Denier Legalism: 1. Scripts and Anomalies

This table provides a framework for analyzing denier memes concerning the postwar trials of Nazi personnel. In this blog series, I illustrate the table with examples from denier literature.

This first blog discusses the denier claim that SS statements were 'scripted' yet contained numerous anomalies. The scripting claim appears in the work of Staeglich, who combines it with a conspiracy theory that recalcitrant perpetrators were murdered prior to their trials:

Had Baer [239] resolutely contested this allegation and been able to show its absurdity, he would not only have made it difficult form them to attain their primary objective - to reinforce the "gas chamber" myth and establish it as an unassailable "historical fact" - but he might also have caused the proceedings to take an entirely different course. By his steadfastness, Baer would have set an example for the co-defendants to follow, and perhaps even influenced some of the other participants in the trial. Hence one should give some credence to the charge that Baer's refusal to play the role assigned him in the script is the reason the trial could not begin until after his death.

Fritz Berg makes another 'scripting' claim here in relation to the T4 gassing testimony of Becker:

Page 9 of that document (see link above) includes Becker's signature followed with the statement: "Dr. Becker declared that he could not read even with eyeglasses, and had requested that the statement be read to him." In other words, someone prepared the statement for him. Oh, my! Here we see the hoaxers at work. Becker was so sick that the interview according to the statement itself had to be interrupted because of Becker's health. A sick old man was obviously browbeaten, if not worse, to make a ridiculous confession which he could not even read.

There is no evidence here that the West Germans deviated from the standard police procedure of producing a statement that accurately recorded what a witness said in an interview and then asking him to sign it, yet Berg sees a conspiracy at work.

Staeglich's scripting meme, and his claim that suicides in custody were actually homicides perpetrated to protect 'the hoax', is a major influence on the work of Thomas Kues aka Laurentz Dahl, who cites the above Staeglich passage approvingly here. His own version of the scripting meme is given here:

The caption of this photo claims that Gomerski was a callous and brutal murderer. Is this true? Did he really receive a fair trial back in 1950, as implied by Schelvis? Was he able to speak his mind openly to his interrogators and lawyers, or was he, like Auschwitz SS man Hans Aumeier, handed a number of leading questions, demanding that he stated what he “knew” about the “gas chambers”?

The deniers' self-contradiction is to then claim that these scriptings can be detected via a technique of anomaly-hunting. For example, Kues admits to this technique here when he states that:

I need the quote/paraphrase for comparison. I have an interview with Franz were he "recalls" it to have been a "Saurer engine" from a "French truck", i.e. I need the quote to establish that Franz contradicted himself on this issue.

Kues/Dahl is blind to the obvious fact that an all-powerful conspiracy, which he claims could murder recalcitrant witnesses at will, would have had controls in place to prevent such anomalies from surfacing. Common scripts will, by definition, be uniform. Like all deniers who promote the script/anomalies contradiction, Kues is asking us to believe that the conspirators were simultaneously omnipotent and careless.