About Us
Following in the footsteps of our spiritus rector, the late Bradley Reed Smith, the goal of this trust is to encourage a free exchange of ideas – in the spirit of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – exactly in those areas of intellectual engagement where freedom of speech is most threatened by dictatorial governments, commercial enterprises putting profit before freedom, and short-sighted societal pressure groups jeopardizing the very civil rights they themselves depend on.
Our guiding principle is that freedom of speech is unlimited, as long as it does not advocate, promote, justify or condone the violation of anyone’s civil rights and right to self-determination in the past, present or future – for those who work to deny others their civil rights or right to self-determination cannot expect to have their own civil rights or and right to self-determination protected. We also reject any criminal action, as defined by the criminal codes of the United States, for any purpose.
There is no civil right to a certain version of history. There is also no civil right to no one disliking you.
What We Do and What We Believe
The aim of this site is to promote intellectual freedom with regard to this one historical event called “Holocaust.” It is our belief that this will in turn help advance the concept of intellectual freedom with regard to all historical events. We find it vulgar beyond belief that Americans would spend more than a three-quarter century condemning the “unique monstrosity” of the Germans when we have not yet learned to condemn our own, or to even recognize it.
CODOH is not a membership organization and is not affiliated with any political party or political group. It is not the purpose of CODOH to prove the Holocaust “never happened,” or that European Jews did not suffer a catastrophe during the years of the Hitlerian regime. Those who try to convince you it is want to muddy the waters. While we no longer believe the gas-chamber stories (we used to very much believe them) or the “genocide” theory, we remain open to being convinced we are wrong.
We understand perfectly well that the Hitlerian regime was anti-Semitic and persecuted Jews and others. We understand many peoples, European Jews among them, experienced unfathomable tragedies in Europe during World War II. Nevertheless, to be clear, we no longer believe the German State pursued a plan to kill all Jews or used homicidal “gassing chambers” for mass murder during the years of World War II.
For some seven decades the homicidal Nazi gas chambers have been at the heart of the Holocaust narrative. In the literature, the two have been absolutely inseparable. It is tempting to say: “No gas chambers, no Holocaust.” But too often it can be—has been—misleading, particularly to those who are just becoming acquainted with revisionist arguments. It is misleading because it suggests that, if there were no gas chambers, the Jews of Europe did not suffer a tragedy at the hands of the Hitlerian regime. They did.
While it is true that Third Reich Germany was criminally responsible for the death of large numbers of civilians, so were the major Allied powers, particularly the Soviets, the British, and the Americans. But much “eyewitness” testimony about Nazi atrocities against Jews and others is demonstrably false, and it appears that all such eyewitness testimony about homicidal Nazi gas chambers is false. It is wrong to bear false witness against others—most of us were taught to understand this when we were children. False testimony against anyone, including Germans, together with those who promote it, should be exposed to the light of public scrutiny.
The attempt to identify every call for open debate about the gas chamber controversy with anti-Jewish sentiment is juvenile. Those who protest that it is more important to be sensitive to “survivors” than truthful to the historical record represent a world view that has no place in Western culture.
We are willing to be convinced we are wrong about any or all of this. We are willing to be convinced it is hateful to weigh the evidence for and against any historical narrative whatsoever. We are willing to consider the possibility that the university and the press in America are justified in their efforts to suppress a free exchange of ideas about the Holocaust or any other matter. We are even willing to discuss the idea that intellectual freedom itself corrupts public discourse when it involves the gas chamber controversy.
We are not willing to remain silent, however. We will be heard.
Founder: Bradley R. Smith
Webmaster: Germar Rudolf (2010 to this day)
Webmasters Emeriti: Rodrigo Mendoza, David Thomas (1995-2010)
Company History
The Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust – CODOH – was founded by Bradley R. Smith in 1987 in order to encourage a free exchange of ideas with regard to the orthodox Holocaust narrative.
In 1990, Bradley Smith started publishing his newsletter Smith’s Report in order to inform his supporters and everyone else about what he and CODOH have been, still are, and will keep doing. Since 1995 Smith’s Report has appeared roughly once a month.
In September 1995, CODOH went online. During the next decades, this step has proven to have been pivotal for the survival of our attempts to fight censorship and to open up a debate on the Holocaust. In 2015, CODOH celebrated its 20th web anniversary.
In 2012, CODOH not only celebrated its 25th anniversary, but also started a promising joint venture with the British publishing company Castle Hill Publishers to promote books and video documentaries which suffer the chilling effects of censorship caused by the Taboo. Ever since we have hosted Castle Hill’s online bookstore on our website, until early 2022, when Castle Hill moved to the U.S., became an asset of CODOH, but then went belly up in late 2023 for reasons not be discussed here. The same kind of books are now published and sold by Armreg Ltd, London, without CODOH’s involvement.
In 2014, CODOH also started sponsoring the publication of new editions and new volumes to the ambitious research series “Holocaust Handbooks,” as well as its video documentary counterpart “Holocaust Documentaries.”
In late 2014, CODOH was reorganized as a charitable trust with its headquarters in California. The Trust’s goal has remained unchanged: to encourage a free exchange of ideas – in the spirit of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – in an area where free speech is most threatened by the West’s biggest taboo.
In 2015, CODOH became the publisher of the quarterly online magazine Inconvenient History. Inconvenient History was established in 2009, filling a gap left behind by its predecessor The Revisionist when it ceased to exist in 2005.
In 2022, CODOH launched an ambitious project to raise funds for a revisionist Holocaust Encyclopedia. This project came finally to fruition in late 2023, with the release of the online version in September, and the printed edition in December of that year. Please visit their websites at www.HolocaustEncyclopedia.com or. alternatively and shorter, NukeBook.org. This book has become a new gold standard for skeptical historiography of the Holocaust. Check it out! We are proud to have been able to fund half of this project’s costs with our donors’ and patrons’ generous donations, with the other half having been picked up by Armreg Ltd, who took it on themselves to publish this fine tome!
The Significance of Our Work
If you want an insight into the significance of our work on the university campus, read this 9,000-word publication by HILLEL, The Foundation for Campus Jewish Life. It’s titled: “Fighting Holocaust Denial in Campus Newspaper Advertisements: A Manual for Action.” Everything in this Hillel Manual is meant to teach Jewish students how to suppress, censor, and control debate about the Holocaust question. Above all else—Control! Hillel has an annual budget of $35-million (million!) dollars.
God Bless the Hillel Rabbis tells the story of how I felt about the behavior of Hillel rabbis well before they produced their censorship Manual condemning intellectual freedom. No line here between the Work and the Life.
—Bradley Reed Smith (RIP)
