226 of 270 people found the following review helpful:
Finally, some clear thinking., 
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This review is from: Debating the Holocaust: A New Look At Both Sides (Perfect Paperback)
As a skeptic of both sides of the Holocaust debate - was there or wasn't there, and if there wasn't, then what? - I've long hoped for a book that would shed light where there was only heat. DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST comes as close as I can hope for, and it is a remarkable accomplishment. Rather than writing a review longer than the book itself, I'll just first note that with Thomas Dalton's book, the biggest single problem has finally been addressed, That It Has Been Impossible To Grasp The Big Picture Of The Holocaust Because Of The Incoherence Of The Story. The goals of Nazi policy, the means by which it was ordered and carried out, major events and where they happened (nobody really knows where the burial and cremation grounds of Chelmno are), the technical challenges that would come with a mass extermination effort, even something as basic as the death totals; nothing about the Holocaust story is consistent from one source to another. Over the decades figures, testimonies and documents have been exaggerated, reduced, misrepresented, changed or even disappeared, and in many cases with the obvious goal of keeping certain details a mystery so that awkward questions don't come up (Saul Friedländer - I'm talking to you!). When Dalton writes that he found "...a Holocaust story in tatters..." he simply states the truth, and it is easy to see why two important historians, Michel De Bouard and Jean-Claude Pressac, remarked that the historical record of the Holocaust is "rotten".
To deal with this, Dalton introduces a remarkable (and easy!) analytic tool which he calls the death matrix, a technique that combines various tables into a single analytic field that clearly demonstrates the properties of any account of the six alleged extermination camps. It can be done by anybody who has a spreadsheet option on their computer. Not unique to Dalton, it's a common tool in several technical fields, and you have to wonder why anti-revisionist John Zimmerman, who is a professor of accounting and has to use similar tools in transaction analysis, never used it in his various refutations.
For the reader, this means a book where you have to take pen to paper and do some homework of your own, but that is a refreshing change to Holocaust books which don't just ask but demand that you swallow whatever they say without question. Dalton's results when he applies his death matrix are clear, transparent and easily understood, but Dalton clearly states that certain data rests on questionable assumptions and that his use of the tool is preliminary and needs refinement (I could already suggest a revision where Dalton credits Krema II at Auschwitz with cremating 11,000 bodies at a time when it was out of service, the six weeks from the beginning of May through June 12 of 1943). It's a terrific tool, something that becomes clear when the tables reveal that the combined work of exhumations and cremations at Belzec had no choice but to run at a rate of 92,000 per month. That's better than 3,000 per day, 125 per hour, a corpse dug out of the ground and thawed and burned to fragments and ground to powder every 30 seconds; and on wooden pyres in the dead of a Polish winter when weather conditions would have frozen the ground rock-solid and rendered many days impossible for work. That account is ridiculous; whatever the truth is, it's something else. Why didn't somebody think of this technique before?
Avoiding the dreary name-calling, Dalton divides the two camps into "traditionalists" and "revisionists", and then divides the revisionists into the "agitators" and "academics". Another good idea where ideas are sorely needed; when it comes to the revisionists Dalton intelligently ignores the "agitators" and concentrates on the solid arguments of the academics. Revisionists who have made it some sort of holy crusade to challenge the Holocaust will not be happy with this book. Dalton clearly states that the Holocaust cannot be dismissed as a hoax, a fraud or a conspiracy (the financial exploitation of it and the loathsome criminalization of challenging it are another matter). Something awful happened, but exactly what it was, and how it fits into the even bigger picture of the Second World War is impossible to determine with the history that we have.
As accessible as a book that addresses technical issues can be, DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST would make an excellent high school textbook, teaching young people about the story while challenging them to accept nothing until they've applied their own brains to it. Certainly a better choice than THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, a book which has nothing in it about the Holocaust but nevertheless is required (forced?) reading on the subject.
While my review lists five stars, I'm actually giving it four and a half, with half a star taken off for listing a large percentage of the deaths at Majdanek as "natural causes" in one of the tables. This is insensitive to say the least. In their 2003 book on the camp (one of only two studies ever made!) revisionists Carlo Mattogno and Jurgen Graf, no defenders of the Holocaust, are themselves aghast at the way some 40,000 people died slow deaths of exposure standing in the open, sewage soaked fields. These are not "natural causes". As a police worker I know that "Official Indifference" is a crime that American police, fire and rescue workers can be charged with, so even if the Nazi's didn't intend to kill these people they are responsible, at the very least, for mass manslaughter.
With that unfortunate beauty mark addressed, I can finish with a preview of Dalton's epilogue, which is depressing. Dalton points out that there is an appreciable amount of common ground between traditionalists and revisionists; no academic revisionist has ever denied that tragic atrocities happened, and the best (and bravest) traditionalists have themselves noted that there is something terribly wrong with the history, which suggests that a combined effort between the two camps holds an excellent possibility of finally bringing to light a clear and coherent picture of what the events of the 1940's really were.
But it ain't gonna happen. As B'nai Brith director Ian Kadegan ominously crows, "The memory of the Holocaust is central to The New World Order" , and goes on to obscenely call it "...Western Civilization's greatest failure" (that would actually be the Congo Corvée, something that only die-hard Mark Twain fans have heard about). The traditional story of the Holocaust is a multi-billion dollar cash cow that enriches some of the most corrupt institutions on Earth, and has truly become an idolatrous religion that too many people are staked in. If the traditional story falls, not only reputations and livelihoods but power will be lost, for the traditional Holocaust story is used as a club to dictate what morality is by people who have no authority to do so, and to intimidate them not to question that authority.
Which means reading this book is may actually qualify as a revolutionary act. The enemies of free speech can exact a price, but they can't stop you. That's why the right is called unalienable. Not even God can take it away. Thanks for the book Thomas.
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