Saurer Company or Why even Rudolf has shown the Diesel Issue is irrelevant on Gas Vans ("Rebuttal of "Holocaust Encyclopedia")

For decades, Holocaust deniers have claimed that the Saurer gas vans had to have diesel engines, and since diesel exhaust has lower carbon monoxide, they conclude the vans couldn’t have been used for murder. The argument is irrelevant as the RSHA turned chassis with gasoline engines into gas vans. A detailed refutation of the "diesel issue" argument was published ten years ago and has never been answered in substance to my knowledge (see Rebuttal of Alvarez on Gas Vans: Why the Diesel Issue is Still Irrelevant). Denier Alvarez’s new edition (2023) of his book "The Gas Vans" continues to repeat it, without a single source, counter-argument, or whisper of a rebuttal to the refutations that already exist. 

Germar Rudolf’s entry "Saurer Company" in CODOH's Holocaust Encyclopedia tries a fresh variation:

He notes that the RSHA motor pool acquired a number of Saurer 5-ton chassis in 1942  and the company Gaubschat in Berlin built a cargo box on each chassis - "for an unspecified purpose".  The historical consensus (or as Rudolf  like to call it "orthodoxy") holds that these were mobile gas chambers. Rudolf argues that because gasoline-engined trucks were supposedly "much easier" to obtain from other manufacturers, the RSHA’s Saurers “must have had diesel engines".

Here’s where the things get interesting. 

Rudolf concedes for the first time what deniers once swore was impossible and what we have pointed out at this blog: that Saurer did, in fact, produce gasoline-engine trucks during the war - in the French factory in Suresnes near Paris

But just when you think he might finally stumble into truth, he goes back to form and claims - without evidence - that the French factory "phased out the last gasoline-engine trucks in 1941". 

The Saurer branch in Suresnes produced 3.766 vehicles between 1940 and 1944 with "production focused primarily on five-tonners with gasoline engines, which accounted for no less than three-quarters of total production" ("Saurer. Vom Ostschweizer Kleinbetrieb zum internationalen Technologiekonzern", p. 198). 

There is therefore no factual basis that the gasoline Saurer were phased out in 1941.

So Rudolf claims the RSHA would have found it "much easier" to buy gasoline trucks from other makers. That assumes knowledge he does not have. In reality, we have no clue which five-ton gasoline-powered chassis would have been easier for the Security Police to acquire - because answering that would require analysis and actual expertise in wartime logistics, procurement procedures, agencies, institutional hierarchies, and the personalities involved. 

The reality of wartime vehicle procurement was far more complex than determining the production output of a manufacturer. For example, the Security Police in Berlin was equipped with a various makes of trucks confiscated from occupied France - hardly a sign that they had their pick of new vehicles rolling off the lines at major domestic plants (Bundesarchiv R 58/7658). 

As Friedrich Pradel, the Security Police’s vehicle procurement officer, later testified on the gas vans, the Wehrmacht's motor pool office refused to allocate truck chassis to the RSHA. His superior, Walter Rauff was forced to source the first batch of vehicles through the motor pool department of the Security Service (SD)  instead (interrogation of Pradel of 26 April 1966, NHStA NDS. 721 Hannover Acc. 97/99 Nr.10/32).  

These initial gas vans weren't acquired through standard military supply channels; they were cobbled together through internal networks and Party stock. Only later did the Wehrmacht finally approve a second batch of trucks: gasoline-powered Saurer chassis from the Suresnes factory in occupied France. The fact that they were not offered domestic vehicles might be no accident. Perhaps the army preferred to keep German-built vehicles for its own operations and was content to pass the heavy, French-made gasoline trucks to the Security Police. Who knows.

On top of that, the argument is beside the point. Even if - for the sake of argument - there were some general preference or higher likelihood for using Saurer diesels or non-Saurer petrols for unspecified purposes, that probability drops straight to zero the moment we consider the documented use of the Saurer "special vehicles" as gas vans. Or in other words, it is more likely that the Security Police was purchasing gasoline-powered Saurer from the French factory than trying to kill people with Diesel engine exhaust. Rudolf's modified diesel argument is useless as a defense - it doesn't help the deniers case one bit.

So, on the positive side, Rudolf finally admits that Saurer was producing chassis with gasoline engines during the war years. That’s progress - a step in the right direction and a slap to the "Saurer-were-all-diesels" choir of revisionists.