Zyklon B, Auschwitz, and the Trial of Dr. Bruno Tesch

We still have judgement here, that we but teach Bloody instructions, which being taught return To plague thinventor. This even handed justice Commends thingredience of our poison'd chalice To our own lips.—Shakespeare, Macbeth

The Prelude to "Justice"

Toward the end of World War II, the designated legal representatives of the United Nations,[1] meeting in London with Lord Wright, Chairman of the United Nations War Crimes Commission, established the London Agreements to implement earlier agreements by the United Nations at Yalta and other war conferences, and to finally concretize numerous threats and warnings made by the United Nations to the Axis nations during the course of the war. Their intention was to impeach, prosecute and punish the vanquished Germans and Japanese for crimes newly defined and delineated by the victors themselves, and to do this with tribunals created by them for that single purpose.

The most atrocious crime of which the Germans were accused by the victors was that they had planned to kill all of the Jews of Europe; of the six million they allegedly succeeded in killing, four million were allegedly killed in gas chambers constructed for that purpose at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

To place these United Nations tribunals in their proper perspective, it is necessary to appreciate the attitude and temper of the United Nations allies toward Germany before and during these trials. Beginning at least as early as 1940, Germany's enemies – who later, on 2 January 1942, were to take the collective name of the "United Nations" – subjected their citizenry to an incessant bombardment of dire, doleful predictions and frightful allegations of the most horrible atrocities allegedly committed or about to be committed by Germany. But a few of the many separate sources of these allegations were: Dr. Nahum Goldman, the Polish Government-in-exile, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Rabbi J.H. Herz, U.S. Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles, former Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinoff, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. H. Wickham Steed (A British journalist who was active in anti-German propaganda during World War I and prior to World War II), and the U.S. War Refugee Board, organized and fully supported by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although presenting no concrete evidence and identifying no "eye witnesses" (allegedly for reasons of wartime security), these charges were, as were the similar charges in World War I, generally accepted by Germany's enemies as valid – with the largely implied pledge that the ultimate proof of these allegations would be presented at the end of the war.

As the end of the war approached, almost every news release seemed to support these early accusations. With the discoveries made near the end of the war by the advancing United Nations armies of the heaps of corpses at Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, Buchenwald, Nordhausen, etc. – corpses, incidentally, predominantly Gentile,[2] and caused by disease, hunger, etc. – the self-righteous indignation of Germany's conquerors mounted to rage. The German Government itself, now headed by Grand Admiral Doenitz, was equally appalled and vowed to see justice done. Doenitz's Flensburg regime was aghast that after the fiasco of Allied accusations against Germany in World War I and the necessity of their subsequent refutation and withdrawal under fire after the war, charges of a similar type would again be brought seriously and again believed by the same enemies only thirty years later, this time as before without thorough prior investigation.

Viewing themselves quite early in the war, however, as avenging angels and anointed crusaders, expurgating and exterminating murderers and blasphemers, the United Nations conquerors thereupon reconsecrated themselves, as they had already sworn they would do, to fast and merciless punishment for anyone they deemed associated even remotely with these apparent crimes. Many United Nations protagonists, the older ones perhaps still smarting from their rebuff and rejection as a result of their false World War I charges, were certain in their own minds that this time Germany was obviously guilty of all allegations as charged – certain without even bothering to wait for the promised proof of these allegations. In their haste, the only questions they were concerned with were when and how far the victors should go in meting out the "new" justice. The London Agreements obviously had not solved all the problems. Stalin was suggesting, as he had been for some time, the summary killing of 50,000 German "war criminals", and the Americans were to learn later that Roosevelt had, at the 1943 Teheran conference, failed to take any umbrage whatever at this proposal. Missouri Representative Marion T. Bennett, in Europe with other U.S. Congressmen at General Eisenhower's special invitation, probably expressed the general, although not unanimous, feeling by saying: "I left Buchenwald convinced that every German must be killed." Joseph Pulitzer of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch advocated killing 1,500,000 "Nazis." Equally ominous for those Germans left alive (out of a nation originally comprising 80 million) was the announcement that four to six million of them faced trial by the United Nations as "war criminals" – presumably under the newly decreed ex post facto fiats of the United Nations London Agreements.

On 14 May 1945, the last legitimate German Government was completely dismantled by Germany's new masters and its members arrested pending trial and execution or imprisonment. The last possible source of even a whimper of protest against any abuse of Germans was thus adroitly silenced forever. The Allies had been cheated of their German "hanging bee" in 1918, but now as the "United Nations" they were determined to be neither cheated nor thwarted. Thus was the stage craftily set in Germany for a series of trials by unique military or "international" tribunals, artfully conceived, contrived and convened by the victors for the sole purpose of trying and punishing only the vanquished Germans, at the victors' pleasure, for "Crimes Against Humanity" and such other "crimes" recently enunciated or to be later unilaterally enunciated by the rationalizing, legalizing apologists of the victorious United Nations.

Dr. Bruno Tesch and his business manager-proxy ("Prokurist") Karl Weinbacher, who had never been members of the German Government or the German Armed Forces, were two of the first unfortunate Germans to become enmeshed in this newly-woven web of United Nations "new international justice."[3] It was their lot to be accused by the United Nations Occupation Authorities of having recommended the use of, and knowingly supplied, the poisonous Zyklon B for the purpose of killing the 4-4¹/₂ million Jews allegedly gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. This paper will discuss the official transcript of the British Military Tribunal which tried them and condemned them to death by hanging.

Of the numerous tribunals established by the United Nations for their multifaceted motives, the first Nuremberg Tribunal – the International Military Tribunal or IMT (also known as the Trial of Major War Criminals or TMWC), which was constituted to try the famous "first string" National Socialists – occupied center stage as intended, often eclipsing the events of other tribunals sitting at the same time. As a result of this, one fails often to realize that these less-publicized "side" tribunals usually provided the Nuremberg Tribunals (both the IMT and the series of American-run Nuremberg Military Tribunals, or NMT) with much of the basic material used to formulate the concepts and support the arguments advanced by Robert H. Jackson, Telford Taylor and other United Nations prosecutors in their assignments at Nuremberg. In time, these concepts and arguments have, with some modifications necessitated already then by early revisionist research, congealed into what has become the monolithic corpus of the "Holocaust" gospel.

Pre-eminent in these side tribunals was the British Lueneburg Tribunal which undertook the trial of the Birkenau SS staff, whom the British Army had captured at the Bergen-Belsen Jewish transit camp. (See note 2.) This tribunal sat from 17 September 1945 to 17 November 1945, and at times its sensational headlines jeopardized the intended place of the Nuremberg IMT show on the front pages of the world's newspapers. It was at this British Military Tribunal that much of the "Holocaust" dogma and wartime tales of German bestiality were chiseled into the United Nations "Behistan Rock" to justify forever the United Nations acts vis-a-vis Germany. This was done by parading before the Tribunal a nondescript chorus of Yiddish voices, each chorus member seeking to gain for himself, for varied reasons, the prestigious role of a latter-day Judith or Esther, a Samson or Mordecai, and each seeking to outdo his predecessor on the witness stand with a horror tale of abuse and privation – naturally all unsubstantiated. It was here that the first United Nations prosecutor sought to establish legal credence and respectability for the earlier rumors of German bestiality and particularly the unsubstantiated allegations that 4,000,000 Jews had been killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was here that physicians Ada Bimko and Charles Bendel made their bows on the front pages of the world's newspapers before figuring in the tribunal trying Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher – and after that disappearing, but leaving behind a legacy of falsehood and confusion which became, nevertheless, a part of the unquestioned, unchallengeable litany of the "Holocaust" credo.

A British officer serving the Defense at Lueneburg described these many witnesses as the dregs of eastern European ghettos; for this he was forced by the Tribunal to apologize. The British Tribunal at Lueneburg was described by Dr. Eberhard Kolb[4] in his book Bergen-Belsen as having carried out its work with "vorbildicher" (typical or exemplary) "Fairness" (fairness) – an opinion typical of a "new" or "reconstructed" German acceptable to the United Nations conquerors. What really concerned the British Tribunal and nearly everyone else at the time was not "Fairness," not facts, not justice but: "How will you kill Kremer?"[5] The real trials had long since been completed in the newspapers, in the information bureaus and in the numerous conferences of the United Nations.

Among the United Nations, there was the almost universal desire to see as many Germans as possible put to ignominious death, and these United Nations Tribunals appeared to be useful vehicles for achieving this extirpation. Others openly favored summary execution of large numbers of Germans with no trial whatever.

The Bergen-Belsen Tribunal at Lueneburg and the trial of Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher are to some extent unique, since they represent some of the first and last vain attempts of the accused to tell the truth and thereby clear up the multitude of preposterous wartime charges disseminated by the United Nations for obvious propaganda objectives. After the trials began, however, it soon became apparent that telling the truth was a fatal strategic error for the accused. To deny, that Jews had been maliciously killed en masse by Germany in a tribunal whose very existence was based upon the intent to establish without doubt that Jews had been killed was as fatal to the defendant in 1946 as it would have been to an accused medieval heretic who before his inquisitors guaranteed his condemnation on whatever charge by throwing in for the hell of it a denial of the existence of the Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus.

From the standpoint of survival, it was necessary for a witness to testify that Jews were certainly gassed, while attempting to save himself by protesting that his presence at that location or in that position entailed no responsibility and only incidental or accidental knowledge of the killings which, if observed, he was powerless to prevent.[6]

Such were the deplorable circumstances on 1 March 1946, when Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher were indicted and brought before the British Military Tribunal at Curiohaus, Hamburg.

Tesch und Stabenow

Dr. Tesch's association with Zyklon-B, the product whose sale was to result in his and Herr Weinbacher's execution, began long before the war. As a gifted graduate in chemistry, physics and mathematics at the University of Berlin, he had attained the position of assistant at the world-venerated Kaiser Wilhelm Institut. Here, he became interested in hydrogen cyanide as a fumigating agent. It was effective, but quite hazardous to use since it was a liquid and was chemically unstable. In addition, it was a deadly poison for humans. But it was this very deadliness to all animals which made it a nearly ideal fumigant. It killed not only warm-blooded vermin quickly but also any eggs, larvae, pupa or adult insects which might be on the vermin or in the area being fumigated.[7]

With the support of the I.G. Farbenindustrie, Dr. Tesch, in conjunction with Dr. Gerhard Peters, initiated research which to a great extent, circumvented the problems which previously had long prevented the widespread use of hydrogen cyanide as a fumigating agent.

These problems were solved as follows: An irritant tear gas was mixed with the liquid hydrogen cyanide so as to "warn" anyone of the poison's presence.[8] After adding a chemical stabilizer, one part of this liquid was soaked into two parts of a porous, highly absorbant material so that the resulting mixture was not a liquid but solid, free-flowing granules. This product was named "Zyklon B"[9], and the deadly fumes which evaporated slowly from the granules were called "Zyklon B gas." Chemically, this fumigating gas was nearly pure hydrogen cyanide diluted with air.

Zyklon B held such promise that it was patented by the I.G. Farbenindustrie and the patent assigned to the DEGESCH, the DEutsche GEsellschaft fuer SCHädlingsbekämpfung (German Society for Pest Control), and it was they who were designated by the German Government to set the safety rules and standards for its use, necessarily stringent, because of the product's extreme lethal character. The DEGESCH also authorized shipment of the product to the user from the factory only after the Government regulations had been met. These regulations for using hydrogen cyanide for fumigation were relaxed only in specific instances deemed essential to the German Government. For purposes of fumigation, the German Military Forces in both World Wars were granted such a relaxation in regulations.[10]

With Herr Paul Stabenow, Dr. Tesch established the company in 1923 which later became fully his: Tesch und Stabenow. Dr. Peters accepted a leading position in the DEGESCH. Tesch und Stabenow was a pest-control company much like those in this country or in England. It sold primarily its pest-exterminating services and know-how. It did not manufacture Zyklon B nor the other chemicals it used in its fumigation service, but purchased them from the factories which produced them in volume.[11]

Prior to the war, Dr. Tesch's business grew rapidly, since with Zyklon B it was possible to fumigate entire ships, buildings, dwellings, mess halls, barracks, flour mills, grain elevators, railroad cars, etc.[12] successfully without damaging their contents. So long as these contents remained dry, Zyklon B gas did not harm them, and so long as the fumigated area was properly aired out after fumigation and the safety practices were followed faithfully, Zyklon B could be used satisfactorily and without danger to humans.

At the same time, similar operations were being carried out in the United States by domestic companies.[13] As Tesch und Stabenow prospered, at least six other similar firms sprang up in Germany. Of all pest-control firms, Tesch und Stabenow was an international leader, if not in fact the international leader. This was a result of Dr. Tesch's careful personal training of his employees in fumigation techniques and his uncompromising refusal to relax safety regulations.

In war, fumigation was even more important to Germany than in peace. Besides the many pressing needs of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, and the Navy, there were additional civilian needs. Any dwelling or building which was vacated for any reason might require fumigation before new tenants could occupy it. In addition, the camps established for the huge numbers of foreign workers and repatriated Germans from the east – all under the care of the SS – required frequent fumigation. The importance of these fumigation operations can further be gauged by the fact that men employed as fumigators were exempt from military draft. Of the 50 or so employees of Tesch und Stabenow at the start of the war, thirty-five were involved with fumigation operations. Herr Weinbacher himself had begun work at the company as a fumigator and had, through hard work, become Dr. Tesch's assistant.

Although the fumigation / pest-control business was profitable, in war it was not without headaches. Besides the shortages of personnel, materials, equipment, etc., Tesch und Stabenow, because of the acute German manpower shortages, was assigned the additional task of assisting the DEGESCH in processing orders from those seeking to use Zyklon B. The German Government made this arbitrary assignment since Tesch und Stabenow already placed regular, large orders for Zyklon B through the DEGESCH, and this simplified the Government's role in policing compliance with existing Government regulations and reduced the work load on the DEGESCH. As a condition of continuing as a licensed fumigator, Dr. Tesch was legally obligated to receive and process all Zyklon B orders from users east of the Elbe River. This unwelcome additional task represented a division of the paper work associated with ordering rather than of manufacturing or supplying. In a similar arrangement, areas west of the Elbe River had their orders initially processed by Hirt und Linkler before they were submitted to the DEGESCH.

After checking the orders to see if potential buyers were authorized users of Zyklon B, the orders were forwarded by Tesch und Stabenow to the DEGESCH[14] where the buyer's Government authorization and compliance with regulations were rechecked. Then, they were allocated whatever percentage of their order Dr. Peters[15] and his allocation committee at the DEGESCH decided upon, and the order was finally placed with the factory. Allocation was necessary Since Zyklon B, like all other chemicals, was always in short Supply.[16] Military orders were always given preference over civilian usage, and these orders were filled from wherever supplies might be available at the time – east or west of the Elbe River.

In performing this order-processing function, Dr. Tesch was required to pay cash immediately when an order processed by him was placed at the factory, and he received his money back plus a small commission three to four months later when the Zyklon B was delivered.

For German Government orders, Tesch und Stabenow received initially a fee of 10% of the gross amount of the order. This fee was set by the Government. After May 1943, this fee was cut to 2¹/₂%, and after 1943, the service of Tesch und Stabenow was dispensed with entirely by virtue of the Government's assignment solely to the Wehrmacht Hauptsanitätspark (Wehrmacht Main Sanitary Depot), Berlin, the function of supplying Zyklon B to all Government users.

Interrogation and Charge

Dr. Tesch first became aware of his impending ordeal with the United Nations Occupation Authorities when a British Captain, Anton W. Freud,[17] visited him in his office with Emil Sehm, one of his former bookkeepers, and interrogated him in German. At this meeting, Sehm. accused his former employer of supplying Zyklon B to kill Jews. Dr. Tesch denied the accusation emphatically, and accused Sehm of knowing full well that Zyklon B was used only in pest-control. Dr. Tesch was left in peace for a few days, but on 3 September 1945, he was arrested and interrogated further before being released on 1 October 1945. On 6 October 1945, he was re-arrested by the British and remained thereafter in their custody until his execution. On 31 October 1945, Dr. Tesch signed a deposition. It was taken in the standard British manner with oral translation from German into English. These on-the-spot oral translations were written down and became the official – and only – record. Afterward, Captain Freud said that the deposition was signed voluntarily and Dr. Tesch had signed after only minor changes. But Dr. Tesch testified later that he had signed only because he "felt under some pressure" and after receiving an indication that later, other explanatory changes in the deposition would be made. It is not difficult to believe that any German being interrogated at this time on this subject by a British officer named "Freud" might, indeed, feel "under some pressure."

The Tribunal

On the basis of Captain Freud's interrogations, the British War Crimes officials decided to prosecute Dr. Tesch, Herr Weinbacher and Dr. Joachim Drosihn.[18] A British Military Tribunal was accordingly ordered convened by Sir Henry MacGeagh. C.L. Stirling, who already had served as judge Advocate at the British trial of the Birkenau SS staff at Lueneburg was again named judge Advocate. R.B.L. Persee was named President and Lt. Col. Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Major S.M. Johnson were named as members of the Tribunal. Capt. H.S. Marshall was designated as a waiting member.

On Friday, 1 March 1946, the Tribunal convened in Curiohaus, Hamburg. It was a trial which had to be held if the "Holocaust" allegations were ever to be anything more than malevolent tales conjured up by imaginative, vengeful inmates, escapees, war propagandists, and so forth, all with sinister, self-serving motivations and intents. It was a time during which Germany's recent conquerors were frantically scrambling to find the bricks with which to erect the all-absolving "Holocaust" edifice they needed so desperately. It was a desperation born of a compelling urgency to justify their own past and future acts in Germany and elsewhere throughout the world as world powers, and to secure permanently the undisputed mastery[19] of Germany and Central Europe which they enjoyed in 1945 as a result of the bloody conflagration.

It must be pointed out that, regarding anything said in German (or French) at the Tribunal, we at this later date are at the mercy of the three translators and the three court reporters as to the accuracy of the translations and of the record. All Tribunal records were kept in English.

In accordance with decrees of the United Nations Occupation Forces, no former members of the NSDAP might practice law. Therefore all defense attorneys had to be free – in the minds of the prosecuting victors at least – of the slightest hint of NSDAP taint. In practice, potential difficulties were usually avoided by the tribunals' allowing only attorneys with actual anti-NSDAP histories to defend the accused. The defense attorneys were therefore from the beginning politically and ideologically hostile to those they were to defend![20] Alternatively, the accused could have elected to be defended by a British officer as was done in Lueneburg at the trial of the Birkenau SS staff. (With the result that most of these were executed!) Civilian English attorneys were at this time strongly discouraged if not forbidden from acting in defense of German nationals in United Nations war crimes tribunals.

The German (anti-NSDAP) Defense personnel, many of whom did not comprehend English fully, were required to follow British court procedure which was totally foreign to them. Their handicap was often so apparent that Major G.I.D. Draper, the British prosecutor, and even the British judge Advocate, C.L. Stirling, felt compelled at times to ask the Defense if they did not have questions at particular points. This was a strange trial indeed. It should also be borne in mind that in the German Law of the Third Reich, the Prosecution was obligated by law to present any evidence in its possession which was favorable to the defendant. In the post-World War II War Crimes Trials in Germany, this was emphatically not the case. When queried on this point at Nuremberg by the German Defense, the American Prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, stated that so allowing would entail the Prosecution's "serving two masters"![21] The realistic objective of the United Nations prosecutors was not one of finding facts and arriving at verdicts justified by those facts but that of obtaining, by whatever means necessary, the testimony and evidence vital to support a preordained verdict. The well-known precepts of the VishinskyMoscow Trials were thus brought from the banks of the Moskva to the banks of the Regnitz.

From beginning to end, the Tribunal assumed the timbre of a dialog between victor and vanquished, between judge and culprit. And although after a period in which he would show characteristic British disdain and contempt for his anti-NSDAP German adversaries, Major Draper might refer to them as "my learned friends of the German Bar," there was never, ever, any question as to whose hand held the gun. (And the scales.) Draper could lecture the German Defense as much as he pleased on the awful burden placed upon the Prosecution by British Law in requiring proof of the charges beyond all reasonable doubt, but there was never the slightest challenge to his continual statements that four million Jews were wantonly and purposefully killed by Germany at Auschwitz, that the alleged Gestapo and SS excesses were common and well-known practices, that foreign workers who came to Germany were in fact "slaves," and so on. Actually, the British judge Avocate Stirling, having performed his appointed task at Lueneburg so well, sometimes joined in the accusations himself. These allegations were already being accepted by the Tribunal as incontrovertable fact, with only Dr. Charles Sigismund Bendel (a self-declared authority on Auschwitz-Birkenau who had testified previously at Lueneburg) and SS-Rottenführer Perry Broad giving anything approaching actual supporting, eye-witness evidence for the alleged mass murder at Auschwitz and Birkenau.

The interpreters were in continual difficulty. Providing accurate, instantaneous, oral translations – in a situation where a man's life may depend on the proper evaluation of a voice inflection, choice of the proper word, etc., – will always pose insurmountable technical difficulties. The interpreters had the further infuriating habit of using the word "gassing" whenever they obviously meant "fumigation" or "gassing" in the sense alleged in the "Holocaust" allegations. The stratagem achieved its desired effect in the United Nations press, but here and in numerous other places, had records also been kept in German, I an), certain there would have been numerous conflicts in the trial records.

Testimony

Of the witnesses called by the British Prosecution, Emil Sehm presented the testimony which was most deadly to Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher. Sehm. had been a bookkeeper at Tesch und Stabenow. It may actually have been he who initially contacted the British and denounced Dr. Tesch. Such actions were openly solicited by the United Nations. Sehm testified that in the Fall of 1942, while looking in the firm files for something entirely different, he came across a pink or red copy of a trip report which implicated Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher, as Tesch's proxy, in mass murder. In testifying to the alleged typed report, Sehin swore:

Dr. Tesch speaks about an interview he had with leading personalities of the German Wehrmacht. I remember a phrase saying that "Herr…" – I do not remember the name – told me that the shooting of Jews is growing more and more frequent and the burial of the great number is proving to be more and more unhygienic. To change this, it is proposed that the extermination of the Jews should be done now through the efforts of the prussic acid." Dr. Tesch, asked to give, concerning this idea some propositions "I, Dr. Tesch proposed to use prussic acid just as it is used for the elimination of vermin, to use it for the above mentioned purpose."

Then, it is explained that those to be exterminated should be put into a previously prepared barracks, prepared in the same way as for the extermination of vermin. During the night some expert in this prussic acid gas method prepares the barracks, which are then later closed against intruding air. The next morning those who have been exterminated through this gas can be got rid of. I must add that in the beginning of the report it was mentioned that the Jews need not be buried, but they would be burned. Dr. Tesch takes these orders to train SS personnel in these matters concerning prussic acid gas.

Much of Sehm's testimony can be challenged for accuracy and consistency. It describes only very vaguely the basic killing procedure accepted and preached by the "Holocaust" high priesthood, and some of it even conflicts with or refutes their accepted stories. Nevertheless, it contains the fertile seeds necessary for gestating the "Holocaust" tales. These were:

• Identification of Dr. Tesch as the person who recommended as early as 1942 the use of Zyklon B in gas chambers as a more effective means of killing as opposed to shooting (or as opposed to the use of carbon monoxide, a ]a??? the testimony of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoess).
• Equation of Jews with vermin, with the implication that both were to be exterminated as pests by pest-control procedures.
• Identification of the SS as the agency responsible for killing Jews (although he also seems to attempt to implicate the Wehrmacht!).
• Disposal of Jewish corpses by cremation ("more hygienic").

The criteria for evaluating the acceptability of Sehm's testimony must be to judge his personal reliability and honesty, to check for unquestionable verification by reliable witnesses, and finally to judge its credibility and cohesiveness.

The pink copy of the alleged travel report supposedly written in the Fall of 1942 and allegedly seen by Sehm was, according to him, burned purposely along with a white original and a second pink copy – both of which no one ever saw – when the firm files were destroyed in a bombing attack on 20 March 1945. Prior to the bombing, these files were open to everyone in the office and were locked only at night. If he had so wished, Sehm could easily have removed an entire copy even easier than he alleges he made notes from the copy he swore he saw. No one would have been wiser.

All the steno-typists of Tesch und Stabenow were questioned. If such a travel report had ever existed, one of them would have had to have taken it down in dictation and then type it in triplicate. All testified, however, that they had never seen nor typed such a report. One typist, Frau Anna Uenzelmann, testified that she had once understood Dr. Tesch to have said after a dictation session that he'd heard in Berlin that people were killed by Zyklon B, but there was no elaboration on his part as to whether this was accidental or not. Dr. Tesch did not even remember the incident. Another typist, Frl. Eliza Biagini, testified that she had once read in a travel report of human beings being killed by Zyklon B at Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg. This event was poorly recalled and may have been actually a question put to Dr. Tesch during one of his classes at this camp. This testimony may also have been the result of an attempt by Sehm to intimidate the witness during her pre-trial interrogation by the British. At this interrogation, Sehm, obviously playing a leading role, falsely alleged that he had the missing, incriminating travel document from Dr. Tesch in his pocket.

The importance of the testimony from these two typists, however, is that neither corroborates Sehm's testimony. For that matter, they do not even support each other. All three testimonies clearly involve entirely separate and different places and events, uncorroborated by any other testimony!

"Substantiation" of Sehm's testimony rested completely on the testimony of three of his close, old friends: Wilhelm and Kate Pook and Bernhard Frahm. Sehm alleged that he showed to the Pooks the notes he made from the red or pink file copy at Tesch und Stabenow. He visited both regularly to discuss religion, pohtics, National Socialism, and other subjects, and they testified that they remembered "seeing" the notes. Under oath, Frau Pook testified first that she had seen the actual travel report itself. But when questioned further, she could say with certainty only that she had seen a "document," and excused her mistake by blaming the passage of four years for her uncertainty. On the advice of Wilhelm Pook, Sehm had allegedly burned his notes in an ash tray on the Pook's table.

Wilhelm Pook testified that Sehm had told him that Dr. Tesch was profiting in the range of RM20,000 to RM25,000 per quarter on Zyklon B sales alone.[22]

Even more remarkable and pertinent to the reliability of Sehm's testimony was the fact that both the Pooks, when first interrogated by the British, had forgotten completely to even mention the all-important incriminating "notes" or "travel report." Thereafter, after Sehm's first appearance before the mihtary tribunal, the Pooks had discussed with him his testimony prior to their appearance before the Tribunal. When questioned closely, Frau Pook admitted that she didn't remember who had reminded whom (she Sehm, or Sehm her) that the "document" had been burned in an ash tray on her table. After such a discrediting group of admissions by witnesses called by the British military prosecutor to give credence to Sehm's testimony, all Major Draper could do was ask Wilhelm Pook if he had told the truth, to which he answered "Yes." Both Pooks were then hurried out of the Tribunal.

Draper sought further to establish the credibility of Sehm's testimony by calling another of the latter's close friends, Bernhard Frahm.[23] Sehm alleged that several months after he burned his notes at the Pook's dwelling, he told Frahm of what he had found in the Tesch und Stabenow files. Herr Frahm professed to remember the occasion, but admitted he himself had not seen the incriminating notes written by Sehm. He added, however – certainly to the gratification of the Tribunal – that the Nazis considered anyone who opposed them to be "vermin"[24], or "Schädlinge." He said that Sehm had told him Tesch und Stabenow were delivering gas and "stoves"[25] to kill humans.

This was the flimsy substance of Emil Sehm's testimony against Dr. Tesch und Herr Weinbacher. No more substantial – rather less so – was the testimony of those called to substantiate it. Of four bookkeepers at Tesch und Stabenow, Sehm was the least important. He was a short-term employee and was quite dissatisfied with his position. Accordingly, he had requested to be released by his employer so that he might return to Königsberg, East Prussia, his native city, where he hoped to start a tax consulting business. Dr. Tesch, who was having difficulty finding employees in wartime, refused to release him, incurring as a result his hatred and wrath. In addition to being anti-NSDAP as were his friends, the Pooks and Frahm, Sehm. already had cause to dislike if not hate Dr. Tesch, who was a Party member. Although he professed no ill will toward Dr. Tesch for refusing to release him, he described his former employer as an "intellectual sadist."

Of the witnesses who knew Dr. Tesch, however, only Sehm and Dr. Drosihn – the latter only after some prodding by Major Draper – spoke ill of him. It is difficult to escape the feeling that this was just one more instance where the end of the war, with its confusion and its bloody tribunals, was seized upon, as it must have been by many, as an opportunity to settle old, long-standing scores in those parts of Europe overrun by United Nations forces.

It seems quite obvious that the incriminating parts of Sehm's testimony are monsterous fabrications. Sensing the completely irresponsible character of this testimony, Dr. Zippel, who defended Dr. Tesch, lost no time in denouncing Sehm as a liar, and after offering examples to the Tribunal in which he had certainly lied under oath, proceeded to deal with the other testimony, believing that of Sehm to have been completely discredited. In the end, however, it was Sehm's incredible accusations in the hands of the British prosecutor, Draper, which provided all the substance the Military Tribunal wanted to tie Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher to the "Holocaust" juggernaut.

The next "witness" was Dr. Rudolf Diels who, because of his on-going interrogations for the Nuremberg Tribunal, could not be present at the Curiohaus Tribunal. His affidavit – also in English – was submitted in lieu of his appearance. This maneuver was used over and over again by those dedicated to the unquestioning service to "one master"[26], because of its efficacy in shielding from cross-examination by the Defense those witnesses deemed weak or unreliable by the Prosecution. It was only much later that the Defense could force the appearances of such "witnesses" for cross-examination.

Dr. Diels's affidavit appears to be the German origin of the famous expression, "You'd better watch out or you'll go up the chimney I" This related to threats of death followed by cremation made to inmates by concentration camp guards. Diels swore that "in his opinion," gassing operations (presumably killing humans) were being talked about practically everywhere in Germany. His revelation that Zyklon B was manufactured in Hamburg was news to Dr. Tesch who, as a user, would have been happy to know of a nearby supplier. (There was, of course, no such factory in Hamburg.)

Before being arrested by the Gestapo, first in March and again in August 1944, Dr. Diels had been President of Koeln und Hannover and then Chief of the Shipping Division of the Hermann Goering Works. His deposition, like that of Wilhelm Hoettl, fairly reeks of his desire to provide his captors with the evidence they so ardently sought. It is a curious mixture of what the occupation authorities already knew or believed they knew and what is little better than common gossip – so much so that Stirling, the British judge Advocate, protested at having to hear all of it. Dr. Diels's affidavit was useful to the British Military Tribunal, however, in "establishing" the point that Germans such as Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher (neither of whom Diels knew) could not but have helped knowing that Jews were being killed with Zyklon B gas.

Far from it being common knowledge in Germany that people were being gassed, as Diels alleged, the vast majority of Germans were horrified by the United Nations accusations and they protested that they had never heard of such acts until after the cessation of hostilities when they had begun listening to United Nations broadcasts. They were, as mentioned previously, even more horrified to learn that the same enemies could after a mere thirty years again believe them capable of such deeds. Since the British Broadcasting Corporation had been broadcasting these accusations regularly for many months before the end of the war, those Germans who had "common knowledge" of the gassing before the war's end most likely got this "knowledge" from the BBC! This may explain at least a part of Dr. Diels's difficulties with the Gestapo, since the German authorities, who regularly recorded and monitored the United Nations propaganda broadcasts,[27] checking them for accuracy if deemed necessary, usually equated knowledge of the contents of these broadcasts with having listened illegally to them, or having associated with persons who had.

Diels's affidavit was followed by testimony from a number of Tesch und Stabenow employees. Among these were Frl. Biagini and Frau Uenzelmann, mentioned previously in connection with Sehm's testimony. The other steno-typists were also questioned about the travel report allegedly seen by Sehm, but none had typed or seen or heard of it. Besides office workers, field workers who had done contract fumigations at Auschwitz and other camps supervised by the SS were heard. No evidence was given, however, which supported the view that Tesch und Stabenow was anything other than a respected, reliable, busy, well-run pest-control firm.

The testimony of Wilhelm Bahr is of interest since, as an SS sanitation orderly from Neuengamme concentration camp, he, with nineteen others, had taken Dr. Tesch's short three-day course in fumigation with Zyklon B, using for training the fumigation chambers for clothing articles at the SS hospital at Oranienburg. These standard fumigation chambers had a volume of ten cubic meters and held from 40 to 50 pieces of clothing per charge.[28] This was the clothing normally from about 25 to 30 people. A fumigation chamber of this size required one 200 gram can[29] of Zyklon B to give the required gas concentration of 20 grams of Zyklon B gas per cubic meter of air.[30]

Bahr testified that Dr. Tesch did not train him and his colleagues specifically in killing humans, but he, Bahr, acting on orders from a Dr. von Bergmann (presumably a physician), killed 200 Russian prisoners-of-war with Zyklon B gas at Neuengamme once in 1942 by pouring five or six tins of Zyklon B (presumably 200 gram tins) into a barrack from a hole in its roof. In addition, he stated that he had seen the name of Tesch und Stabenow on the labels of cans of Zyklon B which he used at Neuengamme apparently for both fumigation operations and for the single admitted killing of Russian POW's.[31] Bahr was the single witness who definitely placed Zyklon B ordered through Tesch und Stabenow at the site of an alleged mass killing operation. This site, however, was at Neuengamme, not Auschwitz.

It is a tortured reasoning indeed which holds Dr. Tesch (and even more illogically, Herr Weinbacher) responsible for the alleged murders of 200 Russians killed by a man who confesses to the murder but testifies that a Dr. Von Bergmann ordered him to do it and that Dr. Tesch didn't train him to do it. If one believes that Bahr did in fact kill the Russians, Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher certainly had no responsibility. But, again, it was all the British Military Tribunal needed to establish firmly in the minds of the "Holocaust" disciples the mental picture of the sadistic SS sanitation orderly fiendishly dumping Zyklon B, ordered through Tesch und Stabenow, through openings in the ceiling into a chamber packed with pitiful, unsuspecting, for once Russian victims! (An occasional later variation on this main theme alleges that Zyklon B was added through wall ports.)

Unterscharführer (Corporal) Wilhelm Friedrich Bahr was himself awaiting trial for war crimes before a later British Military Tribunal.[32] Doubtless, he had been made aware of the seriousness of the charges against him and that his only possible chance of survival lay in accomodating his captors. As yet I have not discovered his subsequent fate.

The testimony of Rottenführer (Lance-corporal) Perry (Pery) Broad at Dr. Tesch's trial constitutes one of the most oft-cited and relied-upon supports for the charges of mass murder of Jews by Germans at Auschwitz-Zasole and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Along with his "Report"[33] and his testimony, he is responsible for the establishment of several concepts essential to the vivification and sustained vigor of the "Holocaust" tales. Broad testified that already in 1942 he had heard rumors that gassing was being carried out "on a bigger scale" at Auschwitz-Zasole. He stated that he observed an actual "gassing" from the Truppenrevier (troop quarters) at a distance of 40-45 meters. This was in July of 1942. Several people in gas masks were on the roof of the old crematorium. They hammered open tins (presumably of Zyklon B) and poured the contents into six holes each ten centimeters (four inches) in diameter[34] leading apparently through the roof to a chamber underneath. Broad alleged that 300 to 500 people were in the "Old Crematorium." After 2-3 minutes, the screaming ended. He assumed that people were killed in this manner once or twice a month, but stated that he actually witnessed only one "gassing" this closely. He testified that in the Fall of 1944, he had observed "gassing" at Auschwitz-Birkenau but from a much greater distance. At Birkenau, he testified, there were four crematories,[35] and in March and April of 1944, 19,000 persons a day were killed with Zyklon B from tin cans. He said he was certain tin cans were used because he saw the cans in a car driven by a disinfector who had given him a ride. But he could not identify the labels on the cans as identifying material ordered through Tesch und Stabenow.

Broad estimated that a total of 2¹/₂ to 3 million Jews from Belgium, HoUand, France, Northern Italy, Czechoslovakia and Poland, as well as Gypsies and German deportees, had been killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These victims included babies and the elderly. Broad's testimony supported the notion that "selection" meant instant death in a gas chamber upon arrival without registration at the camp.[36] Cremation allegedly followed.

The capacities of the crematory/gas-chambers, according to Broad who admitted he was never in one, were as follows: Birkenau crematories I and II – 3,000 to 4,000 people each in underground rooms. Birkenau crematories III and IV – 2,000 each at ground level. Birkenau crematory V had a capacity, he said, of 800 to 1,200 people but contained only a gas stove. He asserted that his detailed information came from guards and from the fact that he had witnessed barrack fumigations and assumed that procedure to be the same as that used in killing. (See Bendel's testimony, below.) Broad continued that the killing was actually done by the fumigators or disinfectors who fumigated clothing. He testified that in 1942 and 1943, the bodies, so far as possible, were cremated in crematories.[37] Thereafter, they were burned on pyres in the open air, since the crematories had insufficient capacities. Broad declared that the clothing from the victims was sent to the Volksdeutschemittlestelle. The killing was allegedly carried out using two of the larger (1 kilogram) tins.[38] Broad testified that in March and April of 1944, trains were lined up at Birkenau waiting to make their deliveries of humans to the gas chambers. Three hours were allegedly required to process a load of victims through the gas chambers and the crematories.

What Perry Broad's testimony, as a former member of the SS, accomplished was to give vital muscle and life to the feeble, anemic statements of Sehm and to what previously had only been suspect, irresponsible, and disconnected allegations by United Nations propagandists. An argumentatively supportable, although admittedly far-fetched, killing operation was described in which nameless, faceless, unidentifiable millions were marched unrecognized, uncounted, and unregistered en masse from countless trains straightaway into waiting gas chambers, and there killed with Zyklon B and cremated – passing from illusory, allegedly uncontested existence into the dusty oblivion of "Holocaust" immortality in the short space of three hours. This testimony must have removed any lingering hesitation from the "searching" minds of the British Military Tribunal, straining to substantiate the wartime propaganda allegations and upon whose verdict Dr. Tesch's and Herr Weinbacher's lives unfortunately depended. The Tribunal must now have felt absolutely secure in declaring that "German monsters" had "gassed" six million helpless Jews. Broad had provided them with a position which, although admittedly controversial, was argumentatively supportable in that it probably could not be disproved unequivocally in minds eager to believe it and, therefore, all other facts could and would be fitted somehow into this overall, general picture, distorted though it might be in some particulars.

Rottenführer Perry Broad was himself in jeopardy on at least two counts. As a Brazilian citizen serving as an SS volunteer, he could have been executed for treason in time of war. As a member of the SS detachment at Auschwitz he, having already miraculously escaped death at capture, was a prime candidate for at least a Soviet labor camp for an undetermined number of years – if he was ever surrendered to Soviet control. Unless he mollified his captors, a train trip to Vienna via the U.S.-run concentration camp at Eppensee[39] and finally to Russia, a trip many others in the SS had taken, was a strong probability. Broad did what he deemed necessary for his survival.

A close study of his testimony and his "Report" discloses many fallacies and contradictions, many of which must have been apparent to the British Tribunal. Suspicion of that small remainder of his evidence was justified by the fact that at the Frankfurt "Auschwitz Trial" in 1964-1965, he did exactly what numerous other witnesses did who had had testimony exacted from them by threats, coercion, or promises. (Those, that is, who were afterward allowed to live.) At a later date, feeling no longer the danger of imminent death, imprisonment or deportation at the hands of enraged, unrestrained captors, he denounced large portions of his earlier, life-saving testimony as being based upon what he had heard rather than upon what he had witnessed. This about-face led Hannah Arendt and others at the time of the "Auschwitz Trial"[40] to describe Broad in terms much less complimentary than those used by Major Draper at the Curiohaus proceedings.[41]

Of the accusing cacophony heard at the British Lueneburg Tribunal, only two witnesses, on reflection by the Prosecution, were chosen to give testimony at the trial of Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher. The first of these was Dr. Charles Sigismund Bendel. In general, he supported the gross allegations made by Broad, although tending to conflict with him on specific points. Declaring himself an authority on Birkenau, he seemed to imply that he, as a physican, obtained his information either from being part of, or in charge of, the goo-man "Sonderkommando" which allegedly operated the crematories. From his testimony, it appears that the German term for this commando unit may have been "Hilflinger," or "helpers." He asserted that during the almost twelve months he was at Birkenau, the Germans killed one million people with Zyk1on B, and that he performed post mortems on some of these victims. May, June, and July of 1944, he asserted, were the months of greatest killing activity. At the peak, in June, 25,000 persons were killed each day. Between May and June of 1944, he declared, 400,000 were killed, and a further 80,000 between 15 July and 1 September 1944. Dr. Bendel alleged that he witnessed the killing process itself, which, he said, was carried out by SS volunteers. Transports of 300 or fewer persons were shot; larger groups were "gassed" in the crematories or the "Bunker." In contrast to Broad, Dr. Bendel placed the capacities of Birkenau's crematory-gas chambers I and II at 2,000 each. Birkenau crematories III and IV[42] allegedly held 1,000 each, while a "Bunker" – not Broad's "crematory V" – held 1,000.

Bendel testified that both underground chambers in crematories I and II were used for gassing and said the gas was added "from the roof, and it came straight down until it touched the floor." The 2,000 victims were packed naked into these two 10 meter by 4 meter by 1.72 meter chambers, their clothes having previously been taken from them for fumigation at Auschwitz-Zasole in a facility known to him. After killing, Bendel alleged, the hair was cut off the victims and the gold was taken from their dental work. He testified that the yield of gold during the lifetime of the camp was 17 tons (17,000 kg.) from four million victims.

Further, Dr. Bendel stated that during the entire two years of his imprisonment by the Germans, he observed only one[43] fumigation of a barracks with Zyklon B. "Lisoform," (apparently a cresol derivative similar to "Lysol") was the material used by the Germans for disinfection, he said. Zyklon B was used solely for killing people, and two 1 kilogram tin canisters were used in each of the underground chambers. He stated that a 1 kilogram can of Zyklon B was capable of killing 500 people,[44] so at a rate of 25,000 killings per day, fifty 1 kilogram tins of the material were required per day. The bodies of the victims were thrown into cremation pits where, after one hour, they had become ashes and disappeared.[45] Finally, Dr. Bendel testified that the Zyklon B was brought into the camp in a Red Cross van but was not delivered by the Red Cross itself.

Dr. Bendel was a Rumanian-Jewish physician who had been arrested in Paris on 4 November 1943, and sent to Drancy. On 10 December 1943, as a result of his not having French citizenship and as a result of his anti-German activities, he was shipped "east" to Auschwitz as a danger to the German war effort. He was an inmate in Auschwitz-Zasole, Auschwitz-Buna (Monowitz) and Auschwitz-Birkenau before evacuation to Mauthausen. He was at Birkenau from 27 February 1943 until January 1944. As a physician at Birkenau and a member of – perhaps even a leader of – the crematory "Sonderkommando" or "Hilflinger," he held a position envied by the other inmates, since he had special privileges (special quarters, special food, etc.) and was always suspected of collaboration with the Germans. This collaboration indeed seems probable, since he admitted at Lueneburg that he had obtained his position at Birkenau through the efforts of Dr. Mengele. Quite possibly, with all the disease in the camp and the eternal shortage of physicians – and considering that he claimed to have done post mortem examinations – he may have been one of Dr. Mengele's helpers or "Hilflinger."

Bendel's fantastic testimony can be challenged for many factual transgressions. He professed to know a lot about the killing operation, but he limits his details to the operation of Birkenau crematories I and II and completely omits any detail of the operations in crematories III and IV[46] and the ever-elusive "Bunker." He does not even betray the "Bunker's" location. His allegations that both underground rooms in each of crematories I and II were gas chambers conflicts totally with the process described by the Auschwitz Museum authorities who aver that only one room which had one small entry door served this purpose.[47] It is the Auschwitz Museum version which is supported by the OSS/CIA pictures released in 1979 showing single "gas chambers" each with four "gas shafts" attached to crematories I and II.

Inconsistencies and impossibilities, however, apparently did not bother Dr. Bendel. His additional statements under cross-examination that 1,000 naked bodies could be crammed into some 64 cubic meters "by the German technique" and that "four million people who were gassed at Auschwitz are the witnesses" completely cowed and intimidated the German Defense. The Defense on precisely these points, and on numerous others, should have then and there ripped his testimony to shreds. Instead, at one point when it appeared that Bendel might be backed into a corner by the anti-NSDAP German Defense and forced to give a detailed answer to a question about a previous accusation, he was allowed to make another horrendous accusation, and thereby avoided giving a detailed explanation of either accusation. As it was, his statements were a series of gratifying bonuses for the British Military Tribunal with its predestined objective, and "Chutzpah" triumphed again![48]

Dr. Sigismund Bendel, who gave his testimony in French, hoping perhaps thereby to eventually gain French citizenship, gave testimony generally much less believable than that of Broad. The use of three languages obviously increased translation difficulties, but such difficulties could not possibly result in the gross error and fantastic physical impossibilities brazenly stated in his testimony.[49]

The very effective United Nations practice of introducing affidavits in lieu of witnesses who could be cross-examined was again resorted to in the case of the second "witness" from the British Military Tribunal at Lueneburg, Dr. Ada Bimko. Being indisposed because of "acute angina pectorum," she could not parade before the Curiohaus Tribunal as she had done at Lueneburg, but her testimony was presented in the form of the two affidavits which she had already presented at Lueneburg. One of these affidavits stated that Zyklon B gas from a cylinder was run through pipes into and out of shower heads to kill the unsuspecting victims, who were expecting a shower bath.[50] Dr. Bimko was quite certain of herself, since she had observed no floor drains in the shower rooms, thus making them without question "gas chambers." She swore that records of the camp, secretly kept by the inmates themselves, and which she had examined, showed that about 4,000,000 persons had been cremated. She also swore that an SS Unterscharführer whose name she had forgotten but who was a member of the camp medical staff had shown her the "crematory-gas chamber." She also refered to five crematories at Birkenau.

Dr. Ada Bimko was a Jewish physician from Sosnowitz, Poland, who had been at Auschwitz. Her depositions are freely sprinkled with "I was told's" and "They said's." On the sixth day of the Lueneburg Tribunal, she admitted that before her transfer to the Bergen-Belsen transit camp, she had been in charge of the Birkenau inmate hospital in Section B-3 ("Mexiko"), a fairly responsible job. Quite likely, she was in the same precarious position as Dr. Bendel – attempting to do sufficient penance with services rendered to placate the wrath of her co-religionists – and she went on obligingly from addendum to addendum in her depositions. There are four addenda in one deposition! This penance maneuver worked in many, perhaps even in most, cases. Thus it was all the more noteworthy when it occasionally failed, as it did in the case of Dr. Rezsoe (Rudolf) Kastner of the Budapest Zionist Relief Committee.

In her haste and eagerness to satisfy her interrogators, Dr. Bimko had unwittingly performed a service for the later historical revisionists. She actually described not Birkenau crematories I and II, which without question were crematories, but the buildings which the Germans described as "Badeanstalt fuer Sonderaktion," commonly referred to by the "Holocaust" historians as Birkenau crematoriums III and IV. The description given by Dr. Bimko sounds, for those who have seen it, very similar to a description of the shower installation at Dachau[51] – a concrete ceiling with rows of spray fittings, i.e., a shower bath!

The testimony of Alfred Zaun, the head bookkeeper at Tesch und Stabenow, established the quantities of Zyklon B ordered through them for various users (Tables I-III). Figures were available for 1942 and 1943, since, as has been noted, after 1943 all German Government users drew their supplies of Zyk1on B from the Wehrmacht Hauptsanitaetspark in Berlin. This new supply arrangement started, therefore, some two months before Dr. Bendel arrived at Birkenau!

In 1942, Tesch und Stabenow ordered a grand total of 79,069.9 kg. of Zyklon B; in 1943, 119,458.4 kg. This involved a total of 9,131.6 kg. to all camps in 1942 and 18,302.9 kg. in 1943. The Auschwitz complex received 7,500 kg. in 1942 and 12,000 kg. in 1943. At the same time, the Wehrmacht Hauptsanitaetspark in Berlin,[52] which after 1943 supplied all Government users, received 11,232.0 kg. in 1942 and 19,982.0 kg. in 1943 – a larger quantity in both years than the combined total for the concentration camps. These German Government orders had taken precedence over other orders from Norway for 5,794 kg. in 1942 and 12,004 kg. in 1943 as well as orders from the Finnish Army for 7,052.5 kg. in 1942 and 10,000.5 kg. in 1943.

Enormous as these quantities are in light of their unquestioned capacity to kill humans,[53] they are insufficiently small when considered in light of the huge fumigation[54] and delousing job that had to be accomplished just to keep epidemics at bay. Since Zyklon B could always be used to good advantage, much more of the material was normally ordered than could possibly be delivered. It simply was impossible to get more of it in wartime, shortage-ridden Germany regardless ot the need. An idea of the degree of this shortage can be gained from the Finnish Army order in 1942. They ordered 15,000 kg. and received a mere 7,052.5 kg. As the war continued, the shortages grew more acute.

The profit realized by Tesch und Stabenow from the sale of Zyklon B to the combined Auschwitz Complex was RM4,500 in 1942 and RM5,000 in 1943 (Table III). This was about 1/18th the amount that Wilhelm Pook testified Sehm had told him Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher were making from such sales. In 1942 Tesch und Stabenow made a total net profit of RM 113,000 and the next year RM 143,000. The gross profits from sales of Zyklon B purchased for the Auschwitz camps was less than 4% of the company's yearly net profits. In U.S. dollars at that time, these gross profits represented about $1,000 in 1942 and $1,250 in 1943. Zyklon B sales to Auschwitz were, therefore, hardly a factor in the enrichment of Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher. The Prosecution, as true warriors in "class warfare",[55] alleged that Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher were typically so rapacious that they would do anything for a few more Reichsmarks!

The Defense

In presenting its case, the German Defense could do little more than place the defendants on the witness stand, calling in addition persons who had known them and their work and having these persons testify under oath as to the characters of Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher. In a situation all too characteristic of the post-World War II United Nations Military Tribunals, it was obvious from the beginning of the proceedings that the burden of proof lay heaviest upon the Defense, and that burden was one of disproving beyond a doubt the accusations made frivolously and without restraint by the Prosecution – all this quite contrary to Major Draper's pious declamations (of the defendants being innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt) otherwise. Stirling, the British judge Advocate at Lueneburg, had already ruled that 4¹/₂ million Jews had been killed with Zyklon B. Was he now likely to reverse his judgement as a result of any evidence presented in Dr. Tesch's case? By this time, the die was cast! Someone logically had to have recommended the use of the poison and also furnished it for that purpose.

Dr. Tesch admitted his connection with Zyklon B and its commercial development, as a result of his efforts, into a useful, effective fumigant. He discussed its use in fumigation chambers to fumigate clothing and the necessity of simultaneous bathing to kill body lice if people were being deloused[56] to prevent typhus epidemics. In this regard, he pointed out that Gentiles and Jews from the eastern regions were equally afflicted with typhus-carrying lice. He denied vehemently, however, every time he was questioned about it, ever having recommended or known of the use of Zyklon B to purposely kill humans. On the contrary, he emphasized, his efforts had always been, rather, to protect humans and save their lives! In spite of all safety precautions, there had been regrettable accidents while using the lethal material, but in no way had there ever been, to his knowledge, intentional killings. If he had learned Zyklon B was being misused to kill people, he would have stopped ordering the material for the offending user immediately.

His firm had contracted to fumigate barracks in several camps. Auschwitz camps were included in these, but the SS on their own responsibility also fumigated barracks. Because of the known size of the Auschwitz complex with its many sub-camps (Table IV) and the known high level of louse infestation in that area, the amount of Zyklon B ordered for Auschwitz through his firm prior to 1944 was not considered excessive. Rather, Auschwitz probably could have used much more Zyklon B in its fumigation operations had it been available, and thus reduced further the many deaths resulting from typhus.[57]

In his cross-examination, the British Military Prosecutor, Major Draper, was obviously more interested in the political implications of the trial rather than in whether Dr. Tesch actually was guilty of the charge as stated in the indictment. Draper's manner was abusive, and his questions were usually "loaded."

All Draper's questions Dr. Tesch attempted to answer fully. He had joined the NSDAP on 1 May 1933, but was not an active member. His wife was also a Party member. Yes, for RM2.00 per month,[58] he was also a "supporting member" of the SS, but for this he received no favors and might not wear a uniform. He would not agree that the SS was the most ferocious anti-Jewish Party group. No, he did not believe the Jews should be persecuted, but he believed they should leave public life and lead their own lives. No, there had never been persecution of Jews in Germany comparable to that in (Czarist) Russia. He had read inflammatory articles against the Jews and had heard of synagogue burnings, but these acts were openly criticized by most Germans. Goebbels had triggered these excesses, but Hitler had stopped them. He had not heard of the destruction of Jewish property. Draper asked him: "Is it now clear, do you agree with me that your gas helped to exterminate four million people in one concentration camp?" To this rather complex, loaded question, Dr. Tesch answered, according to the translator: "That I did not know; if it was my gas I did not know it."

The translators do not quote Dr. Tesch as saying that Bendel lied, although there are numerous examples during the trial in which Bendel obviously did just that. Rather, Dr. Tesch is placed in the much weaker position of saying that Bendel "passed the truth" and "exaggerated." Because the record is in English, we will never know whether Dr. Tesch could not bring himself to believe that an educated man, such as he considered Bendel to be, would blatantly and glibly lie knowing that he was sending innocent men to their deaths, or whether it was a fluke in the interpreters' choices of words. Might it have been the intent of the translators to leave the impression that as a result of guilt, Dr. Tesch didn't have the nerve to accuse his antagonist of lying?

Dr. Tesch found Broad's testimony much more believable, but pointed out that Broad had not identified the Zyklon B he saw at Auschwitz as having been ordered through Tesch und Stabenow, and that he had revealed that a manufacturer of Zyklon B was located near Auschwitz. As a scientific man accustomed to reason in word and thought, Dr. Tesch pointed out that if humans were ever packed into any space as tightly as Dr. Bendel testified, they would promptly suffocate, making the use of poison gas quite superfluous. He had heard that in Riga, Latvia, a group containing a few Jews had been shot for crimes they had* committed in wartime. He could not understand how Dr. Dials could say what he did in his affidavit with no evidence to support his charges. He was unaware that the SS were a law unto them selves and not subject to ordinary courts, as Draper averred. Nor had he known that the Gestapo used methods different from ordinary police; he had had no reason to doubt their integrity. He had not heard of four million people going "up the chimney" (as smoke) at Auschwitz.

Yes, he still believed that Zyklon B was used only for fumigation. Responding to this, Draper asked: "Did you feel the SS were more reliable than the Allied [United Nations] authorities, as a matter of information?" Dr. Tesch answered with honesty and great perception (again according to the interpreter): "I cannot say because during the war I did not hear anything else. Today, I think that something might be true but probably there are exaggerations or misunderstandings." Draper replied: "Were you aware that the murder of the four million was partly arranged by the Reicharzt SS?" Dr. Tesch answered: "This is quite news to me. I have never thought of that."

Dr. Tesch then proceeded to say that during his visit to the Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg concentration camp, the inmates in striped suits looked well-fed, healthy and "quite happy." He had heard Hitler say in a speech that a Jewish Zone was being set up in the eastern provinces, and he believed him. Further, he had no reason to believe that Hitler had lied to the Germans. He believed that Hitler and the SS had been perfectly correct in their behavior. He believed Sehm and Bendel to be incorrect in their testimony. Sehm. had probably misinterpreted an unimportant remark and invented the remainder; his testimony was "quite impossible." The thought of killing Jews with Zyklon B had never occurred to Dr. Tesch, who believed also that the other witnesses misunderstood something they saw or heard. He did not believe that concentration camps were a natural consequence of the NSDAP but that they were originated to contain persons considered dangerous to the state. Dr. Tesch ended his testimony by saying: "I was not a militant member of the Nazi [sic] Party but I was always loyal to the German State."

With these honest, forthright statements, Dr. Tesch had more or less sealed his own doom and dragged his unfortunate business associate, Herr Weinbacher, into the maelstrom along with him.

Major Draper had failed to prove that either Dr. Tesch or Herr Weinbacher was involved in any alleged plot to kill Jews (or Russians, or anyone else) with Zyklon B or even that the Zyklon B allegedly seen at Auschwitz by Broad had without question been ordered through Tesch und Stabenow. What Draper had done was to produce warm, live bodies to fill roles which had been conjured up deductively and rationalistically to conform to and support the war-time "Holocaust" allegations of Germany's accusers. One of these was an apparently repentant SS man who, for whatever reasons he might have had, testified under oath[59] that what the United Nations propaganda mills had been screaming about for years was true. That, along with the rabid testimonials at the Lueneburg Bergen-Belsen Tribunal, provided a tale which, if not examined too closely for accuracy and cohesiveness, could be used to calm and reassure those United Nations nationals who had been waiting uneasily for the revelations at war's end which would justify the many self-serving allegations disseminated by propagandists in the prosecution of the war. Many were doubtless fearful of another post-war investigation of such charges, 6 ]a??? that which followed World War I, and of what might occur if the people of the United Nations should discover that they had been monstrously deceived a second time by anti. German propagandists.

To the drama created by Broad's testimony, Draper added Dr. Bruno Tesch, cast in the role of a brazen, diabolical, unrepentant, unrehabilitatable "Nazi," a "member" of the "infamous" SS, the developer of the iniquitous Zyklon B, an obvious German heretic and fanatic who, even after seeing the many bloated corpses of Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, etc. in the United Nationssponsored newspapers, still had the effrontery, the unmitigated gall, even as a prisoner before the United Nations Bar of justice, to doubt and question the "facts" established; to maintain that from what he knew Nazi racial policy did not lead inevitably to concentration camps and gas chambers, that the SS did not purposefully kill at least four million Jews at Auschwitz with Zyklon B developed, recommended and provided by him to the concentration camps for that purpose, and so on.

Most certainly, Dr. Tesch could never become a "born-again German" through any of those quasi-religious, mock-baptismal cleansing rites of intellect cartharsis, called "Denazification" or "Reeducation," which Germany's conquerors were yet to decree for Germans who possessed concepts and values contrary to their own.

The British Military Tribunal was confronted with an elementary problem of logic. If, on the basis of the obviously sullied, unclean testimony presented against Dr. Tesch, they acquitted him and Herr Weinbacher, there would have been no one else apparently at hand against whom could be made the accusation of supplying Zyklon B or initially recommending its use to kill Jews. If, indeed, there was a "Holocaust", SOMEONE had to have carried out these functions.

With no "Holocaust" to take their place in the columns of the world's newspapers, the many surreptitious, undercover activities, plans and responsibilities of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his proto-United Nations co-conspirators prior to, during and after the war – today still too – little publicized – would have come under immediate, murderous, and lasting scrutiny. This would have resulted in the United Nations wartime charges and the (stillvulnerable) "integrity" of this organization being ripped asunder in a manner which would have made the revelations about Allied lies found in the World War I Bryce Committee Report on propaganda charges look by comparison like reports on a love feast. If the many plans already formulated diplomatically and formally or informally in war conferences were to be fully, irreversibly implemented as the planners wished, the "New" United Nations organization would have to have the full support of those who might otherwise strongly oppose it. The wartime "atrocity propaganda" charges made by the victors to inflame their soldiers and citizenry, and to justify and condone their own use of progressively more violent, ruthless measures against Germany and Japan, simply had to be sustained after the war. There was emphatically to be no "Peace Without Victory" this time, no "Forgive and Forget." And no "coming clean" about wartime propaganda charges.[60]

C.L. Stirling, who had already functioned as judge Advocate at the Lueneburg British Military Tribunal regarding the Birkenau SS staff must have pondered his personal position were Dr. Tesch to be freed. A large number of Germans – some of them women – had already been killed by the British because they had allegedly killed all those people at Auschwitz. Any decision in the Tesch/Weinbacher trial simply had to conform to this fact. An acquittal would have been most embarrassing, given what had already been "decided" about Auschwitz – and already done (executions) about it. Stirling was doubtless chosen for both his offices – as were the others – on the basis of his dedication and adaptability to the goals and the great "New" postwar world envisioned by the founding fathers of the United Nations, the Illuminati of the impending Utopian Millenium! Any doubts or stirrings of conscience cannot, therefore, have posed a problem insurm mountable to Stirling. The loss of Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher, even if innocent, would be no loss at all to the "New Germany" in the "New World Order" envisioned by the United Nations.

Verdict, Sentence, Execution

The verdict was short. Both Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher were declared "Guilty." Dr. Drosihn was acquitted. The Tribunal's sentence: Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher must hang! Another British Military Tribunal (there were to be 216 such tribunals) had cut a swath through Germans.

There were still attempts to avoid execution of the sentence. Both condemned men protested their innocence in appeals to the Commander of the 8th Corps District of the British Army of the Rhine. Briefs from their defense attorneys were attached outlining and documenting more fully the unreliable character of the testimonies of Sehm, Broad, Bendel, and the others. The appeals were denied. A subsequent appeal for a pardon for both men was made by the employees of Tesch und Stabenow, and yet another for a pardon for Herr Weinbacher was made by his stepsister. These appeals were similarly refused.

On 26 April 1946, Montgomery of Alamein, Commander-in-Chief, BAOR, issued death warrants to the Director or Officer-in-Charge of the Hamburg Prison to execute Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher within 24 hours after receipt of the writ. Both warrants were executed at 11:23 AM on 16 May 1946, at Hameln Zuchthaus (prison). Dr. Bruno Tesch and Herr Karl Weinbacher were dead.

Both these honorable, innocent men died, probably aghast that such a monster masquerading as "Justice," which had previously raged east of the Bug River, now stalked purposefully with unchecked violence east of the Maas River.

For Dr. Tesch and Herr Weinbacher, the ordeal was ended. But for those Germans still alive out of what had been a Nation of 80 million[61] before the war, it had barely begun. An ordeal of far greater magnitude was about to be unleashed upon them with deadly, methodical, Cromwellian-puritan efficiency and fury, with the "Holocaust" tales associated with Zyklon B and, principally, the Auschwitz camp, cited over and over again – to this day – as the ostensible "moral" justification. The trial of Dr. Bruno Tesch and his associates was of no small importance to the firm establishment of these tales. We have seen how that trial was conducted, and on what bases it reached its conclusions. From this some conclusions of our own about how to approach and examine one of the most astounding and incredible collections of tales in not only recent, but all, history, must naturally follow.

Table I: Zyklon B Users Ordering Through Tesch und Stabenow*

1. German Government Users (Before 1944)
   1. Concentration Camps
      1. Auschwitz Complex
      2. Gross Rosen
      3. Majdanek-Lublin
      4. Neuengamme-Hamburg
      5. Ravensbrück
      6. Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg
   2. Wehrmacht Hauptsanitätspark, Berlin
   3. SS Voransalon** (Including Waffen SS)
2. German Non-Government, Non-Military Users
   1. Disinfection Institute of City of Guthafen
   2. German Hygiene Institute, Riga
   3. City Police, Stettin
   4. Bürgermeister's Office, Danzig
   5. German Railway Repair Works, Posen
3. Foreign Users
   1. Finnish Army, Helsinki
   2. Norsk Fumigating Company, Oslo

* This list in not intended to be a comprehensive list of all Zyklon B users who had their orders processed by Tesch und Stabenow. Rather, the institutions given are those specifically mentioned in the trial transcript.
** Main SS (possibly Purchasing) Office

Notes

Bibliography

I. Documents

• Cocatrix, A. de. "The Number of Victims of the National Socialist Persecution: Expos6 presented on the Occasion of the International Conference of the Comite International des Camps, 22-25 April 1977." Arolsen International Tracing Service, International Red Cross.
• Nuremberg War Crimes Documents:
  NO-021
  NO-4467
  1553-PS
• British Public Record Office, judge Advocate General's Office. War of 1939-45: War Crimes Papers (WO 235).
• WO 235-12, Case 12, Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz Concentration Camps Case (Lueneburg Tribunal), 11 vols.
• WO 235-83, Case 71, Bruno Tesch, Karl Weinbacher, & Joachim Drosihn (Hamburg Tribunal).

III. Books

• American Cyanamid and Chemical Corporation. Military Fumigation Manual: Zyklon Discoids for Insect Control. 1944.
• Datner, et. al. Genocide. Warsaw: 1962.
• International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg. Trial of the Major War Criminals. (TMWC), Vols. I, III & IX.
• Kolb, Eberhard. Bergen-Belsen: Geschichte des "Aufenthaltslagers" 1943-1945. Hannover: Verlag fuer Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, GmbH., 1962.
• Naumann, Bernd. [Translation by Jean Steinberg.] Auschwitz. New York: Praeger, 1966.
• Puntigam, Franz; Breymesser, Hermann; and Erich Bernfus. Blausäuregaskammern zur Fleckfieberabwehr. Berlin: Sonderveröffentlichung des Reichsarbeitsblattes, Reichsarbeitsministerium, 1943.
• Reitlinger, Gerald. The Final Solution: The Attempt To Exterminate The Jews Of Europe, 1939-1945. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1961.

III. Periodicals and Newspapers

• Czech, Danuta. "Kalendarium Der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau." Hefte Aus Auschwitz, [Issued by the State Museum at Auschwitz, Poland], 1962.
• "Kremer's Fate Is Main Topic – 'How Will You Kill Kremer?'" New York Times. 22 April 1945, p. 12.
• Lawrence, W.H. "Nazi Mass Killings Laid Bare In (Majdanek) Camp." New York Times. 30 August 1944, pp. 1, 9.
• Puntigam, F. und Pichler, H. "Raumlösung von Entlausungsanlagen." Gesundheits-Ingenieur. Jahrgang 67, Juni 1944, Heft 6, p. 139.
• U.S. Public Health Service. "Public Health Reports." Vol. 46, No. 27 (July 3, 1931), pp. 1572-1578; No. 38 (July 10, 1931), pp. 1633-1636.
• Wüstinger, Emil. "Vermehrter Einsatz von Blausäure-Entlausungskammern." Gesundheits-Ingenieur. Jahrgang 67, 1944, Heft 7, pp. 179180.