Letters

Thoughts on the Irving-Lipstadt Trial

Your analysis of Judge Gray's decision in the Irving-Lipstadt trial [March-April 2000 Journal , pp. 2-8] is brilliant, and could well serve as an outline for Irving's appeal. Based on my own close reading of the trial transcript, as my years of experience as a lawyer, I'd like to chip in with a few comments.

Irving, as a loyal Englishman, seems to have had an unrealistic faith in the fairness of the British legal process. He could have benefited greatly from capable legal help, and I hope he has some to assist him in preparing his appeal.

Why, oh why, didn't Irving produce Germar Rudolf as a witness?

On the "conspiracy" angle, you are right in pointing out that Irving was never able to produce a "smoking gun," or even establish a real link to Lipstadt's book, which was, after all, at the core of his suit.

As Irving put it, Judge Gray's decision was "perverse." As you point out, on the record of this trial, any judge could have written a decision in Irving's favor. (To illustrate this point, I've toyed with the idea of writing such a decision myself.) Even on the existing record, in spite of its defects, I believe that a judgement for Irving was amply justified.

I was surprised at the many prejudicial interventions made by Judge Gray in the course of the trial. Numerous times he joined defense attorney Rampton in arguing against Irving. In doing so, he exhibited his own prejudices, which he "cleverly" acknowledged in his judgement while disingenuously claiming that he was able to set them aside in reaching a decision. I thought this very odd, and wondered if it is usual in British legal practice.

Anyway, the Judge's prejudiced interventions could well be cited in an appeal.

A. D
Florida [by e-mail]

The 13th IHR Conference

Thank you for a dynamite Memorial Day weekend. The speeches by Faurisson, Rudolf and Graf were nothing less than stirring. The other talks were first class as well. I also appreciate the opportunity to renew old acquaintances.

You all are doing the work of God. Eventually there has to be a daybreak in this endless intellectual night.

E. B.
Dallas, Texas

I learned a lot at the recent IHR Conference, and met some very nice and interesting people. Thank you for the "student scholarship" help. I am a serious history student, and the Conference was a true blessing for me. To be quite honest, I realized just how much I didn't know, and "how much more there is still to learn. I am looking forward to beginning work on my Master's degree, and the Conference really helped.

You all did a wonderful and very professional job. Thank you again for a great weekend.

D. W.
Fresno, Calif

Congratulations on your excellent conference. It was very well organized and informative -very good for everyone's morale.

John Bennett
Carlton, Australia

Swastika Charm

Regarding the March-April 1999 Journal article about the swastika, and the remark [p. 34] that "in India it was revered as a sign of good fortune and prosperity," it is notable that such was also the case in the USA well into the 20th century. An example is seen in the 1931 Hollywood movie "Blonde Crazy." In the latter part James Cagney examines a two inch square metallic "swastika charm." The dialogue makes clear that Americans generally interpreted such a charm as a "good luck piece." (The title of the movie does not fit well. The original title, "Larceny Lane," was better.)

Arthur R. Butz
Evanston, Illinois

An Undeserved Honor

In December a group of "establishment" (that is, politically correct) historians and political commentators named Winston Churchill as the best British Prime Minister of the Century.

How an individual who was responsible for the criminal folly of the inadequately planned First World War Gallipoli campaign could even be considered for such an honor is beyond me. More to the point, Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, was responsible for a similarly disastrous lack of thoughtful planning in Britain's ill-fated 1940 Norwegian campaign, a fiasco for which Neville Chamberlain was blamed and was accordingly replaced as Prime Minister by none other than Churchill himself. (See The Nameless War by Captain A.H.M. Ramsay.)

After the fall of France (June 1940), Hitler offered Britain very reasonable peace terms. He had even stopped his panzers from annihilating the British evacuating at Dunkirk as practical proof of the sincerity of his peace terms. But Churchill, who wanted the opportunity to regain his loss of prestige over the Gallipoli disaster, refused to consider peace thus risking the lives of more millions. (See Ten Days to Destiny, by John Costello, and The Nameless War, by A. H. M. Ramsay.)

Churchill also permitted himself to come under the influence of the money power, which had bailed him out when his expensive lifestyle landed him heavily in debt. (See Churchill 's War, by David Irving). Today the grip that the money power has on the world is a legacy left to us by the policies of Churchill and Roosevelt, for it is now fairly widely known that Roosevelt, aided and abetted by Churchill, provoked Japan into war in order to bring America in to help defeat Germany. Thus, in this all important game of divide and conquer, the money power won, and indeed the Western world, including Britain, has nothing to thank Churchill for.

S. A.
Caloundra, Qnsld. Australia

Massive Historical Distortion

While we are inundated with "remembrance" of the greatest war crime that never occurred, the record of the greatest such crime that actually did occur are being expunged. I refer to the expulsion at the conclusion of World War II of twelve million Germans from the real east Germany -Silesia, Pomerania, East Prussia, the Sudetenland, and other areas east of the Oder-Neisse line – which involved the deaths of some two million people.

Then these lands, which constituted a quarter of Germany's territory, were incorporated by the Allied leaders into Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Although just as German as the rest of Germany, these regions had the geographic misfortune to be vulnerable to Allied, and especially Stalinist, vengeance.

With this great crime has come distortion of history on a grand scale. My 1986 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (a work under the guidance of the University of Chicago) refers to east German cities as being "under Prussian control" until "liberated" by the Poles in 1945. A Maps of the war on the History Channel and on the boxes of model airplanes show postwar boundaries. An article in the neo-conservative magazine The American Spectator imagines a wartime event occurring in "Wroclaw" (Breslau). A few years ago Poles in the city of Stettin (Szczecin) celebrated the city's 800th anniversary. With the current Pope in attendance, they arranged the festivities as a celebration of their history. Even some Germans seem eager to eradicate their historical heritage and collective memory. During a visit to the Nietzsche house in Naumburg in 1998, I was startled to see the philosopher's life traced on wall maps not of his era, but of today.

Eric Rachout, M. D.
Moody, Texas

Fascinating and Helpful

I have been reading several of the articles on your web site. They are very interesting and challenging. After checking and crosschecking the source references, I find your site even more interesting! I've also been downloading and copying quite a few items from your site. Quite a few folks I know are fascinated by this material.

Your work, The Zionist Terror Network, is a great read. Absolutely fantastic. It will help greatly in adding color and detail to a novel I am writing. In this novel, I had referred to a mythical Zionist terror organization, but I did not dream that such a thing really existed until I read your material. Also very helpful is your article on Simon Wiesenthal.

Keep up the good work.

S. L. S.
[bye-mail]

Hard Documentation is Crucial

I have always felt that publicizing the truth about what really happened to Europe's Jews during World War II would be in everyone's best interest over time. Neither the various European governments nor the Jewish lobbies seem to concur, however. Instead, Jewish-Zionist groups have made a cash cow out of the Holocaust. In doing they have acted shamelessly and have denigrated their deceased brothers.

I believe that the only way that the truth about the Holocaust will ever force its way into the mainstream -barring an initiative by the German or American government -is through publishing hard documentation. The Auschwitz "Death Books" alone seem sufficient to force a change in perspective ["Pages from the Auschwitz Death Registry Volumes," Fall 1992 Journal], and I am at a loss as to why much more has not been made of them. In spite of their importance, certainly not one German, or American, in ten thousand has even heard of them.

R. G.
Whiteville, N. Carolina

Hard Evidence for Mass Famine in Ukraine?

In his letter in the Jan.-Feb. 2000 Journal ("Myths About Stalin and the Ukrainian famine, pages 70-71), J. C. M. makes the case for the existence of an imposed mass famine in Ukraine during the early 1930s in almost exactly the same way that mainstream historians make their case for "the Holocaust," and using similarly unreliable evidence. [This letter by J. C. M. is a response to an earlier letter by K. W., "One-Sided Revisionism," in the Sept.-Dec. 1999 JHR, p. 71.]

J. C. M. claims that the Ukrainian famine is well-documented because several authors have written about it. That can also be truthfully said about the Holocaust.

He also cites Robert Conquest's estimate of 14.5 million deaths in the Ukrainian famine. In producing this "estimate," Conquest cooks data, makes unwarranted assumptions about birth rates, overlooks emigration and population transfers, and ignores the unreliability of the era's population data. (The Soviet Union only instituted national ID cards in 1933, and there were no accurate population statistics until after the Second World War.) Holocaust historians use similarly dubious techniques to "prove" the six million figure.

Just as Holocaust historians can't come up with gas chambers, piles of bodies, or piles of cremated ashes, neither can Conquest, Solzhenitsyn or anyone else come up with real evidence that the Ukrainian famine ever took place.

J. C. M. cites "eyewitness" and "survivor" testimony. Similar testimony is used to prove "the Holocaust." Anecdotal evidence is notoriously unreliable and can easily be fabricated.

Real historians know that anecdotal evidence about a specific or localized incident cannot be extrapolated or generalized to determine the truth about a larger area or time period.

In the vast Soviet archival records that have been accessible for the past ten years, no evidence has been found for an imposed mass famine in Ukraine. It is also interesting to note that the records of the Gulag camps found in the KGB files show that there were never more than 2.5 million prisoners in the Soviet camps at any one time. (To put this in perspective, there are almost as many people imprisoned in the USA today.) The Soviet records also show that the death rates in the camps only exceeded ten percent during two years, 1942 and 1943, when supplies were understandably very short due to the war emergency. Parallels to Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald and so forth, are obvious. (Source: "Lies Concerning the History of the Soviet Union," by Mario Sousa, in the Dec. 1999 issue of North Star Compass [a Stalinist monthly published in Toronto]. See www.northstarcompass.org.)

Revisionists should not be arbitrary or inconsistent, but should find a solid standard of evidence and stick with it. Revisionism should be applied to anti-Communist propaganda as ruthlessly as to anti-fascist propaganda.

K. W.
Phoenix, Arizona

Argentine Admirer

I am a great admirer of historical revisionism. I have read the book by Jürgen Graf, El Holocausto Bajo La Lupa. This is a really good, well documented work. As in so many countries, the "Holocaust industry" rules here. Anyone who says "What six million?" can be punished as a heretic.

G. I.
Buenos Aires, Argentina

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