Christopher Browning on the “Holocaust”

Extreme Genocide?

Like most mainstream historians, Christopher Browning regards the so-called Holocaust as history’s most extreme case of genocide. Browning writes concerning the “Holocaust”:[4]

“I believe that the Holocaust was a watershed event in human history – the most extreme case of genocide that has yet occurred. What distinguishes it from other genocides are two factors: first, the totality and scope of intent – that is, the goal of killing every last Jew, man, woman, and child, throughout the reach of the Nazi empire; and second, the means employed – namely, the harnessing of the administrative/bureaucratic and technological capacities of a modern nation-state and western scientific culture.”

Browning further defines the Final Solution as “the Nazis’ plan to kill every last Jew in Europe on whom they could lay their hands.”[5] Browning says Hitler’s goal of a Nazi-dominated Europe free of Jews was to be obtained “through the systematic and deliberate murder of every last Jew – man, woman, and child – caught within the Nazi sphere of domination.”[6]

If, as Browning claims, the Germans had the goal of killing every last Jew throughout their empire, they didn’t do a very good job of it. As of January 1984, there were 4.39 million successful individual restitution claims under the terms of the German Federal Compensation Law (BEG) of 1953 and 1956. This law provides monetary compensation to individuals who were “persecuted for political, racial, religious or ideological reasons” by the wartime German government. The great majority of these successful restitution claims have been from Jews. Jewish Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg estimated that about two-thirds of the allowed BEG restitution claims had been from Jews.[7] Using Hilberg’s conservative estimate would mean that over 2.9 million successful BEG restitution claims had been made to Jews by January 1984.

This estimate of 2.9 million successful Jewish BEG claims understates the number of successful BEG claims to Jews because, as of 1985, Jews in Poland, the Soviet Union, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia were not eligible for BEG restitution. Also, some European Jews who survived World War II died before the German BEG restitution law was enacted in 1953. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution newspaper estimated that only half of the Jewish “Holocaust” survivors around the world in 1985 had received restitution under the BEG.[8] If this 50% estimate is accurate, it means there would have been approximately 5.8 million successful BEG restitution claims if all Jewish survivors of World War II had been eligible to receive BEG restitution.

Since the number of BEG compensation claims is larger than the number of BEG claimants, the exact number of Jewish recipients of BEG compensation cannot be obtained. Nevertheless, these BEG compensation figures indicate that not anywhere close to 6 million Jews died during World War II.[9]
The New York Jewish paper Aufbau reported that on June 30, 1965, 3,375,000 inmates, the vast majority of whom were Jewish, had survived the German camps and had applied for restitution from Germany.[10] How could there be 3,375,000 survivors of the German concentration camps applying for restitution from Germany 20 years after the war if Germany had mass murdered 6 million Jews? Norman Finkelstein, the author of The Holocaust Industry, quotes his mother as asking:[11]

“If everyone who claims to be a Holocaust survivor actually is one, who did Hitler kill?”

Stephen F. Pinter, who was a U.S. War Department attorney stationed in Germany after the war, also disputed the claim that millions of Jews were murdered by Germany. In a statement made in 1959, he wrote:[12]

“From what I was able to determine during six postwar years in Germany and Austria, there were a number of Jews killed, but the figure of a million was certainly never reached. I interviewed thousands of Jews, former inmates of concentration camps in Germany and Austria, and consider myself as well qualified as any man on this subject.”

Another problem with Browning’s statement is that numerous Jewish children survived the “Holocaust.” Carlo Mattogno has prepared a long list of children and twins at Auschwitz-Birkenau who survived the camp.[13] These children were not fit for work, and could not have survived the war if Auschwitz-Birkenau had been the extermination camp it is claimed to have been.

Browning’s statements also do not account for the fact that numerous disabled Jewish adults who were not fit for work survived their internment at Auschwitz-Birkenau and other German camps. For example, Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank, contracted typhus at Auschwitz-Birkenau and was sent to the camp hospital to recover. He remained at Auschwitz-Birkenau when the Germans abandoned the camp in January 1945, survived the war, and died in Switzerland in August 1980.[14] If Auschwitz-Birkenau had been a place of mass exterminations, why would the German authorities leave behind thousands of disabled Jews such as Otto Frank to testify to their genocide?

Primo Levi is another disabled Jew who one would think would have been executed at Auschwitz-Birkenau. However, along with about 7,000 to 8,000 additional disabled Jews, Levi was left behind in Auschwitz. Although the Germans could have easily gassed and cremated these Jewish inmates in crematorium V at Birkenau during the first week of January 1945, they let them survive the war to tell their stories about Auschwitz-Birkenau. [15]

No Extermination Order

Originally the Holocaust story assumed that Germany had a plan or program for exterminating the Jews. In the 1961 edition of his book The Destruction of European Jews, Raul Hilberg wrote that in 1941 Hitler issued two orders for the extermination of the Jews.[16] However, even though the Allies captured most of Germany’s government and concentration camp records intact, no order or plan has ever been found to exterminate European Jewry.

In the revised 1985 edition of Hilberg’s book, all references to such extermination orders from Hitler were removed. Browning, in a review of the revised edition of The Destruction of European Jews, wrote:[17]

“In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler order for the ‘Final Solution’ have been systematically excised. Buried at the bottom of a single footnote stands the solitary reference: ‘Chronology and circumstances point to a Hitler decision before the summer ended.’ In the new edition, decisions were not made and orders were not given.”

With respect to Hitler’s role in the alleged extermination of European Jewry, Browning testified at the 1988 Ernst Zündel trial that there was no proof of a written order from Hitler to exterminate Jews. Browning testified that Hitler had adopted the nod theory, which held that it only took a nod from Adolf Hitler to exterminate Jews. He said:

“I did indeed coin the phrase that it would have only taken a nod of the head, or it could have only taken yes.”

Browning testified:[18]

“We have, I have argued, circumstantial evidence of at least incitements or initiative.”

So, what proofs exist of the “Final Solution”? Browning testified at the 1988 Ernst Zündel trial that, in his opinion, the Wannsee Conference protocol and the diary of Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-ruled Poland, were the two most striking proofs of a plan of extermination.[19]

Other Holocaust historians also claim that the Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942, was the start of a program to systematically exterminate Europe’s Jews. The documentary evidence of this meeting, however, shows that no extermination program existed. Instead, the German policy was to evacuate the Jews to the East. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer has declared:[20]

“The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at.”

Likewise, Israeli Holocaust historian Leni Yahil has stated regarding the Wannsee Conference:[21]

“[I]t is often assumed that the decision to launch the Final Solution was taken on this occasion, but this is not so.”

The Hans Frank diary does not indicate that Germany had an extermination program against Jews during the war. Instead of destroying his diary, Frank voluntarily handed his 43-volume diary to the American Army officers who arrested him.[22] It should be noted that Frank had a volatile personality, and that blood thirsty and inflammatory statements were also made by the Allies during the war. In a war in which many millions of people were killed, emotions ran high. Highly provocative and heated statements such as Frank made in parts of his diary were made by supposedly responsible people on both sides of the war.[23]

Hans Frank testified at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that he had not known of a program of mass killings of the Jews during the war. However, when asked if he had participated in the annihilation of the Jews, Frank stated:[24]

“I say yes […] particularly after hearing the testimony of the witness [Rudolf] Höss, my conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility on these minor people. […] A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”

This last sentence has been repeatedly quoted in books and articles about National-Socialist Germany. It does not prove that Germany had a program of genocide against the Jews. It only shows that Hans Frank believed Höss’s false testimony at the IMT that had been criminally obtained by the use of torture.

Extermination of Jewish Workers

To his credit, Browning writes that the German use of Jewish slave labor was not a matter of consensus, and could vary greatly as to time and place.[25] However, Browning frequently cites instances where Germans used extreme measures to exterminate Jewish workers.
For example, Browning writes that Heinrich Himmler labored furiously between the spring and fall of 1943 to murder the Polish “work Jews.” Browning writes:[26]

“This elimination of these ‘work Jews’ was not, I must emphasize, achieved through what the Nazis euphemistically termed ‘destruction through labor.’ For the most part, the victims were not gradually worked and starved to death. Rather, the workers in these camps and remnant ghettos were killed in a relentless campaign of systematic mass murder, exemplified above all by the great Erntefest or ‘Harvest Festival’ massacre of 42,000 ‘work Jews’ in the Lublin district in a mere two days on November 3-4, 1943.”

Browning describes the Erntefest massacre as one of the largest German killing operations against Jews in the entire war.[27] However, Browning provides no credible documentation that these 42,000 work Jews were massacred in two days. He apparently thinks that we will take it on good faith that these mass murders happened.

Browning is correct that there were instances where Jewish inmates were overworked. For example, Mauthausen in Austria was a German concentration camp in which the working conditions were horrible. The camp was located near a quarry which was a principal supplier of paving stones for Vienna and other cities. Stone cutting and hauling is a strenuous occupation in the best of circumstances, but at Mauthausen the work was especially arduous. Most of the labor in the quarry was done with pick and axe, and prisoners hauled heavy chunks of granite on their backs up 186 steps that connected the camp to the quarry.

Conditions at Mauthausen got even worse after the evacuation of Auschwitz, when thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent to Mauthausen and its sub-camps. Marched through the winter without adequate clothing and food, prisoners who survived to enter Mauthausen were usually in desperate physical and psychological condition.[28]

Mauthausen also spawned an especially brutal system of close to 50 sub-camps. The major sub-camps were Gusen and Ebensee. In addition to quarry work, inmates at Gusen built underground armament factories for the production of machine guns and other weaponry, as well as fuselages for Messerschmidt aircraft. Ebensee was created in 1943 to provide labor for the construction of underground factory tunnels. Both sub-camps in 1945 became end-destinations for underfed workers transported from other camps. By the end of the war, conditions at Mauthausen and its satellite camps were so bad that every day hundreds of prisoners died from exhaustion, starvation, dehydration, typhus and other diseases.[29]

Browning is not correct, however, that German work policies were designed to kill Jewish workers.[30] There are numerous documents indicating that the Germans attempted to improve working conditions for their Jewish inmates.

For example, on December 28, 1942, SS officer Richard Glücks, who was the head of the camp administration office, sent a directive to commandants of the concentration camps. This directive ordered that “[…] camp physicians must use all means at their disposal to significantly reduce the death rate in the various camps. […] The camp doctors are to see to it that the working conditions at the various labor sites are improved as much as possible.” The directive also stressed that “the Reichsführer SS [Heinrich Himmler] has ordered that the death rate absolutely must be reduced.”[31] Glücks followed up his directive in January of 1943 by informing the concentration camp commandants:[32]

“As I have already pointed out, every means must be used to lower the death rate in the camps.”

German camp administrator Oswald Pohl, in an order dated October 26, 1943, gave specific measures to ensure the health and productivity of the internees of the camps. A copy of the order was sent to Himmler. Pohl began by stating the importance of the camps in the war effort. In addition to stressing the importance of proper nutrition, clothing and rest, Pohl specified that ill prisoners were to receive a special diet to help restore their health.[33] While such directives were not always implemented as ordered, such directives did help lower the death rates in the camps. Such orders are inconsistent with a plan to commit genocide against European Jewry.

Genocide on the Eastern Front

Christopher Browning states that the Germans used gas vans to murder Jews in the Soviet-occupied territories.[34] Ingrid Weckert writes regarding these alleged German gas vans:[35]

“There is no document to indicate that [homicidal] ‘gas vans’ had ever come up for discussion in the Third Reich. The term dates from post-war times. […] To automatically connect the term ‘Special Motor Vehicle’ with the murder of Jews reveals gross ignorance of the facts. […] To date, no vehicle which clearly could have served as [a] ‘gas van’ has ever been found.”

Browning does not tell us how the alleged German homicidal gas vans operated. This is typical of virtually all Holocaust historians. American engineer Friedrich Paul Berg wrote regarding the Holocaust literature that “as far as the actual mechanics of the extermination process are concerned, about all one ever finds is an occasional short and vague description.”[36] Browning never provides even a short and vague description of how German homicidal gas vans operated.

Browning also disputes Jewish Princeton University historian Arno Mayer’s belief that the murder of Soviet Jews was not part of a comprehensive German plan of extermination. Mayer writes:[37]

“Even so, and notwithstanding the unparalleled magnitude of the Jewish suffering, the extermination of eastern Jewry never became the chief objective of Barbarossa. The fight for Lebensraum and against bolshevism was neither a pretext nor an expedient for the killing of Jews. Nor was it a mere smoke screen to disguise the Jewish massacres as reprisals against partisans. The assault on the Jews was unquestionably intertwined with the assault on bolshevism from the very outset. But this is not to say that it was the dominant strand in the hybrid ‘Judeobolshevism’ that Barbarossa targeted for destruction. In fact, the war against the Jews was a graft onto or a parasite upon the eastern campaign, which always remained its host, even or especially once it became mired deep in Russia.

When they set forth on their mission, Einsatzgruppen and the RSHA were not given the extermination of Jews as their principal, let alone their only, assignment.”

Mayer states that the killing of Jews in the Soviet Union occurred as the result of the inexorable radicalization of the war in the east, and because many Soviet Jews were classified by the SS as carriers of Bolshevism.[38]

Browning writes:[39]

“Mayer sees the mass murder of European Jewry as a byproduct of Nazi Germany’s anticommunist crusade on the one hand, and its hyperexploitation of impressed labor on the other.”

Browning says that Mayer “refuses to understand the Final Solution for what it was – the Nazis’ plan to kill every last Jew in Europe on whom they could lay their hands.”[40] Browning thinks that Mayer has gone astray in his understanding of the so-called Holocaust.

Browning relies on the Einsatzgruppen reports to indicate that extremely large numbers of Jews were murdered in the Soviet Union, and that these killings were part of a program that had been coordinated and monitored by Berlin.[41] However, Carlo Mattogno has shown that many of the figures quoted in the Einsatzgruppen reports are inaccurate. Mattogno writes:[42]

“For example, in the summary of the activity of Einsatzgruppe A (October 16, 1941, to January 31, 1942) the number of Jews present in Latvia at the arrival of the German troops is 70,000, but the number of Jews shot is reported as being 71,184! Furthermore, another 3,750 Jews were alive in work camps. In Lithuania, there were 153,743 Jews, of which 136,421 were allegedly shot, whereas 34,500 were taken to the ghettos at Kaunas, Wilna, and Schaulen, but the total of those two figures is 170,921 Jews!”

The British trial of German Field Marshall Erich von Manstein also proved the inaccuracy of the Einsatzgruppen reports. The prosecution’s case was based partly on the reports showing that Einsatzgruppe D under the command of Otto Ohlendorf had executed some 85,000 Jews in four and one-half months. Manstein’s defense attorney, Reginald T. Paget, wrote that these claims were quite impossible:[43]

“In one instance we were able to check their figures. The S.D. claimed that they had killed 10,000 in Simferopol during November and in December they reported Simferopol clear of Jews. By a series of cross checks, we were able to establish that the execution of the Jews in Simferopol had taken place on a single day, 16th November. Only one company of S.D. was in Simferopol. The place of execution was 15 kilometers from the town. The numbers involved could not have been more than about 300. These 300 were probably not exclusively Jews but a miscellaneous collection of people who were being held on suspicion of resistance activity. […]

It was indeed clear that the Jewish community had continued to function quite openly in Simferopol and although several of our witnesses had heard rumors about an S.D. excess committed against Jews in Simferopol, it certainly appeared that this Jewish community was unaware of any special danger. […]

By the time we had finished with the figures and pointed out the repeated self-contradiction in the S.D. reports, it became probable that at least one ‘0’ would have to be knocked off the total claimed by the S.D. and we also established that only about one-third of Ohlendorf’s activities had taken place in von Manstein’s area. It is impossible to know even the approximate number of murdered Jews, for not only was Ohlendorf lying to his superiors but as we were able to show his company commanders were lying to him.”

Von Manstein testified that he had no knowledge that the Einsatzgruppe D or the German army had a policy of murdering Jews. The court believed Manstein, and found him innocent of murdering Jews.[44]

Peter Winter has also exposed the fraudulent nature of the Einsatzgruppen reports.[45] Thus, the Einsatzgruppen reports do not support Browning’s statement that there was “a conscious Nazi policy aimed at the systematic extermination of every last Jew in Europe.”[46] Arno Mayer is correct that the deaths of Soviet Jews were not attributable to a German policy of genocide.

Conclusion

Deborah Lipstadt writes that Christopher Browning and her other four expert witnesses – Richard Evans, Peter Longerich, Robert Jan van Pelt, and Hajo Funke – “constituted the historian’s ultimate dream team.” She says these professors were appalled by David Irving’s cavalier treatment of the historical record, and made an exceptional commitment in her defense against Irving’s libel suit.[47]

I agree with Lipstadt that Christopher Browning and her four other well-compensated expert witnesses made an exceptional commitment in her defense against David Irving’s libel suit. However, none of these expert witnesses has been able to prove a German policy of genocide against European Jewry.

Endnotes