Review of Holocaust Handbooks Volume 23 - Carlo Mattogno, Chelmno (Part I - Method)

Part I - Method

Part II - Scholarly Avoidance

Part III - Systematic Analysis of One Example

 
Nearly two-thirds of the Holocaust Handbooks - based on page volume and principal authorship - can be credited to a single figure. If this weren't bad enough, it's none other than Carlo Mattogno, a prime example in the "How Not To Do History" playbook. It's truly comforting to know that the bulk of revisionist historiography rests on him.

Take Holocaust Handbook no. 23 on the Chełmno (Kulmhof) extermination camp, for instance. It's one of Mattogno's worst contributions, though the competition is fierce. In this work, a lack of proper historical method combines with near-total avoidance of research of the subject and unfortunate timing. 

Mattogno sums up his approach in a single statement, which begs to be quoted in its full beauty:

"As there are no documents which can be used as a basis of comparison, this means that for Chełmno the testimonies cannot constitute historical sources, so that there cannot even exist a genuine historiography for this camp."

(Mattogno, Chelmno, p.9)

There's more than half a million words of witness accounts, hundreds of wartime documents, photos, and archaeological studies on the camp. Among all events of mass violence in human history, the extermination camp Chełmno (Kulmhof) is relatively well documented. But why let overwhelming evidence get in the way?

How Mattogno & Rudolf Invented A Crazy Journey of a Jewish Transport from Holland Through Upper Silesia

Almost unnoticed, an Italian researcher made a surprising discovery on the route of Jewish transports to Auschwitz.

On 16 October 1942, a Jewish transport with 1,710 departed from the Netherlands (Westerbork camp) to Auschwitz. But the train did not only halt at the station Cosel in Upper Silesia, where 570 Jews were taken out for forced labour, as it is well-known so far.

According to this Italian researcher, the transport was diverted from its route to Auschwitz after reaching Cosel. Instead of going eastwards to Auschwitz, the train headed North-West to Gogolin, where some Jews were unloaded and admitted to the camps St. Annaberg or Sakrau. At Gogolin, the transport was either going further North to Oppeln and then East to take a halt at Voßwalde. Here, some more people got off to go to the camp Malapane between Oppeln and Voßwalde. The journey continued South to Blechhammer, some 5 km East of Cosel, where the train had started its detour and where more people were again taken out for forced labour. The train headed straight to Königshütte near Kattowitz, where it let off more forced labourers for the Bismarckhütte. Finally, the transport arrived at the Auschwitz camp.

Alternatively, the deportees were sent back from Gogolin to Cosel via Kattowitz to Auschwitz. But the transport was not unloaded at the Auschwitz camp. Instead, some Jews were selected for forced labour for the camp Bobrek. The rest of the people was taken back to Blechhammer (5 km East of Cosel, where they had been earlier the day), then to Königshütte (which they pass now for the third time) to sent Jews to Bismarckhütte and finally to the Auschwitz camp.

How does that sound? Incredible? Unbelievable? Well, perhaps I should have mentioned that this Italian "researcher" is not doing historical research in the proper sense, but he is just watching out for any straw - how matter far-fetched and absurd - to deny the Holocaust.

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.

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.

Techniques of Neutralization: Acknowledging Shootings but Denying Blame

The term Techniques of Neutralization was devised by Sykes and Matza in 1957 (see here) to analyze how people suppress guilt by rationalizing their actions in ways that deny or transfer blame. This posting applies their five categories to the excuses used by the Nazis and their denier apologists to evade any guilt for the shootings of Jews they carried out in the USSR.

What Did Reginald Paget Deny and Accept?

Manstein's defence attorney Reginald Paget has been used by deniers, such as Mattogno and Graf here, to support their claim that there was no extermination policy in the Crimea. Below I will show that Paget's opening speech to the Manstein trial regarding extermination policy was far less convenient to modern deniers than they assume. On the one hand, Manstein supported denial to the extent of claiming that killing numbers in Operational Situation Reports were massively exaggerated and that the SD did not have the manpower or time to carry out that volume of killing. He also denied that the Wehrmacht shot Jews because they were Jews rather than because of partisan warfare. On the other hand, however, Paget accepted that the SD had received "an assignment to exterminate the Jews" and that "resettlement" was a camouflage term for execution.

Georg Leibbrandt and the Killing of Jews in the USSR: A Case Study of Mattogno's Methods

Georg Leibbrandt was one of two members of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) who attended the Wannsee conference. Mattogno has discussed him on numerous occasions, most recently in the Italian edition of volume 1 of his forthcoming Einsatzgruppen Handbook where Mattogno cites him seven times, six of which are duplicated from his response of 2013 to our White Paper. The one new reference in the Italian edition is the false claim, as shown below, that Leibbrandt regarded Soviet Jews as only a political and partisan enemy rather than a race that had to be eliminated on biological grounds. The six recycled references entail a misrepresentation of Leibbrandt's correspondence with Hinrich Lohse of the Reichskommissariat Ostland in the Autumn of 1941 as supporting resettlement of Jews eastwards. An analysis of Leibbrandt's involvement in anti-Jewish policy can therefore form a useful case study of how Mattogno manipulates sources on German perpetrators.

Jews Shot because They Were Jews

In response to the brainless denier meme that Jews were only shot in the USSR because they were partisans, Communists, saboteurs or provocateurs (a meme that is antisemitic on its face, because no other group was automatically shot because it was assumed to inherently possess those characteristics), below are a list of quotes from Einsatzgruppen Operational Situation Reports [hereafter EMs] which show that being a Jew alone - and for no other reason - was sufficient to get a person shot, regardless of age, class, gender or political history.

An Early Use of 'Ausrottung' - and a small deception by Jansson

On September 12, 1936, Julius Streicher used the word 'extirpated' [Ausrottung] in a clearly exterminatory sense in a speech reported by The Times, reproduced on September 16 in The Glasgow Herald, shown here. Jansson claims here that the quote was imputed falsely to Streicher by Jewish organizations, and credulously chooses to believe Streicher's defence at Nuremberg. However, Jansson's own source (pp.23-24) shows that the quote was published in The Times, which was not a Jewish organization, and the original author of the article was, according to his biography, Matthew Halton, a Canadian reporter.

Why Did The Einsatzgruppen Reports Give False Reasons for Shooting Jews?

The reasons given in the Einsatzgruppen Reports [hereafter EMs] are sometimes used by Mattogno et al to deny that Jews were shot "because they were Jews." For example, on page 226 of this screed, Mattogno responds to the extermination remarks of Thomas in EM 133 [here] by stating that "The extermination was therefore motivated by the fact that the Jews were considered a "breeding ground [Nährboden]" and "germ bearers [Bakterienträger]” of Bolshevism." Mattogno simply takes Nazi excuses and pretexts at face value. Below I show a rational method for analyzing such pretexts.

Update: Mattogno's Ineptitude on the Fate of Jewish Workers in the General Government

Carlo Mattogno denies the established fact that Jewish workers were massacred in the General Government in early November 1943 and claims instead that there was "a mass transfer of Jewish inmates to the west [Majdanek, p.230]." As we noted in the Critique (pp.233-238), Mattogno's knowledge of this event is woefully inadequate, and he has clearly failed to read the literature on the shootings or the real labour transfers that took place in 1943. His only source for "a mass transfer of Jewish inmates" is "the November 20, 1943, issue of the Polish newspaper-in-exile Dziennik Polski, printed in England."  He quotes numbers from Hilberg showing that "22,444 Jews worked in the armaments industries of the General Government in October 1943" but "it had increased to 26,296" by January 1944, but fails to address the true sources of that increase, which we showed on page 237 of the Critique (note 430). Below I examine a further source of documents ignored by Mattogno: Nuremberg exhibits whose authors documented the fate of the plants that were closed down in the "special action" on November 3, 1943, and bemoaned the fact that the "withdrawal" of Jewish workers caused irreparable losses to the economy.

Manstein Trial Documents: Further Debunking of the Paget Meme

Following the excellent article on Simferopol by Hans here and the older debunking of the Paget/Manstein meme by Roberto here, the article below examines the exhibits presented at the Manstein trial, the proceedings of which have been digitized by Yad Vashem in 62 files in the record group TR.4. I will deal with documents in their date order; most of them were discussed at trial in the transcripts digitized at TR.4/58 and TR.4/59.

Denier Excuses For Their Epic Fail

After witnessing the latest display of passive-aggressive infantilism from our old friend Hannover on this thread at CODOH forum, I was reminded of this little list of denier excuses, compiled many years ago on the old RODOH forum.

Note on Involvement of OSS in Locating Gas Van Documents PS-501

The following information is taken from pages 179-182 of this work by Michael Salter and concerns the four documents constituting Nuremberg exhibit PS-501, discussed in this series by Hans. The first involvement of the OSS was to locate the documents among those held by British intelligence in London. A cable from Donovan to Jackson dated June 1, 1945, detailed the role of Colonel Amen in obtaining "documents (originals) which contain details of gas by "death van" fitted out by that purpose" [Salter p.180, citing cable 18124, 1/6/45, Jackson Papers, Box 101, Reel 7, my emphasis]. These were placed in a dossier prepared by OSS X-2 branch and eventually picked up by Whitney Harris, who discusses here (pp.198-199) how he used them in the interrogation of Ohlendorf while preparing for the case against Kaltenbrunner. The documents were also authenticated by Rauff in Ancona, as Hans shows here. Although the Becker-Rauff document became part of PS-501, it was originally filed by the OSS as Feldpostnummer S2704 / SECRET. Rauff gave a further very detailed confirmation of the document in Chile in 1972, shown here.

On the whining of Weckert and others about the origins of these documents, I refer readers to the quote by Zimmerman in Roberto's post here.

Sehn's Mistake, Bellinger's Gaffe

In 2001, Joe Bellinger, writing as Ross McCullough, wrote this review of Jan Sehn's book on Auschwitz. Bellinger accurately quoted Sehn's claim that, in the verdict against Degesch MD Gerhard Peters, the Frankfurt court stated that "although Peters did voluntarily agree to supply the camp with poison gas, it is impossible today to prove beyond doubt that people were really killed in Oswiecim with cyclon B."

Bellinger kicked up a fuss over this quote without realising, or bothering to check, that Sehn was misquoting the primary source, which he had only seen via a secondary source, a newspaper article (Trybuna Ludu 9.6.1955). The primary source here actually says

Hieraus folgt, dass eine Feststellungen dahin, dass das von dem Angeklagten gelieferte Zyklon B nicht zu Tötungen benutzt worden ist, nicht getroffen werden kann. Es kann aber nicht bewiesen werden, dass mit dem von dem Angeklagten gelieferten Zyklon jemand getötet worden ist

which Valerie Hébert translates as "From this it follows, that a conclusion, that the Zyklon B delivered, by the accused was not used for killing, cannot be made. It can, however, not be proven, that with the Zyklon delivered by the accused someone was killed."

In addition to the trial verdict and Hébert's thesis, a contemporary report of the trial can be read here. I am grateful to Maximus Olson for his help with this piece.

Mattogno's Dishonesty: the Föhl Letter

In MGK's Riposte, p.546, Mattogno writes as follows:

 On 21 June 1942 Walter Föhl, Deputy Director of the Department for Population and Social Welfare of the General Government (stellvertretender Leiter der Abteilung Bevölkerungswesen und Fürsorge des Generalgouvernements), wrote a letter containing the following information:

“Wir nehmen jeden Tag Züge mit je über 1000 Juden aus ganz Europa an und verarzten sie hier, bringen sie mehr oder weniger provisorisch unter und schieben sie meist weiter, hinein in die weißruthenischen Sümpfe Richtung Eismeer, wo sie alle – wenn sie es überleben (und das tun die Juden vom Kurfürstendamm oder aus Wien und Preßburg bestimmt nicht) – gegen Kriegsende versammelt sind, nicht ohne einige Autostraßen fertig gebaut zuhaben. (Aber man soll darüber nicht sprechen).”

“Every day we receive trains, each with more than 1,000 Jews from all of Europe, giving them medical checks, accommodating them more or less temporarily and sending most of them on, into the White Ruthenian marshes toward the Arctic Ocean, where they will all be assembled by the end of the war – provided they survive (and the Jews from the Kurfürstendamm or from Vienna and Bratislava certainly won’t) – not without having built some roads. (But we are not supposed to talk about it).”

The only sane reading of Föhl's letter is that it is a sarcastic commentary on how three of the RSHA's former suggestions (deportation to the Pripet marshes, detention in Siberian camps and roadbuilding in the East) have now been replaced by extermination in the Aktion Reinhard camps, with the exception of the use of some fit Jews (a relatively small number) for work tasks such roadbuilding on the DG IV project. Föhl's sarcastic tone is clearly expressed in the absurd formulation "the White Ruthenian marshes toward the Arctic Ocean", whilst the real murderous intent is conveyed in the phrase "provided they survive (and the Jews from the Kurfürstendamm or from Vienna and Bratislava certainly won’t)," which also echoes the euphemistic language used at Wannsee concerning "natural reduction." Yet Mattogno, a supposedly educated man, says "This provides further evidence in favor of a real “resettlement [Aussiedlung].”" This tells us everything we need to know about Mattogno.

Thomas Kues on Maly Trostenets: Trying to create a false dilemma

In his article The Maly Trostenets "Extermination Camp"—A Preliminary Historiographical Survey, Part 2, anomaly-hunter Thomas Kues points out «a few oddities and contradictions pertaining to the alleged use of "gas vans" at Maly Trostenets».

Jürgen Graf tells another lie

Dr. Christian Lindtner's disavowal of "Revisionism" seems to be a festering wound for Jürgen Graf, especially after HC's interview with Dr. Lindtner.

Thomas Kues on Maly Trostenets: Trying to discredit the Arlt Reports

A large part of Thomas Kues’ article The Maly Trostenets "Extermination Camp"—A Preliminary Historiographical Survey, Part 2 is spent discussing the activity reports of an SS unit known as Gruppe Arlt, which Kues claims are the only documents that connect the Maly Trostenets killing site with mass killings.

Thomas Kues on Maly Trostenets: Lying about a German Court Judgment

In a judgment issued on 21.05.1963, the Court of Assizes (Landgericht - LG) in Koblenz, German Federal Republic, sentenced several former participants in mass crimes committed in the years 1941-44 in the areas of Minsk, Koidanow, Rakow, Slonim and Sluzk in present-day Belarus, including the Maly Trostenets killing site near Minsk.