From the Editor

In this issue of The Journal of Historical Review we are proud to publish, for the first time in English, the Second Leuchter Report, which has just appeared in a French translation, in the premiere issue of Revue d'histoire révisionniste (B.P. 122, 92704 Colombes Cédex, France). Just as Fred Leuchter's minute investigation of the remains (and in some cases the postwar “reconstructions”) of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek was the first forensic study of these facilities, so is Leuchter Report No. 2 the first published expert report on facilities still widely maintained to have been constructed, if not used, for homicidal gassings at Dachau, Mauthausen, and Hartheim Castle. Robert Faurisson's introduction and annotated bibliography supply the perfect historiographical counterpoint to Mr. Leuchter's technical expertise.

As the Soviet empire unravels, an historiographical drama of world-historical import begins. In the USSR since its inception, in the Western “democracies” for decades, the fact that the “Russian” Revolution was anything but Russian has been a taboo punishable by ostracism or imprisonment. Ivor Benson, long a distinguished analyst of the practical alliance between Capitalism and Communism, here contributes a suggestive and certain to be controversial essay on the key, but neglected, role of the most dynamic of all Soviet nationalities, the Jews, in the origins and rise of Bolshevism. Nothing could be more timely in elucidating the riddle of why this turbulent minority is embarking on yet another dramatic exodus, just as unprecedented freedoms and opportunities unfold for the rest of the USSR's long-oppressed peoples.

Our reviewers greet new studies of Nuremberg, of how FDR illegally inveigled America into war, of the course of that war, and of a long overdue revision of a cherished national myth – England's “defeat” of the Spanish Armada – positively, all in all. The Revisionist content of these books is perhaps a sign of our movement's progress, for only one author would cheerfully accept the title of Revisionist.

He is Carlos Porter, one of the closest students of the absurdities as well as the injustices which crowd the transcripts of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. With his usual mordancy, Mr. Porter has contributed an unusual comparison and analysis of three testimonies of concentration camp guards and capos: it is out of such questionable building blocks as these that the Holocaust edifice has been constructed.

Two of IHR's embattled editorial advisors, each of whom has been subjected to the Orwellian indignity of having an earned doctorate allegedly “revoked,” contribute news and commentary on matters French and German, Dr. Henri Roques (who has just joined our masthead) on his efforts to compel the French government to recognize his degree, Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich in two frank letters to West German President Richard von Weizsäcker which bring to that preacher of eternal German guilt the glad tidings of the first Leuchter Report. From France comes a report of yet another “affair” in Lyon, where university teacher Bernard Notin has been subjected to a ferocious campaign to ruin him legally, professionally, and financially for daring to question the dogma of the gas chambers (recently made a crime by the French National Assembly).

As the above news from Europe indicates, our enemies are running scared. Reports, published just as this issue of The Journal went to press, disclosed that the Polish authorities who run the atrocity museum in the former concentration camp at Auschwitz have reduced the number of alleged victims to one fourth of the figure previously given out as official. The full implications of that must strike the public as the wholly arbitrary resurrection of some three million “victims” will be explored in future issues of this journal. Suffice it to say that at least the progress of Historical Revisionism is being registered, however grudgingly, in other ways than the persecution of Revisionist scholars and publicists.