First among Muehlenkamp's errors is that he relies on sources about decomposition on the surface when he should be studying decomposition in deep mass graves.
Muhlenkamp has an
entire section where he talks about the different decomposition rates underground vs. the open air and how that affects his calculations.
In particular his much beloved "phase of butyric fermentation" is not much mentioned in the actual published literature on the subject.
Not
much mentioned? I see.
The fact that ANTPogo can cite a energy value of 16 MJ/kg for glycerol as evidence that energy content does not decrease with decomposition is proof that he knows nothing about this subject. Human fat has an energy value of ~39 MJ/kg. As 16 is quite a bit less than 39...
Keep in mind that Muhlenkamp is using these numbers to show that a decomposed corpse with most of its water lost does not also have its flammable components decay away and so retain the same thermal balance like Mattogno claims. Instead, as Muhlenkamp shows, a decomposed corpse does not have the same flammability as a fresh corpse, but that's more than offset by the water loss.
Muehlenkamp's utter ignorance is also revealed by the fact that he refers to
as though butyric acid [butanoic acid] is the main fatty acid involved; in reality it is not, but just one of the principal volatile fatty acids (aka short chain fatty acids). This means that it is important in forensics, for instance because it has a strong smell and is relevant to detection by cadaver dogs. But this tells us nothing about burning decomposed bodies, and in absolute terms butanoic acid is a rather minor factor.
Which would be why he also talks about methane, hydrogen sulfide, putrescene, and cadaverine in addition to butyric acid (as well as the flammable properties of adipocere).
I never asserted that 0.3 cubic meters per body was a strong upper bound, but only that it was a reasonable estimate.
Reasonable for modern mass burial of animal carcasses for public health reasons, yes. But it doesn't tell you anything at all about what would be
impossible for the Nazis to do.
The true value could be somewhat higher or lower. For example, one of the main Buchenwald witnesses claimed (see Nuremberg document NO-1253) that during the last weeks of the camp's existence there was no fuel for the crematorium, so that burial pits had to be dug; these were 15 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 4 meters deep, and held 400-600 bodies. That's 400-600 bodies in a volume of 360 cubic meters. With the higher figure of 600 bodies that's 0.6 cubic meters per body, and with the lower figure of 400 bodies that's 0.9 cubic meters per body. In either case, it's quite a bit higher than the estimate of 0.3 cubic meters per body which I offered.
So? What do the burials at Buchenwald have to do with the burials at Treblinka? Did the Nazis use the exact same burial methods at both sites? Were the burial requirements even the same?
Mathematics is not your strong point
A fact I freely admit to. Wolfram Alpha has been quite a help in this regard.
Given that I already pointed to the effect of the overburden on the grave capacity in my previous post, it's hard to understand what you think you're refuting.
That to use the modern animal carcass burial cover and backfill recommendations in your calculations of how many victims the Nazis could bury in a single mass grave is misleading and inapplicable, since it does not actually tell you what it was impossible (as you've stated) for the Nazis to actually accomplish.
But I don't see why the Germans would have avoided covering graves with a layer of fill. It's entirely standard practise. The Soviets at Katyn and Vinnytsia covered their mass graves with a fairly thick layer of soil. Why wouldn't the Germans do the same?
Because they had a lot more bodies to bury than the Soviets did, in quite different circumstances than Soviets did.
Tell me...is it
impossible that the Germans could have avoided covering their mass graves at Treblinka with a layer of fill?
The study you cite
has already been discussed here. Holocaust deniers are way ahead of you on this.
Yes...and they note the exact same thing I do: that the actual carcass mass in the pit was 8-10 sheep per cubic meter, and that the number of .3 m
3 per carcass included excavated overburden, therefore assuming .3 m
3 is the maximum capacity of the pits used by the Nazis is misleading at best. There is no physical reason whatsoever that the Nazis were unable to pack bodies into a burial pit tighter than that.
But even if we ignore this factor, the pictured sheep are plainly quite a bit smaller than humans.
I'm not sure how you're able to make that determination, given the angle and distance of the photo.
Given the (seriously overgenerous) estimate of 10 bodies per cubic meter, and assuming all the pits were graves and were filled to the brim with bodies, we can still see that the pits found by Sturdy-Colls are nowhere near adequate for the alleged burials. The pits she describes appear to have a total surface area of perhaps 2,500 square meters. If we assume vertical walls and a depth of 4 meters, that gives us 10,000 cubic meters of burial space, which at 10 bodies per cubic meter gives us a total burial capacity of 100,000 bodies. But supposedly over 750,000 bodies were buried at Treblinka. Where did the other 650,000 go?
As has been pointed out to you by Matthew Ellard, that's not exactly the correct depth, nor has anyone said that these are the only pits that exist at or near the camp.
No to mention the fact that the burials stopped and the cremations started during the camp's operation, meaning that there's no requirement for space for all 750,000 bodies to be buried simultaneously.
One additional problem: if the pits were filled to the brim and then mounded over with soil, there should be testimonies to this. But as far as I am aware none of the Treblinka "death camp" witnesses describe such a thing.
As has also been pointed out to you, none of them were providing technical instructions, but describing details they thought were important.
One set of guidelines mentions such a concern, yes.
And for a very good reason. Modern animal carcass disposal pits are built very carefully, something that the Nazis did not have to worry about. It's a really bad thing if a modern carcass disposal pit has its dead animals buried tightly together and with little or no cover and overfill.
But what was stopping the Nazis from doing that?
But let's look at a concrete example, such as
the mass burial site at Great Orton from the 2001 UK FMD epidemic. The burials there looked like
this. Were they not making efficient use of burial space?
They weren't making
as efficient as possible use of burial space, no.
Carcass disposal: a comprehensive review notes that the Great Orton burial pits had a potential capacity of 750,000 carcasses, but only 460,000 were buried there. Oddly, despite the fact that your Holocaust denier blog cites
Carcass disposal: a comprehensive review, it doesn't mention that.
It also uses Great Orton's burial to calculate that since 575,000 sheep-equivalent bodies were buried in a 55-hectare (135.9 acre) space, Treblinka must have required 72.7 hectares (179.6 acres) to bury 750,000 bodies...but somehow skips over the fact that
Carcass disposal: a comprehensive review notes that the Birkshaw burial site had a potential capacity of one million carcasses in just 124 acres (50 hectares) of space, more than twice the density of Great Orton and eight times the density that they say the Soviets buried at Kateyn.
Both you and they are trying to portray the numbers and density of carcasses at burial sites as an upper bound on what the Nazi mass graves could have contained, and claiming that since there's not enough room at the Nazi sites to contain enough bodies at these densities to account for everyone, that therefore it was
impossible for the Nazis to have buried as many corpses there as they did.
And that's flat-out untrue.
Unless Sturdy-Colls finds some additional, much larger, pits, her work completely rules out the traditional version of Treblinka's history.
This is addressed above.
