A Life That Made a Difference

I first learned of Bradley Smith when he wrote me in January 1980. He had just read my book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century and it "shook [his] faith in a story [he had] believed unquestioningly for thirty years." He would "leave the authentication of [my] work to others" and, in that connection, asked what the "critical reception… has been" and wondered "Am I crazy, or has there been no critical reception?"

He expressed a wish to examine this topic in Smith's Journal, his tabloid of libertarian orientation, and said he intended to write press, media and religious figures for their views on the book. He asked if I could help him and asked about my experiences trying to discuss the book publicly, and wondered how "to break through the book's suppression".

I was very happy to receive his letter for a number of reasons. Up to that point my support in the USA had come largely from either "the far Right" or from German-American entities. Both had agenda items not relevant to what has come to be called "revisionism". Bradley identified himself with an agenda, Libertarianism, which raised few complications. His greatest adventure up to that point may have been his arrest, in 1960, for selling Henry Miller’s novel Tropic of Cancer. He was a veteran distributor of forbidden literature before becoming associated with revisionism.

I believe the most striking feature of his character was that he was both tough and tolerant, two features not easily reconciled.

The words for which the acronym CODOH stand for may suggest his search for critical reaction, expressed in that first letter to me, has been a failure. That is true, but I call it a great success, because his kitchen-table operation has grown into the principal center of revisionism, publishing, posting or linking to articles in several languages and providing outlets for people who make worthy contributions, many while being forced to write under pseudonyms. As for the silence on the other side, the reader can surely figure that out.

Congratulations and R.I.P., Bradley, for a life that made a difference!

Arthur R. Butz
February 21, 2016