Letters to the Editor
11 September 1980
Dear Mr. Brandon,
As a reader of five to twenty-five books a year (almost none of which are to be found in public libraries), historical Revisionism is the brightest star on my horizon!
It is indeed sickening to see what comes out of our so-called “educational” system, and downright revolting to discover the reasons for such decay.
Of the six indignant letters to the editor printed in the Fall, 1980 journal, four are typical of the reaction one can expect from brain-washed nincompoops. The other two aren't any more enlightening, but I will comment as follows:
David Gold, you mention “expertise.” The Holocaust myth was not the product of expertise, but depended upon the ignorance and apathy of the people who fell for it. Any five-year-old can see through the asinine drivel known as “The Gerstein Statement.” And those fake photographs? Too crude to believe! Not to mention the “confessions.” Mr. Gold, you should know that the spirit of Henry Ford, Sr. lives on!
Mr. Lapides, I hope you do let your poor, unfortunate students see The Journal of Historical Review! Perhaps that will provide the spark which will inspire them to search for the truth, which they will get precious little of at the University of Bridgeport or any other for that matter.
Mr. Brandon, you and the IHR are doing a wonderful job!
Sincerely,
Mason Armstrong
Clements, MD 20624
Dear Mr. Brandon:
Several comments are in order regarding the Fall 1980 issue of The Journal of Historical Review.
1. The sample letters published from various academics are tragic examples of the four decades of historical blackout and “smotherout” to which we have been subjected. Obviously Revisionists have a long way to go before this thick fog of ignorance is penetrated. Your reprinting of Harry Elmer Barnes' “The Public Stake in Revisionism” is a welcome effort in setting forth the Revisionist approach as bona fide and historically valid and not as simply an exercise in pro-Nazi or anti-Semitic propaganda.
2. As you state in your review of Oradour by Philip Beck “Our WWII Revisionism is not to rehabilitate National Socialism, but to rehabilitate truth. And the simple truth is that in wartime, atrocities are committed on all sides; the winning side and the losing side.”
3. The attempts to link Revisionism and anti-Semitism are deplorable. Obviously such historians and publicists as Harry Elmer Barnes, James J. Martin, Murray N. Rothbard, Frank Chodorov, Clyde R. Miller to list just a few representative names are not anti-Semitic or pro-Nazi.
4. The truth is tragic enough without any further embellishments. Jews perished in the typhus epidemics, families were separated, executions took place. There was a “holocaust.” The question is, “What was the nature of the holocaust?” Not a day goes by without the announcement of a new publication, both fiction and non-fiction on the holocaust, in a sickening commercialization of a tragedy of history. Little effort is made to search for the real causes of war and how to prevent holocausts of the future, which lie in the radical alteration of the world economic system.
Sincerely,
Bezalel Chaim
The Revisionist Press
GPO Box 2009
Brooklyn, NY 11202
Dear Sir:
As an erstwhile member of U.S. army intelligence of Majority ethnic descent, I applaud the efforts of the courageous authors who have contributed to The Journal of Historical Review. Most members of the Dispossessed Majority, as it has aptly been called, have all too long been content to let the propaganda myths of World War 11 go unchallenged; myths unscrupulously promulgated for purposes of political expediency with no regard for the real welfare of the Republic. The results of World War II continue to be very much with us in various forms and as burdens on the American taxpayers. The continued Communist domination of eastern Europe and the hostility of the Islamic nations toward us as a result of our unwavering support of the Zionist state in Palestine are examples of the terrible moral and economic burdens which Americans must bear as a result of what the myths helped to bring about. Late though the hour might be, it is still appropriate to reexamine the myths that caused and continue to cause us so much grief.
Sincerley yours,
Charles E. Weber, Ph.D.
Faculty of Letters
The University of Tulsa
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104
Dear Mr. Brandon:
Thank you for a most interesting publication, THE JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL REVIEW. The machinations of the international money manipulators and the role they play in history certainly needs to be exposed. My only disagreement with you is that you seem to feel these manipulators are solely Jewish, whereas I believe they belong to various groups.
Please spend more time exposing the fact that all governments are plutocracies and less time with prisoner-of-war camps. This may be of interest to a specialized group, but historical revision is too broad a subject to be narrowed in this fashion. If all money manipulators are not Jewish, then removing sympathy from the Jews by debunking the WWII genocide myth will not effectively oppose money manipulation. Please have more articles on economics, showing how these manipulations work.
Again, thank you for a very interesting publication.
Joe Baumhaft,
Oklahoma State University
Dear Mr. Brandon,
Thank you for yours of 7 July, which I found fascinating, not least because of your references to heretic-burning at Salzburg, Lewes, and in Spain, and the mobs who persecuted Copernicus, Darwin, Galileo, da Vinci, and poor old Columbus.
I should have thought that you, above all others, would have realized by now that these myths are the result of a massive historical confidence trick designed to discredit true defenders of high civilization. The fires of the Inquisition were, in fact, folk festivals mainly given over the marshmallow-roasting. Some heretics, it is true, were injured during these revels, but only because they shared with moths a fatal fascination for light. As for Copernicus, Galileo, and da Vinci, they were all implicated in a massive chainletter swindle, considering which they got off fairly lightly. Columbus was actually a double agent for the Aztecs, arid was the real origin of the raffish phrase 'Montezuma's revenge.' And Darwin was really a simian in disguise; his theory on the origins of species was thus merely an extended exercise in social climbing. Polite Englishmen of his day saw through this, but typically they did not mob him; rather he was excluded from the best clubs.
I have done much research on these and other evidences of the ages-old liberal-rationalist plot to discredit such exemplars of true humanity as Torquemada and judge Jeffreys, but I can't find anyone in the anti-intellectual liberal establishment to publish them. Perhaps you could point me in the way of finding some funds to subsidize publication of these essential findings?
Actually, I'm a product of the American educational system, so you had better add it to your list of fallen angels.
Yours sincerely,
Robert M. Bliss
University of Lancaster
England
Dear Lewis:
A magazine which may be of interest to those who read German is Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Germany in Past and Present). Now in its 27th year, the attractive journal is published quarterly by the Grabert Verlag of Tübingen, the publisher of important works such as Der Erzwungene Krieg by David Hoggan, Der Auschwitz Mythos by Wilhelm Stäglich, as well as the German editions of Yockey's Imperium and Rassinier's The Drama of the European Jews. The recent issues I have were sent to me by Dr. Stäglich, a regular contributor who was forced into early retirement for writing several articles questioning the “holocaust” legend.
Wilfried von Oven, once personal press consultant to Dr. Goebbels and author of the gripping memoir Finale Furioso, serves as editor in chief of the (self-described) “journal for politics and cultural — and intellectual — history.”
Each issue runs 32 to 40 pages and contains seven or eight major articles as well as several book reviews and a page of short news items. The format is similar to that of Instauration. Subscriptions from the United States cost DM 21 (about $12.50) per year and may be ordered from: Grabert Verlag, Postfach 1629, D-7400 Tübingen 1, West Germany.
Among other well-written articles, the latest issue contains a critical piece by Wilhelm Stäglich about the widely publicized Auschwitz aerial photos, and a review of a “Cholly Bilderberger” essay from Instauration.
The issue also contains an article by American historian David L. Hoggan on the background to Hitler's attack against Soviet Russia in 1941.
Hoggan's brilliant Harvard doctoral dissertation was considerably expanded to become Der Erzwungene Krieg (The Forced War). The book, now in its tenth edition, has earned a place as the standard work on the origins of the Second World War.
The Grabert Verlag has just announced the publication of a two-volume work by Dr. Hoggan entitled Das Blinde Jahrhundert (The Blind Century), the Californian's fourth major work. Volume one, released last October, is Amerika — Das messianische Unheil (America — The Messianic Calamity). The second part, Europa – Die verlorene Weltmitte (Europe — The Lost World Center) is expected to appear late next year.
Harry Elmer Barnes called the appearance of Hoggan's Erzwungene Krieg in 1961 “an epoch-making event in post-war historiography” which “destroyed for all time the fiction of Germany's exclusive responsibility for the outbreak of war in 1939. “
The appearance of important books by Hoggan, Arthur Butz, David Irving, A.J.P. Taylor, and others, has begun an inexorable process in revising the emotional and hate-filled “historiography” of the victors of 1945. Tremendous progress has been made recently in replacing the politically self-serving and highly tendentious writing of authors like William Shirer with something approximating the ever-elusive truth.
David Hoggan concludes his article for the last issue of Deutschland in Geschichte und Gegenwart with an admonition that could have come from the pen of the great Leopold von Ranke himself:
“Prejudice and emotion have no place in the search for historical truth. That effort demands hard work involving concrete facts and source materials. The result of such research work must be able to absolutely speak for itself, free from political considerations of any kind.”
Mark Weber
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. Brandon,
If your letter was a sample of the kind of thinking that goes into your work at the Institute for Historical Review, then I think that to call your journal a “rag” was elevating it too highly. Your letter of 25 August 1980 (The Christian News, 8 September 1980, page 13), is distorted and filled with errors.
I have nothing to lose in investigating history to find out the truth, and have no objection to your doing the same. What I object to is that you do not do this. You instead destroy history by publishing opinions that are clearly false and misunderstanding the past, and by becoming an apologist for the errors of Nazism.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States, 1933-1945, was not trying to get America into World War Two. He saw the rise of Nazism and the dangers it presaged, and understood that at some time this would lead the United States into war against Germany. But this might be prevented, if Hitler could be stopped, and Roosevelt did what he could to do just that. It is a complete misunderstanding of history to claim that Roosevelt's desire to get us into war led to Japan's attack on us at Pearl Harbor. Of course the Japanese insisted that we caused the war by forcing them to fight us. Of course, if we had given in to their urging, and let them go on as they wanted, they might not have gone to war against us at that time. Does our resistance make us the responsibile party?
If the American people were dead against war, why did Congress support Roosevelt's actions, support the draft (pre-war), and finally vote war by an immense majority? Why did those men get reelected?
What were Roosevelt's “covert … machinations”? I thought that his acts in the late 1930's and early 1940's were quite open. What did he do in secret? In what was he lying? You accused him of “mendacious machinations” but this is false rhetoric. Most of his activities were open and truthful, even if you happen to disagree with them, or with their results.
You seem to think the Neutrality Act forbade the President from keeping oil and metal from being shipped to Japan. Would you please cite the section of the law that forbade this?
Further, why should the President of the United States be required to allow sales of oil and metal to a country that is going to use these things against us?
What sort of political power to act for the good of the country would you allow to a President? What are the limits of action in foreign policy for any nation? Can you show that these activities by the United States were in fact aimed only at starting a war, and not at lesser goals? What purposes are proper for any foreign policy?
Would you allow the threat of war, by any power, to stop your country from the exercise of any economic policies short of war?
I think your point of view, and your idea of foreign policy, are stupid and self-contradictory. They are, I feel, caused only by your desire to make points against Roosevelt, and not upon the historical facts involved, nor upon any reasoned view of foreign policy and the constitutional limits of the American presidency.
HOW MANY DIED IN THE HOLOCAUST?
No one that I know has argued that all of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust, nor the millions of others killed by the deliberate action of Germans and other Nazis, under the leadership of Hitler in World War II, were all killed in concentration camps. Many thousands were killed in Russia by extermination groups. Others were slaughtered in the midst of the Warsaw insurrection.
Your figure of 350,000 (inexplicably reduced to 35,000 by the typists of the Christian News), is most probably the list of those persons who died in these camps, and were identified. It excludes the “death camps,” where millions died, and probably excludes those not personally identified. Do you claim that the Red Cross verified that only 350,000 persons in all in the whole of World War II [died] in the concentration camps of all kinds?
Even during World War II it was known that millions of Jews were being killed by the Germans. In December 1942 Rabbi Stephen Wise wrote to President Roosevelt to tell him of the mass massacres. Other sources of information verified this, but the news was so appalling that few could believe them, and they demanded more proof.
In August 1943 the New York Times reported on the organized murder by the Germans of 1.7 million persons, and the starvation deaths of 750,000 others. Others among Hitler's associates helped to reveal the truth, as in the work of SS Officer Gerstein and of those who brought the news to the Vatican.
But in the midst of war we could not bribe Hitler or negotiate with him, and it meant that we had few ways to deal with the terror Hitler had launched upon innocent civilians. Thus we could only look on in horror as the death camps murdered thousands of victims every month.
I have no objection to any attempt to verify the exact number of Jews and others who were killed by Hitler and the Germans in World War II. I know that we must estimate the numbers because some of the records of the German killers were lost but skillful reconstruction can help us to arrive at a good figure.
We are now dealing with deliberate killing. This excludes deaths by disease or starvation, or those who died fighting in or against the Germans under arms. Prisoners in concentration camps sometimes died because they were maltreated or given too little food, and their hearts gave out. We are even willing not to count them.
We include Jews burned to death in synagogues or asphyxiated in the panel vans or machine gunned to death beside trenches. We include those who were gassed in the death camps, or deprived of oxygen for the purpose of killing them. We include those human beings, babies to grandmothers, who were stripped nude and killed, and whose corpses were then examined to make sure their gold fillings were extracted.
We know of the many gold fillings and gold eyeglasses that poured into private Gestapo and SS accounts in Berlin, until they overflowed the warehouse room available for them. We know of the evidence given by some of the death merchants themselves, and of other witnesses.
We know some of the mechanics of the death camps, and how they were built. We have the estimates of the builders as to how much gas to use, and how to use it. We know some of the statistics here, and from them we can extrapolate as to the probable number killed.
I think six million is a credible figure. I would expect our best estimate to be between four and eight million Jews (by Hitler's idea of Judaism) killed, plus others dying in other circumstances.
I would be appalled at the idea Hitler killed one person simply for the “crime” of being born a Jew. Would you agree to condemn Hitler if we could show that his policies led to this one death, a deliberate execution of a person for being of a certain ethnic group, and that he approved of it? If not, why not?
THE ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE
The Anti-Defamation League is not illegal. Since you claimed it was, please tell me under what laws this group is cited as being illegal. If you can't, you should say so. At least, don't try to be silent about it. Tell me what laws it has broken and what political authority has outlawed it.
The ADL did not “terrorize” the Organization of American Historians. No reputable group of scholars would want to be associated with a group like yours, and to point out that you had secretively. latched onto their mailing list appalled them. All the ADL had to do was point it out, and the Organization of American Historians dropped you like a ton of hot bricks.
The ADL is not the representatives [sic] of a foreign dictatorship. I will not argue about the state of the government of Israel ' but only note that the links between the ADL and Israel in no sense make it a representative of Israel. If so, it would be registered. Is it? Why not look for facts, and not make wild and unsupported accusations?
The ADL did not tell American academics what they can or cannot read. Most of them, as experts agreed, would have picked up your rag with a pair of tongs and dropped it into their wastebaskets. The ADL would not try to do this. The academics would not stand for it. It did not happen.
This was not academic terrorism, or terrorism of any kind. When your secret and covert machinations were exposed, decent people turned on you and rejected you. Of course they apologized to the ADL, for the error they had been engaged on, and promised not to do it again. Who wouldn't?
The freedom of dissent was not involved, and it was not impaired. If you, in your rage, want to dissent, go ahead. If you won't recognize the truth, we will be sorry for you. But your power to dissent, and to argue with the ADL, was not reduced one whit by this action.
There is not a single statement about the ADL in your whole letter that is not false, fallacious, and spurious. You are not only not objective, you are wide of the truth. If this is your standard, your efforts will only help to destroy truth. The best thing you could do would be to get out of the business you are in, and go back to school to learn simple logic, history, and an appreciation for the truth.
LUTHER ON THE JEWS
Luther did write a diatribe about the Jews called The Jews and Their Lies. It has not been suppressed. It is of little theological interest, and there is little sociological interest in Luther for items that are clearly the result of his evangelical drive, and the resistance of the Jews to becoming Christians. He was disturbed because they would not acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ, and used the same violent language he used against the Roman Catholics and the Baptists against them.
If you want to read this little treatise, you can find scholarly editions of it. But please do not use Luther, or St. Paul for that matter, as authority for a position on the Jews, unless you read also some of the other matter they wrote on theology. While neither Paul nor Luther was an apologist for the Jews, or for the ADL, they would be appalled by your own views. They verge, it seems to me, on anti-semitism, and this, for a Christian, would be a terrible criticism.
HISTORICAL STUDY SHOULD LEAD TO TRUTH
In this letter there is little that is true. Your opinions are biased and false. Your knowledge of'-definite situations in the past is limited. Your view of foreign political administration is lamentably meager. You are not equipped for what you are doing.
Couldn't you find another trade?
You don't seem equipped for history. If you are the director, what sort of material do you put out? If you edit the magazine, how can anyone expect to find anything of value in it?
Yours in Christ Jesus our Lord
Pastor John Holte Hagen
Box 97
Nerstrand, Mn 55053
Bibliographic information about this document: The Journal of Historical Review, vol. 1, no. 4 (winter 1980), pp. 297-307
Other contributors to this document: n/a
Editor’s comments: n/a