SanityGap
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Jun 2, 2010
- Messages
- 346
Sources noted in this essay.
Thanks
Thanks for the wall of nazi text plus some very dodgy references.
Care to try again with a primary source.
Sources noted in this essay.
Thanks
.Are you suggesting that all of the cited incidences of torture and coercion by British, US and Soviet officials are false?
.If any of them are true, it blows the hell out of your mass gassing theory, doesn't it?![]()
Are you suggesting that all of the cited incidences of torture and coercion by British, US and Soviet officials are false? If any of them are true, it blows the hell out of your mass gassing theory, doesn't it?![]()
Crowell was already wrong in 1997 as it happens, but his essay is now completely obsolete because there has been a lot more research on the subject in the past 14 years.
There would have been a lot more research anyway because 14 years is a long time in academia, and because of the technological changes in that time. 14 years ago there were barely any e-journal databases, you did not have newspapers archived online, and digital cameras were very expensive. Heck, laptops had only just become laptops back then. Today many archives have microfilm readers hooked up to scanners, or you can take your copies to a decent scanner and digitise the material. Today you can search library catalogues worldwide on the internet, which you could not do back then. All of these changes have had an effect on what can be achieved in historical research, and will go on having an impact for many decades to come.
The other reason why 1997 is dated for Holocaust research is because 22 years ago, the Cold War ended. Access to materials from Eastern Europe, and in this case especially Poland, suddenly became much easier. In 1997 that process was only a few years old, today it is a well established process. A new generation of Polish historians has appeared who are taking much more of an interest in the Holocaust than was the case under communism. They live and work right next to the archives and can get an awful lot done. In turn, western historians can visit Poland, or read the results of Polish research, or see copies of documents whose originals are in Poland, on microfilm in western archives and research centres. So this has massively stimulated the amount written on the subject.
Frankly, 14 years is also a large chunk of the time elapsed since the Holocaust began in earnest - it's 20% of the time. The Holocaust happened within what is still living memory, and it is no surprise that we should be still finding out lots about events in 20th Century history, since this also happens for WWI, WWII, the Soviet Union, imperialism, the Cold War etc.
Thanks for the wall of nazi text plus some very dodgy references.
Care to try again with a primary source.
Thanks to Grey Rabbit. I am as it happens familiar with Alan Moorehead’s 1945 book ECLIPSE and I do consider it good evidence for coercion. The passage that is often recycled (p236 of 19 67 edition) would be even better evidence if Mark Weber had quoted it in full.
I am also very familiar with the unpublished trial archives at Kew and I happen to think they too contain good evidence for coercion. But I am interested here in any documentation to support coercion of the Belsen staff that has already been published.
If indeed there was torture and coercion used to extort perjured testimony as to the mass extermination policy, surely anything else that spews forth from that cesspool must be considered extremely suspect, to say the least.
Thanks
I am as it happens familiar with Alan Moorehead’s 1945 book ECLIPSE ....
Primary source given. Not hard is it Gene.
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No, I am flat out stating that the 'citations' you have offered are not citations, but mere claims which do not hold up under scrutiny.
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It is not *my* anything, nor is the mass gassing by the Nazis a mere theory. But I'm glad to see that you have dropped the pretense of "looking at both sides" although I doubt having done so will prevent you from claiming that you are in the future.
But for the sake of argument, *if* your claims of torture and coercion were true, it would not blow anything out of anything, since (I'll type this slow for you)
T h e . n o r m a t i v e . h i s t o r y . o f . t h e s e . e v e n t s . d o e s . n o t . d e p e n d . s o l e l y . o n . t h e . t e s t i m o n i e s . o f . t h e s e . p e o p l e .
.
T h e . n o r m a t i v e . h i s t o r y . o f . t h e s e . e v e n t s . d o e s . n o t . d e p e n d . s o l e l y . o n . t h e . t e s t i m o n i e s . o f . t h e s e . p e o p l e .
Have you seen the site www.belsenbergen.co.uk - does this contain most of the interrogations available at Kew, or are there more.
As for signs of coercion - leaving aside the fact that Kramer initially denied any homicidal gas chambers, then provided an affidavit that suggested there was one crematorium and one gas chamber and finally on the stand said there were four crematoria and four gas chambers - we have the testimony of British journalist Alan Moorehead
As we approached the cells of the SS guards, the [British] sergeant's language become ferocious. "We had had an interrogation this morning," the captain said. 'I'm afraid they are not a pretty sight.' ... The sergeant unbolted the first door and ... strode into the cell, jabbing a metal spike in front of him. "Get up," he shouted. "Get up. Get up, you dirty bastards." There were half a dozen men lying or half lying on the floor. One or two were able to pull themselves erect at once. The man nearest me, his shirt and face spattered with blood, made two attempts before he got on to his knees and then gradually on to his feet. He stood with his arms stretched out in front of him, trembling violently.
"Come on. Get up," the sergeant shouted [in the next cell]. The man was lying in his blood on the floor, a massive figure with a heavy head and bedraggled beard ... "Why don't you kill me?" he whispered. "Why don't you kill me? I can't stand it any more." The same phrases dribbled out of his lips over and over again. "He's been saying that all morning, the dirty bastard," the sergeant said.
Sounds like coercion to me.
Thanks to Grey Rabbit. I am as it happens familiar with Alan Moorehead’s 1945 book ECLIPSE and I do consider it good evidence for coercion. The passage that is often recycled (p236 of 19 67 edition) would be even better evidence if Mark Weber had quoted it in full.
I am also very familiar with the unpublished trial archives at Kew and I happen to think they too contain good evidence for coercion. But I am interested here in any documentation to support coercion of the Belsen staff that has already been published.
I'm sorry but the excerpt/quote is in no way 'good evidence for coercion' in any kind of meaningful sense. There is actually no direct evidence for coercion to make anyone say anything in particular. Without that - this is in essence the missing link - then all one has is apparent evidence of rough treatment by guards, which is sadly nothing unusual for prisoners in captivity.
The timing of the account would seemingly place the testimony - again it is really rather amazing how deniers seize on anything that suits them, when elsewhere they tell us over and over and over again that testimonies are not to be trusted - immediately after liberation. The Belsen pre-trial investigation lasted some time and there were many months before the trial, which was conducted in public with reporters present.
Moreover both before the trial and during the trial, the defendants did what one would expect - defend themselves against accusations. Guards denied having beaten prisoners, Kramer brought out his violin and claimed he was unable to do anything about the humanitarian catastrophe at Belsen, and so on.
It is really no more than magical thinking which allows deniers to try and parlay extremely vague report of maltreatment circa the first week of May 1945 with no names and no corroboration, into a very targeted coercion which forced SS men to lie exclusively about gas chambers while denying other crimes, and forced them to lie despite the presence of the world press. Even the defendants at the Moscow show trials in the 1930s recanted on the stand on occasion.
The logistics of this world-beating conspiracy become all the more absurd when the many other interrogations of Auschwitz SS going on at precisely the same time are taken into consideration. Not only is there not a peep of coercion for those interrogations - absolutely no evidence, not even a testimony to be quote-mined - but their sheer number decreases the prior and posterior probability of any such scenario.
That's before we even consider the impossible-to-explain matches. Poor bunny will bleat about me repeating this one, but I have always loved the idiotic allegation made by Carlo Mattogno that 'the Poles' got on the horn to 'the British' and made them coerce Hans Aumeier into using the term 'Bunkers' to describe the first gas chambers at Birkenau. This claim is advanced without a shred of evidence, and actually contradicts the documented chronology of Polish-British cooperation over war crimes, which got underway somewhat later. The glaring absence of evidence is evidently not enough to stop Charlie the chimp-in-chief from pausing to realise his own intellectual bankruptcy.
I'm sorry, but it's not enough to glom onto a single quote out of context which doesn't actually connect up with where you want it to go. You have to explain the totality of the evidence. End of story.
It certainly appears that a massively funded holocaust industry has been furiously working on damage control 24-7-365 in the last 14 years and beyond.
There has also been a big push worldwide
to silence, persecute and imprison those who challenge the official dogma. Even your Tony Blair indicated that he would like to see holocaust denial outlawed in the UK a few years back.
Fortunately as always, the search for the truth marches forward despite all of the threats and rhetoric. It will be interesting to see how many of this "new generation of Polish historians has appeared who are taking much more of an interest in the Holocaust", end up in German courtrooms and jails.
What is encouraging is that there are still places like this forum, IHR, CDOH, and RODOH that facilitate the free exchange of ideas regarding this topic. Onward!!
More double talk.
The eventual overall leniency of the post war sentences prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, to moral people, that the so called confessions were coerced.
.The eventual overall leniency of the post war sentences prove beyond a shadow of a doubt, to moral people, that the so called confessions were coerced.