Again about the Stalinist deniers: yes, the Moscow trials were staged, duh.

Sometimes we tackle other kinds of denial here, since the "methodology" employed by the Holocaust deniers can be employed to "debunk" practically anything, and highlighing this fact now and then is useful. 

Various brainwashed Stalin apologists, like Grover Furr (exposed as a liar and an ignoramus here) and Ludo Martens claim, despite all evidence, that the absurd Moscow show trials were real, that the Old Bolsheviks really were reduced to the level of pitiful wreckers and then freely and with gusto confessed their crimes.

The simple fact is that the trials were staged. Some of the evidence for this is provided below. If these neo-Stalinists (who are no better than neo-Nazis, as far as I'm concerned) are wrong on such a trivial matter, they simply cannot be trusted on anything else.

Nazi Document on Mass Extermination of Jews in Auschwitz-Birkenau: The Franke-Gricksch Report

The so-called Franke-Gricksch report on the "resettlement action" in Auschwitz is the most detailed and explicit contemporary Nazi document on the mass murder of Jews in an extermination camp. The document describes the process of mass killing in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including how "the unfit [Jews] go to the basement of a biggish house" and  "are put to sleep" by "certain substances" introduced "by lowering containers into pillars from above" before "the corpses are incinerated". Previously, only a crude post-war copy of the report has been made public. We have located and now publish for the first time a war-time carbon copy made by the staff of the SS Personnel Main Office.

The Document

(BArch R 187/539, p. 24-25)

The Hagen Letter: "...to deal with 1/3 of the Poles - old people and children under the age of 10 - as with the Jews, that is to kill them."

On 17 February 1943, the Higher SS and Police Leader East Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger forwarded to the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler correspondence of German officials in the General Gouvernement (BArch NS 19/1210).

The cause was a letter written by Wilhelm Hagen, the medical officer of Warsaw, to Adolf Hitler. In his letter of 7 December 1942, Hagen explained that Lothar Weirauch, head of the Department of Population and Welfare,  had revealed that "it is intended or considered, in the course of the resettlement of 200,000 Poles in the east of the General Government...to deal with a third of the Poles - with 70,000 old people and children under the age of 10, as with the Jews, that is, to kill them" (see document below). He did ask Hitler for his intervention and decision on the issue.

Blobel, Eichmann's Office and a Denier's Ignorance

We have already observed the pattern that whenever the denier Carlo Mattogno claims on the Holocaust that something or someone is not known, had nothing to do with something else or did not exist, then there is a good chance that the exact opposite is true.

Examples:

• Josef "quite unknown" Spacil (SS-Standartenführer, BdS Niederlande, SS economist at the HSSPF Süd-Russland, head of RSHA II)


• Johann "completely unknown" Ernst (SS-Untersturmführer and Technischer Obersekretär, head of SiPo repair garages)


• Guido "completely unknown" Huhn (SS-Obersturmführer, SS-Sondereinheit at concentration camp Auschwitz)


• Friedrich "not a Major in any way" Pradel (SS-Sturmbannführer and Major der Schutzpolizei, RSHA II D 3 a)


• on Sonderkommando 1005 German documents that "there are none" and that the designation "was invented by the Soviets".


• on the Minsk gas-chamber dossier that the "signature of the note in question is by a different hand and is a rather clumsy attempted imitation" and that "there is no trace of any record of the presumed visit to Minsk itself by any Italian fascist delegation".


• on homicidal gas vans that "the word 'Gaswagen,' in the sense of 'mobile homicidal gas chamber' was coined only after the Second World War by the victorious powers".


• on homicidal gas vans that "the term 'Gaskammer' can only refer to a stationary 'gas chamber'".


• on Saurer gasoline driven gas vans that "all Saurer trucks had diesel engines"


• on intercepted decodes on the mass killing unit Sonderkommando Lange that "there is no mention of Sonderkommando Lange, or gas vans, or Novgorod, or mental patients to be killed!".


• on a gas van document that "[c]ontrary to normal practise, the typed name of the author of the letter is missing, as are his name [sic!] and rank and  that steel bottles with carbon oxide "does not appear in any document".


• on the testimony of von dem Bach-Zelewski that "the Jewish editors of Aufbau falsified the original document, shamelessly interpolating and adding entire paragraphs".


• on the Auschwitz Jewish Sonderkommando that "not a single one had anything whatsoever to do with the crematoria" 

Mattogno never gets tired to deliver explosive ammunition that would have destroyed his reputation as a researcher - if he ever had one. In this posting, we take a look at another case in point from his recent "Holocaust Handbooks": Mattogno argues that the Aktion 1005 leader Paul Blobel "had nothing to do" with Eichmann's office - which is straight away refuted by numerous contemporary German documents.

The Soviet Role in World War II - Antony Beevor

This article has nothing to do with the usual subjects of this site (well, a little). It’s about a 2017 lecture by British historian Antony Beevor at Hillsdale College, the subject of which was the Soviet Union’s contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II.

Brest Ghetto Mass Grave: More Than One Thousand Murder Victims Exhumed

Earlier this month, the BBC reported here the exhumation of over 1,000 Jews from a mass grave in the site of the Brest ghetto during the previous two months. The unearthed skeletons included women and children and proof that victims were shot in the back of the head. The embedded video in the report included (from two minutes in) an illustrated discussion of the ghetto population register. As I showed in our Critique, this was the 'Accounting and Control Book of Population Movement' that recorded 16,934 Jews on October 15, 1942, but crossed out that figure the following day. Mattogno of course insists that all these 16,934 Jews were 'evacuated' as that is the term used by Police Battalion 310 in its report of the ghetto action (Mattogno, pp.702-704), but these remains are proof that not all 'evacuated' Jews ever left the ghetto and that at least a thousand of them had infact been shot in the ghetto itself. Moreover, given that this also proves that 'evacuated' was a euphemism that included substantial killing, and there is no evidence these Jews ever left that administrative region of the occupied territories, it is logical to infer that any Jews who were transported elsewhere were also shot. Another desperate Mattogno gambit therefore fails.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

In his Einsatzgruppen book, Mattogno explains away the Einsatzgruppe B report of 1 March 1942 on "Gaswagen" (gas van) as referring to producer gas vehicles. The term "Gaswagen" can describe a producer gas vehicle, but it can also describe a vehicle for transporting gas, a vehicle driven by liquefied petroleum gas, a delousing van - or as demonstrable in this context a homicidal gas van.

Correction Corner #8: the alleged Himmler speech about extermination of Poles is most probably a forgery.

1. Introduction.

In the Eastern Bloc literature as well as in the modern Polish studies on the Nazi policies an alleged speech made by Himmler on March 15, 1940 before the camp commandants in the occupied Poland is quoted quite often. Himmler is reported to have said:

All skilled workers of Polish origin are to be utilized in our war industry; then all Poles will disappear from this world.
In fulfilling this very responsible task, you must destroy Polishness* quickly in prescribed stages. I give all the camp commanders my full authorization...
[...]
The hour is drawing closer when every German will have to stand the test. It is therefore necessary that the great German nation sees its main task in exterminating all Poles...

This claim is peculiar, for at that time the official Nazi policy did not even include wholesale slaughter of Jews (the exterminatory "Final Solution" policies appeared in 1941 and escalated throughout 1941 and 1942), and Jews were on a lower rung of the Nazi "racial hierarchy" than Poles.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VII: Semantics

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

If we search through the books published before the Second World War, the word Gaswagen has been used with three meanings: a) short for Holzgaswagen (producer gas vehicle), short for Gastransportwagen (vehicle for transporting gas), c) any vehicle with an internal combustion engine (for sources see Mattogno and the Activity & Situation Report of Einsatzgruppe B on its Gas Vans). 

Between 1941 and 1944, the Nazis deployed homicidal gas vans with engine exhaust. The vehicles consisted of a closed cargo box mounted on a light to medium truck chassis and can be described as Kastenwagen (box wagon/van). Vergasungen (gassings) were carried out inside the closed box, so the vehicle would be something like a Vergasungskastenwagen. The bulky term can be shortened to Gaswagen (as in Gaskammer/gas-chamber, the prefix Vergasung- can be simplified to Gas-). It is semantically plausible that the Nazis would have called their homicidal gas vans as Gaswagen.

Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans. Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

 Mattogno, his Einsatzgruppen book and the Gas Vans

Part I: A Dilettante at Work

Part II:  Mental Degeneration or Dishonesty, Your Choice!

Part III: Genesis and Pictures That Say it All

Part IV: The "Enormous Contradiction" That Is None

 Part V: Nazi Foreign Office Documents vs. Holocaust Denial

Part VI: Gas Van Arithmetic

Part VII: Semantics

 Part VIII: Little More Than Hot Gas

The number and distribution of the RSHA gas vans is yet another topic that exposes Mattogno's deficiency in his Einsatzgruppen book. He does not properly read/understand the literature he wants to attack, he omits relevant German documents on the subject, his knowledge on the Nazis' Security Police and Security Service in the East - precisely the topic of the whole book - is beneath contempt, and his representation is ridden by confusion.