Mattogno's Distortions on the Crimea

Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen Handbook (here) has a section on the Crimea (pp.673-681) that illustrates Mattogno's ignorance of context and documentation. Mattogno assumes that all killings would be documented in detail by the Operational Situation Reports and is apparently unaware that the Wehrmacht issued its own killing reports due to the fact that the fourteen command HQ[1]subordinated to Korueck 553 (11th Army Rear Army Command) did not just hand over Jews to the SD but also killed them using their own military police. He also, as in the rest of the book, ignores the true ideological context, in which Jews were killed as Jews, as shown by the fact that the killings included Krymchaks, despite the fact that they were "passive towards Bolshevism", as I discussed here. Mattogno's poor sourcing is shown by the fact that he totally overlooks the documentation from the Manstein trial, which is online at Yad Vashem. The analysis below demonstrates how much this weakens Mattogno's authority on the region.

A new document mentioning "special cellars" (Sonderkeller) in the crematoria 2 and 3 at Birkenau.

Dr. Pavel Polian has kindly provided us with several documents from a collection residing in the Military-Medical Museum (Voyenno-Meditsinskiy Muzej) in Saint-Petersburg, Russia.

One of the documents is important for confirming the chronology of the decision to install gas chambers in the cellars of the Birkenau crematoria II and III.

We will provide a short historical introduction as well as an analysis of the Holocaust deniers' take on the issue

1. Introduction to the "special cellar" issue.

We know that the first two Birkenau crematoria (II and III) were initially planned as "normal" hygienic installations. Their morgues were began to be intended as gas chambers some time in 1942* and as undressing rooms some time in 1943.

Germar Rudolf’s foreword to Mattogno’s Einzatzgruppen book

The English translation of Mattogno’s Einsatzgruppen opus, which bears the title The Einsatzgruppen in the Occupied Eastern Territories. Genesis, Missions and Actions and has already been addressed in several HC articles, has finally been published.

Towards the end of October, as mentioned in this article, Germar Rudolf wrote that "We have submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC Blog -- to the author for his review, and are awaiting his feedback". However, there seems to have been no such feedback, or then it was limited to excuses for not addressing that long list of open issues, or then Rudolf changed his mind.

Either possibility is in line with the final part of Rudolf’s foreword to Mattogno’s book, which will be addressed in this article. Said foreword is on pp. 11-22 of the book, and the part referring to the "remarks made by the HC Blog" is on pp. 21 and 22.

Some Initial Observations on Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen Handbook

Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen study, which we have already addressed in its Italian version, has just been issued as Holocaust Handbook, Volume 39 in an English translation. Several members of the HC team will be posting their observations about this text on this blog shortly. My initial observations constitute seven parts, presented below.

1) Flawed Logic

Mattogno's key argument regarding German actions in the USSR is that Soviet Jews were killed because they were perceived by the Germans to be the "architects and supporters of Bolshevism" rather than because they were Jews (p.126). However, this is a "begging the question" fallacy because it does not acknowledge how this perception was connected to a racist worldview in which, as I showed here and here, the Jews were considered to be a Gegenrasse. Mattogno omits, for example, Hitler's message to the troops of October 2, 1941, in which both Communism and American plutocracy were blamed on "Jews and Jews alone." Given that the evidence clearly shows the perpetrators embracing this worldview, it is inescapable that Jews were killed "as Jews", as a perceived world-historical racial enemy. Mattogno simply feigns blindness to this racist, antisemitic framework of Nazi policy.

Laura Loomer Makes Fool of Self, Defames Muslims, Doesn't Know History

If you’re a seasoned kook-watcher like myself, you probably saw Laura Loomer’s protest at the Twitter headquarters last week, at which she chained herself to only one of the two front doors and wore a yellow star of David (she’s Jewish) to protest her unfair treatment by Twitter. Some Jews (myself included) took offense at this and expressed our opinion about it. But she really added insult to injury when she granted an interview to Stefan Molyneux to hash out her complaints.

Bunker 2 Extermination Site in Auschwitz-Birkenau in Contemporary Photographs

The Auschwitz State Museum has published a 26-page booklet dedicated to Bunker 2 in Auschwitz-Birkenau (Bartosik & Martyniak, "Biały domek". Historia zagłady w bunkrze II, 2017). As already suggested by the front cover, the gassing facility known as Bunker 2 (in some accounts also Bunker 5) has been spotted on a photograph taken by the SS - AFAIK its only appearance in a contemporary ground photograph (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Construction site in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1943 (Yad Vashem Archives, Photo Archives, Album FA157/344, Item 66393)

Germar Rudolf's fraudulent treatment of the Balard shooting range footage.

In the mockumentary "Probing the Holocaust", the transcript of which is available here, Germar Rudolf presents the footage of the Balard shooting range in order to "prove" that the Allies were engaged in an outright Holocaust-related fraud.

The Balard shooting range was built in 1938 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, at the boulevard Victor in the XVth arrondissement of Paris for training police offcers. It was demolished in 1964. During the Nazi occupation it served as a place of torture and executions.

In his mockumentary Rudolf brings up the postwar footage of the shooting range during his segment on the gas chamber of Dachau (which will be dealt with at a later date). He tries to prove that the footage proves that the Allied Psychological Warfare divisions were faking evidence of Nazi atrocities, and thus wants to dismiss the Dachau gas chamber as another such fake.

Let's take a look at his arguments.

Mattogno's Major Problem with a Gas Van Document

Among the contemporary German documents on homicidal gas vans is a letter from Walther Rauff to the Criminal Technical Institute at the Reich Criminal Police Office of 26 March 1942 on "special wagons" and "gas bottles with carbon monoxide". Since the document challenges a core belief of Holocaust denial of no Nazi homicidal gas-chambers, it had to be declared dubious or insinuated forged by leading deniers (debunked in Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Van: Part V: The Rauff Letter to the Criminal Technical Institute with updates 1, 2, 3 and specifically on Mattogno here).

One of the arguments: the head of the Security Police motor pool Friedrich Pradel is referred to as "Major" in the letter, allegedly a false rank. Recap what Santiago Alvarez and Carlo Mattogno - one parroting the other - claimed on the issue:

Alvarez, The Gas Vans (September 2011), p.298:

Mattogno, Inside the Gas Chambers, 1st edition (June 2014), p. 146 and 2nd edition (October 2016), p. 145:

Bunkers, dugouts, Mattogno's honesty.

In "Carlo Mattogno, the failed Dragon-slayer" I wrote in regard to Mattogno's claim that the term "Bunkers" (in relation to the first two extermination installations in Birkenau, Bunker 1 and Bunker 2) was invented by the Poles and forced on Hoess:

The problem for Mattogno is that Hoess did mention the term "Bunker" before he was transferred to Poland. Here's a quote from the joint interrogation of Otto Moll and Rudolf Hoess at Nuremberg on 16 April 1946, by Lieut.-Colonel Smith W. Brookhart, as published in R. Overy, Interrogations. The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945, 2001, p. 394:

Q. How does that figure strike you, Hoess?
A. It is impossible for him to know the exact figures, but they appear to me to be much too small as far as I can remember today. The people buried in the two big mass graves of the so-called dugouts one and two, amounted to 106,000 or 107,000 people.
[...]
Q. Hoess, what do you think would be the correct figures?
A. Moll, in my opinion, cannot possibly have any idea of the number of killings in the dugouts where he was working and responsible. At any rate, they were far, far too low - that is, Moll's figure.

Obviously "dugouts one and two" are Bunkers 1 and 2, and the translator was clueless about what Hoess meant. And why would that be if there was such a grand conspiracy? So much for Mattogno's claim about Hoess.

In his response Mattogno characterized my explanation as follows:

He argues that Rudolf Hoess used the term "Bunker" before his extradition to Poland (contrary to what I said) and cites an interrogation of the former commandant of Auschwitz on April 16, 1946 where, however, the term "Bunker" does not appear but rather "dugouts one and two". Romanov said: "Obviously "dugouts one and two" are Bunkers 1 and 2, and the translator was clueless about what Hoess meant." The explanation is quite feeble. The fact is that the text does not mention the term "Bunker", and here we are speaking precisely about terminology.
During the interrogation of 1 April 1946 Hoess spoke of "two old farms", and on 11 March 1946 of "two old farmbuildings". These terms correspond to the German Bauernhäuse, so that the term "dugouts" is explained more by an inappropriate translation of Bauerhaus than that of "Bunker".

In my response I explained, citing dictionaries:

"Dugout" is one of the direct English translations of the German term "Bunker". Indeed, the very English word "bunker" in the military sense of "dugout" came from German [...] Hence, in context, it is obvious that originally Höss used the term "Bunker" which for a native English speaker made sense as a dugout.

Lo and behold: in his subsequent book Commandant of Auschwitz - Rudolf Höss, His Torture and His Forced Confessions (Nov. 2017, p. 227) Mattogno adopts my "quite feeble" explanation without any further ado!

Most likely, Höss had used the term “bunker” earlier on April 16, 1946, when he spoke about “dugouts” 1 and 2 [...] The term in question, “dugout,” is in fact the English equivalent of the German word “Bunker,” whose primary meaning is “concrete shelter” (“betonierter Schutzraum”; Brockhaus…, p. 86), such as a fortress or an air-raid shelter.

No acknowledgment of his previous conspiracy theory about Poles forcing the term on Hoess (he concocts an entirely new one instead, which is even less convincing) and no acknowledgment that he was wrong about my explanation being "quite feeble" either.

Carlo has shown his true face again.

Mattogno's Distortion of Orders in his Italian Einsatzgruppen Book

An English translation of Carlo Mattogno's Einsatzgruppen study, which had previously appeared in Italian in two parts (1 and 2) has just been translated and is undergoing "author proofing" before being made available as Holocaust Handbook No. 39. However, towards the end of October 2018, Germar Rudolf wrote that "We have submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC Blog -- to the author for his review, and are awaiting his feedback" [see screenshot at the foot of this article]. What are these issues? Many of them are likely to pertain to Roberto's detailed refutation of the Jaeger Report chapter. Some may also relate to Hans' demolition of Mattogno on gas vans. This posting focuses on the Italian text's distortions of German orders, which Mattogno misrepresents because he wishes to convince his readers that the orders were intended to shoot Jews not "as Jews" but because they were assumed by the Germans to be aiding Bolshevism and the partisans (pp.10-11). Given that I have posted previously on Mattogno and Graf's old habits on this theme, it is possible that Rudolf wants Mattogno to address it. The distortions regarding orders can be shown by presenting them in chronological sequence.

SK Lange and Mattogno's Italian Book on the Einsatzgruppen

A few days ago, Germar Rudolf indiscreetly revealed on the Holocaust Handbooks site that he has "submitted a long list of open issues -- including remarks made by the HC blog" to Carlo Mattogno for review for an already translated and edited, but not yet published English edition of his Einsatzgruppen book. I don't want to miss the opportunity to add to this list his (mis)treatment of Sonderkommando Lange, if it's not yet on it. I have already blogged extensively on SK Lange, but I will again roll out some of it in this posting specifically to address Mattogno's Italian edition of his Einsatzgruppen book.

Scrolling through the footnotes (Mattogno, Gli Einsatzgruppen nei territori orientali occupati, parte I, p. 279 - 286), it strikes one right away that his knowledge of literature is marginal, his use of documents selective and his study of testimonial evidence virtually non-existent.

His main source is the more than 30 years old article by Beer, Die Entwicklung der Gaswagen beim Mord an den Juden (1987). He does not use in this context or know of the more recent works specifically on the killing of mentally ill people and SK Lange, like 

• Rieß, Die Anfänge der Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens in Danzig und Wartheland 1939/40 (1995)

• Alberti, Die Verfolgung und Vernichtung der Juden im Reichsgau Warthegau 1939-1945 (2006)

• Topp et al., Die Provinz Ostpreußen und die nationalsozialistische "Euthanasie" SS-"Aktion Lange" und "Aktion T4", Medizinhistorisches Journal, 43 (2008) 

• Montague, Chelmno and the Holocaust (2012)  [only cited later on]

• Leidinger, Das Schicksal der polnischen Psychiatrie unter deutscher Besatzung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Psychatrische Praxis, 41 (2014)

• Schwanke, Die Landesheil- und Pflegeanstalt Tiegenhof (2015)

Mattogno pours in some snippets from Gerlach's Kalkulierte Morde and Longerich's Holocaust - not exactly specialist literature on the subject - and some British intercepts of radio signals. But this does not change the overall picture that he is mainly stuck in the 80s, both in terms of literature knowledge and his method, that does not seem to have advanced since then.

His limited knowledge of sources combined with his usual double standards, systematic misinterpretation, destructive approach of dismissing evidence for no real reason without offering any own narrative seems to provide him with the false certainty that he has somehow neutralised the momentum of SK Lange on gas vans and the Holocaust. 

Auschwitz-Birkenau Aerial Photographs

The following is a compilation of published aerial photographs (with close-ups) of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex. I have also listed visible features relevant to mass extermination and figures on Jewish mass transports (derived from the so called Glaser list) to those days with aerial photographs of sufficient quality and before the halt of the extermination in October 1944.

In the context of Holocaust denial, it is noteworthy that the known aerial photographs show only few seconds of Birkenau from high altitude on few days in 1944, thereof only two days with excessive mass killings taken place (31 May and 8 July 1944 - as opposed to four other days in June and August with "mild" activity and "only" one or two Jewish transports arriving). At such frequency, the photographs cannot directly depict the actual magnitude of mass killing on a certain day or even over a period. And yet, more or less static features constantly present or only slowly changing over time such as open air incineration area, thick security and camouflage screens and discolouration at the gas introduction openings on the gas chambers' roofs, as well as repeated heavy smoke from an incineration trench located close to the crematorium 5 gas chambers (also belching smoke on Sonderkommando ground photos) provide more than just a glimpse on the extermination machinery.

A useful resource of information on the various photos compiled by the late Harry Mazal can be found here (just some of the scale figures need to be corrected).

Other blog postings related to the Auschwitz-Birkenau air-photos:

The Auschwitz Open Air Incineration Photographs as Evidence for Mass Extermination

Personal Movement in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Compound on 25 August 1944 Aerial Photographs

The Gardens at the Crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau

John Ball's Air Photo Evidence on Auschwitz

Agreements Made Before Operation Barbarossa to Target "Communists and Jews" in the Balkans and Occupied Eastern Poland

A key argument of deniers, such as by Mattogno and Graf here, is that the Germans followed a policy in occupied eastern Poland that only pro-Communist "Soviet Jews were shot" systematically, while many other eastern Jews were killed only "on account of sabotage, anti-German activities, as carriers of diseases, and above all as retaliatory measures for partisan attacks." However, such deniers ignore the fact that agreements secured and transmitted by Heydrich before June 22, 1941 had paved the way for the Wehrmacht to give his forces the freedom to target "Communists and Jews" in the Balkan region and the areas of eastern Poland that the Germans would occupy before reaching the pre-1939 borders of the USSR. The evidence below therefore refutes Mattogno and Graf by showing that the Balkans and occupied eastern Poland, as well as the occupied pre-1939 USSR, were designated as grounds for "racial war" against an "anti-race", not just military or political war.

Germar Rudolf doubles down on John Ball's Babiy Yar lie.

John Ball's blatant lie about Babiy Yar was exposed by me here back in 2006.

Long story short, Ball lied about the place where the shootings took place in the ravine and "analyzed" the wrong area of the aerial photo. Here, once again, is the photo with Ball's picture overlaid. No witness has claimed shootings took place there. Ball deceptively omitted most of the ravine, including the places where the shootings did take place.

Ball's lie was republished under Germar Rudolf's editorship numerous times.

Ball's book is the volume 27 of the "Holocaust Handbooks" series and is already in its 5th "corrected and updated edition".

There's a note:

The first three editions of this book bore John C. Ball as the author of this work. On Jan. 29, 2015, John requested not to use his name for new editions, but allowed us the use all of the photographic and texual material as we see fit.
The first edition appeared in 1992 under the title Air Photo Evidence: Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Bergen-Belsen, Belzec, Babi Yar, Katyn Forest— World War II photos of alleged mass murder camps! Does evidence confirm or dismiss eye witness stories? Were gas chamber marks put on by CIA workers?, self-published by the author, Ball Resource Services Ltd., Delta, BC, Canada. The second edition of January 2015 has the same title as the current one and is a marginally corrected reprint of the first edition with a preface similar to the present one plus a number of footnotes added. The third and fourth editions (January 2015, March 2017) resembled the current one closely, except for some updates, corrections and material added.

Naturally, the lie is still in the book:

Wrong! This location is not alleged to have been used for shootings or cremations.

Fake news! Entirely wrong location.

A blatant lie! "8" is not the location "where between 33,771 and 100,000 bodies were said to have been exhumed and cremated".

Rudolf is well aware of our blog, so he has no excuse whatsoever.

Needless to say, this lie fully discredits not only the hoaxer John Ball (about whose other exploits you can read here, here and here) but also the fraud Germar Rudolf, known for his use of numerous fake PhDs in absence of a real one.

The Gardens at the Crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau

In his contemporary manuscript, Marcel Nadjari, a prisoner of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau, provided the following description of crematorium 2/3 (he was usually employed at the latter):

"It is a big building with a wide chimney and 15 ovens. Below a garden there are two big endless rooms in the basement. The one serves for undressing and the other is the death chamber, where the people enter naked and after filled with about 3000 people, it is closed and they gas them, where they gave up the ghost after 6 to 7 minutes of martyrdom."

(Contemporary Handwritten Letter of Auschwitz Sonderkommando Prisoner Marcel Nadjari Deciphered, my emphasis)

Prussian blue penetration depth.

Many years ago a few article drafts appeared on the late Harry Mazal's website mazal.org. One of them was entitled "Techincal requirements for a gas chamber and some observations on Prussian blue".

It turned out to be a draft of the article quoted by Dr. Richard Green in his devastating rebuttal of the fraudulent Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf. Apparently it was initially to be a part of the collective report responding to Rudolf, though later it was decided that only Dr. Green and Prof. Jan van Pelt would officially respond.

The drafts disappeared from the site some time later, and Mr. Mazal died in 2011. The paper was left unpublished, and it is highly unlikely that it will ever be published. Therefore I decided to post an excerpt from this article that concerns one point about the formation of Prussian blue with several valuable photos.

The excerpt follows. There has been some minimal editing of the references (like picture numbers).

Bila Tserkva, 'Gegenrasse' and the Ideological Roots of the Nazi Murder of Jewish Children

In August 1941, 90 Jewish children in Bila Tserkva, Ukraine, were shot by forces under the ultimate authority of General Field Marshall Walther von Reichenau. When Generalstabsoffizier Helmuth Groscurth attended a meeting to discuss the necessity of killing the children, the Field Commander, Reidl, gave him a justification based purely on ideological [weltanschauliche] grounds [facsimile here, translation here]. The subsequent shooting was described by August Haefner in testimony for the Callsen trial. Reichenau's reply to Groscurth confirmed his permission for these murders, whilst his order of a few weeks later echoed Reidl's emphasis on ideology by stating that "The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations." Reichenau thus reflected a worldview (Weltanschauung) that the "pitiless extermination of foreign treachery" via a "severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry" was necessary in order to "to liberate the German people once forever from the Asiatic-Jewish danger." An important task for historians is to address the roots of those beliefs and how they differed from the racism directed at most other Nazi victims of mass murder, such as Slavs.

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (2)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

In this article I continue the presentation of administrative documents relating to mass graves from the extermination of the Jews in Lithuania in 1941, which like in the previous series will be contextualized with the 2nd Jäger Report and other evidence.

The documents presented hereafter are from districts of the GBK’s Panevėžys(Ponewesch), Šiauliai (Schaulen) and Vilnius(Wilna)-Land.

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) - Part 5 (1)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

In the previous articles of this series I refuted Mattogno’s arguments against the authenticity and reliability of the 2nd Jäger Report in the first volume of his work about the Einsatzgruppen.

This article and the next one will be dedicated to presenting and discussing some documentary evidence associated to the mass killings reported by Jäger, which is mostly ignored by Mattogno and largely shown for the first time, as far as I know, in a publication written in the English language.

Ron Unz comes out as a Holocaust denier, fails even at that.

Ron Unz has come out as a Holocaust denier in this article.

No surprise there, we've already pointed out the signs before.

I'll just comment on a few factual points.

Unz is obsessed with various important WWII figures allegedly not mentioning the Holocaust. There is no logical argument here, so this shows the irrationality of his denial.

See here on the memoirs of Churchill et al., it's a common denier meme.

Unz then complains about the historians not paying much attention to Milch's Jewish roots. The argument is of course sheer nonsense since Milch's exception doesn't somehow disprove the rule.

He doesn't fail to mention Rigg's book about Hitler's "Jewish" soldiers. Actually the absolute majority were not Jewish by the Nazi laws, but Mischlinge ("mongrels"). The majority of the "half-Jews" were dismissed from the Wehrmacht in 1940.

Here are some citations from the book Lives of Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story of Nazi Racial Laws and Men of Jewish Descent in the German Military:

The reader will therefore not find it surprising that the Nazis deported countless converted parents, grandparents, and other relatives of the Mischlinge documented in this study to Hitler’s death camps, even though, as Martin Gilbert wrote, “tens of thousands of German Jews were not Jews at all in their own eyes.”
[...]
People often ask, “How could those affected by these laws serve?” Most Mischlinge served because they were drafted by the Wehrmacht, which, until 1940, required half-Jews to serve. However, they could not become NCOs or officers without Hitler’s personal approval.
In April 1940 Hitler decided to order the discharge of half-Jews from the armed forces because their presence created problems. Many came home after the Poland campaign in 1939 to find that the authorities had severely persecuted their relatives. Hitler did not want to protect Jewish parents and grandparents because of the service of their children and grandchildren, so he discharged the half-Jewish soldiers. Many, however, remained on active duty, with exemptions from Hitler or because they had hidden their Jewish ancestry. Also, several stayed with their units for months after this discharge order, due to the war with Norway in April and the invasion of France in May 1940, which slowed the bureaucratic process of discharging them.
The authorities did not widely enforce this discharge order until late summer 1940, and even then, many officers ignored it. In addition, the search for half-Jews in the service often consisted solely of requiring soldiers to sign ancestry declarations stating they were not Jews. Many Mischlinge signed this statement in good faith, since they were not Jews according to their understanding. Others just lied and remained with their units. Known half-Jews who had won combat medals or battlefield promotions could apply for an exemption from the racial laws, enabling them to remain in the Wehrmacht because of their valor. Thousands submitted applications. Even before 1940 several half-Jewish officers had received exemptions from Hitler and obtained high ranks.
The military also drafted quarter-Jews. Unlike the half-Jews, they had to serve throughout the entire war. Yet they, like their half-Jewish counterparts, could not become NCOs or officers without Hitler’s approval.
[...]
The passionate patriotism felt by many Mischlinge is ironic. When drafted, most thought it their duty to obey, even though the Nazis persecuted them and their families. As half-Jew Dieter Bergman said, “I loved my Fatherland, and most half-Jews I knew all believed they were fulfilling their duty to Germany. We loved Germany and wanted to see her become great again. Unfortunately, we were lied to and were abused by the very country we held so dear.” Nazi policy toward Mischlinge gradually worsened and pushed them toward the world of the Holocaust.
Hitler refused to use these patriotic citizens to help win the war. This demonstrates how Hitler valued racial purity over military victory.
[...]
Hitler had discharged tens of thousands of half-Jews from military service by late 1942, when Germany encountered severe setbacks at Stalingrad. He could have recalled these men, and most would have fought bravely. Did Hitler have nothing better to do at the height of the battle of Stalingrad than to examine applications from Mischlinge to see if they were worthy of Aryanization? Only he could grant such an exemption, since he believed only he, like God, could discern a person’s true racial makeup. Hitler’s racial policies turned most Mischlinge against him and his government. The majority of them looked forward to the day of Hitler’s demise. Krüger admitted that had Hitler not discriminated against him, he probably would have become a Nazi. When asked why, he simply explained how difficult it is today for people to understand how attractive the movement was to young men. In front of “the evil goals of the Nazis stood the wonderful activities for young men of camping, war games, and community. It all just felt so good.”

Unz then complains that some authors do not extensively examine the Nazi myth of the Jewish Bolshevism. Well, what do you know, Unz actually accepts this myth.

He even repeats Putin's ignorant claim about 80-85% of the first Soviet government having been Jewish and mentions Robert Wilton.

Too bad that Putin's claim is pure bunk because there was only 1 Jew in the first Soviet government, Trotsky. Official pic of the first Soviet government with the official list:

Putin relied on no other than Robert Wilton (most likely indirectly, though Andrey Dikiy), who was a known fraud who simply made up his lists. Those will be the subject of a more detailed study, but it will suffice to mention for the time being that he made up non-existent commissariats and lied about non-Jewish commissars being Jews, to wit: Lurye-Larin was never a commissar; Shlikhter was fully non-Jewish (German and Polish ancestry); Karl Lander came from a family of Latvian peasants; no "Kaufman", "Spitsberg" or "Lilina" has ever been a commissar; Shmidt was an ethnic German; Zinoviev was Jewish but never a commissar; no "hygiene" commissariat ever existed; Anvelt was an ethnic Estonian; Volodarski and Uritski Jewish but never SNK commissars; Shteinberg indeed Jewish, albeit not a Bolshevik; no "refugee" commissariat existed. So much for Wilton and Putin.

In between his Holocaust denial rants Unz takes some time to go full neo-Nazi, to wit:

Anyone who reads serious history books knows that Jews have generally enjoyed a reputation for producing many of the world’s greatest swindlers and frauds, hardly surprising given their notorious tendency to lie and dissemble. 

[...] 

But combine them together with the relatively tiny size of worldwide Jewry, around 16 million prior to World War II, and the inescapable conclusion is that in per capita terms Jews were the greatest mass-murderers of the twentieth century, holding that unfortunate distinction by an enormous margin and with no other nationality coming even remotely close. And yet, by the astonishing alchemy of Hollywood, the greatest killers of the last one hundred years have somehow been transmuted into being seen as the greatest victims, a transformation so seemingly implausible that future generations will surely be left gasping in awe. 

Unz complains about some Holocaust fakes - obviously, every huge and significant event produces those, only a primitive mind would claim that those prove anything. Extensively addressed here.

He also repeats the debunked Auschwitz death toll canard:

...sudden reduction in the official Holocaust body-count by 3 million has had so little impact...

In fact he liked it so much, that he repeated that debunked nonsense twice:

Indeed, so much space was devoted to those issues that he was forced to entirely skip over the official reduction of the Auschwitz body-count by 3 million just a few years earlier, thus avoiding any need to explain why this large shift had had no impact on the canonical Holocaust figure of Six Million.

The Holocaust body count was not reduced since Communists did not claim all those 4 million were Jews in the first place. Most deniers fail at basic math, and Unz is not an exception.

Unz promotes the hoaxer Butz, who denied the extremely documented deportation of the Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz basically for the sole reason that he couldn't explain where most of them went afterwards. Needless to say, the modern denier gurus like Mattogno and Graf accept these deportations (though they are just as at a loss to explain the fate of the 320,000 Jews not selected for work and not registered in the camp).

Unz promotes the fraud Sanning, fully debunked here, and Fred Leuchter, a proven liar.

Unz promotes the hapless liar Faurisson, whose lies have been documented here in French and here in English. Here's a small demonstration of Fauri's level of "scholarship".

Unz mentions the denier claims about the Anne Frank diary, forgetting to mention that they were decisively refuted by a full forensic testing of the diary.

He repeats the usual denier nonsense about Anne's fate. Actually she fell ill with typhus only in Belsen, in Auschwitz she was not sent to the gas chamber since she was old enough and thus could join the slave labor pool. Scabies were not a reason for a gassing at that time.

Unz promotes the proven liar Irving, without bothering to address the evidence that he's a liar.

He also promotes Rudolf, fraudulently calling him a "Dr." despite him not having a PhD (his chemical nonsense is debunked here, among other places).

Unz promotes Kollerstrom,, who repeatedly and shamelessly lied about the Red Cross report, as shown here and here. And through him Unz regurgitates the denier meme about the British decodes, debunked here.

He then reveals his absolute ignorance and cluelessness by saying he was shocked to learn the well-known and uncontroversial fact that Zyklon B was a delousing agent.

One would think he would blame his ignorance on himself, but hey, that's "personal responsibility" for you.

In the end he confesses his Holocaust denial:

However, as an outsider exploring this contentious topic I think it far more likely than not that the standard Holocaust narrative is at least substantially false, and quite possibly, almost entirely so.

Well, no surprises there.

Too bad it is completely based on lies, as we've already seen.

And, being a neo-Nazi that he is, he adds this cherry on top of his pyramid of lies:

Then one day, a gust of wind came along, and the entire gigantic structure collapsed. I wouldn’t be surprised if our current Holocaust narrative eventually suffers that same fate, perhaps with unfortunate consequences for those too closely associated with having maintained it.

So much for Unz, who has repeated the most low-brow denier arguments (and never even mentioned the most "academic" denier). He has failed not only at basic history (that's a given), but even at basic denial.

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 4

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

The subject of this article is Mattogno’s argumentation in support of his denial of the killing, mentioned in the 2nd Jäger Report, of German and Austrian Jews deported to Kaunas.^[98]

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

This article and the following will address what Mattogno’s calls his "critical examination" of the 2nd Jäger Report.^[47]

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 2

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

In the previous article of this series I addressed Mattogno’s arguments against the authenticity of the 2nd Jäger Report and concluded that these are rather weak. In this and the following articles I will address Mattogno’s arguments against the reliability of the information contained in the 2nd Jäger Report.

Mattogno takes on the Jäger Report (well, he tries) – Part 1

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5 (1)

Part 5 (2)

Introduction

The report dated 1.12.1941 by SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger, commander of Einsatzkommando (EK) 3 of Einsatzgruppe (EG) A (the 2nd Jäger Report) ^[1] is the most explicit surviving German document related to Nazi Germany’s largely successful endeavor to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. It details the killing, between 4 July and 25 November 1941, of a total of 137,447 people mainly on the territory of Lithuania, of which 135,391 (98.50%) were Jews and 2,056 (1.50%) were non-Jews (communists, partisans, prisoners of war, mentally disabled people and others). ^[2]

Panagiotis Heliotis - The New Star Shining in the Revisionist Coffin? (With Added Comment on his Reply)

The Holocaust denier journal "Inconvenient History" gets increasingly spammed with articles by some Greek denier Panagiotis Heliotis mainly pasting together full quotes with his feeble-minded outpourings strictly following the style and fallacies of "Revisionist" orthodoxy. In fact, Heliotis sounds a bit like a cloned Carlo Mattogno (just minus rudimentary knowledge of sources, but plus even more pointless nitpicking).

Hitler's Comments of March 30, 1941

Historians debate the intentions of the Nazi leadership at the moment that Germany invaded the USSR in June 1941, disputing the extent to which an extermination of Soviet Jews had already been decided and, if so, whether this covered just Jewish men or also women and children. Important sources for deducing those intentions are starvation plans and Heydrich's instructions to the Einsatzgruppen and HSSPF, but a less explored source is Hitler's address to the military of March 30 recorded in the diary of Franz Halder. In this article, I analyze this source against other earlier and later statements made by Hitler.

How Twitter collaborates with neo-Nazis.

I was suspended on Twitter a few days ago for calling a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier a nutjob.

Here's how it happened.

Report on the Deportation of Reich Jews to Riga in December 1941

On December 26, 1941, Paul Salitter submitted a report on a transport from Düsseldorf to Riga that had taken place between the 11th and 17th of that month. A copy of that report, the original of which is in the Wiener Library, London, can be seen here whilst an English translation is here. Below I analyze its most pertinent contents and compare it to other sources, such as Meurin's report of the transport to Minsk of a month earlier.

A quick response to some boring nonsense.

The long-winded and correspondingly boring third-tier denier John Wear (see this blog devoted to debunking him) has published a long-winded and boring piece "comparing" euthanasia to the Holocaust and it has been brought to my attention that he has mentioned our blog.

First, let's take a quick look at the kinds of arguments he proffers.

Dividing the Dead – or not (Part 4)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

The fourth and final part is this series is about how the Soviets addressed the Nazi genocide of the Jews after Nuremberg, and about what the Soviet approach to the particular fate of Jews under Nazi rule might (or not) reveal about the reasons why the Soviets held back the 2nd Jäger Report for almost twenty years after its discovery.