The Early History of Revisionism

Readers knowledgeable about the Holocaust will recall that the central elements of the present-day story existed not only in the immediate aftermath of the war – when such things were at least theoretically knowable – but also during the war, and even before the war, when they were not. Hitler’s plan for the “extermination” of the Jews, the gas chambers and the potential 6 million victims – all these were prominent features of major newspapers during and prior to the war. These were unprecedented and extreme claims, and they drew skeptical commentary even amidst the war. But this early history of revisionism is largely unknown today, even by specialists.

When the question arises of the earliest revisionist writings, most experts will point to the work of Paul Rassinier (1906-1967). A French communist at the outbreak of the war, Rassinier fought with the French Resistance against the Germans until his arrest in October 1943, after which he was deported to Buchenwald and Dora camps. He escaped a German transport train in April 1945, survived the war, and went on to write 11 books, most about the war.

Rassinier’s first book to challenge the Holocaust story was The Lie of Ulysses, initially published in 1950 and then in expanded form in 1955. There, he first questions the gassing claims and challenges the existence of homicidal gas chambers, leading to a grave skepticism about the entire alleged extermination program. The capture, trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 led to a second important work, The Real Eichmann Trial (1962), and eventually to a third critical book, The Drama of the European Jews (1964).

As important as these works are, they were preceded by, or contemporaneous with, other important critical thinkers who objected to various aspects of the Holocaust story. Here I will highlight two overlooked individuals, in order to give credit where credit is due: Douglas Reed and John O. Beaty.

But first, let us recall some basic aspects of the conventional story. Assertions that Hitler wanted to “exterminate” the Jews were promoted in major newspapers from almost the day he became known to the world. In a remarkable early anticipation, the New York Times reported already in February of 1923 – a full decade before he took power – that “a part of the program of Herr Hitler […] is the extermination of the Jews” (8 Feb). Upon his ascension in 1933, the NYT was ready to promote the soon-infamous figure of 6 million Jewish victims. The very month that Hitler took power, the NYT reported on a “Hitler protest” in New York; Rabbi Stephen Wise issued an appeal for “the preservation of German Jewry,” adding that his group “is now active in relief and reconstruction work in Eastern Europe where 6,000,000 Jews are involved” (29 Mar, p. 9).

Stories about “extermination” and “6 million” threatened or endangered Jews made several appearances in subsequent years, and accelerated as soon as war became imminent. In early 1938, the NYT reported on “a depressing picture of 6,000,000 Jews in Central Europe, deprived of protection or economic opportunities, slowly dying of starvation, all hope gone” (23 Feb, p. 23). War began in September 1939, and naturally yet more such stories appeared; in mid-1940, the NYT quoted Nahum Goldmann: “Six million Jews are doomed to destruction if the victory of the Nazis should be final” (25 Jun, p. 4). This incredible prediction came one full year before Hitler allegedly decided to begin his program of Jewish mass murder, according to traditionalist experts.

As the war progressed, death tolls mounted on all sides – but especially on the side of the Jews, if we are to believe our major papers. By December 1942, the Jewish death toll was reported as 2 million, representing one third of the 6,000,000 “in Hitler’s domain.” It was, said the NYT, “a holocaust without parallel” (13 Dec, p. 21). Thus, “holocaust,” “extermination,” and a looming “6 million victims” were firmly established in the public media already by the end of 1942.

Now, it is certainly a fact that, as they say, truth is the first victim in any war; but even so, one could expect that intelligent and critically thinking observers of that time would have begun asking themselves some pertinent questions. How, for example, do we know that 6 million are at risk? How does anyone know that 2 million Jews had been killed? How was Hitler physically able to round up and kill that many people, in only some 18 months? (Reports of mass civilian killing did not emerge until mid-1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.) If true, Hitler was killing more than 110,000 Jews per month, on average – or some 3,700 per day, every day. Surely skeptical thinkers asked themselves: is this even possible, amidst a major war?

And in fact, at least one thinker did ask such questions: Douglas Reed (1895-1976), a British writer, journalist and political commentator. A pilot in World War One, Reed went on to become lead European correspondent for the Times of London. He resigned in 1938 in order to become an independent journalist and author, publishing roughly one book per year for the next 15 years. Of special interest here is his 1943 book Lest We Regret. Primarily a study of the British political climate at the time, one lengthy chapter – “The Children of Israel” – examines the Jewish Question. The primary focus of the chapter is his worry about importing more Eastern European Jews into Britain, but along the way, he voices concerns about Hitler’s alleged Jewish policy and the large reported death toll.

Lest We Regret was apparently written from mid-1942 through about April 1943 (the latest cited date) – precisely the period of time in which the alleged extermination program was peaking, and death tolls were skyrocketing. The following is an extended excerpt from the subject chapter (pp. 249-254):[1]

“In November 1942, a great campaign began about the ‘extermination’ of the Jews. At that very moment, the prospect of our victory first loomed distinct. The Eighth Army conquered in Libya; Italy showed signs of distress; the Germans failed to take Stalingrad; that Germany would be beaten, possibly even in 1943, became clear (and I wrote a play foretelling Hitler’s disappearance).

Victory, then, approached. If it came, and found those Jews still in Europe, they would remain there. If they were to leave Europe (if ‘the problem’ was to be solved by transferring it to us) they would need to come away before Victory arrived. Also, the British government had suspended immigration to Palestine. The ‘extermination’ campaign began. The power which this particular interest wields over our public spokesmen and Press stands revealed as gigantic. Some newspapers gave more space to this matter than would be devoted to any other in any circumstances which I can imagine. The word ‘extermination’ was printed billions of times. It was used habitually, without flinching, by Ministers, politicians, and the BBC. Any who care to keep note of the things which were said, and to compare them in a few years’ time with the facts and figures, will possess proof of the greatest example of mass-misinformation in history. All sound of the suffering of the non-Jews who are Germany’s captives was drowned. […]

Before November 1942, none ever suggested that the Germans practiced racial discrimination in cruelty. Jews and non-Jews suffered alike; but as the non-Jews were 20 times as numerous, their suffering was as much more, as the whole is greater than the part. Indeed, the New Statesman remarked that ‘Hitler subjected the Jews of Germany to every imaginable form of insult, robbery and oppression’ (he subjected many more non-Jews, all over Europe, to the same things) ‘but he did not slaughter them.’

Now, when the war was over three years old, like a bolt from the brown came this news that he was slaughtering them, and they must therefore be brought to England! How, if they were exterminated? That point was ignored; the word ‘extermination’ was deliberately chosen. It means ‘to root out, destroy utterly’.[2] (If that is not clear enough, the New Statesman said: ‘Hitler is engaged in exterminating the Jews of Europe, not metaphorically, not more or less, but with a literal, totalitarian completeness, as farmers try to exterminate the Californian beetle’!)

We were told, then, that the Jews were being ‘exterminated,’ and we must therefore receive them. We are entitled to examine the truth of this, since it is the basis of the claim made on us, mainly on behalf of those Jews in Poland who most tenaciously hold to the teaching (expressed by the Chief Rabbi in London) that ‘the mission of the Jew is first of all to be a Jew.’ (Hitler has used those very words about Germans.)

The claim was, that something different was being done to the Jews, something more than the non-Jews suffered: ‘Nothing else in Hitler’s record is comparable to his treatment of the Jews,’ the News-Chronicle; ‘For Hitler, the Jews were and are the first and principal victims of a frenzied malice manifest in his earlier outpourings as an irresponsible political agitator,’ The Times; ‘Upon this people, the Jews, the fury of the Nazi evil has concentrated its destructive energy’, the Archbishop of Canterbury; ‘The worst cruelties are reserved for the Jews’, the Bishop of Chelmsford; ‘The persecution of the Jews is, however, unique in its horror; it is deliberate extermination directed against, not a nation, but a whole race; this is a horror unprecedented in the history of the world’, the Archbishop of York.

These statements are untrue. I saw Hitler’s work with my own eyes, from the day he came to power until the eve of this war. Nineteen-twentieths of the inmates of his concentration camps were non-Jewish Germans; nineteen-twentieths of his victims outside the German frontiers are non-Jewish non-Germans. This distortion of the picture has gone on since 1933. I felt misgivings about it then, when his first cruelties were practiced, and I noticed that the Jewish share of the whole was being put out of all proportion in the foreign press.

But now the suggestion has been crystallized into a definite statement which I would not dare challenge if it could be upheld: the Jews in Europe are being ‘exterminated.’ You must not use this big word unless you mean physical extinction. What was the evidence, first that ‘extermination’ was ordered, and second, that it was carried out?

(1) The Times of 4 December 1942, spoke of ‘a memorandum compiled by underground labour groups in Poland’ which stated, ‘one of the war aims of Hitler’s regime, and one which has been publicly proclaimed by its highest authorities, is a complete extermination of the Jews.’ The Archbishop of York said on December 9^th, ‘The extermination of all the Jews in Poland has been decided on and will be carried out’. The Manchester Guardian, on December 11^th, spoke of some

‘evidence available in London [that] a plan was proposed to Hitler last June that the Jews [in Poland] should be exterminated by Christmas. […] He hesitated for a time but soon relapsed and decided to gratify his lust for cruelty by adopting the original proposal. […] One need not suppose that Hitler has signed an actual order for the destruction of the Jews, which is strongly reported but at present unconfirmed.’

The Times, on December 12^th, said ‘Hitler has boasted of his intention to eliminate every Jew in Germany under his yoke.’ Mr. Eden, on December 17^th, spoke of ‘Hitler’s oft-repeated intention of exterminating the Jewish people in Europe.’ The Times, on December 21^st, quoting ‘a statement issued by the Allied Information Committee’, said ‘Himmler, after a stay in Warsaw, issued an order that half the Polish Jews were to be killed in the course of a year.’ The Arch-bishops of Canterbury, York, and Wales, in the name of all the British Bishops, in January 1943, stated, ‘The extermination already carried out is part of the carrying into effect of Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe, which means in effect the extermination of some 6,000,000 people’.[3] The Roman Catholic Cardinal of Westminster and the head of the Salvation Army associated themselves with such statements, which were repeated innumerable times in the radio and Press. On January 9^th, the New Statesman said, ‘In July of 1942, Himmler gave the necessary orders for extermination on a continental scale.’

(2) On December 4^th, Mr. Vernon Bartlett wrote, ‘According to cables from Dr. Stephen Wise, President of the World Jewish Congress, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann, President of the World Zionist Organization, confirmation has now been received of an order issued by Hitler for the extermination of all Jews in Nazi-occupied countries before the end of the present month’ (then how could they be rescued?). ‘The number of Jews who have already died cannot, of course, be estimated with great accuracy. In the opinion of the World Jewish Congress, roughly two million out of the three-and-a-half million Jews in Poland have been murdered by the Nazis since the outbreak of the war.’

Almost on the same day, the World Congress, according to The Times, ‘issued a statement on Nazi massacres of Jews in Europe showing that of the 7,000,000 Jews who normally live in the territories now under Nazi occupation, 1,000,000 have been cruelly done to death.’ Mr. Harold Nicolson wrote in the Spectator of December 25^th, ‘In order to assuage his insane hatred of the Jewish people Hitler, with Himmler as his main agent, has carried out the murder of some 250,000 men, women and children in cold blood.’ And again, ‘In October 1940, the Germans interned 433,000 Warsaw Jews in a special area or ghetto which they surrounded with a high wall. […] For the month of October 1942, only 40,000 ration cards were printed.’ (His clear inference, and he says ‘there can be no doubt whatever of the facts,’ was that the number of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto was reduced from 433,000 to 40,000 by ‘extermination.’) The Jewish Labour representative on the Polish National Council in London reported, in March 1943, that ‘only 200,000 Jews remain in the Warsaw Ghetto.’

Readers may compare these quotations for themselves. ‘Extermination’ was ordered; it was not ordered, but strongly suspected; it was ordered for half the Jews in Poland; for all the Jews in Poland; for all the Jews in Europe by the end of 1942. Two out of three-and-a-half million were already dead, on December 4^th; one million out of seven million were already dead, on the same day; 250,000 were already dead, three weeks later. Thus spake our leading public men.

This was the factual basis of the most stupendous political and press campaign in my experience. I suspect that I am better informed about German affairs than many of the people who spoke thus, and I know of no ‘oft-proclaimed intentions’ or ‘orders’ to exterminate the Jews.[4] Hitler is noticeably reticent on that theme. Any threats he has uttered cannot compare, in ferocity and iteration, with his threats to exterminate England, the British Empire, Bolshevism and other things. The only threats I know, which promised ‘extermination’ were clearly aimed, not at the Jews, but at the Czechs, Poles, and Serbs, who are the foremost objects of German detestation. Such was Hitler’s statement, on 24 February 1943, that he would ‘not spare alien lives’, and its meaning was pointed two days later by Frank, the Czech ‘Protector’, when he said, ‘Stalin could only enter Germany as a victor over the body of every single German and over the body of every single Czech’. The only authentic instance that I know (the Germans themselves announced it) of local extermination in this war, was the extermination of every Czech man, woman, and child in the village of Lidice, where I once received most friendly hospitality. Similar, though smaller massacres have been committed on Frenchmen, Serbs, Norwegians, and Greeks: the Germans published them.”

This is a remarkable passage, especially as it was written at the height of the war. This seems to constitute the earliest extended revisionist analysis.

Eight years later, when the “fog of war” had cleared a bit, Reed wrote another book titled Far and Wide (1951). Here the focus is on communism and Zionism and their role in striving for a World State or World Government, but Reed makes an interesting side remark on the by-then-iconic figure of “6 million”. Astonishingly, this figure, given as a definitive Jewish death toll, appeared in the NYT just six days after Germany capitulated on 7 May 1945: “It has been calculated that in all about six million Jews were deliberately slaughtered [in gas chambers] and other ways” (13 May, p. SM4). Calculated by whom? How? And with what evidence? The NYT does not say.

But the figure was certainly getting around. On 17 July 1945, Jewish activist Abba Kovner gave a speech in Italy lamenting “the loss of six millions”; “we saw how the six million faced the great test […] before their deaths,” he exclaimed.[5] In August, the NYT stated that “six million [Jews] have perished at the hands of the Nazis” (5 Aug), and in September, they reported: “Loss of six million Jews during the war has made extremists of all Zionists […]” (2 Sep) – as if it were common knowledge at that point.

To further solidify the number as literal fact, it had to appear during the Nuremberg Trials – which it did. The first occurrence came at the very start of the trial, read in the record from an affidavit by Wilhelm Höttl (or Hoettl). Recalling the words of Eichmann, Höttl stated that around 4 million Jews died in the concentration camps, and another 2 million in other ways.[6] A second appearance came in March 1946, when British prosecutor Maxwell Fyfe was interrogating Hermann Göring; Maxwell Fyfe cited Höttl’s earlier testimony of 4 million plus another two.[7] A third occurrence came with a prosecutor’s statement of 30 September 1946:[8]

“Adolf Eichmann […] has estimated that the policy pursued resulted in the killing of 6,000,000 Jews, of which 4,000,000 were killed in the extermination institutions.”

Thus the figure became codified at Nuremberg and has never relinquished its grip.

Reed was rightly concerned that this figure had, by 1950, become something like a religious icon – unquestioned and unquestionable. In Far and Wide, he wrote:

“[T]he words ‘six million Jewish dead’ seemed to atrophy the power to think. […] During the Second War, I noticed that the figures of Jewish losses, in places where war made verification impossible, were being irresponsibly inflated. […] The process continued until the war’s end when the figure of six millions was produced. A transparently worthless estimate was not only used for mass-delusion through newspapers, but even given official status! If by any turn of chance, the American and British representatives who bandied it about at Nuremberg were ever called to answer for it, they might be hard pressed for a defense, for any impartial tribunal might tear it to pieces. […]

No proof can be given that six million Jews “perished”; proof can be adduced that so many could not have perished. […] Yet this massive assertion about the six millions was used by politicians in the highest places, by prosecutors at Nuremberg, and habitually by mass-newspapers which in lesser matters would print no statement unverified! […] In my judgment, the figure of six millions was a grotesque exaggeration which an unintimidated press would never have published, save to expose [as a hoax…].

If ever freedom of debate returns to the world, a board of impartial accountants might be set to study this matter of the six millions, stated by leading politicians of the West, and their representatives at Nuremberg, to have perished. Until then, all the student of the times can do is to try and trace their fate in such figures as are available to him.” (pp. 307-309)

“Freedom of debate” has, of course, yet to return to this world, now 75 years later; but intrepid revisionists have pressed ahead and “traced the fate” of the 6 million with remarkable accuracy. The story is telling.

At about the same time that Reed was composing his 1951 book, another man, John Owen Beaty, was busy at work on his magnum opus, The Iron Curtain over America (1951). Beaty (1890-1961) was an American professor, writer, and anti-communist who earned his PhD in philosophy in 1921 and taught at Southern Methodist University in Texas. He also served active duty during World War Two, working for the Military Intelligence Service.

In his long academic career, Beaty wrote over a dozen books, the most famous being Iron Curtain, where he argues for the ‘Khazar hypothesis’: that modern-day Ashkenazi Jews are descended from, or related to, the Khazar people of the central Caucasus region. The bulk of his book is dedicated to arguing that Khazar/Ashkenazi Jews are infiltrating American government and academia, thus bringing down an ‘iron curtain’ in our own homeland; subsequent analysis bears out many of his claims.

Of note, though, is a short comment in chapter 6, where Beaty presses on the absurdity of the claimed ‘6 million’ Jewish deaths in WW2.

“An official ‘Israeli’ view of Germany was expressed in Dallas, Texas, on March 18, 1951, when Abba S. Eban, ambassador of the state of ‘Israel’ to the United States and ‘Israel’s’ representative at the United Nations, stated that ‘Israel resents the rehabilitation of Germany.’ […] The same day that Ambassador Eban was talking in Dallas about ‘Israel’s’ resentment at the rehabilitation of Germany, a Reuters dispatch of March 13, 1951 from Tel Aviv (Washington Times-Herald) stated that ‘notes delivered yesterday [March 12] in Washington, London, and Paris and to the Soviet Minister at Tel Aviv urge the occupying powers of Germany not to ‘hand over full powers to any German government’ without express reservations for the payment of reparations to ‘Israel’ in the sum of $1,500,000,000.’[9]

This compensation was said to be for 6,000,000 Jews killed by Hitler. This figure has been used repeatedly, but one who consults statistics and ponders the known facts of recent history cannot do other than wonder how it is arrived at. According to Appendix VII, ‘Statistics on Religious Affiliation,’ of The Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States (A Report of the Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate, 1950), the number of Jews in the world is 15,713,638. The World Almanac, 1949, p. 289, is cited as the source of the statistical table reproduced on p. 842 of the government document. The article in the World Almanac is headed ‘Religious Population of the World.’ A corresponding item, with the title, ‘Population, Worldwide, by Religious Beliefs’ is found in the World Almanac for 1940 (p. 129), and in it the world Jewish population is given as 15,315,359.[10] If the World Almanac figures are correct, the world’s Jewish population did not decrease in the war decade, but showed a small increase.

Assuming, however, that the figures of the US document and the World Almanac are in error, let us make an examination of the known facts. In the first place, the number of Jews in Germany in 1939 was about 600,000 – by some estimates considerably fewer[11] – and of these, as shown elsewhere in this book, many came to the United States, some went to Palestine, and some are still in Germany. As to the Jews in Eastern European lands temporarily overrun by Hitler’s troops, the great majority retreated ahead of the German armies into Soviet Russia. Of these, many came later to the US, some moved to Palestine, some unquestionably remained in Soviet Russia and may be a part of the Jewish force on the Iranian frontier, and enough remained in Eastern Europe or have returned from Soviet Russia to form the hard core of the new ruling bureaucracy in satellite countries. It is hard to see how all these migrations and all these power accomplishments can have come about with a Jewish population much less than that which existed in Eastern Europe before World War II. Thus the known facts on Jewish migration and Jewish power in Eastern Europe tend, like the World Almanac figures accepted by the Senate Judiciary Committee, to raise a question as to where Hitler got the 6,000,000 Jews he is said to have killed.” (pp. 133-135)

As such, this brief statement constitutes perhaps the first attempt at a numerical critique of the Jewish death toll. World Almanac figures on Jewish demographics came from Jewish sources, and hence were ‘self-reported,’ to some extent, and lacking in independent verification. And by the 1950 edition, the Almanac had adjusted its postwar population figures to 11,373,000 (p. 473), thus indicating something close to the mandatory 6-million loss. But the validity of this lower figure is as uncertain as those of previous years. Hence it is difficult to come to firm conclusions about the Jewish death toll from such reports alone. More useful are the approaches of current revisionists who make arguments based on the technical inability to kill so many people via the claimed methods, the inability to dispose of so many bodies in the allotted timeframes, and the striking lack of material evidence today.

In any case, the two above authors certainly deserve credit for their early critiques. Reed’s work seems to have been completely overlooked by later revisionists, but Rassinier, in his 1955 edition of Lie, cites Beaty’s Iron Curtain as a source of early criticism. And Rassinier, in turn, was cited by subsequent revisionists, such as in David Hoggan’s 1969 work, The Myth of the Six Million.

Thus we can see that Holocaust revisionism has had a long and distinguished evolution, from early doubts and questioning to recent analysis that is scientifically and logically rigorous and has a substantial evidential basis. But we all owe a debt of gratitude to the likes of Reed and Beaty who, working in complete void, established the framework for skeptical and rational doubt.

Endnotes