General Holocaust Denial Discussion Part II
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Nick Terry
Illuminator
Nick Terry
Illuminator
So there were forged documents from the Moscow Red Cross and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, that doesn't sound very much like forged Nazi documents filed in conventional archives, which is what you want to believe in, right?
The guy I am arguing with spouts the typical tripe such as it was the Allies fault for bombing supply lines (he does not blame the Germans for putting them in the camps), sources do not agree on the numbers killed so this means there was no genocide program, and last but not least, it was the Jew's fault.
Did any Nazi on trial at Nuremberg ever claim the final solution did not exist?
Ranb
Did any Nazi on trial at Nuremberg ever claim the final solution did not exist?
Ranb
Nick Terry
Illuminator
This thread will be moved, but yes you missed quite a bit. Defendants routinely denied knowledge of the Final Solution if they thought they could get away with such an argument. This included the majority of defendants at the main Nuremberg trial, of whom only a couple admitted some knowledge of the crime. Because the Final Solution was carried out by the SS and there was a degree of secrecy surrounding it, as well as 'need to know', then some of the denials of knowledge, especially of the details, are plausible. In other cases the denial of any kind of knowledge was implausible or exposed as a lie based on Nazi documents.
What can be said however is that no defendant whether SS or belonging to another Nazi organisation ever offered a convincing "alibi" defence by way of an alternative explanation for what happened to the Jews when they were deported. The denials were consistently denials of personal knowledge rather than meaningful refutations of the evidence put in front of the courts.
Where's the other forum, by the way? I'm always interested in observing the comedies of ignorance that result from a denier failing to argue their way out of a paper bag.
Courier
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If you were told that any denial of the Holocaust will lead to unfortunate accidents to your wife and children, would you deny the Holocaust?
A'isha
Miss Schoolteacher
Who, specifically, was told that any denial of the Holocaust would lead to unfortunate accidents to their wife and children?
Courier
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Its just a hunch.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
ddt
Mafia Penguin
But that's actually a different question. The OP asked whether any of the defendants offered as defence "We didn't do that". At most, as you say, they offered as defence "I didn't know about it". Most famously, of course, Kaltenbrunner, head of the RSHA after Heydrich's death, who claimed he only rubber stamped all those orders and didn't really look at them.
Darth Rotor
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Why do you believe that this was done? (Or, more correctly, why the hunch?)
At what point during that period of time, mid to late 1940's, was there any depth to a meme that what happened didn't happen, and thus a concern that what may happened might be denied?
"We were only following orders" seems to have been a more common meme, at the time.
Put another way, you appear to be making stuff up.
Courier
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I find it very odd that none of the Nazis on trial claimed that the Holocaust didn't take place.
Darth Rotor
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Why is that odd? Those who were in the inner circle (you might want to read Speer's "Inside the Third Reich") knew what they knew.
Nick Terry
Illuminator
Again, it depends on who you're talking about. Since most discussions of trials will automatically default to the main Nuremberg trial, there is the problem that only 1 of the defendants was an active SS officer, Kaltenbrunner. The others all could rely on some attempt at plausible deniability, even though their complicity could be shown in other ways, to the extent that it was relevant. The military figures were not involved in a significant fashion.
The question should be: did SS officers serving in units involved in the Holocaust deny "it happened" when put on trial? The answer is some did, invariably without conviction or against better knowledge available from documents. Thus, in the 1960s, Karl Wolff resorted to flat denial of knowledge about the Final Solution even though he received letters about deportations to Treblinka and Belzec. This wasn't a convincing denial and the form of the denial is not a meaningful negation, because it was a Mandy Rice-Davies Defense ('He would say that, wouldn't he?') at best.
The best known case is Josef Kramer, commandant of Birkenau then Belsen, who denied there were gas chambers at Birkenau until, he said, he learned of Hitler's death, which released him, he said, from his oath of secrecy. So by his trial he was fully admitting things.
What is worth underscoring is how many SS disclaimed knowledge even when they were serving in close proximity. Virtually all of the Gestapo officers who organised deportations professed that they knew nothing of the intended fate of the Jews, and fell back on a variety of extremely vague cover stories. Ahlrich Meyer has dissected these in Taeter im Verhoer, a study of the interrogations of the members of the Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei Frankreich, i.e. the Gestapo/SD in France.
Similarly, SS guards at Monowitz who were extradited to Poland disclaimed all knowledge of what was going on in Birkenau a few miles away. This was even more implausible, and was not a consistent claim, since some did admit knowledge, but anyone who was more than a stone's throw away from a killing site would routinely try to distance themselves from the events.
The 'no Nazi ever denied' argument is not really a conclusive one, because there are too many loopholes and exceptions through which their contemporary fanbois can weasel their way out.
The more relevant point is how many Nazis and SS men admitted knowledge and gave evidence. There were hundreds of them; too many for the usual obfuscatory arguments about torture or coercion to stand up to scrutiny, especially since there are statements made when SS men were at liberty. The classic example is Eichmann's interviews with Willem Sassen, who wanted Eichmann to deny the Holocaust, but Eichmann refused to do so, when at liberty in Argentina before his capture.
I an routinely threatened when confronting people online. Without exception those people that threaten me are cowards who lack the backbone to go through with any of the threats they makes. This means I would tell them to ef themselves.
Ranb
You misunderstand. I asked if any of the defendants claimed the final solution never took place, not if they knew about it. There is a big difference.
The discussion is on SilencerTalk.com. It started out as a discussion on atheism and degenerated into holocaust denial. I am venting my spleen in a way that would be unacceptable on most forums.
http://www.silencertalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=126&t=108749&p=847326#p847326Ranb
angrysoba
Philosophile
You misunderstand. I asked if any of the defendants claimed the final solution never took place, not if they knew about it. There is a big difference.
The discussion is on SilencerTalk.com. It started out as a discussion on atheism and degenerated into holocaust denial. I am venting my spleen in a way that would be unacceptable on most forums.
Ranb
Well, the guys on there certainly demonstrate that atheism is not a sufficient condition for critical thinkingTM. It's as predictable as sunrise that someone will claim that "I'm not an anti-semite but..." and then explain how the word anti-semitism is a made-up concept employed by the Jews as part of their world domination manipulation strategy. It's a new twist to see the claim that all Jews and Arabs are Sumerians, but I imagine the claim is a broken-telephone-style transmission error, as in "Did you know that the Jews are not the only Sumerians and "anti-Sumerianism" is just an insult thrown at people who are trying to make people understand that Hitler never knew about the Holocaust, and it never happened, and Hitler tried to save Jews from the Holocaust, because he was a friend of the Jews, and what thanks did he get from the Jews? None at all, which only shows that Hitler was right about the Jews after all."
angrysoba
Philosophile
Also, "warjunky" is wrong about his claim that people have been locked up in Great Britain for Holocaust denial. They have not, as Holocaust denial is not a crime in the UK.
On the other hand, David Irving tried to get Deborah Lipstadt's book pulped because he didn't like she had said about him, and he tried to sue her and Penguin books for publishing it.
On the other hand, David Irving tried to get Deborah Lipstadt's book pulped because he didn't like she had said about him, and he tried to sue her and Penguin books for publishing it.
ddt
Mafia Penguin
And to state that explicit: it was Irving who sued Lipstadt and Penguin Books for libel. And he lost grandiosely, and was sentenced to pay Lipstadt's and Penguin's defence costs, which were in the ball park of 2 million pounds. When he didn't pay, Penguin asked for him to be declared bankrupt (and the court agreed).
BTW, here are the transcripts.
There are more things warjunky is wrong about:
1) Not all Jews were tattooed and recorded: only those who were recruited first to work. Those who were sent straight into the gas chamber from the train ramp were not recorded.
2) The claim of Allied bombing of the rail roads to the camps is bollocks. The aircraft didn't get that far East (when we're talking the extermination camps).
3) Germany didn't pay for ships for Jews to emigrate.
4) The Red Cross was not permitted in general in the camps. They were allowed to pay exactly one visit to Theresienstadt, which was already a sort of "model camp" and which was doffed up for the occasion.
That's just the tip of the iceberg...
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