A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Which is, of course, part of the old "functionalist vs. intentionalist" debate (the existence of which itself debunks the denier canard about an "official Holocaust story that no one can question").
General Holocaust denial discussion Part III
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Which is, of course, part of the old "functionalist vs. intentionalist" debate (the existence of which itself debunks the denier canard about an "official Holocaust story that no one can question").
LemmyCaution
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And which, too, given what both Degeneve and you comment, means that the "master plan" trope is really at this point a denier strawman.
First, there's no "official" definition of the Holocaust - let alone one that includes the idea of a basic or master plan; rather, most scholars now focus on improvisation, overlapping plans and projects, solutions plural, competing and collaborating networks within the Third Reich and across Europe - all within the context of a drive to eliminate the European Jews and accomplish other ends (economic, occupation policy, etc).
Second, scholars, to my knowledge, are not punished for arguing that the Germans didn't operate according to a master plan; serious and ongoing historical dispute occurs regarding the development, pace, and scope of the Final Solution as well as roles in shaping it, with Browning, Cesarani, Gerlach, Brayard, Longerich and Gerwarth, Bloxham, and others staking out important positions and debating them. No matter how much deniers fulminate and exhort, all (with the sad exception of Cesarani, who died this past year) remain free and working away.
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By the way the same also applies to scholars who have tried to evaluate the number of the victims and usually provide figures below the 6 million.
EtienneSC
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Back to the fray. I am finding this discussion personally difficult - though worthwhile - as it requires me to rethink some of the pro-revisionist convictions I have come to over the last five years or so. In addition, evidence is still coming in, so there is an air of uncertainty (for me at least). Here are my opinions based on information currently to hand:
Günther Reinecke
I have looked at a copy of Reinecke's thesis Münchener Privatrecht im Mittelalter from 1936. It reads much more like the plain words of the man who testified in 1946 than those of the one who confessed in 1961. This makes me prepared to continue questioning at least his degree of involvement with the Taubner verdict.
In particular, Reinecke clearly had deep scholarly interests as a lawyer. He was part of a group that investigated legal traditions in Bavaria. A key figure in this was Pius Dirr, a local archivist. Dirr lived from 1875 to 1943 and was a liberal democrat representative from 1912 who moved to the DDP in 1919. In his Foreword, Dirr encourages Reinecke to write a projected complete history of private law in Munich. The thesis involved examining books of decisions by local courts for precedents and cites a published book of decisions. Reinecke does not sound like someone who would engage in radical departures from western legal norms without explanation (as in the Taubner verdict, where the principle that "The Jews have to be destroyed" is introduced without justification). Nor does it sound like someone who would acquiesce in the destruction of court records, or create records that they would later wish destroyed - for the significance of the work lies precisely in its role as a precedent.
In terms of the sources Reinecke used, these include prominently the writings of Sigmund Adler, who is there in Reinecke's bibliography. Looking up Adler, I find that he lived from 1853 to 1920 and was the son of a well to do Jewish merchant. He was a teacher and historian with particular interests in inheritance law and research into legal sources. He was the brother of Victor Adler, a prominent politician who corresponded with Friedrich Engels, the friend of Karl Marx. By acknowledging a debt to Adler during the Third Reich, Reinecke does not evince the sort of casual or visceral anti-semitism found in the Taubner verdict. Equally, I see no indication in his thesis of restricted access to the courts on the part of Jews. It is true that anti-Jewish sentiment increased after 1938, but all the same...
Authenticity of the Taubner verdict
I stress that this is only a theory - or desperate guess if you will. Nonetheless, I'm being serious. Two things would have to have happened for there to have been a miscarriage of justice in the 1961 investigations into Reinecke. Firstly, the Taubner verdict would have to been wrongly associated with him, or somehow misrepresented. We have still not seen his signature on it or an official stamp that would connect him with it.
Secondly, there would have to have been pressure on the German authorities in the early 1960s to throw SS men to the wolves. Now there is evidence of this happening. Following the Wirtschaftwunder of the 1950s, West Germany was attempting to rearm morally as part of the Cold War. The "myth of the clean Wehrmacht" had been strengthened by the Manstein trial. Hence the Auschwitz trials of the time proceeded without the full evidence of a normal trial. This was partly justified by the existence of the iron curtain at the time. Some of the verdicts (e.g. the Oberhauser confession on Belzec) have been questioned, at least by revisionists. Oberhauser's sentence is out of proportion to his offence, which is evidence of plea-bargaining, or of something going on behind the scenes.
Work to do
It should be possible to get a copy of the original verdict. There is an essay on the investigation into Reinecke in HGS - this needs to be examined in detail.
Günther Reinecke
I have looked at a copy of Reinecke's thesis Münchener Privatrecht im Mittelalter from 1936. It reads much more like the plain words of the man who testified in 1946 than those of the one who confessed in 1961. This makes me prepared to continue questioning at least his degree of involvement with the Taubner verdict.
In particular, Reinecke clearly had deep scholarly interests as a lawyer. He was part of a group that investigated legal traditions in Bavaria. A key figure in this was Pius Dirr, a local archivist. Dirr lived from 1875 to 1943 and was a liberal democrat representative from 1912 who moved to the DDP in 1919. In his Foreword, Dirr encourages Reinecke to write a projected complete history of private law in Munich. The thesis involved examining books of decisions by local courts for precedents and cites a published book of decisions. Reinecke does not sound like someone who would engage in radical departures from western legal norms without explanation (as in the Taubner verdict, where the principle that "The Jews have to be destroyed" is introduced without justification). Nor does it sound like someone who would acquiesce in the destruction of court records, or create records that they would later wish destroyed - for the significance of the work lies precisely in its role as a precedent.
In terms of the sources Reinecke used, these include prominently the writings of Sigmund Adler, who is there in Reinecke's bibliography. Looking up Adler, I find that he lived from 1853 to 1920 and was the son of a well to do Jewish merchant. He was a teacher and historian with particular interests in inheritance law and research into legal sources. He was the brother of Victor Adler, a prominent politician who corresponded with Friedrich Engels, the friend of Karl Marx. By acknowledging a debt to Adler during the Third Reich, Reinecke does not evince the sort of casual or visceral anti-semitism found in the Taubner verdict. Equally, I see no indication in his thesis of restricted access to the courts on the part of Jews. It is true that anti-Jewish sentiment increased after 1938, but all the same...
Authenticity of the Taubner verdict
I stress that this is only a theory - or desperate guess if you will. Nonetheless, I'm being serious. Two things would have to have happened for there to have been a miscarriage of justice in the 1961 investigations into Reinecke. Firstly, the Taubner verdict would have to been wrongly associated with him, or somehow misrepresented. We have still not seen his signature on it or an official stamp that would connect him with it.
Secondly, there would have to have been pressure on the German authorities in the early 1960s to throw SS men to the wolves. Now there is evidence of this happening. Following the Wirtschaftwunder of the 1950s, West Germany was attempting to rearm morally as part of the Cold War. The "myth of the clean Wehrmacht" had been strengthened by the Manstein trial. Hence the Auschwitz trials of the time proceeded without the full evidence of a normal trial. This was partly justified by the existence of the iron curtain at the time. Some of the verdicts (e.g. the Oberhauser confession on Belzec) have been questioned, at least by revisionists. Oberhauser's sentence is out of proportion to his offence, which is evidence of plea-bargaining, or of something going on behind the scenes.
Work to do
It should be possible to get a copy of the original verdict. There is an essay on the investigation into Reinecke in HGS - this needs to be examined in detail.
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html#p1803
Any discussion of the postwar German approach to the Holocaust needs to start with sections 211 and 212 of the German criminal code. Because West Germany was not an American "puppet", and because most of the perpetrators were still at large in the nascent West German government, the IMT and NMT were very unpopular. In particular, the Germans complained - perhaps rightly- that "crimes against humanity" were ex post facto laws. They wanted to try German crimes under German laws. So, they applied the statute that was on the books during and before the Nazi era= section 211 shown above. Because the US did not fake the Holocaust or cared about it for that matter, and because they had bigger things to worry about, they did not care. Article 211 first and foremost is a loophole. As the text above states, murder has a very narrow definition. Anything not falling within the definition merits a lighter sentence. What's more, murder under section 212 was under the statute of limitations. Simply put: even if an act of killing was proven to have occurred, if the "base motives" could not be proven the perpetrator could get a lighter sentence or no sentence at all, depending on when the case was pursued and if it was past the statute of limitations. German defence attorneys - mostly Nazi sympathizers- took advantage of this loophole and coached their clients into carefully concealing any "base motives". German judges- mostly Nazi sympathizers or ex Nazis themselves- were all too eager to indulge them. Their behaviour resulted in mostly light sentences being given to most Nazi perpetrators. Thus, the game was rigged in their favor from the ver onset. EtienneSC's assertions; of "evil" courts throwing poor SS men "to the wolves", of "pressure on German authorities", and most of all, his accusations that the German authorities "forged" the Taubner verdict are nonsense and completely the opposite of what happened. Deniers are fixated on the IMT and have no knowledge of the well known and easily accessible history of the West German trials. Probably because the reality completely undermines any "hoax" narrative they're trying to build.
By the way, this is the real measure of German law with regards to the Holocaust. Laws against Holocaust denial came into force only in the mid to late 80s. Section 211 was on the books since West Germany became a sovereign country, and ex Nazis have exploited it to gain leniency for themselves since the 50s. It's no exaggeration to say that Perpetrators of the Holocaust got lighter sentences than the deniers today. There's no "bias" against "Revisionism": one could say that the laws against it are designed to make up for the same laws that allowed the actual perpetrators to escape. Even then, slaps on the wrists for a handful of deniers don't make up for five to six decades worth of slaps on the wrists for murderers who killed innocent people.
The "hoax" never happened. The whole premise of Holocaust denial is false and at odds with reality. None of the evidence was "faked". None of it, because no one was interested in "faking" it.
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I'm sorry, did I say "unnoficial"? I was wrong. Here's what US president Harry Truman had to say about the whole thing.
m.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-810207-3.html
One of the heads of the BKA at the time was one Paul Dickopf: a hardcore Ex Nazi. He allowed a lot of his former colleagues to serve in the BKA, and even infused it with Nazi "virtues". They were very hard on communists and continued discriminating against Gypsies. Apparently, Dickopf was also a CIA informant/Agent. West Germany clearly felt "pressured" to throw men like Mr. Dickopf "to the wolves", which was why he served as the head of Interpol from 1968 to 1972. Yeah, a lot of pressure there. A lot of pressure.
The only "miscarriages of justice" is that these scumbags got off the hook and were protected by two Major governments despite their crimes. The entire premise of Holocaust denial is false.
Nick Terry
Illuminator
Dickopf was the probable source of a 100-page report on the RSHA, SD and Nazi intelligence given to the Swiss military in 1944. I.e. he probably wrote the whole thing, in exhaustive detail.
The report included a section with extremely detailed knowledge of the extermination of the Jews, especially the Einsatzgruppen, gas vans and to a lesser extent Auschwitz, that could only have come from insider-hearsay, from knowledge passed on by other SS officers - Brigadefuehrer Thomas seems to have been one of his sources. Dickopf was not directly involved in the Holocaust, which is why he could remain in government service. But one did not need to be a mass murderer to be a Nazi or to find some aspects worth preserving after 1945.
Halcyon Dayz
Critical Thinker
There were 8.5 million NSDAP members. Complete denazification was never an option.
Well it depends. There might have been 8.5 million members of the party before and during the war. However when listening to Germans after the war none of them had been a member or even a sympathizer of the Nazi party.
A amazing case of collective amnesia on such a large scale…
False claims about revisionists. What they claim and what they don't claim -
http://germarrudolf.com/germars-views/false-claims-about-revisionism/
Germar Rudolf has been to prison in Germany for his views -
http://codoh.com/library/document/925/
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Copy/paste from your link:
Maybe you should carefully read the content of the page before posting links to websites...
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I know, right? It's almost as of the "victors" didn't care about what they did. And in fact, looked the other way and allowed them to carry on because they wanted to "use them". Almost as if the entire premise of Holocaust denial was false...
kmortis
Biomechanoid, Director of IDIOCY (Region 13)
The bombing of civilian targets is off-topic for this thread, so I moved the discussion off to its own thread. Please discuss that topic over there, and this topic over here.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic Posted By: kmortis
Complete Denazification was indeed never an option. Indeed, by 1946, the US authorities issued several amnesties for youth and categories of "lesser" Nazis. In 1947, the US authorities sped it up even faster by not requiring "indiscriminate trials", and avoiding the removal of Nazis and the like from key positions. By 1948, the whole thing was in the hands of German prosecutors, who could "reclassify" and even exonerate whoever they wanted. The consequence is of course the thing that EtienneSC refuses to confront or admit: that all his crap is baseless nonsense.
Dash80
Rave on, Not Fade Away
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Careful reading is not particularly a skill for deniers.
These are complete BS too:
Rudolf is a liar:
Whoops...
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Mondial said:
Here is what "Revisionists" claim, in Mondial's own words.
As has been demonstrated, none of this is true. Absolutely none of it. It has been shown that the USA and the other victors were very lenient on Germany. Rather than forcing them to "toe the line"; the US loosened the requirements for Denazification, with the result that Ex Nazis played a prominent role in West German politics. Because they US needed West Germany's support in the cold war, they looked the other way with regards to Mondial's heroes' crimes. They commutted the sentences of German SS men who massacred American POWs in Malmedy. They hired former SS men as spies, and they even allowed the German government to blackmail Israel with the threat of witholding foreign currency in the form of Arms sales, when it seemed as if Adolf Eichmann would expose prominent Nazis in Adenauer's government. Rather than Mondial's baseless assertion that the "postwar german constitution followed the official propaganda narrative", the US allowed the Germans to disregard the IMT's statutes and instead make use of a built in loophole in the form of section 211 of the criminal code; a holdover from the Nazi era. This loophole and its narrow definition of murder allowed Ex Nazis to get nothing but slaps on the wrist for even the most heinous acts of mass murder, and they were helped along by a German legal system filled to the brim with ex Nazis. All because as mentioned above, "complete denazification was never an option", and in fact eventually removed from the "victors'" agenda.
EtienneSC has avoided tackling these well known facts because they show "Revisionism" for the baseless, dishonest nonsense that it is. Mondial will probably do the same.
LemmyCaution
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And Nazis made up a significant % of officials, professionals and others who would be needed to administer government and other bureaucracies. There was a balancing act here - it involved separating out the lesser and run of the mill cases from the significant figures within the Nazi movement, important perpetrators, etc. The "objective" framing really gave way to exigencies and trade-off based on necessity, connections, political pressure, and so on. The Cold War also "happened" on top of all of this - leading to clemency for significant perpetrators, closing down of trials against perpetrators, and increasing reliance of the standards of necessity of the new era. Deniers just make stuff up about this period, best I can tell, including the idea that it was the Holocaust "myth" that shaped the '50s/'60s - when it was the Cold War that dominated the politics, ideology, and culture of the western countries during that period.
LemmyCaution
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You are aware of the date of the Täubner decision, right? You do know what was the Jewish population of Germany at this time, correct?
As to your understated point, it was not just "anti-Jewish sentiment" that was an issue. It was legislation and other official acts; Nazi party actions; and, in 1938 already, in particular, party-led and government-sanctioned violence against Jews throughout the year culminating in Kristallnacht which was followed by a host of legal measures further restricting Jews' legal status and their lives.
Your statement - emphasizing "sentiment" and excluding recognition of orchestrated "persecution" - doesn't approach the situation by 1938 - it de-contextualizes and makes unrecognizable the legal situation facing Jews then and afterwards. Previously, with some exceptions, Jews had been excluded from the civil service and professions; equal citizenship rights (state subject status); membership and affiliations in a host of organizations and institutions; and business ownership - and had been subject to legislation forbidding marriage or forbidding sexual relations with Aryans (accused Jews were subjected to biased proceedings and to harsher penalties than Aryans found guilty under these laws - e.g. the Leo Katzenberger race defilement case); further, Jews were subjected to in many cases to dismissal from employment without notice as well as to measures pressuring them to emigrate from Germany, with financial penalties. In 1933 - to take an example showing the extent of the anti-Jewish measures in Nazi Germany - Jewish boxers were prohibited to compete. The movement , shopping hours, and living conditions of Jews were restricted by law (by 1941 Jews would have check in with local police agencies before leaving their designated places of residence); Jews' homes were confiscated and Jews were forced into "Jews' houses" where several families and individuals were thrown together. During Kristallnacht as many as 20,000 Jewish men were hauled off, without hearing or charges, to KLs where many died, most were abused, and finally, on signing promises to emigrate, most were released.
To take one case in this litany, dismissal from employment, the Labor Courts rejected legal claims against dismissals on the ground of racial descent. Especially in 1938, legal measures confiscating Jewish property and Aryanizing Jewish businesses were accelerated. Before the war, Jews would be subject to forced labor. By late 1938 Jews could no longer practice as lawyers. There were left between 150-200 "Jewish advisors" without full legal standing to represent Germany's Jews. (Yes, much of this is covered in Majer's book, among others.)
Would you like us to compile a full list of post-Kristallnacht prohibitions - just a list - to help establish context better?
To some extent, too, during the Third Reich laws and "popular sentiment" were enforced by Nazi-inspired and led mobs, intimidation and violence, sometimes with state and party permission, at other times, reined in.
By 1941, the Eleventh Decree provided that nearly all property of Jews beyond the Reich's borders would become the property of the Reich (to be used in the final solution of the Jewish question). And by the end of 1941 forced deportations of Jews from Germany were underway - will you tell us how legal appeals to that process went (I know of a couple outlier cases - those didn't end well)?
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dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
This. A great many civil servents joined the party just to keep their jobs. Not very admirable,perhaps, but understandable. Almost anybody with actual experience in government in post war Germany had been a NSDAP member.The allies did not have much choice but to employ people who had been Nazi party members.
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