A “proper investigation” doesn’t need to involve an international effort. But an open investigation conducted by unbiased neutral parties who fully document their findings is necessary if the results of such an investigation are going to stand the test of time. If a proper investigation into a war crime/crime against humanity was conducted only ONCE in the first half of the 20th century, that doesn’t make all the other “investigations” valid, reliable, and honest. It means that a proper investigation into a World War II atrocity was conducted only once.
This opening paragraph is self-contradictory; the bolded first line contradicts the concluding part. The entire paragraph is essentially gibberish; you're basically implying here that we can have absolutely no faith in any investigation of any war crime other than Katyn, which would be wonderful news for dictators and their apologists everywhere, since absolutely no crime other than Katyn seems to have been subjected to your entirely arbitrary standard of what is a 'proper' investigation.
I don’t suppose you can cite any of the reports these Soviet investigators who exhumed mass graves all over the USSR published? Or did the Russians not write any of this stuff down?
I'm referring to the 55,000 reports collected in GARF fond 7021.
If there was absolutely no contact between the US investigators who had the documents and the Soviet investigators who exhumed the mass graves, how did the Soviets know what all those dead people were doing in the ground?
Soviet investigators knew what had happened because they conducted a conventional crime scene investigation; i.e. they had the locations of graves pointed out by witnesses, who they also interviewed to reconstruct what had happened, and then looked at the grave sites. There are quite a few pictures floating around of them doing this.
And what do you mean by "the sources match?" Do you mean the Soviets and Americans used sources that matched, like the Soviets used eyewitness testimony and the Americans used eyewitness testimony? Or do you mean the Americans and the Soviets arrived at the same conclusions? Did the US investigators have a document that said three hundred innocent Jews had been shot in a region where the Soviets found a mass grave with three hundred bodies?
The sources match because the captured German documents detailed mass executions in the same localities as were examined entirely separately by the Soviet authorities. The Americans relied on the captured documents to prosecute the Einsatzgruppen leadership.
Or is it more like the US had a document that said a bunch people had been shot somewhere and the Soviets had a mass grave somewhere with bodies in it? If my high school history class had been assigned a term paper on the Civil War, everybody in the class would use the same sources: the books in the library. But everybody wrote a different term paper. So your claim that "Yet the sources match" is either a poor word choice or intentional dissembling.
No, the sources match. They are also independent of each other; Einsatzgruppen reports and other German documents describing mass executions in the same localities as were examined by Soviet authorities.
Good thing nobody said it did. It only needs to be "forensic" if it's used in a court of law. And if it's used in a court of law, it is by definition a "forensic" investigation.
Please cite all the statutes of British, French, West German (= also Reich 1871), Polish, Soviet and US federal plus state law which
require a forensic/physical investigation of a crime.
Or maybe you can cut out the blether and just look up freie Beweiswuerdigung, a fairly central concept in German/Austrian law regarding how judges are meant to arrive at verdicts.
It seems you're just as incoherent about what is and isn't a investigation as you are about what is and isn't a proper investigation.
And what exactly did the Poles test that was found to contain cyanide in 1945? A ventilation grill? Some empty cans of Zyklon B? And where exactly did the two separate denier investigations that confirm the presence of cyanide find this cyanide? Did the Poles and the deniers all find cyanide in the delousing chambers and in the alleged gas chambers? Did the Poles and the deniers all find evidence that the cyanide concentration was equal in both places? Did everybody even try to measure the concentration?
You can answer your own questions by reading Van Pelt's report, which you should have done a long, long time ago. Frankly, if you are that ill-read in this discussion that you don't recognise the reference, you should rectify your ignorance and start the big pile of (free) reading that has been ecommended to you on a number of occasions
See, your problem is you're comparing apples to oranges. In fact the Poles and the deniers didn't get the same results.
On the contrary, the Poles and the deniers all proved the presence of cyanide in the crematoria ruins. The deniers
interpreted this fact differently, but everyone found cyanide.
Good thing nobody said the details were fabricated or scripted. And all subsequent investigations did not confirm the original 1940s investigations. Saying that is an absolutist statement that you know is false. The original investigations came up with some pretty ridiculous conclusions that, although agreed to on both sides of the Iron Curtain at the time, are no longer believed by anybody to be true.
Regarding the essential issue under discussion - extermination camps - then all subsequent investigations confirmed the essential fact that Auschwitz etc had been sites of mass extermination.
Any matches between the east and the west were on a very broad scale. When you get down to the specifics, there’s not always the perfect alignment you pretend there was.
On the contrary, I have in mind matches on quite precise points of detail which were held back from the published communiques and had not been mentioned in any wartime publications. Things like what the first gas chambers at Birkenau were called, the use of wire-mesh columns in Kremas II and III, that sort of thing. These points of detail came up in the course of interviewing or interrogating witnesses on both sides of the Iron Curtain.
And some of the perfect alignment is on facts that you guys consider rubbish today. The Zyklon B trial conducted by the British found that four and half million people were murdered at Auschwitz while the Poles said it was only four million. You can say that’s close enough but I think half a million dead people is a significant difference. Which number turned out to be right in the end?
In actual fact the circulation of the 4M figure on both sides of the Iron Curtain can be traced in part to the fact that prisoners heard about estimates of up to 4M while already in Auschwitz; but this is hearsay. Other estimates circulated which were clearly influenced by the publication of the Soviet communique on Auschwitz in May 1945.
But that is irrelevant. The details revealed during the course of investigations on both sides of the Iron Curtain included many facts which were not in the Soviet communique. Those are the details you'd need to explain to dismiss the convergence of evidence arising from these separate investigations.
The Poles said steam chambers
Which Poles? The Polish government-in-exile received reports in late 1942 which misidentified the killing method at Treblinka as involving steam. Those reports were repeated alongside other reports saying gas chambers. The PGE then submitted a document charging Hans Frank, written in London, which drew on old wartime files to draft charges. That became 3311-PS.
Meanwhile, the Polish underground state, the Delegatura, was consistently reporting gas chambers at Treblinka, their reports made it to London and were not properly digested by the London authorities. There is no evidence that the Delegatura papers were available to Soviet or Polish investigators in 1944-45, yet their investigations said gas chambers.
and the Americans said shrunken heads and lampshades.
both of which were one-off freakshow events that happened to be true.
What kind of an investigation could have possibly produced those results and, because they did, how can we be certain anything else they found is accurate?
falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus is a fallacy. Deal with the totality of the evidence or stfu.
Historians shouldn’t feel obligated to break out the DNA kits and electron microscope because somebody discovered a spot where a German once refused to offer his seat on the train to an elderly Jew. But we’re talking about the epicenter of human suffering. This isn't an American style genocide that took place in a continent-sized area over several hundred years. These holocaust death camps saw the greatest mass murders in history. Those places deserve at least as thorough investigation as Katyn received.
In terms of man-hours, Auschwitz received far more attention and time than Katyn was granted. The majority of the man-hours were spent interviewing witnesses and digesting documents, but the Soviets and then the Poles autopsied every body on site, examined every survivor who reported maltreatment in medical experiments (and autopsied a few survivors who died of their injuries after being examined initially). They walked the ground, probed the ash-pits, and sifted through the rubble of the crematoria to find items which were then chemically tested. They took photographs and measurements. They did just about everything that was possible for them to do given 1945 technologies and limitations. More was impossible, since there wasn't anything else they could do.
The Soviets devoted more resources to investigating Katyn than they did for any other Nazi atrocity site. And they STILL couldn't figure out what had actually happened there. Why would we expect their investigation of Treblinka to have any value when they were so wrong about Katyn?
False analogy. The Soviets lied about Katyn rather consciously. They sent in NKVD heavyweights from Moscow and threw a vast effort at the investigation. Treblinka was left to the JAG branch of 65th Army, not even a Front command, since the Front in question had its JAG branch hard at work on Majdanek at the time.
Your analogy would work if and only if the Soviets had thrown their top guns at Treblinka as they had at Katyn, which they didn't; and if and only if the Nazis had previously accused someone else of perpetrating Treblinka, which they hadn't.
The Treblinka investigation was a case of a very anonymous Soviet frontline army - not even a Guards formation - conducting an initial investigation which was not given a huge amount of attention. The files resulting from the investigation were sent back to Moscow and buried in the archives there, and really weren't used that extensively either at Nuremberg or in the Cold War. The results of the investigation did inform Ilya Ehrenburg's essay on Treblinka which was published in the autumn of 1944, but as the results then went under lock and key, they count as quite independent of Ehrenburg's journalism, unless you're going to accuse Ehrenburg of orchestrating the whole thing, which wouldn't work since there's no evidence he arrived on the scene until after the bulk of the initial investigation was over.
Oh well, if he had been a prisoner in Auschwitz I’m sure he would fair and balanced in his study of the site. What exactly did he “witness” when he witnessed a gassing? And because this is the type of “evidence” that passes for evidence with the holocaust, I feel compelled to point out the obvious: seeing Krema I “with his own eyes in 1942” is evidence that he saw Krema I in 1942. Nobody denies the presence of Krema I. It’s not evidence of gas chambers or the holocaust or anything except Krema I.
Since your earlier fuss-making revolved around the
reconstruction of Krema I, then you seem to have tied yourself in knots again. Langbein's presence in Auschwitz main camp in 1942 was cited by me as an illustration of why the 'reconstruction' issue would be felt to be somewhat irrelevant for much of the postwar era, since authors writing about the camp often had first-hand knowledge of the camp.
And yes, Langbein was extremely fair and balanced in his 1972 book People in Auschwitz. The judgements he reaches show a considerable amount of compassion and acknowledgement of human weaknesses, and is also extended to quite a few SS men he knew. Indeed, some might say he was biased
towards the SS, because he worked directly for the camp medical officer, Eduard Wirths, as a secretary, and had done so previously at Dachau.
There. Was answering that question so hard? Western officials didn’t visit until the 1960s. But they did visit it surreptitiously and if what you said earlier was accurate, they were only looking to confirm lines of sight.
Zzzzzz.
Admitting the "gas chamber" at Auschwitz was a reconstruction was Saggy's thing. I'll let him fight for it if he wants.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
For what have I not accounted? If the evidence for Stalin’s crimes are based on the same type of evidence as that of Hitler’s crimes, and the nature of Stalin’s crimes seemingly break the laws of physics then I would question them as well. But I don’t know that they do. Not because I have an evidentiary double standard but because I have an interest double standard—I’m not interested in Stalin. There’s a lot of atrocities I don’t care about.
Unfortunately, your disinterest in Stalin does not exculpate you from the chore of making sure that your standards of evidence aren't biased. Which they clearly are. I didn't say anything about the evidence for Stalin's crimes being based on the same type of evidence as that for Hitler's crimes. I actually said that the evidence for Stalin's crimes during the Cold War consisted of
worse evidence, since there were no documents to rely on.
Your latest twist is simply special pleading which ignores the point of the comparison. Throughout the Cold War, the Nazi and Soviet regimes were both recognised to have committed extensive mass atrocities, in both cases involving large-scale concentration camp systems. This is often known for short as 'totalitarian terror'.
The view that the Soviet Union under Stalin had committed mass murder was based on almost entirely testimonial evidence, corroborated to a limited extent by examining censuses and demographic. The view that the Nazis had committed mass murder was based in essence on the captured German records, complemented by testimonial evidence. Clearly, the view that the Nazis had been mass murderers was on a more solid foundation during the Cold War than the view that the Soviets had done so.
What doubts? What misconception? My doubts about a steam chamber? Doubts that the Poles said there were steam chambers? Are you saying the report from the Polish government in exile wasn't submitted into evidence? Do the Soviets need to submit a report from the Polish government for it to be from the Polish government?
The clue is in the document code. PS-documents were generally submitted by the Americans, who submitted as mentioned above, a charge sheet from the Polish government-in-exile - which barely even reaches the level of a report. The Soviet prosecutors submitted other evidence on Treblinka which told a more detailed story, and contradicted the 'steam chambers' claim. Samuel Rajzman was put on the stand and didn't mention 'steam chambers'. So there is nothing about steam chambers in the judgement.
Look me in the eye and tell me that you believe that when investigating a mass murder, the total number of victims is merely one point of fact that is no more important than any other point of fact such as, e.g., the color of the shoes the killer took from one of his victims after he tried to shoot her in the head but missed and hit her foot.
When it comes to assessing the veracity of information, a headline figure is a headline figure. It can well be wrong without this impeaching the credibility of the rest of the report, especially if the figure is calculated by means which don't have anything to do with the credibility of the witnesses or the veracity of the documents or forensic tests.
This is because unlike points of fact such as whether shoes were stolen by a killer, the number of victims in a megadeath usually has to be estimated. This applies to the Holodomor, Kolyma and to Auschwitz. Huge variations were forthcoming on all these things. So I will look you in the eye and say 'so what?' the next time you try on the 4M gambit, because it's imbecilic.
The Polish investigation of Auschwitz revealed a vast amount of detail and thus, points of fact. These include the fact of the use of gas chambers to carry out mass murder and the fact of serial cremation. Indeed, the Sehn investigation had a copy of the '4756' document spelling out the crematoria capacity, which
contradicted the 4M headline figure. So the only conclusion is that the Polish investigation was sloppy and lazy on the death toll, which is why from an early stage - 1947 - there were voices heard saying it was significantly lower, in addition to the evidence of Hoess himself saying it was significantly lower.
By contrast, the Treblinka investigation of 1945 got it almost exactly right, because station-master Zabecki had counted trains coming in, and the resulting figure of 781,000 turns out to be very much on the money when compared to the documentary evidence found later on. The Belzec investigation estimated 600,000, and was 85% on the money, compared to what we now know.
The initial estimate for Majdanek, meanwhile, managed to overstate the death toll by a factor of 20 - but this figure turns out to be rather accurate for Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka
plus Majdanek, and indeed the evidence which most contributed to the (Soviet) 1.5 million figure at Majdanek came from BST - the shoes of the victims of Aktion Reinhard, piled up in a warehouse in Lublin. The Polish Main Commission dismissed this figure and re-estimated the number at 360,000, still many times the eventual number, but as with Auschwitz, there was the political factor of submerging Jewish losses in a sea of Slavic suffering,
The bottom line is that you answered the question. As far as you know, the first people who had not been in the camp during the war to visit Auschwitz to inspect the site were probably the officials of the Frankfurt Landgericht in the 1960s. IIRC they were not able to visit as official representatives of a western government so they used some sort of subterfuge to gain access. There is no "gotcha" to not having access to the physical plant for nearly twenty years after the end of the war. The only "gotcha" stems from your explanation as to why this doesn't matter. The fact is that, despite your assertion that investigators in the East and the West arrived at similar conclusions, they didn't always. And when they did, they would arrive at the same conclusions that nobody believes today. Independant investigations on both sides of the iron curtain that arrived at similar conclusions that are not accepted as true today is not evidence of competent investigations. It's evidence that there were buffoons on both sides.
Whether or not there were buffoons on either side of the Iron Curtain (and sure there were; there are buffoons in all walks of life in all eras) is somewhat irrelevant to the fact that the e-v-i-d-e-n-c-e matches. I've been talking about how documents matched forensic investigations and how witnesses matched other witnesses, all in the course of entirely independent investigations.
Neither subsequent legal investigators nor historians have ever felt bound by the 'first stabs' at uncovering the full extent of Nazi atrocity. That's why the Auschwitz 4M figure was thrown over rather publicly in the 1950s by Reitlinger, for example, and why the Frankfurt court didn't endorse it either. What is obvious, however, from looking at subsequent trials and the historiography is that both lawyers and historians are perfectly capable of identifying where evidence matches up. This happens all the time.
The "gotcha" in Western investigators not having access to the main sites of the holocaust is not the blocked access. It's your dismissal of these main sites as trivial to our understanding of the holocaust. It's your dismissal of the lessons of Katyn: that the greatest concentration of human suffering in recorded history (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor) were never investigated as thoroughly as a murder scene that is an atrocityette (Katyn) by comparison and the only on-site investigation of any holocaust "crime" scene was conducted by people who were mass murderers and liars and were known to be so since before the end of the war.
Katyn was investigated by people who were mass murderers and liars and were known to be so since before the end of the war. The investigation was especially careful precisely because the Nazis knew that the Soviets were likely to accuse them of having perpetrated the crime, and because it was a propaganda exercise. Yet once one strips away the bluster of this delegation and that delegation visiting, then the actual Geheime Feldpolizei-supervised crime scene investigation is no different to that which was conducted by the Soviets across the multiple crimes scenes at Auschwitz. Same type of military JAG personnel with same type of university pathologists brought in.
The difference is that at Katyn, all the bodies were intact and present, and were also clothed. This opened up possibilities that were entirely absent at Auschwitz, or Treblinka. Even if there had been graves with intact bodies at those camps, then the work of identifying the victims from their clothing and personal possessions couldn't have been done, yet it's this which takes up the most space in the Nazi Katyn investigation. But there weren't graves with intact bodies. The Soviets autopsied well over 500 bodies of victims at Auschwitz but these were generally naked emaciated Muselmaenner. Still, the file is rather thick.
The "gotcha" is that you know the Soviets lied about Katyn, you know they
lied about soap.
No, the Soviets didn't lie about soap. Human fat was used to make cleaning materials at the Danzig Anatomy Institute. The interpretation placed on this fact was over-eager and proved nothing about any Nazi war crimes suspect, but the hard facts at DAI were not fabricated by the Soviets.
Katyn is therefore a set of one, and is irrelevant to judging the veracity of other Soviet investigations since these are accepted today because of the independent evidence provided by other nation-states.
You know the Americans lied about lampshades and shrunken heads.
No, they didn't.
You know the British lied about four and a half million Allied citizens murdered at Auschwitz with Zyklon B.
No, they didn't lie. They offered an estimate which can be seen to be exaggerated. The qualitative evidence was fine.
And yet you believe that you can cherry pick factoids from all the diamonds these sources generated and arrive at "the truth" because it suits your preconceived agenda of hate.
I don't think assessing hundreds of witnesses and thousands of documents is even remotely cherrypicking. It's telling that when deniers are put on the spot about the investigations, the same old hoary crap is brought up - with no variations, no new material, no further examples to confirm the paranoid falsus in uno argument.
For starters, each investigative agency is to be judged on its own merits and achievements. The US investigators at Buchenwald were different to the ones at Mauthausen or the ones at Hartheim or the ones at Dachau. Let me remind you of some of the forces involved:
21 Army Group
British 2nd Army and XXX Corps - Belsen
12 Army Group
US 9th Army - sub-camps; the Gardelegen massacre
US 3rd Army - Buchenwald, Flossenbuerg
US 1st Army - sub-camps
6 Army Group
US 7th Army - Dachau
15 Army Group
US 5th Army - Mauthausen
2nd Belorussian Front - Stutthof, Danzig Anatomy Institute
1st Belorussian Front - Majdanek, Treblinka, Sobibor
1st Ukrainian Front - Auschwitz, Belzec
Lvov oblast procuracy - interviewing Belzec survivor; Janowska
Belorussian SSR - Minsk, Maly Trostinets
Latvian SSR - conducting Riga trial of Jeckeln
et cetera.
Are you seriously trying to claim that the (alleged) actions of one sub-unit of the US Army affect the veracity of all other sub-units of the US Army? And how would that even affect the trustworthiness of entirely REMF organisations like the IMT interrogation division?
Your implied argument is as silly as claiming that police corruption in New York in the 1970s means we should throw out all convictions in Detroit, just because.
