Diesel exhaust – and whether he had ever considered testifying as an expert witness in the trial of John Demjanjuk.[12]

Surely, if Eran Sher and the Israelis really believe it happened in 'Nazi' Germany, then it might happen again. Surely, we should all be concerned that Sadam Hussein might someday use some of his tens of thousands of Diesel trucks to perpetrate another Holocaust. Surely, the United Nations arms inspectors who are so concerned about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq will miss the boat if they fail to report on Sadam's diesels.

DIESEL HISTORY

One can judge the murderous possibilities of a diesel gas chamber arrangement by studying industrial accidents involivng diesel engines – especially in underground mines which can often become totally enclosed spaces from the inevitable accidents which occur there. Gasoline engines have generally been outlawed for underground applications because of their toxic exhaust but the history of diesels undergound is quite different.

Diesel engines were first used underground in coal mines already in 1928 in Germany, in the Saar, and quite safely from all I have seen in the excellent German literature on this subject – especially in the German mining journal Glückauf.[13] In Britain, Diesels were first used underground in 1939 more than ten years later in Yorkshire – but over the following decades, thousands more were used throughout Britain. For an industry where heavy machinery is used in the most difficult and unnatural circumstances imaginable – and where the industrial accident rate has always been among the highest anywhere, one expects many fatal accidents – but, the British safety record with Diesels was a stunning surprise to many mining professionals, especially in the USA.[14]

The safety record was spelled out in June of 1974 when Mr. S. Gilbert of the British National Coal Board wrote the following in a major British technical journal about the British experience going back 35 years to 1939:[15]

Does this prove that Diesels cannot be used to commit mass murder? Of course, not – but, it is good reason to believe that killing people with diesel exhaust is far from easy – and yet, because of the smell, there is the widely held belief that just the opposite must be true. That false belief has been used in Holocaust propaganda as early as 1943.

One more quote from the technical literature summarizes much of what can be found there. This is from an American essay by a Mr. Dennis S. Lachtman – Director for Health Engineering for the EIMCO Mining Machinery company. In the Mining Congress Journal for January of 1981 on page 40, we have his four-page essay entitled “Diesel Exhaust – Health Effects.” One section of his essay is entitled: “NO significant human hazard seen in over 20 studies”:[16]

In other words, there was not even one fatality or even one injury from Diesel exhaust. No doubt there must be some occasional deaths somewhere in the world – but they are few and far between – and that should give everyone a good idea as to how relatively harmless diesel exhaust truly is – and how absurd the holocaust story is. If the holocaust by diesel allegation is to be believed – there should be strong, overwhelming and clear evidence – but the best the exterminationists have ever found is the Gerstein statement which is absurd and unbelievable for countless reasons aside from the diesel claim.[18]

Every year, many thousands of deaths occur worldwide due to carbon monoxide poisoning from gasoline engines. Suicides in cars from gasoline engine exhaust are common also and are well documented in public health reports. The most common death from carbon monoxide occurs, however, when people simply run their car or truck engines to keep warm in winter – or cool in summer by means of an automotive air conditioner. Approximately a thousand accidental deaths occur in this way every year today in the US alone even though the cars in the US are routinely equipped with catalytic converters and emission control devices – but not with Diesel engines. There are no known Diesel suicides either.

Every night across the world, tens of thousands of truck drivers sleep inside their truck cabs with their Diesel engines running throughout the night – to keep warm in winter or cool in summer. Although there are always some exhaust leaks into a van compartment of a truck, there is no evidence that I have ever found of even one trucker dying or even being injured in such circumstances from Diesel exhaust. It never happens.

Diesel exhaust is inherently safe-and that is a major reason for why the Holocaust story is a hoax.

Internal speed governor

In some of my previous essay, I stressed the fact that relatively high CO emission rates are related primarily to high fuel/air ratios. One might think that all one has to do to get high fuel/air ratios is to press the fuel pedal to the floor – without any load being coupled to the engine. What happens then is quite interesting. Without any load, the engine speed will rapidly increase and the fuel/air ratio will indeed go to the maximum – but within a few seconds also, the engine speed will reach the maximum safe engine speed set by the manufacturer. Long before that speed is reached, however, an internal speed governor in the fuel injection pump assembly will cut back on the fuel – and quite severely – to make certain that the maximum safe speed or “redline” speed is never exceeded. After a few seconds, the actual fuel/air ratio at high speed idle stabilized to nearly the same fuel/air ratio as at low speed idle.

Even though the driver might want the fuel/air ratio to remain at high levels – the speed governor will override his demand as expressed through the fuel pedal. There are only two realistic ways to get the engine to run at high fuel/air ratios for more than just a few seconds: either by coupling some kind of load such as a pump or generator or some other kind of device to the engine to force the engine to work against some heavy resistance, or by reducing the air intake of the engine to a minimum, hence almost suffocating the engine. Otherwise the engine will race – and the governor will cut the fuel/air ratio.

As a practical matter, coupling a loading device to an engine in a truck or tank is far from easy – and thoroughly impractical. Nothing like that is even remotely suggested in any of the anecdotes in the Holocaust accounts.

Reducing the air intake, however, is quite easy, but experiments of British researchers during the 1950s have shown that the resulting maximum carbon monoxide concentration is still so low that it took more than three hours to kill all animals exposed to these exhaust gases.[19]

Combined Effects of Carbon Monoxide and reduced Oxygen

One objection to my 1984 essay was that I had not properly considered the combined effects of carbon monoxide and reduced oxygen. If one uses a multiplier to determine an effective carbon monoxide level, one will see that there is no significant difference due to reduced oxygen until one gets the engine running under heavy loads which is exactly what I claimed in 1984.

The effective carbon monoxide level is determined by dividing the concentration of oxygen in normal air – which is 21% – by the reduced oxygen concentration. Until one has reduced the oxygen level to about 8-10% (heavy engine load), the symptoms upon any intended victims are not significantly different from those at a normal oxygen concentration. Serious symptoms only begin when oxygen is reduced to below 8% and that only occurs when the diesel engine is running against a heavy load.[20]

Exhaust Gas Recirculation for Mass Murder

Generator gas bus

Saurer Diesel, an emission-friendly Vehicle

A diesel gas chamber might have worked by recirculating the exhaust gas from a diesel engine. This is actually a well-known problem with diesel exhaust going back to at least the 1920's in Germany. The idea is that the diesel engine air intake for the engine is connected directly to the same enclosed space to which the engine discharges its exhaust. The exhaust goes around and around through the engine and the enclosed space – and eventually so much oxygen is consumed by combustion and so much carbon monoxide is produced that together these changes kill anyone within the enclosed space. But the engine eventually shuts itself down when there is no longer enough oxygen to sustain combustion and then ceases producing anymore carbon monoxide also.[21]

One should remember that nearly all of the carbon monoxide which is recirculated will be consumed in the engine if sufficient oxygen is available – and so, any additive increase in carbon monoxide levels which one might at first expect, will in fact not occur at all. Carbon monoxide gas is an excellent fuel and actually burns far more easily than diesel fuel or even gasoline. If the CO level is initially only 0.05% after the first pass through the engine, one might – wrongly – expect it to double to 0.10% after second pass and then on to 0.15% after the third pass and so on and on. In reality, however, the carbon monoxide concentration in the exhaust gas basically depends on the oxygen concentration in the air only. Hence, there is not likely to be any significant change in the CO concentration until much later when the oxygen level has been so reduced that complete combustion is no longer possible and the engine shuts down.

Recirculating exhaust gases basically has the same, but extremely delayed effect as reducing the air intake of the engine. Whereas the oxygen content decreases only slowly when applying exhaust gas recirculation, it is immediately minimized when restricting the engine's air intake. Therefore, an attempt of murder with exhaust gas recirculation would take even longer than the minimum of over three hours as established in the above mentioned experiments with air intake restriction. Finally, a combination of both methods, i.e., restricting the air intake and recirculating the exhaust gases, would eventually suffocate the engine.

The important question is whether any deaths can occur before the engine actually shuts itself down. There is no mention in the Gerstein statement or anywhere else of the engine shutting down during the half-hour needed to kill the 700-800 Jews trapped inside – there is only mention of Mr. Heckenholt needing more than two hours to get it started. And so, it seems about as reasonable as anything else one can conclude from the Gerstein statement that the engine must have been operating throughout this period without any serious operating problem from lack of oxygen or for any other reason. In other words, even the recirculation argument fails to fit any of the Diesel gas chamber scenarios from Gerstein or anyone else.

The Gas Vans

When I first saw this picture in 1983, my last doubt about the revisionist position ended. This picture represents a kind of epiphany for me – because the existence of vehicles like this totally undermines the holocaust story for two important reasons. First of all, this type of vehicle makes the use of diesel exhaust as a source of lethal concentrations of carbon monoxide even more absurd than it would otherwise be – and second of all, it helps to explain and undermine the allegation that the 'Nazis' used gas vans to murder some of their victims.

This vehicle was a real gas van, which used poison gas as its fuel. That poisonous fuel was primarily carbon monoxide and was generated on the vehicle as well.

There were, however, accidental gassings arising from the use of a different kind of gas van which is enormously important to unraveling the Holocaust gassing legend. Those “vans” were the producer gas wagons commonly used throughout all of Europe during this era – not just German-occupied Europe. Well over half-a-million of these vans or gas wagons had been built and used for transportation of almost everything by the end of the war and even for many years after the war.[22] They were ubiquitous.

When the war ended the use of these vehicles declined – but only gradually. In the early 1950's in West Germany, at least 20,000 were still in use and their safe operation was still of great concern to medical professionals.[23]

The Soviet Origin of the Gas Van Story

The earliest reference to mass murder in gas vans that I have ever found is in July of 1943 when Pravda reported on the show trials of a number of German prisoners who had supposedly murdered Soviet citizens in Krasnodar with diesel powered vans. English translations of the Pravda stories appeared in The Trial in Britain through Hutchinson & Co., and Foreign Languages Publishing House we have the following text:

For a later trial in Kharkov in December of 1943 we have in a publication called “The People's Verdict” the following information on page 43:[24]

Of course, diesel exhaust never contains “highly concentrated carbon monoxide.”

In a later publication entitled: “Soviet War Documents” from December 1943 and published by the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC, we have a description of the gas van on page 172 which claims the engine was a “Sauer” engine and that the body of the van was constructed in Berlin. There is no Sauer engine manufacturer but there is a famous company called “Saurer.” The connection that is made here to a company called “Sauer” is significant because it reappears in the infamous fake letter from Becker to Rauff in Nuremberg File PS-501.[25] By their common errors one can often recognize the work of a forger. There is never any mention anywhere of the engines having been gasoline engines although that would have certainly made sense technically – nor is there any mention of producer gas wagons which would have made all the sense in the world.

Accidental Gassings in Gas Vans

Although there is no credible evidence of any deliberate gassings with gas vans, there were no doubt many fatal accidents. These accidents arose almost inevitably from the nature of the producer gas vans which made and used poison gas in highly concentrated form to drive the vehicles. Fatal accidents were inevitable from the earliest uses of these vehicles – and no doubt increased with increasing use of this technology. However, this author has found no actual record of such accidents in the German wartime literature to date. The dangers involved are however clearly spelled out in the German literature which includes the various safety guidelines which were required reading of all drivers and operators of these dangerous vehicles.

It is in the post-war literature of Scandinavia that one can find the most startling detailed information as to the many medical problems arising from producer vehicles.[26]

German air raid shelter door of World War II

Bombshelter Doors and baskets for Zyklon B

Many photographs and illustrations from Germany's wartime civil defense literature show that the Germans used well-designed, steel, gas-tight doors with peepholes for their bombshelters. All German bombshelters had to be gas-tight and that also meant annual testing with a blower and pressure gauge.

The important point I want to make is that each bombshelter could with hardly any modification have also served as a highly effective gas chamber. All that one needed to do to kill any group of intended victims was to lock them in and cut off any fresh air from either the supply or exhaust air ductwork. That this was easy enough to do is proven by the fact that it occurred often enough during actual bombing attacks when the air supply was effected either through structural failures or when the outside air was poisonous as well. If anyone had wanted to introduce a poison gas such as cyanide, all that would have been needed would have been to slightly alter some of the sheetmetal supply ductwork with a hinged cover section so that a basket of Zyklon-B could be dropped-in – and, then as supply air passed through, preferably warmed air, the cyanide would be driven from the granules and into the bombshelter.

German Zyklon B delousing chambers of World War II which were based on these principles. The standard, 10-cubic-meter delousing chambers could have been used to kill prisoners just as easily and safely as American execution gas chambers, one or a few prisoners at a time. The only important feature they lacked was a big window to allow witnesses to see what was going on.

Zyklon B granules will hold onto the liquid hydrogen cyanide within the granules rather tenaciously – until the cyanide is forced out of the granules by a blast of warm air passing through the granules. That's the way the delousing chambers worked – and everyone working with them understood that. If the air passing through the granules was too cool or not moving fast enough, that would adversely effect the rate at which the cyanide would escape from the granules into the chamber – and that in turn would slow the entire delousing process down rather dramatically and reduce the effectiveness of the delousing process. Baskets were necessary to hold the Zyklon granules while still allowing warm air from a blower or forced air duct to pass through the basket and granules.

By contrast, the story we are given about Zyklon B for mass murder in Auschwitz is absurd. According to some Holocaust tales, the poison gas product Zyklon B was allegedly simply poured out onto the floor of the gas chambers. A somewhat more complicated version exists regarding the morgues of crematoria II and III of Auschwitz-Birkenau, which were allegedly converted into homicidal gas chambers. In those locations, wire mesh baskets full of Zyklon B were allegedly lowered through holes chiseled through the reinforced concrete ceiling into introduction columns which were supposedly also made of wire mesh. This was supposedly done to allow recovery of the Zyklon B granules after the cyanide gas had escaped and killed the people trapped inside the alleged homicidal gas chambers. Without any real forced ventialtion through the granules, it would have taken hours before all hydrogen cyanide would have evaporated.

The alleged homicidal gas chambers were supposedly equipped with a room ventilation system as it is to be expected for morgues. Only minor modifications to the ventilation shafts outside of the alleged gas chamber would have solved the problem, but nothing even remotely close to what would have been needed is described anywhere in the Holocaust literature.

Functioning Mass Homicidal Gas Chambers

The Zyklon B railroad delousing tunnels which were operated in many places of German occupied Europe would have actually been perfect for mass murder but, ironically, they have never been implicated anywhere in the Holocaust claims. Even more important is the fact that the railroad delousing tunnels already existed in key locations such as Budapest and other major cities throughout Eastern Europe. What one really needed was already in place, but rather than having used any of that superbly designed available technology, the 'Nazis', who were supposed to have been so fiendishly clever in so many other respects, used some basement cellars with little holes in the ceilings instead in Auschwitz far away from Budapest. It is just too cookoo to be believed. It never happened!

Conclusion

I will conclude by giving an answer to a question that was put to me just recently by a journalist. What is driving you and other revisionists? The answer is the evidence – it is as simple as that. It is the evidence that drives us. If one looks at the Holocaust story with some healthy curiosity and some perfectly normal skepticism, the evidence cries out for conclusions that are totally different from what we are required to believe. But instead of truly coming to grips with our past, true Vergangenheitsbewältigung and recognizing who the bad guys really were, we may be entering a new kind of Dark Age where repression and terror far more subtle than anything Orwell imagined become normal. Big Brother is preaching democracy, freedom, and tolerance as he practices the exact opposite. We are clever creatures indeed – but, if we continue to blindly believe in the hoax which is so central to the madness around us, then we are retarded as a species – and a menace to ourselves as well.

Notes

First published in Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung 6(4) (2002), pp. 436-446.