Ask The Experts

[Citizenfitz]

I've just been asked a tough question: if there were no homicidal gas chambers, then why didn't the nazi hierarchy deny this at their war crimes trials?

I can't find that anyone did deny it, but I'm sure there's a hole in the story big enough to drive a King Tiger through. I just don't know where.

[Carto's Cutlass Supreme]

Because they were coerced, threatened, tortured. And it wasn't a good strategy for not getting sentenced to death. By the way, Julius Streicher told the US prosecutor he wasn't sure if he believed the extermination story.

One could ask the same question regarding witch trials. Why did no one ever say the devil doesn't exist?

Here's Robert Faurisson:

Exactly as in the witchcraft trial, when the people were accused of having met the devil, they wouldn't say, 'Your Honour, the best proof that I have not met the devil is that the devil does not exist'; it would have been the end. No. The tactic was to say, 'Oh, yes, the devil was there on the top of the hill. Myself, I was down at the bottom...and in Auschwitz it's exactly the same thing." The accused would admit the existence of the gas chambers, but deny their involvement with them.

Did Six Million Really Die?' -Report of the Evidence in the Canadian
'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel – 1988, Edited by Barbara Kulaszka. Page 640

[Haldan]

The torture endured by the defendants I simply can't begin to fathom. You can hear Julius Streicher describe his own faith here, in a straightforward and naked way, as he always described issues which he encountered:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_8erQTy1Kg

I don't think any of it is embellished.

I just can't grasp how it must have been. Anyone who believes these trials established any kind of truth or accountability, is in my mind at least, either a fool or somebody who denies the obvious injustice wrought at the defendants way.

-haldan

[Turpitz]

I think you will find Goering denied it as well.

I just can't grasp how it must have been. Anyone who believes these trials established any kind of truth or accountability, is in my mind at least, either a fool or somebody who denies the obvious injustice wrought at the defendants way.

Or likes wallowing in their ill gained hero status. You know -- 'we saved the world' and all that.

[Goethe]

I've just been asked a tough question: if there were no homicidal gas chambers, then why didn't the nazi hierarchy deny this at their war crimes trials?

I can't find that anyone did deny it, but I'm sure there's a hole in the story big enough to drive a King Tiger through. I just don't know where.

The sham courts established 'judicial notice' on the gas chambers, which meant they were accepted as fact by the court without ever providing proof, simple as that. This sham 'judicial notice' made any defense against the gas chambers claim impossible. And to hedge their bets, the Alllies had various means at their disposal.

American judge, van Roden:

"Statements admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four and five months..The investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head, punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him and beat him with rubber hoses"

Judge van Roden's allegation of torture to gain "confessions" is confirmed by Texas Supreme Court Judge, Gordon Simpson. He confirmed that savage beatings, smashing of testicles, and months of solitary confinement occurred.
- Congressional Record, appendix. v. 95,sec.12, 3/10/49

see more: getting the desired 'confession'....via torture
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=1121

"The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to [Bernard] Clarke the blows and screams were endless. Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: 'Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse.'"(12)
- 12.R. Butler, Legions of Death, Hamlyn, (London, 1983), p.237

see more: US President Obama's Attorney General nominee on torture
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?t=5306

[Hektor]

I've just been asked a tough question: if there were no homicidal gas chambers, then why didn't the nazi hierarchy deny this at their war crimes trials?

This was actually disputed as has been pointed out. And I am pretty sure, if we look long enough we will find many more examples for this.

I can't find that anyone did deny it, but I'm sure there's a hole in the story big enough to drive a King Tiger through. I just don't know where.

But they didn't confirm this either. I don't have dispute any accusation someone is making to express my disbelieve in it. It is enough not to comment on this.

Additionally I should add that Himmlers adjudant Wolff knew nothing about the Holocaust:

Wolff has been a controversial figure because many believe he was far more privy to the internal workings of the SS and its extermination activities than he acknowledged. In fact, he claimed to have known nothing about the Nazi extermination camps, even though he was a senior general in the SS. ....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Wolff

[Citizenfitz]

I really want to thank you guys for helping out on this! My knowledge of the holocon is better than most - but compared to CODOH veterans, I'm still in grade school :)

[PLAYWRIGHT]

Josef Kramer, Kommandant of Bergen-Belsen who had previously worked at Auschwitz, also denied that there had been gas chambers, but after being worked over a few times, changed his story,with the explanation that he had wanted to protect a "soldier's honor" by denying the story the first time. I've lost track of his entire retraction, but have been working on an essay about it. You see, being a member of the General rather than Waffen SS, Kramer was never a soldier.

[Sannhet]

I can't find that anyone did deny it

Here is something you may find useful:

One of the most important and revealing Nuremberg cases is that of Oswald Pohl, the wartime head of the vast SS agency (WVHA) that ran the German concentration camps. After his capture in 1946, he was taken to Nenndorf where British soldiers tied him to a chair and beat him unconscious. He lost two teeth in repeated beatings.89 He was then transferred to Nuremberg, where American military officials intensively interrogated him for more than half a year in sessions that lasted for hours. Altogether there were about 70 such sessions. During this period he had no access to an attorney or any other help. He was never formally charged with anything, nor even told precisely why he was being interrogated.

In a statement written after he was sentenced to death at Nuremberg in November 1947 by the American military court ("Concentration Camp" Case No. 4), Pohl described his treatment.90 He reported that although he was generally not physically mistreated in Nuremberg as he had been at Nenndorf, he was nevertheless subjected to the less noticeable but, as he put it, "in their own way much more brutal emotional tortures."

American interrogators (most of them Jews) accused Pohl of killing 30 million people and of condemning ten million people to death. The interrogators themselves knew very well that such accusations were lies and tricks meant to break down his resistance, Pohl declared. "Because I am not emotionally thick-skinned, these diabolical intimidations were not without effect, and the interrogators achieved what they wanted: not the truth, but rather statements that served their needs," he wrote.

Pohl was forced to sign false and self-incriminating affidavits written by prosecution officials that were later used against him in his own trial. As he recalled:

Whenever genuine documents did not correspond to what the prosecution authorities wanted or were insufficient for the guilty sentences they sought, "affidavits" were put together. The most striking feature of these remarkable trial documents is that the accused often condemned themselves in them. That is understandable only to those who have themselves experienced the technique by which such "affidavits" are obtained.

He and other defendants were "destroyed" with these affidavits, which "contain provable errors of fact regarding essential points," Pohl wrote. Among the false statements signed by Pohl was one that incriminated former Reichsbank President Walter Funk, whom the Nuremberg Tribunal eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.91

American officials also made use of false witnesses at Nuremberg, Pohl wrote:

Whenever these productions [affidavits] were not enough to produce the result sought by the prosecuting authorities, they marched out their so-called 'star witnesses,' or rather, paid witnesses ... A whole string of these shady, wretched characters played their contemptible game at Nuremberg. They included high government officials, generals and intellectuals as well as prisoners, mental defectives and real hardened criminals ... During the WVHA trial [of Pohl] a certain Otto appeared from a mental institution as a "star witness." His previous lifestyle would have been considered exemplary by any hardened criminal. The same is true of prosecution witness Krusial who presented the most spectacular fairy tales to the court under oath, which were naturally believed...

Pohl also protested that defense attorneys were not allowed free access to the German wartime documents, which the prosecution was able to find and use without hindrance:

For almost two years the prosecution authorities could make whatever use they wanted of the many crates of confiscated documentary and archival material they had at their disposal. But the same access right was refused to the German defendants despite their repeated efforts ... This meant a tremendous or even complete paralysis and hindrance of the defense cases for the accused, for those crates also contained the exonerating material that the prosecution authorities were able to keep from being presented to the court. And that is called "proper" procedure.

Because Pohl held the rank of general in the German armed forces, his treatment by the British and Americans was illegal according to the international agreements on the treatment of prisoners of war.

"As result of the brutal physical mistreatment in Nenndorf and my treatment in Nuremberg, I was emotionally a completely broken man," he wrote. "I was 54 years old. For 33 years I had served by country without dishonor, and I was unconscious of any crime."

Pohl summed up the character of the postwar trials of German leaders:

It was obvious during the Dachau trials, and it also came out unmistakably and only poorly disguised during the Nuremberg trials, that the prosecution authorities, among whom Jews predominated, were driven by blind hatred and obvious lust for revenge. Their goal was not the search for truth but rather the annihilation of as many adversaries as possible.

To an old friend Pohl wrote: "As one of the senior SS leaders I had never expected to be left unmolested. No more, however, did I expect a death sentence. It is a sentence of retribution."92

He was hanged on June 7, 1951. In his final plea to the Nuremberg court, Pohl expressed his faith that one day blind hysteria would give way to just understanding:93

After distance and time have clarified all events and when passion has ceased and when hatred and revenge have stilled their hunger, then these many millions of decent Germans who have sacrificed their lives for their fatherland will not be denied their share of sympathy which today is being attributed to the victims of the concentration camps, although a large number of them owe their fate not to political, racial or religious characteristics, but to their criminal past.

...
Along with the millions of people around the world who avidly followed the Nuremberg proceedings by radio and newspaper, the defendants themselves were shocked by the evidence presented to substantiate the extermination charge. Above all, the testimony of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and Einsatzgruppen commander Otto Ohlendorf made a deep impression. Contrary to what is often claimed or insinuated, however, the Nuremberg Tribunal defendants declared that they did not know of any extermination program during the war.94 These men were, in a sense, the first "Holocaust revisionists."

The main Nuremberg defendant, Hermann Göring, who had been Hitler's second-in-command and designated successor during most of the Third Reich years, vehemently denied knowing of any extermination program during the war. "The first time I learned of these terrible exterminations," he exclaimed at one point, "was right here in Nuremberg." The German policy had been to expel the Jews, not kill them, he explained, and added that, to the best of his knowledge, Hitler did not know of any extermination policy either.95

During a rare unguarded break between court sessions, fellow defendant Hans Fritzsche privately asked Göring about the truth of the extermination charge. The former Reichsmarschall solemnly assured Fritzsche that the accusation was not true. The Allied evidence for the charge, he insisted, was inaccurate or incomplete and totally contradicted everything he knew about the matter. In any case, Göring added, if there had been any mass killings, they certainly were not ordered by Hitler.96

General Alfred Jodl, chief of the operations staff of the Armed Forces High Command, and probably Hitler's closest military adviser, gave similar testimony to the Tribunal. Responding to a direct question about this matter, he said:97

"I can only say, fully conscious of my responsibility, that I never heard, either by hint or by written or spoken words, of an extermination of Jews ... I never had any private information on the extermination of the Jews. On my word, as sure as I am sitting here, I heard all these things for the first time after the end of the war."

Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-ruled Poland, testified that during the war he had heard only rumors and foreign reports of mass killings of Jews. He asked other officials, including Hitler, about these stories and was repeatedly assured that they were false.98

Frank's testimony is particularly noteworthy because if millions of Jews had actually been exterminated in German-occupied Poland, as alleged, hardly anyone would have been in a better position to know about it. During the course of the trial, Frank was overcome by a deep sense of Christian repentance. His psychological state was such that if he had known about an extermination program, he would have said so.
...
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, wartime head of the powerful Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was certain that he would soon be put to death regardless of the evidence presented to the Tribunal: "The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be. Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the fundamental things that are wrong here." In a question-and-answer exchange, Kaltenbrunner rejected the charge that he had ordered gassings:102

Q. Witness after witness, by testimony and affidavit, has said that the gas chamber killings were done on general or specific orders of Kaltenbrunner.

A. Show me one of those men or any of those orders. It is utterly impossible.

Q. Practically all of the orders came through Kaltenbrunner.

A. Entirely impossible.

The case of Albert Speer, one-time Hitler confidant and wartime Armaments Minister, deserves special mention. His Nuremberg defense strategy was unique and also rather successful because he did not hang. While maintaining that he personally knew nothing of an extermination program during the war, he nevertheless declared himself morally culpable for having worked so diligently for a regime he belatedly came to regard as evil. After serving a twenty-year sentence in Spandau prison, the "repentant Nazi" was "rehabilitated" by the mass media for his somewhat subtle but fervent condemnation of the Hitler regime. His contrite memoir, published in the US as Inside the Third Reich, was highly acclaimed and sold very profitably in Europe and America.

Until his death in 1981, Speer steadfastly insisted that he did not know of any extermination program or gassings during the war. His position was remarkable because, if a wartime policy to exterminate the Jews had actually existed, almost no one would have been in a better position to have known about it. As Reich Armaments Minister, Speer was responsible for the continental mobilization of all available resources, including critically needed Jewish workers. That millions of Jews could have been transported across Europe and killed at a wartime industrial center as important as Auschwitz, and elsewhere, without Speer's knowledge simply defies belief.103
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Weberb.html

You asked for "any one", there are Seven: Oswald Pohl, Herman Goering, Hans Fritzsche, Alfred Jodl, Hans Frank, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Albert Speer. A practical "Who's Who" of the surviving top men of National Socialist Germany.



And on the subject of fake "confessions":

...The case of Jupp Aschenbrenner, a Bavarian who was tortured into signing a statement that he had worked on mobile gas chambers ("gas vans") during the war. It wasn't until several years later that he was finally able to prove that he had actually spent that time in Munich studying to become an electric welder. (note 75)

and

Fritz Sauckel, head of the German wartime labor mobilization program, was sentenced to death at the main Nuremberg trial. An important piece of evidence presented to the Tribunal by the US prosecution was an affidavit signed by the defendant. (Nuremberg document 3057-PS.) It turned out that Sauckel had put his signature to this self-incriminating statement, which had been presented to him by his captors in finished form, only after he was bluntly told that if he hesitated, his wife and children would be turned over to the Soviets. "I did not stop to consider, and thinking of my family, I signed the document," Sauckel later declared. (note 76)

[jheitwler]

I've just been asked a tough question: if there were no homicidal gas chambers, then why didn't the nazi hierarchy deny this at their war crimes trials?

I can't find that anyone did deny it, but I'm sure there's a hole in the story big enough to drive a King Tiger through. I just don't know where.

Goering insisted the Final Solution referred to emigration, not extermination, at Nuremberg. I can't find any mention of the gas chambers in his testimony but you can find it at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/subject_menus/imtproc_v9menu.asp if you're interested.

As has been mentioned already, Kramer initially denied gas chambers but suddenly remembered them after he had been in custody for a while. Johann Paul Kremer (not KrAmer but KrEmer) kept a diary that included the time he was in Auschwitz. He became one of the defendants in the 1947 Auschwitz trial and various passages of his diary was read before the court. I don't know if he denied the gas chambers when he was first arrested but he didn't mention gas chambers at all in his diary. However, by the time he got to trial, he too had 'remembered' the gas chambers and explained how passages in the diary really referred to gassings.

Thies Christophersen and Wilhem Staeglich both denied the existence of gas chambers after the war and suffered the consequences of their nonconformity. Anybody who would have been in a position to know if there were gas chambers or not would also be in a position to be charged with war crimes. Since there is no statute of limitations on war crimes, it would take a very brave person to declare in public that the gas chambers are a hoax. (And just about anybody who would know is dead by now anyway)

Even if a former guard at one of the camps were brave enough to deny the gas chambers, it wouldn't do much good because former Nazis--like everybody else--cannot prove a negative nor can they know for sure that there were not any gas chambers. They can testify under oath while hooked up to a polygraph that there were no gas chambers but that would only show that they are 1) lying 2) mistaken or 3) unaware of the gas chambers.

The bottom line is that you can't prove that Saddam Hussein did not have WMDs. You can't prove the tooth fairy doesn't exist. You can't prove that 'social security reform' is not a George Bush euphamism for exterminating the elderly. Nobody can say there were no gas chambers, only that they were not aware of any.

I have no way of proving one way or another but I bet there were a significant number of captured Germans who did deny the gas chambers but, if they were allowed to continue living, their interrogation wasn't made public and they sure as Hell were not allowed to testify to this in court.

[KostasL]

I really want to thank you guys for helping out on this! My knowledge of the holocon is better than most - but compared to CODOH veterans, I'm still in grade school

If you are really interested in this subject, read books that are available.

There is a revisionist library in CODOH site. But there is also a treasure of
books and essays in more than a few sites more.

[PLAYWRIGHT]

One of the most important and revealing Nuremberg cases is that of Oswald Pohl, the wartime head of the vast SS agency (WVHA) that ran the German concentration camps...Because Pohl held the rank of general in the German armed forces, his treatment by the British and Americans was illegal according to the international agreements on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Alas, this is untrue, and illustrates my previous point about Kramer never having been a soldier.

Pohl did not hold the rank of general in the German armed forces, he was not in the German armed forces. Pohl held the rank of Obergruppenfuhrer in the SS. The SS did not use military ranks. A "rank-equivalent", such as describing Eichmann as a Lieutenant-Colonel, a rank he never held, is a form of shorthand you see in many histories, and in it's own way is a good tool for discovering frauds, such as when Hololiar David Faber claims Eichmann introduced himself as "Colonel" Eichmann at Auschwitz.

To the best of my knowledge, Pohl was never a member of the German armed forces even before joining the SS. The SS was a branch of the Nazi Party, and as such, I don't think he was protected by any international agreements. That doesn't mean his treatment wasn't disgraceful, or that the confessions alluded to are true. But the SS was not created by an act of the Reichstag or German constitution, which is why it was declared, or to be more accurate parts of it were declared, a criminal organization at Nuremburg, one of the few things about the Nuremburg trials I agree with.

For those who may object to that, think of Louis Farrakhan's security organ, "The Fruit of Islam", or The Jewish Defense League, becoming an official organ of the U.S. Government, complete with powers of arrest and subpoena, all without an Act of Congress, and you'll see what I mean.

Describing members of the SS with common military ranks has led to no small amount of confusion on both sides of the fence, but as I mentioned, it can be a useful tool for discovering fraud.

Kramer's retraction, where he states "his soldier's honor" led him to deny gas chambers, was written for him by his captors, for once again, Kramer was never a soldier, certainly did not go through a miltary officer's school, and would not have had a "soldier's code of honor" to protect. Whoever wrote the retraction for him, for I'm convinced Kramer did not write it, probably bought into the sterotype of the Prussian military officer, and thought that all Germans thought that way, which is a clue that whoever wrote that retraction for him was woefully ignorant of German culture excluding whatever they had learned from their own propaganda. Or, perhaps they thought that the press and mass of Western people would buy that statement, ignorant of the fact that the SS was not the German military.

And before somebody objects, yes, the Waffen (weaponed) SS was created, and did create field divisions during World War II, but they were still a branch of the Nazi Party that was integrated - against the wishes of professional officers - into the German military. If I recall correctly, they got their paychecks from the SS, not the Heer.

[NeilfromBris]

The next time someone asks you a question like that, show them the "confession" of Rudolph Hoess, commandant of Auschwitz. Its a truly amazing document in which Hoess confirms,among other things, the existance of a camp that never existed and it ends with a statement that the confession is true and that he has read and understood it. This from a man who couldnt SPEAK English, let alone read and write it.

Bottom line is that anyone can be made to say anything,if the right method of "questioning" is used.

[Turpitz]

And before somebody objects, yes, the Waffen (weaponed) SS was created, and did create field divisions during World War II

For troops that fought in some of the fiercest clashes in history, That has to be the understatement of the year.

But they were still a branch of the Nazi Party that was integrated - against the wishes of professional officers - into the German military.

Only because the 'professional officers' (invariably birthright) were concerned that their self indulgent ways would be undermined. Hitler wanted men that earned their status rather than were born into it. After watching first hand the utter incompetance of this hoard in WW1, you can see why. No, it was sour grapes I'm afraid.

If I recall correctly, they got their paychecks from the SS, not the Heer.

In the end they both got their pay from the German government.

A great deal of SS commanders were from the army including Field Marshal von Manstein who commanded the Totenkopf, and thought they were fantastic soldiers. The SS had a great hand in redefining modern warfare and most armies emulate their tactics. The first slaughter of the Iraqi's in 1991 after the Jewess Albright had starved them with trade embargos (Sound familiar? Germany post WW1) was an action replay of blitzkreig using armoured divisions. True, it was Guderian who helped pioneer it, but it was the SS Panzer divisions that defined it.

As for the show-trials they were a disgrace, but for America the chickens will soon be coming home to roost.

[jheitwler]

The sham courts established 'judicial notice' on the gas chambers, which meant they were accepted as fact by the court without ever providing proof, simple as that. This sham 'judicial notice' made any defense against the gas chambers claim impossible. And to hedge their bets, the Alllies had various means at their disposal.

Did the court take judicial notice of the gas chambers at Nuremberg? Do you have a source for that? I've been looking for a reference in the transcripts where the court takes judicial notice of a report that mentions gas chambers.

Article 21 states that the court shall " take judicial notice of official governmental documents and reports of the United Nations, including the acts and documents of the committees set up in the various allied countries for the investigation of war crimes, and of records and findings of military or other Tribunals of any of the United Nations." The Soviet Prosecutor read excerpts from a Polish government report mentioning the steam chambers of trebinka and the electric floor at belsen which I take to mean that the court took judicial notice of these methods of execution. But I haven't found something for the gas chambers. Gas chambers are mentioned in the judgement but not in the testimony (as far as I can tell)

In Mermelstein v IHR, the courts in california took judicial notice that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz but that was much later--sometime in the 1980s.