I hate to admit it but you have a pretty compelling argument. The ease with which a negative is proven is so obvious that we never even covered the topic in debate class. So of course, anybody who wanted to prove the holocaust didn't happen could easily do so, if it had not happened.
All you need is evidence that something isn't. Germans would have welcomed anybody who could refute the holocaust if anybody could. The right wing sentiment and abhorrence for bureaucracy that made any sort of denazification program absolutely out of the question right after the war was still alive and well in 1949. The findings of the International Military Tribunal were binding on all subsequent war crimes trials in all four occupation zones and upon the Germans themselves when the took over the prosecutions themselves.
No, they were not. The
verdicts (rechtskraeftige Urteile) of Allied war crimes trials were binding on West Germany in the Ueberleitungsvertrag or Deutschlandvertrag. That is all. West German courts could not overturn the sentences of war criminals already convicted by an Allied power.
But so what? This means that only in a war crimes trial were the crimes of the holocaust unchallengeable. Any SS man was free to come out of the closet and tell the world that nobody was holocausted, if nobody had been holocausted, as long as he didn't do it in court.
Most SS men were not in court, and there were many, many SS men who had already been convicted and could not be tried again.
And, as you pointed out, after 1955, Germans enjoyed unfettered freedom of speech so saying that nobody was holocausted during the Nazi era would have been allowed, even encouraged except in a court.
Allied censorship was withdrawn in 1949 when the Federal Republic was established. West Germany has never had a pre-publication censorship system. Thus it would have been perfectly possible for someone to have published a book or an article which presented evidence to refute the charges. It would have been perfectly possible, also, to publish in foreign countries.
And what could possibly be inhibiting former Nazis from telling what they knew? By 1955, Eichmann had already been captured and brought back to Israel for a heroes welcome. The Auschwitz Trials of 1964 had come and gone by 1955. The Treblinka trials of 1964 and 1970 were nothing more than pages in the history book by 1955 as well.
Holy chronological gibberish, Batman!
Any former SS man who wanted to refute the holocaust after 1955 could look no further than Wilhelm Staglich and Thies Christopherson to see how challenging the official narrative was a sure ticket to fame and fortune.
One thing you're missing is that a true refutation would have to come from someone outside Auschwitz as much as someone inside Auschwitz. Unless you are a deportation denier, then we are talking about more than 2.5 million people who were deported from across Europe to the camps in the east. Denying that the Nazis had a Jewish policy was never going to fly.
The ony way out would be to say, actually no, the deportees went somewhere else. Meaning, 'the east'. So that means some of the counter-witnesses would have to come from the ranks of those Germans who served in the occupied eastern territories. They were the ones who were going to have to say, I saw 100,000 Jews from Warsaw arrive in Dnepropetrovsk in the summer of 1942. They could be SS, they could be Army, they could be civil servants. Guys like Eichmann involved in organising the deportations could help here, too: no, our deportations only stopped over at Auschwitz and they took off the Jews of working age, the children and old people we took to their new home in the east, given to them by the Fuehrer.
What was needed, was an alibi.
Eichmann could have provided it, when he was interviewed by Willem Sassen. Indeed, that was precisely Sassen's aim. He wanted evidence to refute the charge of extermination, and thought, who better to provide such evidence than the man who was in charge of organising the deportations. If anybody could have provided good evidence against extermination, it was Eichmann. He had need to know. But alas, Eichmann didn't say anything that could refute the charge of extermination; quite the opposite.
Remarkably, even living in the United States isn't a barrier to enjoying the benefits of holocaust refutation. Right now, at this very moment, in the year 2010, John Demjanjuk is reaping the benefits of having been lucky enough to have been a low level guard at Treblinka or maybe Sobibor or maybe somewhere else. And he's not even denying ANYTHING! Can you imagine how great life would be for him if he just came out and said that the holocaust is a pack of lies? He'd be sipping a Mai Tai on his private island and knocking it out with a different supermodel every night!
Instead he's.......I forget. Where is Demjanjuk right now?
Other than to relieve the pressure inside your head, the above has absolutely no point and makes absolutely no sense.
No, you're right. If the holocaust were a lie, there would be a floodgate of old Nazis refuting it.
Actually if the Holocaust were a lie then there would have been a flood of denials and refutations
in 1945 when the SS were first interrogated. It is only by hypothesising a conspiracy which is already implausible in 1945 that one can wriggle out of this. It is implausible but not entirely impossible - just incredibly technically difficult to have achieved, and to have left no trace or hint, other than Hoess's sore feet - but becomes ever more implausible the longer time goes on.
Extending the statute of limitations on prosecution for war crimes indefinitely only guarantees the safety of anybody stepping forward. And since the German penal code guarantees freedom of speech as long as you don't say anything that would challenge the victim mentality of the German Jew or cause him to believe that he is not recognized as a victim by the non-Jew, anybody can deny the holocaust.
Thank you Nick Terry. Your arguments become more and more persuasive every day.
Your strawmannery becomes ever more transparent.
I truly marvel at the epochal cowardice of the SS who although they leaped fearlessly across Russian trenches and fought like lions on many fronts in the war, were intimidated even from the distance of many thousands of miles away in their hiding places in Latin America from speaking out and revealing the Truth about the Holocaust. I am amazed at how not one of them had the wit to leave a lengthy account with their sympathetic right-wing lawyer 'to be opened in the event of my death' and published, heck, even in America.
You're right. The hoax is obviously a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization. It's not a conspiracy
Then please explain why SS men starting in 1945 have testified to extermination in substantial numbers. Without invoking a conspiracy. Saying 'they were afraid of prosecution and told their interrogators what they wanted to hear'
does not explain how they knew what to say.