Richard J. Evans: The New Wave of “Court” Historian

Introduction

The mainstream media viciously attacked David Irving after his testimony at the 1988 false-news trial of Ernst Zündel in Canada. Irving’s books subsequently disappeared from many bookshops, his sales plummeted, and he was ultimately labeled a “Holocaust denier.”[1]

The harassment campaign against David Irving included numerous arrests in various countries. These arrests did not seem to bother Richard Evans. Evans writes:[2]

“One would not have expected a reputable historian to have run into such trouble, and indeed it was impossible to think of any historian of any standing at all who had been subjected to so many adverse legal judgments.”

It likewise did not interest Evans that David Irving’s arrests were attributable to the fact that numerous countries make it a felony to dispute facts of the so-called Holocaust. This reflects poorly on the regimes Irving was arrested in rather than on Irving’s qualities as a historian. The question is: What kind of historical truth needs criminal sanctions to protect it? The Holocaust story would not need criminal sanctions to protect it if it were solidly based in historiographic evidence.

Deborah Lipstadt writes in her book Denying the Holocaust that “on some level Irving seems to conceive himself as carrying on Hitler’s legacy.” Lipstadt describes Irving as a “Hitler partisan wearing blinkers” who “distort[ed] evidence […] manipulate[ed] documents, [and] skew[ed…] and misrepresent[ed] data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions.”[3] David Irving brought a suit against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books Ltd. in British courts to end these and other similar libelous statements.

Lipstadt’s defense team hired Richard Evans toward the end of 1997 as an expert witness. Evans was told that his first duty as an expert witness was to the court, and that he had to be as truthful and objective as possible in his report. Evans accepted the commission, and 18 months later, he presented his 740-page report at the end of July 1999. Nikolaus Wachsmann and Thomas Skelton-Robinson, who were both Ph.D. candidates under Evans, assisted him in research and writing his report.[4]

The “Holocaust”

Evans writes about the “Holocaust”:[5]

“Over a number of years, I have had direct experience of Holocaust denial in a variety of forms. At the turn of the century, I was involved as an expert witness in the libel action brought by the writer David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books, over her allegation that he was a Holocaust denier who manipulated and distorted the evidence for the Nazi extermination of European Jews. Researching the subject for the trial, which ended in Irving’s comprehensive defeat, brought me into contact with many varieties of Holocaust denial, many of them nauseating, all of them upsetting.”

Evans thus makes it clear that he detests what he calls “Holocaust denial.” However, Evans displays a remarkable ignorance of this subject. Evans writes of the chemistry aspects of the Leuchter Report:[6]

“[Fred] Leuchter had removed samples from the inner walls of Crematorium II at Auschwitz-Birkenau and had them analyzed, with the result that the concentration of cyanide residues was found to be slight, compared with the concentrations found in the delousing facilities, thus showing, he had triumphantly declared, that the crematorium was not used for gassing people. But he had taken great chunks out of the wall instead of scrapings off the surface, thus greatly diluting whatever residues were to be found there.”

The allegation that Leuchter took “great chunks” out of the walls does not invalidate the chemical aspects of his report, nor of the comparison with the delousing chambers, from which he took “chunks” of similar size. Dr. James Roth testified at the 1988 Ernst Zündel trial that he received samples from Fred Leuchter in his capacity as an analytical chemist at Alpha Analytical Laboratories. The purpose of the tests was to determine the total iron and cyanide content in the samples. Roth said that the Prussian blue produced by a reaction of the iron with the hydrogen cyanide could penetrate deeply in porous materials such as brick and mortar.[7] Thus, according to Roth’s testimony at the Ernst Zündel trial, the fact that Leuchter took “great chunks” out of the walls did not invalidate the chemical aspects of his report.

Dr. Roth later refuted his testimony in a documentary movie titled Mr. Death produced by Errol Morris. Roth states in this movie: “Cyanide is a surface reaction. It’s probably not going to penetrate more than 10 microns. Human hair is 100 microns in diameter. Crush this sample up, I have just diluted that sample 10,000; 100,000 times. If you’re going to go looking for it, you’re going to look on the surface only. There’s no reason to go deep, because it’s not going to be there.”[8]

Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom writes that Dr. Roth’s statements in Mr. Death, besides contradicting his original testimony, are wrong:[9]

“The 1999 film about Leuchter features an interview with the chemist [Dr. James Roth] who had done the analysis of his wall-samples back in 1988. He had done this “blind,” i.e. with no knowledge of where they had come from, which was correct scientific procedure. During the second Zündel trial in Toronto in 1988 he testified under oath concerning the method used and what Leuchter had sent him. He said back then that hydrogen cyanide can easily penetrate into brick and mortar. But then, when he was interviewed again by Morris for his documentary, he suddenly stated that the results were quite meaningless, because the cyanide could only have soaked a few microns into the brickwork. Wow, that was quite a whopper. Mortar and brickwork are highly porous to hydrogen cyanide, obviously so because the delousing chambers were more or less equally blue inside and out, it had soaked right through. But you can watch him on video explaining this, as if he were confusing brick and mortar with rock. The latter will only absorb cyanide to a few microns of its surface.“

Germar Rudolf, a degreed chemist, gives numerous reasons why Dr. Roth’s statements in Mr. Death are incorrect. Rudolf concludes:[10]

“It is also revealing that Prof. Roth mentioned during this interview that, had he known where Leuchter’s samples originated from, his analytical results would have been different. Does that mean that Prof. Roth manipulates his result according to whether or not he likes the origin of certain samples? Such an attitude is exactly the reason why one should never tell an ‘independent’ laboratory about the origin of the samples to be analyzed, simply because ‘independence’ is a very flexible term when it comes to controversial topics. What Prof. Dr. Roth has demonstrated here is only his lack of professional honesty.”

So much for Dr. Roth’s objectivity. Chemists defending the orthodox Holocaust narrative have not explained why the walls of the delousing facilities at Auschwitz-Birkenau are permeated all the way through with Prussian blue, while nothing of this sort can be observed in any of the alleged homicidal gas chambers. The only conceivable explanation is that Zyklon B was never used in the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Nicholas Kollerstrom writes, “[…] for any alleged human gas chamber found in a German World War II labour camp let us merely measure cyanide in the walls: if it’s not there, it didn’t happen.”[11]

The physical evidence refutes the possibility of homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In addition to the aforementioned Leuchter Report, articles, testimony, reports, books and videos from Walter Lüftl, Germar Rudolf, Friedrich Paul Berg, Dr. William B. Lindsey, Carlo Mattogno, John C. Ball, Wolfgang Fröhlich, Dr. Arthur Butz, Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom, Richard Krege and David Cole have conclusively proven that there were no homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The books The Real Case for Auschwitz by Carlo Mattogno[12] and The Chemistry of Auschwitz by Germar Rudolf[13] are probably the best books for anyone wanting to make a thorough study of this subject, although Amazon and mainstream booksellers refuse to handle them. They are available only through the Web site of Castle Hill Publishers, Powell’s Bookstore of Portland, Oregon and a few others.

Evans also disputes David Irving’s statements that the Wannsee Conference held on January 20, 1942 did not discuss the extermination of Jews.[14] The documentary evidence of this meeting, however, shows that no extermination program existed. Instead, the German policy was to evacuate the Jews into recently conquered territories to the East.

Many Jewish Holocaust historians agree with Irving that the Wannsee Conference did not discuss the extermination of Europe’s Jews. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer has declared, “The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at.”[15] Likewise, Israeli Holocaust historian Leni Yahil has stated in regard to the Wannsee Conference, “[I]t is often assumed that the decision to launch the Final Solution was taken on this occasion, but this is not so.”[16]

Although the Allies captured most of Germany’s government and camp records intact, Evans fails to explain why no order or documentation has ever been found to exterminate European Jewry nor, indeed, even to acknowledge this fact. When asked in 1983 how the extermination of European Jewry took place without an order, Jewish Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg replied:[17]

“What began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus, came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus—mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.“

On January 16, 1985, at the first Ernst Zündel trial in Toronto, Raul Hilberg confirmed that he said these words.[18] Thus, Hilberg states that the genocide of European Jewry was not carried out by any plan or order, but rather by a literally incredible mind-reading among far-flung German bureaucrats.

Other historians have acknowledged that no document of a plan by Germany to exterminate European Jewry has ever been found. In his well-known book on the Holocaust, French-Jewish historian Leon Poliakov stated that “[…] the campaign to exterminate the Jews, as regards its conception as well as many other essential aspects, remains shrouded in darkness.” Poliakov adds that no documents of a plan for exterminating the Jews have ever been found because “perhaps none ever existed.”[19]

British historian Ian Kershaw states that when the Soviet archives were opened in the early 1990s:[20]

“Predictably, a written order by Hitler for the ‘Final Solution’ was not found. The presumption that a single, explicit written order had ever been given had long been dismissed by most historians.”

Thus, neither the Wannsee Conference nor any written document indicates a plan by National-Socialist Germany to exterminate Jews.

The Dresden Bombings

Historians and witnesses have made many conflicting estimates of how many people died from the Allied bombings of Dresden on February 13-14, 1945. David Irving in his 1964 book The Destruction of Dresden estimated that approximately 135,000 people died in Dresden from the British and American bombings.[21] Richard Evans, in his inquiry of 1998, estimated that approximately 25,000 people died during these bombings. Predictably, Evans alleges that Irving intentionally inflated the estimated death figure at Dresden. Evans writes about Irving, “An honest historian would have taken due consideration of the convergence of the major authentic sources around estimates in the area of 25,000 dead.”[22]

Historians agree that a large number of German refugees were in Dresden during the night of February 13-14, 1945. However, the estimates of refugees in Dresden the night of the Allied bombings vary widely, and this is a major reason for the differences in the death-toll estimates. Irving writes concerning the number of refugees in Dresden:[23]

“Silesians represented probably 80% of the displaced people crowding into Dresden on the night of the triple blow; the city which in peacetime had a population of 630,000 citizens was by the eve of the air attack so crowded with Silesians, East Prussians and Pomeranians from the Eastern front, with Berliners and Rhinelanders from the West, with Allied and Russian prisoners of war, with evacuated children’s settlement, with forced laborers of many nationalities, that the increased population was now between 1,200,000 and 1,400,000 citizens, of whom, not surprisingly, several hundred thousand had no proper home and of whom none could seek the protection of an air-raid shelter.”

Evans attempts to discredit Irving’s estimate of Dresden’s swollen population at the time of the Allied bombings. One source Evans cites is Dresden historian Friedrich Reichert, who estimates that only 567,000 residents and 100,000 refugees were in Dresden on the night of the bombings. Reichert quotes witnesses who state that no refugees were billeted in the homes of Dresdners, and that no shelter was (futilely) sought in Dresden’s parks or squares. Thus, Reichert estimates that the number of people in Dresden on the night of the bombings was not much greater than the official figure of Dresden’s population before the war.[24]

Reichert’s estimate of Dresden’s population during the bombings is almost certainly too low. An RAF memo stated before the attack:[25]

“Dresden, the seventh largest city in Germany and not much smaller than Manchester is also [by] far the largest unbombed built-up area the enemy has got. In the midst of winter with refugees pouring westwards and troops to be rested, roofs are at a premium, not only to give shelter to workers, refugees and troops alike, but also to house the administrative services displaced from other areas.”

A woman living on the outskirts of Dresden at the time of the bombings said:[26]

“At the time my mother and I had train station duty here in the city. The refugees! They all came from everywhere! The city was stuffed full!”

Alexander McKee wrote in regard to Dresden:[27]

“Every household had its large quota of refugees, and many more had arrived in Dresden that day, so that the pavements were blocked by them, as they struggled onwards or simply sat exhausted on their suitcases and rucksacks. For these reasons, no one has been able to put a positive figure to the numbers of the dead, and no doubt no one ever will.”

A report prepared by the USAF Historical Division Research Studies Institute Air University stated that “there may probably have been about 1,000,000 people in Dresden on the night of the 13/14 February RAF attack.”[28] I think the 1-million population figure cited in this report is a conservative minimum estimate of Dresden’s population during the Allied bombings. If Irving’s estimate of Dresden’s population is at all overstated, it is not overstated by very much.

Evans writes:[29]

“Even allowing for the unique circumstances of Dresden, a figure of 250,000 dead would have meant that 20% to 30% of the population was killed, a figure so grossly out of proportion to other comparable attacks as to have raised the eyebrows of anyone familiar with the statistics of bombing raids, as Irving was, even if the population had been inflated by an influx of refugees fleeing the advance of the Red Army.”

Contrary to Evans’s statement, a comparable attack to that of Dresden occurred at Pforzheim, Germany 10 days later on February 23, 1945. Since neither Dresden nor Pforzheim had suffered much damage earlier in the war, the flammability of both cities had been preserved.[30] A perfect firestorm was created over both of these defenseless cities. These cities also lacked sufficient air-raid shelters for their citizens.

The area of destruction at Pforzheim comprised approximately 83% of the city, and 20,277 out of 65,000 people died according to official estimates.[31] Sönke Neitzel also estimates that approximately 20,000 out of a total population of 65,000 died in the raid at Pforzheim.[32] This means that over 30% of the residents of Pforzheim died in one bombing attack.

The question is: If more than 30% of the residents of Pforzheim died in one bombing attack, why would, as Evans suggests, only approximately 2.5% of Dresdners die in similar raids 10 days earlier? The second wave of bombers in the Dresden raid appeared over Dresden at the very time that the maximum number of fire brigades and rescue teams were in the streets of the burning city. This second wave of bombers compounded the earlier destruction many times, and by design killed the firemen and rescue workers so that the destruction could rage on unchecked.[33] The raid on Pforzheim, by contrast, consisted of only one bombing wave. Also, Pforzheim was a much smaller target, so that it would have been easier for the people on the ground to escape from the blaze.

The only reason why the death-rate percentage would be higher at Pforzheim versus Dresden is that a higher percentage of Pforzheim was destroyed in the bombings. Alan Russell estimates that 83% of Pforzheim’s city center was destroyed versus only 59% of Dresden’s.[34] This would, however, account for only a portion of the percentage difference in the death tolls. Based on the death-toll percentage in the Pforzheim raid, it is reasonable to assume that 20% of Dresdners died in the British and American attacks on the city.

If a 20% death-rate figure times an estimated population in Dresden of 1 million is used, the death-toll figure in Dresden would be 200,000. If a 25% death-rate figure times an estimated population of 1.2 million is used, the death-toll figure in Dresden would be 300,000. Thus, death-toll estimates in Dresden of 250,000 people are quite plausible when compared to the Pforzheim bombing.

The British were fully aware that mass death and destruction would result from the bombing of Germany’s cities. The British Directorate of Bombing Operations predicted the following consequences from its saturation-bombing program called Operation Thunderclap:[35]

“If we assume that the daytime population of the area attacked is 300,000, we may expect 220,000 casualties. Fifty per cent of these or 110,000 may expect to be killed. It is suggested that such an attack resulting in so many deaths, the great proportion of which will be key personnel, cannot help but have a shattering effect on political and civilian morale all over Germany.”

Evans states that it would be impossible to remove 200,000 dead bodies in a short period of time at Dresden. He writes:[36]

“And how was it imaginable that 200,000 bodies could have been recovered from out of the ruins in less than a month? It would have required a veritable army of people to undertake such work, and hundreds of sorely needed vehicles to transport the bodies. The effort actually undertaken to recover bodies was considerable, but there was no evidence that it reached the levels required to remove this number.”

Evans apparently does not realize that many of the dead bodies at Dresden were not incinerated at the Altmarkt or transported out of Dresden. A British sergeant reported on the disposal of bodies at Dresden:[37]

“They had to pitchfork shriveled bodies onto trucks and wagons and cart them to shallow graves on the outskirts of the city. But after two weeks of work the job became too much to cope with and they found other means to gather up the dead. They burned bodies in a great heap in the center of the city, but the most effective way, for sanitary reasons, was to take flamethrowers and burn the dead as they lay in the ruins. They would just turn the flamethrowers into the houses, burn the dead and then close off the entire area. The whole city is flattened. They were unable to clean up the dead lying beside roads for several weeks.“

Other historians cite evidence that bodies were incinerated beyond recognition. These incinerated bodies would not have to be transported to another location. For example, Marshall De Bruhl cites a report found in an urn by a gravedigger in 1975 written on March 12, 1945 by a young soldier identified only as Gottfried. This report stated:[38]

“I saw the most painful scene ever. […] Several persons were near the entrance, others at the flight of steps and many others further back in the cellar. The shapes suggested human corpses. The body structure was recognizable and the shape of the skulls, but they had no clothes. Eyes and hair carbonized but not shrunk. When touched, they disintegrated into ashes, totally, no skeleton or separate bones.

I recognized a male corpse as that of my father. His arm had been jammed between two stones, where shreds of his grey suit remained. What sat not far from him was no doubt mother. The slim build and shape of the head left no doubt. I found a tin and put their ashes in it. Never had I been so sad, so alone and full of despair. Carrying my treasure and crying I left the gruesome scene. I was trembling all over and my heart threatened to burst. My helpers stood there, mute under the impact.“

Evans also disputes Irving’s claim that bodies were still being recovered in Dresden.[39] Marshall De Bruhl, however, agrees with Irving’s claim. De Bruhl notes that numerous other skeletons of victims were discovered in the ruins of Dresden as rubble was removed or foundations for new buildings were dug. De Bruhl writes:[40]

“One particularly poignant discovery was made when the ruins adjacent to the Altmarkt were being excavated in the 1990s. The workmen found the skeletons of a dozen young women who had been recruited from the countryside to come into Dresden and help run the trams during the war. They had taken shelter from the rain of bombs in an ancient vaulted subbasement, where their remains lay undisturbed for almost 50 years.“

Thus, with regard to Dresden’s death toll, Evans does not have a legitimate basis for saying “all of Irving’s attempts to justify a high figure rested on fantasy, invention, speculation, the suppression of reliable evidence, the use of unreliable sources, or, most shockingly, the repeated deployment of a document that he knew to be a forgery.”[41] Evans unfairly accuses David Irving of intentionally overstating the death-toll figure in the Dresden bombings. If anything, I think Irving underestimates the death toll from these bombings, aside from whatever intentions Sir Richard Evans in his all-seeing wisdom might impute to Irving.

Conclusion

Evans concludes his expert report by claiming that David Irving is no historian. He writes:[42]

“I have understood that my overriding duty is to the Court. My paramount obligation, as I have been advised by my Instructing Solicitors, is to assist the Court on all matters within my expertise regardless of whom my instructions are from and who is paying my fees. I confirm that this report is impartial, objective and unbiased and has been produced independently of the exigencies of this litigation. I believe that the facts I have stated in this report are true and that the opinions I have expressed are correct.”

In reality, David Irving is an inspired and inspiring historian who has done invaluable work uncovering new information in the archives. Irving’s books will be read as long as there are people interested in World War II history (and booksellers willing to handle them). By contrast, Richard Evans is a court historian whose expert report in the David Irving trial was designed to smear Irving as much as possible. Evans’s concluding statement is simply of a piece with the rest of his report: not “impartial, objective and unbiased,” and not “produced independently of the exigencies of this litigation.”

Endnotes