Hitler’s Apologists

Hitler's Apologists: The Anti-Semitic Propaganda of Holocaust 'Revisionism'. An Anti-Defamation League Publication. Available from the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 823 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017, 1993. $8.00 plus $2.50 postage. 8 +88 pages. Preparation of the publication is credited to Marc Caplan and a number of research and editorial contributors.

As a revisionist historian I have written many a page in an attempt to inform readers about the absurdities and falsehoods of the “Holocaust” material which has been used for various political, psychological and economic purposes by organized Jewry. This book contains obvious absurdities, self-contradictions and evidence against the “Holocaust” material. For that reason I welcome its publication, even thought its purpose is to denigrate the many historians who have had the courage and moral compulsion to raise questions about the “Holocaust” material in spite of the huge sums that have been expended, even by the United States government, to propagate it. Many Americans are quite unaware that there are historians who question the “Holocaust” material. This book will bring them information about their existence and efforts.

Any halfway thoughtful, unbiased and perceptive reader of this book is compelled to ask himself why the many historians with respectable academic credentials and impressive publications presented in this book have risked their careers, relationships with their publishers, costly litigations and even their physical safety by raising questions about the “Holocaust” material. Even the Jewish historian, Professor Arno J. Mayer of Princeton University, has pointed out in his book, Why Did the Heaven Not Darken? (1988; reviewed in our Bulletin 38, reprinted in the Liberty Bell of August, 1989), that sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable. Mayer's book seems like an attempt to admonish Zionist propagandists to tone down their claims lest they make fools of themselves, even if Mayer adheres to many of the traditional aspects of the “Holocaust” material. Pages 48-49 express the discomfort which the authors of Hitler's Apologists feel with regard to Mayer's book.

One very great advantage which purveyors of the “Holocaust” material have in the United States lies in the simple fact that most Americans who lived during the Second World War and its aftermath want to believe the material for some very strong emotional reasons. We allied ourselves with a regime, Stalin's, which was so evil that by comparison National Socialism looked benign. Our airplanes burned scores, if not hundreds of thousands of Germans to death. The ruined European cities the refugees from the east and the starving German children were there for the world, including millions of American soldiers, to witness, quite in contrast to the Soviet death camps in remote sites in Polish forests. The war crimes of our Soviet allies later became known, even on the basis of postwar Congressional investigations. The “Holocaust” material thus provides a psychological rationalization for what our armed forces and politicians did in Europe, and in particular Germany, a country of a size comparable to our state of Texas (as of 1938).

The whole “Holocaust” controversy is a complicated one. It is unfair and misleading to assert that revisionist historians simply “deny the Holocaust,” a formulation which the Zionist propagandists favor. Revisionists do not deny that Jews suffered during the Second World War, especially during the chaos of the closing phases of the war, a war which influential Jews helped to bring about by bribing British political figures, notable Churchill, as David Irving has pointed out (see our Bulletin 12). The suffering of Jews, however, was only a small fraction of the enormous suffering caused by the war, the suffering of the people of most European nations. Even if the gas chamber tales were true, it must be admitted that death from Zyklon B would have been far less painful than being burnt to a crisp in incendiary bombing attacks, such as those against Hamburg (1943) and Dresden (1945). The suffering of Jews was by no means unique. Taken as a whole, it was probably far less than that of such nations as the Ukrainians in the early 1930's during the famines deliberately caused by the cruelty of Stalin's regime or the suffering of the Baltic nations as a result of the Soviet occupation during 1940-1941 and 1945 ff. It is entirely understandable why Ukrainians and Balts welcomed German armed forces as liberators, even if German administrators were not astute in taking advantage of these sentiments, a point almost universally conceded by German historians. Hitler's Apologists makes the usual ethnocentric claim that Jewish suffering was unique, a claim that is a misleading distortion of history and a callous disregard for the suffering of the Jews' host populations. I, for one, would certainly not deny to Jews the right to mourn their dead anymore than I would deny that right to Ukrainians and Balts, to mention two groups that suffered especially from American support of Stalin's tyranny ( see our Bulletins 7 and 15), including the infamous “Operation Keelhaul,” a dark stain on the history of the United States. It would have been far more appropriate to build a memorial museum to the victims of Communism than the one which has been recently dedicated in Washington.

Much of Hitler's Apologists is directed against specific revisionist historians and investigators, such as Fred Leuchter (pages 8-9), David McCalden (pages 16-18), David Irving (pages 19-25), Charles Weber (pages 28-29), Hans Schmidt (pages 30-32), the nationally known journalist Pat Buchanan (pages 35-36), and even the Jewish (!) historian, Professor Arno J. Mayer (pages 48-49). The book by the Canadian journalist James Bacque, Other Losses, is bitterly attacked on pages 49-51. Bacque found evidence in American military archives that hundreds of thousands of German prisoner of war were killed by very severe and easily preventable condition in prison camps after the war. A rather long section (pages 68-73) is devoted to editorial advisors of the Journal of Historical Review.

Parts of the book convey an almost gloating boastfulness about Jewish power to frustrate the efforts of revisionists by any means, such as attacking the professional status of the revisionist in question, as in the case of Fred Leuchter (pages 8-9), physical attacks, as in the case of Prof. Robert Faurisson (page 42), or deprivation of academic degrees, as in the case of Wilhelm Stäglich and Henri Roques (page 43). Such unscrupulous tactics, which would be impossible if it were not for the remarkable power of organized Jewry in North American and European courts, universities, legislative bodies and the media, simply serve to emphasize how weak and assailable the “Holocaust” claims are. Crimes such as the arson attack against the Institute for Historical Review in 1984 or the nearly fatal attack against Prof. Robert Faurisson in Vichy in 1989 are a striking demonstration of the validity of the revisionists' arguments.

In the “Foreword” Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, claims that Willis Carto, I, Hans Schmidt and Ernst Zündel are motivated to deny the “Holocaust” in order to defend totalitarianism. Actually, there is a far simpler and more obvious motivation involved. Those of us who are Germans or are of German descent are angered by the lies and distortions which have put us at social, professional and economic disadvantages. Even the title, Hitler's Apologists, is misleading. It implies that revisionists dealing with the “Holocaust” material have some sort of unified, complicated political agenda. The truth of the matter is that such revisionists have quite varied political, philosophical and religious orientations.

Mr. Foxman also continues to adhere to the assertion that Hitler's regime murdered six million Jews during World War II. This figure is contradicted on page 82 of the book, where Raul Hilberg gives a total of 5,100,000, a total which is also impossible on the basis of prewar and postwar population statistics. Hilberg, by the way, is the man who declined to testify at the second trial (1988) of Ernst Zündel for fear of the withering cross-examination by Zündel's brilliant defense attorney, Douglas Christie, as he had to admit in a letter dated 5 October, 1987 to the crown Attorney John Pearson. Even Polish authorities, who also have a vested interest in the “Holocaust” material, finally came to the realization that four million deaths at Auschwitz was so absurd that the claim had to be withdrawn and memorial stones to that effect had to be effaced. Six minus three equals three!

Elie Wiesel is quoted at some length on page 67. This man, as well as millions of other members of his race who survived the occupations by German forces, have provided living proofs that there was no general extermination order.

On the cover of the book is a picture of a German (?) soldier pointing a rifle in the direction of a boy with upraised arms. Although the fact is not mentioned on any page of the book, this particular child survived the war and went on to a successful career in London after the War. (See VHO-Nieuwsbrief 1993, nr. 2, page 6.)

The Anti-Defamation League has advocated with considerable success that compulsory “Holocaust” courses be introduced into schools, where, of course, there is a captive audience consisting of pupils hesitant to contradict their teachers and not yet possessing much critical capacity. One Illinois couple had the courage to protest such indoctrination of their daughter (pages 27-28). If this book is used in such compulsory courses, there might even be a few bright seventh-graders who will notice the statistics on page 78, where the claim is made that the “Nazis forced to their deaths 700 to 800 men, women, and children at a time” into gas chambers measuring an average of 225 square fee. Thus, as many as 800 divided by 225 = more than 3 1/2 persons per square foot, an obvious impossibility. The further claim is made that the gas chambers at various camps accounted for 20,000 victims per day at the height of the extermination program. How could such a number of bodies be cremated? Where would the huge quantities of scarce fuel required for such cremations be obtained? If the bodies were not cremated, where are they buried? Revisionists have been pointing out such absurdities for years in the “Holocaust” tales, but Zionist propagandists continue to publish them, confident that their control of the media would prevent the raising of questions.

In the section aimed against David Irving, the matter of the recently released death records of Auschwitz is brought up (page 23). The statement is made that crucial to Irving's “misrepresentation” the fact is ignored that these rosters “were only a partial listing of victims killed during a few months of 1942.” This statement is simply false. Actual death certificates from the years 1941 and 1943 are reproduced in the fall, 1992 issue of the Journal of Historical Review.

I have expressed my own criticisms of David Irving in Bulletin 65, which was republished in the Christian News of 5 April 1993 and the Liberty Bell of May, 1993. In particular, I feel that by the time Hitler's War was published in 1977, Irving should have been well aware of the mass of evidence against the usual versions of the “Holocaust” material, even the absurdities in some of the “documents” and confessions produced by torture presented at the Nuremberg trials. (For details, see Carlos Porter, Made in Russia/The Holocaust.) These, of course, had been published many years before 1977. Before that year there were also books by the earlier revisionists, by Rassinier, App and Butz.

I felt flattered that 1 1/2 pages (pages 28-29) were devoted to the Committee for the Reexamination of the History of the Second World War, with its tiny financial expenditures. My own writings are mentioned in some detail, such as my arguments in favor of the use of the “Aryan” and Bulletin 5, in which I analyzed the factors which brought about National Socialism and in which I pointed out that some of the features of National Socialism were by no means peculiarly German, and that some American influences on National Socialism were obvious. Bulletins 14-15 are also mentioned, which bore the title, “How to Discuss the Extermination Thesis (Holocaust) at a Cocktail Party or at a 'Holocaust' Seminar Sponsored by Zionists.” I am accused of making “ongoing efforts at revitalization of National Socialism and 'Aryan' supremacy.” Having been involved in Denazification after the war when I was still in military service, I am well aware what a thorough job of brainwashing was done by the Allied occupation authorities in Germany and how close to impossible a revitalization of National Socialism would be, even in Germany itself. I am also delighted that the authors of Hitler's Apologists believe that the Committee for the Reexamination of the History of the Second World War consists of only one person.

On page 74 we have a quite welcome list of representative revisionist books offered for sale by the Institute for Historical Review. This list is a valuable guide for the reader who wishes to investigate the other side of the “Holocaust” controversy, the side which is never presented in Hollywood films or network television series or, for that matter, typical courses in universities on recent European history, even though universities should be redoubts of historical objectivity if they really intend to serve their students honestly.

The Anti-Defamation League grows in importance and hence the ability to attract donations by frightening Jews into believing that historical revisionism is only very modestly financed and virtually completely excluded form influence on the media of the United States, especially its television networks, which continue to pour out a stream of programs based on the “Holocaust” claims, such as the very expensively produced television series, War and Remembrance. (For reviews of this series, see our Bulletins 32 and 37. The thought has sometimes crossed my mind that a preoccupation with the “Holocaust” material has done considerable psychological damage to Jews themselves.

Although several of my own writings were presented in a somewhat critical manner in this book (pages 28-29) and in spite of the basic intent of the book, I hope that it will be widely read. The materials presented in this book, including the valuable little guide to revisionist literature on page 74, and the quotations from various revisionist authors should indicate to a reader with capacities for analysis and critical thought that there is a reasonable basis for questioning the usual versions of the “Holocaust” material.

Committee for the Reexamination of the History of the Second World War (Bulletin No. 66)