The Dachau Gas Chamber: An American Forgery?

In 2011, two important articles appeared on the alleged gas chamber at Dachau Concentration Camp, one by the Orthodoxy, the other by a revisionist. The first, authored by Barbara Distel with the (translated) title “The Gas Chamber in ‘Baracke X’ of the Dachau Concentration Camp and the ‘Dachau Lie’,” was published in the proceedings of an international historical conference held in Oranienburg, Germany, in 2008. The other was written by Thomas Dalton and appeared in the journal Inconvenient History under the title “Reexamining the ‘Gas Chamber’ of Dachau” (Dalton 2011).

I have discussed orthodox writings on this topic earlier (“The Mysterious Gas Chamber at Dachau,” in Mattogno 2016, pp. 222-227). Before I expand on my earlier elaborations, I reiterate what I wrote earlier about what the orthodoxy knows on this topic, which is still valid today.

In her paper, Barbara Distel states (Distel, p. 337):

“In the spring of 1942, the construction of a new crematory in line with the plans of the SS was started at Dachau – designated as ‘Bara­cke X’ by the SS, because the capacity of the crematorium erected in 1940 was no longer sufficient in view of the high mortality in the camp, caused in particular by the execution of thousands of Soviet PoWs. The new crematorium was equipped with a gas chamber.”

Distel then continues (p. 338):

“The question of whether people were actually murdered by poison gas in the gas chamber installed in this crematorium has not yet been answered with certainty; the sources in this respect are poor, and this has not changed in the 25 years which have passed since the first scientific inventory on ‘Nazi Mass Murders.’”

For this reason, Distel tells us, the “date of the termination and/or the start-up of the gas chamber is still unclear” (footnote 8 on p. 338), in spite of the fact that, at Dachau, “in the early 1960s an intensive search for reliable sources was carried out in the area of the former camp as part of the creation of a memorial” (footnote 6 on p. 338).

Distel states that, in the opinion of orthodox historians B. Siebert, the alleged gas chamber was built in connection with the execution of Soviet PoWs, but she adds (pp. 339f.):

“The question as to why the gas chamber, presumably finalized in the spring of 1943, was not used for executions according to what we know today must remain unresolved just like the question whether the gas chamber was possibly used for individual killing actions.”

While evidence is said to exist to the effect that “during the construction of Baracke X” the infamous Dr. Siegmund Rascher considered using “the gas chamber for the testing of deadly combat gases,” this has “not been ascertained unambiguously to the present day,” although it “could not be excluded” either (p. 339).

In this regard there is the well-known statement by former camp inmate František (Franz) Bláha of January 9, 1946 (PS-3249) – to which I will return later – which another historian, Stanislav Zámečník, “considers credible, despite its contradictions, or for not improbable with respect to a use of the gas chamber as suggested by Rascher.” but Distel then admits that “evidence for the killing of people in the Dachau gas chamber does not exist in this case either” (p. 340).

Just as unresolved, in her opinion, is the question why the alleged gas chamber “was not used during the last months of the war for the murder of the sick and the weak, as was the case in other camps which possessed such killing installations” (ibid.).

As in the case of other camps, the gas-chamber story at Dachau was born out of the tragic situation the Americans found and filmed when they entered the camp. At the Dachau Trial (November 15 – December 13, 1945) it was explicitly admitted (United Nations…, p. 5):

“A typhus epidemic was raging at the camp from December, 1944, until the liberation of the camp by American troops in April, 1945. Approximately 15,000 prisoners died of typhus during this period.”

Distel writes (p. 337):

“In front of the [crematorium] building, as well as in the so-called morgue, there were piles of naked corpses that it had been impossible to throw into the mass grave near-by. That is where the dead had been taken in the last weeks before the liberation, as there was no longer any fuel for the incineration of the corpses in the cremation furnaces.”

It was clear to the U.S. propaganda staff that these poor people must have been murdered in a gas chamber. This version was all the easier to sell as there existed – in front of the crematorium – four genuine Zyklon B circulation disinfestation chambers (plus an empty one, without any equipment, which was probably used for the storage of the Zyklon B cans). As we will see later, these chambers would be presented as homicidal gas chambers in the official American report on Dachau prepared in May of 1945.

To complete the propaganda picture, the Americans had a sign placed in front of the crematorium in 1945 that spoke of “238000 individuals who were cremated here” (Distel, p. 340).

Paul Rassinier, who published a photograph of this sign (“This area is being retained as shrine to the 238.000 individuals who were cremated here. Please don’t destroy”), added (Rassinier 1961, p. 334):

“In a lecture presented on 3 January 1946 and published in Stutt­gart by Franz M. Hellbach under the title ‘The road to freedom,’ Pastor Niemöller asserted that ‘238,756 people were burnt’ at Dachau, more than had ever been interned there.”

This is correct, except that this was not Niemöller ‘s claim, but another sign placed in front of the crematorium that said (Niemöller, p. 19):

“In the years between 1933 and 1945, 238,756 people were burnt here.”

Distel then briefly reviews several postwar publications that mention the alleged Dachau gas chamber; some claimed that only a few experimental gassings were performed there, while others maintain that it “never really worked properly.”

In the 1960s, the Dachau Memorial placed a sign in several languages on the premises in question that read: “Gas Chamber disguised as a ‘shower room’ – never used as a gas chamber.” It was still there in 1990, when I visited the camp (see illustration).

Also in 1960, the first protests began. The German right-wing tabloid Deutsche National-Zeitung und Soldaten-Zeitung began to speak of the “Gas Chamber Hoax of Dachau.” The critics went so far as to claim that the furnaces of the new crematorium had been built after the war,[1] and they merged the gas-chamber and cremation themes into the term “gas oven.” Distel then writes about Martin Broszat ‘s much-cited letter to the editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, published on 19 August 1960 under the title “No gassing at Dachau,” and adds that “the revisionists” (it would have been better to say “some revisionists”) had distorted its contents and had claimed falsely that Martin Broszat had contested in a general way the existence of gas chambers on the territory of the Altreich, i.e. Germany in the borders of 1937 (which, in fact, he did not do).

All this is well known. What is less well known is that Martin Broszat wrote his letter “in reaction to an article written by Robert Strobel on the front page of ‘Die Zeit,’ in which he implicitly painted as a fact the assertion that mass killings by poison gas had been carried out in the Dachau gas chamber and moreover created the impression that the victims had been Jewish” (Distel, p. 341).

In this article, Robert Strobel had attacked the former Wehrmacht general Martin Unrein, a “proto-denier” who had labeled the gas chamber as an ordinary shower room. The meaningless notion of “gas ovens” was introduced into the discussion by Robert Strobel himself:

“For him [General Unrein], it was not Hitler’s victims who were burned in the Dachau gas ovens but the corpses of the German SS-soldiers who had died at Dachau.”

The article mentioned by Distel actually appeared only on 7 January 1966 (since 1963 the title of the newspaper has simply been Deutsche Nationalzeitung). It was written by H. Berger and was headlined “Rumors about Dachau.” It stated that the SS guards, interned at Dachau, had been forced by the Americans to build “new and larger gas ovens” – which, of course, is incorrect.

Distel concludes by asserting that the revisionists have not changed their arguments since that time (Distel, p. 342).

In fact, a major change in the way revisionists argue occurred precisely in 2011, thanks to Thomas Dalton ‘s article mentioned earlier, which followed his visit to Dachau in the middle of that year. He first notes contradictions in the official literature that seem to support the accusation that the alleged gas chamber was set up by the Americans: on the one hand, the gassing system described is at odds with the current state of the place, and on the other hand, a report dated May 15, 1945, states that the ceiling of the alleged gas chamber was “some 10 feet” (about 3 meters) high, so the ceiling must have been lowered after the Americans arrived in Dachau (Dalton, p. 327):

“Indeed the gas chamber ceiling today is 2.15 meters high, but the adjacent room height is 2.9 meters – a full 75 cm (30 inch) differential. Whoever lowered the ceiling and installed the ‘fake showerheads’ did a remarkably crude job. Today it appears as a poured concrete ceiling, smooth and white, into which someone roughly chiseled several funnel-shaped holes. Of the 15 such holes, 13 have an open metal funnel, one is complete with perforated head, and the last is fully exposed […]. In most cases one can see, faintly, evidence of rework to the ceiling after the ‘shower heads’ were installed.”

The author then lays out pertinent observations based on the current state of the alleged gas chamber.

The evidence in favor of the American forgery seemed convincing, and I too assumed its validity in my paper cited earlier (first published in German: Mattogno 2011, pp. 258-264), but I soon renounced this explanation in the article “The Dachau ‘Gas Chamber’: New Perspectives,” which appeared in 2015 on the Olodogma website, of which the present study is a radical reworking.

The May 15, 1945 report mentioned by Dalton is Nuremberg Document L-159, which was published in the court records with the following explanation (IMT, Vol. 37, p. 615):

“Report of a special Congressional Committee to the Congress of the United States, 15 May 1945, following a personal inspection of Buchenwald, Nordhausen, and Dachau concentration camp: conditions in the camps. Particularly atrocities which had been committed there (Exhibit USA-222)”

In the section on Dachau, we read the following:

“The gas chamber was located in the center of a large room in the crematory building. It was built of concrete. Its dimensions were about 20 by 20 feet, and the ceiling was some 10 feet in height! In two opposite walls of the chamber were airtight doors through which condemned prisoners could be taken into the chamber for execution and removed after execution. The supply of gas into the chamber was controlled by means of two valves on one of the outer walls, and beneath the valves was a small glass-covered peephole through which the operator could watch the victims die. The gas was let into the chamber through pipes terminating in perforated brass fixtures set into the ceiling. The chamber was of size sufficient to execute probably a hundred men at one time.”

To this description can be added the account by former camp inmate Eugen Seibold recorded in a statement dated November 10, 1945:

“I have never seen any person killed by gas in the gas chamber. The gas chamber was originally differently arranged than it looks now. Ranges [shower heads] like in a shower-room which ran parallel to the ground were supposed to spray the gas. Only later on, about a year ago, the ceiling with the false shower-heads was built in. The reason was that the gas to be used came in grains. Steam heated from the furnaces was supposed to enter the chamber on the top of the false ceiling where the gas grains would be dissolved by the steam which then would come out through the shower heads and kill the people.

We had 10 boxes of this gas called cyclon in our office for half a year, but they were never used. An engineer from Berlin who is right now at Dachau and at large was in charge of the construction [sic]. The gas arrangement was never finished, and we prisoners can say that we helped to sabotage its completion. When in 1944 the construction dump was damaged by bombs, we took a few parts from our steam dump in the basement which could not be replaced and made sure that there was never a chance to use the devilly [sic] system as planned by the SS High Command. I know, however, that people were very anxious to get the gas chamber going.”

Dr. Hintermeyer, the witness continues, visited the crematorium twice. The second time, on February 1, 1944, he told SS Oberscharführer Bongartz that the gas chamber absolutely had to be finished because 500 Jews from Berlin were to be gassed there.[2]

While the claimed original system of real showers could theoretically have worked with a gas such as carbon monoxide in pressurized cylinders, the one purportedly made afterwards is absurd. The “gas grains” had to be poured, it is not known how, into a cavity that had been created between the original ceiling and the one built later (which was made of concrete). Through the original real showers, water vapor was injected into the cavity, which “dissolved” the granules, generating the gas. But since the showers in the new ceiling were “fake,” the gas vapors could not enter the room, hence would have remained in the cavity!

The witness, who was in charge of cremating corpses, uttered glaring absurdities in this area as well: the furnaces allegedly operated at a temperature of 1,800°C – twice the probably actual temperature – and seven to eight corpses were put into each muffle that was designed to contain only one corpse – and if the corpses were emaciated, even nine were allegedly introduced! This impossible load presumably burned within two hours; after two hours, another similar load is said to have been introduced.[3]

Endnotes