Historical Past vs. Political Present
Arthur R. ButzThe Journal for Historical November/December 2000Volume 19 number 6
Excerpt:In this paper I wish to focus on three broad subjects, making remarks of general interest.
- My attempt to use the archives of the Berlin Document Center.
- Some writings of mine that have been objects of ridicule. There are things to learn by taking another look, and I won't apologize.
- Some things that came out of the Wilkomirski affair that deserve more stress than they have been given till now, and which raise basic questions on the nature of our disagreements with our adversaries, and we should have no illusions that that is the right word.
2. Some Ridicule of Butz
During his recent trial David Irving made available on his web site the "expert opinion" that Robert Jan Van Pelt prepared for Irving's adversaries in the trial. This raises historiographic issues in the sense of how conclusions should be drawn from historical data. I read some of this and I was surprised, as others have been, to see Van Pelt claim that the roles of Auschwitz, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka as extermination camps were "moral certainties." In his report he appears to define "moral certainty" as something between "beyond reasonable doubt" and "unqualified certainty," but then he applies it to the claims of the legend in connection with Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, while admitting that the evidence is scant for those places. Thus I am not sure how to interpret the phrase as he uses it, and he probably isn't either.[note 11]
In any case I read part of Van Pelt's report, including the part dealing with my book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, and the reading confirmed the inference, that has been made before by me and others, that the Auschwitz legend rests entirely on alleged eye witness accounts. The "extermination" cannot be deduced, or even suspected, from the documents, from the ordinary historical record of how the principals behaved, or from physical evidence at the site. All of the material means that play a role in the legend (for example, Zyklon, crematories) have in fact non-homicidal interpretations, with dual homicidal interpretations being supplied by the alleged eye witnesses. Van Pelt's report also confirms the opinion I expressed many years ago, that in these debates[note 12] we must maintain context and perspective and above all be on our guard against being tricked into quarreling so much over details that we lose sight of simple observations, as I shall explain.[note 13]
I think it is fair to say that today the defenders of the legend argue, with an exception to be noted, not that available forensic evidence shows that the gassings took place, but that it was possible that they took place. This is something that must be inferred from their writings, because they don't put it that way and maintain an air of dogmatic certainty. A good example is their defense against the Leuchter and later investigations relating to cyanide residues in the crematoria at Auschwitz.[note 14] In the most honest versions of their defense they concede the main point, namely that the residues are very scarce in the alleged homicidal gas chamber in the crematory structures, but exist in abundance in the walls of a nearby delousing gas chamber, in the form of iron-cyanide compounds. Then they argue in effect, employing largely unsupported technical assertions and making adjustments in "eye witness" testimonies, that the results do not exclude that people were gassed in the structures in question.[note 15]
In my 1992 IHR conference paper I said that the procedure is like sawing off a tree limb that one is sitting on.[note 16] The logic is circuitous. We are told to believe the gassing stories, not because the documents and physical evidence say so, but because the witnesses say so. Then we are told that we should make some adjustments in the accounts of the witnesses, because features of their testimonies are inconsistent with the alleged fact of the gassings.
A dishonest version of their defense is to ignore the delousing gas chamber issue entirely, as is done in the Errol Morris film on Fred Leuchter entitled "Mr. Death"; at least, that was how it was handled in the version I saw last February. Another instance of this dishonesty, which could perhaps be dismissed as blazingly stupid rather than dishonest, was taken in that 1994 report of the Institute of Forensic Research in Cracow.[note 17]The argument, to the extent that it was intelligible enough to be summarized at all, was that they did not understand how the iron-cyanide compounds got to be there, so they decided to ignore them in reaching their conclusions. I don't understand how the moon got there, so I will ignore all effects associated with it, such as tides. I hope I don't drown.
Revisionists have carried this point as far as necessary. The legend's defenders are claiming "events continental in geographic scope, of three years in temporal scope, and of several million in scope of victims,"[note 18] and they must provide commensurate evidence. They are claiming events that by their nature and scale would leave emphatic commensurate evidence, physical and otherwise. A few witnesses won't do, just as they wouldn't do if the claim were that New York City burned down. When we dissect such witness testimony we play a game in which larger issues are not at stake. Never forget that. If I can't offhand find internal contradictions in the testimony of a man who claims that New York City burned down, you would not conclude that it did burn down.
Van Pelt's report resurrected the defense of the legend offered in Michael Shermer's article a few years ago in his Skeptic magazine.[note 19] In his critique of revisionism Shermer chose to give prominence to the unusual word "consilience," apparently coined in 1840 by the English philosopher William Whewell. The word has been used more recently as the title of a book by Edward O. Wilson to mean "a 'jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact based theory across disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation," or in Whewell's words what "takes place when an Induction, obtained from one class of facts, coincides with an Induction, obtained from another different class. This consilience is a test of the Theory in which it occurs." Wilson's book argues for the application of the methods of the natural sciences to the social sciences and the humanities, to achieve a grand synthesis.[note 20]
Shermer also proposes to apply a test of a "convergence of evidence" as "a less cumbersome phrase." I think that is also a more acceptable phrase than "consilience," because the various classes of evidence that Shermer considers are not from diverse fields of study. They are the usual sources that have been assembled by those who have been specifically interested in pressing the genocide claim.
If a true "convergence of evidence" is sought then we must of course consider the behavior of the Allies at the time, the behavior of the Red Cross, the behavior of the Vatican, the behavior of the German opposition to Hitler, the behavior of the Jewish organizations, the vast numbers of Jews in Europe immediately after the war, many in camps and bound for Palestine, the USA, and other destinations (often employing concealment and deception in regard to their numbers and identities), the contemporaneous German documents, the aerial photos, the lack of physical evidence for "extermination," and the lack of evidence for engineering design projects to create equipment for the extermination of large numbers of human beings in gas chambers (remember it hadn't been done before -- they say the Germans silently adapted other means to the novel and gigantic undertaking). That is a real test of convergence. Long ago, I wrote an article presenting this convergence of evidence, though I didn't call it that. The article was entitled "Context and Perspective in the Holocaust Controversy," and was given in lecture form at the IHR conference in 1982.[note 21]
Though he says the test of historical truth is a "convergence of evidence," Shermer presents first only "A Case Study in Convergence" and then explains that "it is not possible in a magazine-length article to adequately cover all of the points made above" (that is, the general case for convergence). How is it, then, that I say that I wrote an article presenting a convergence of evidence, but Shermer could not? It is very simple. I could refer to other works on how the Allies acted, how the Vatican acted, how the Jewish organizations acted, and so forth. Books had been written about massive Jewish movements after World War II, and virtually all books on the subject acknowledge that an extermination program is not to be found in the German documents. All studies of the German concentration camps acknowledge the high death rates due to disease, the use of Zyklon for hygienic purposes, and the cremation of the victims. Other investigators, virtually all of whom would have rejected my conclusions, had done the work for me. Shermer said he could not present the convergence because he was only writing an article. I say he couldn't present it because it wasn't there.
Shermer avoided considering how the various principals acted; that perspective is missing. He could not find any scholarship to correspond to the massive scholarship that supports the revisionist observations, such as "nobody acted as if it was happening," or "at the end of the war, the Jews were still there," or "the German documents speak of a program of expulsion and resettlement," or "catastrophic death scenes in the camps in 1945 were fraudulently represented as evidence of intentional extermination." On our adversaries' side, there are only such things as "leading Nazis said...," or "all historians say...," or "survivors say," or "Höss confessed that," or "this inmate testified that."
Having been unable to argue "convergence," Shermer examines two special subjects: Nazi statements about exterminating or annihilating Jews and the gas chamber/crematoria issue. Thus he ends up arguing special points rather than convergence.
He begins with the occasional Nazi use of the German word "Ausrottung" (extermination) in application to the Jews. He is right in saying that the standard translation is "extermination"; moreover the standard translation of "Vernichtung," also sometimes used by Nazis, is "annihilation." However in actual practice in English both words can be used in contexts where they are not taken to mean killing, and a further complication is that the Nazis were notorious for hyperbole or rhetorical inflation; for example, everything they did had to be the "greatest," or "most glorious," and so forth.
Without realizing it Shermer demolishes his case on this matter with a February 18, 1937, quote from Himmler, addressing a meeting of his Gruppenführers:[note 22]
I have the conviction that the Roman emperors, who exterminated (ausrotteten) the first Christians, did precisely what we are doing with the Communists. These Christians were at that time the vilest scum, which the city accommodated, the vilest Jewish people, the vilest Bolsheviks there were. Shermer's problem is that it does indeed seem that Himmler is claiming that he is physically exterminating Communists and/or Jews, and there were many of both in Germany then. It would be very difficult to argue, on the basis of internal analysis, against such an interpretation. However Germany was not doing such things in 1937. Communist leaders and other political enemies had only been put into concentration camps.
If Himmler can seem to claim mass killings that did not actually exist, where does that place later occasional comparable statements by him and other Nazi leaders? In a discussion of this problem in my book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century I remarked that in connection with comparable statements Hitler "could have chosen his words more carefully."[note 23] I have been a butt of ridicule for that passage, but I stand by the statement and the analysis.
The second special subject that Shermer takes up is the gas chamber/crematory issue, which has given rise to a second basis for ridicule of my work, as I shall explain. However the general issue has been well worked over in other revisionist writings and I shall not take it up here. I only remark in this connection that Shermer misrepresented the results of the forensic investigations discussed above, by claiming that "forensic tests have now been conducted demonstrating the homicidal use of both the gas chambers and the crematoria for the express purpose of exterminating large numbers of prisoners." That is an amazing lie that the other defenders of the legend are not guilty of, as far as I know.[note 24]
It is common for promoters and defenders of the legend to focus only on Germany, an elementary historiographic error. Alas, revisionists also commit it. When there is a focus elsewhere, the scope of the exposition is similarly limited. For example a treatise excoriating the wartime Pope, for not acting as though a "Holocaust" were in progress, will not properly take into account that nobody else so acted.
A focus distributed on all principals can throw light on what may seem mysterious or enigmatic if considered out of its historical context. In another phase of his discourse on the use of the word "Ausrottung," Shermer reproduces and discusses a memo from Rudolf Brandt, a member of Reichsführer SS Himmler's personal staff, to the chief of the security police and SD in Berlin, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, dated February 22, 1943.[note 25] It says "On the instructions of the Reichsführer-SS, I am transmitting herewith to you a press dispatch on the accelerated extermination (Ausrottung) of the Jews in occupied Europe." Shermer did not point out, though his source did, that the press report involved was the story that appeared eight days earlier, on February 14, 1943, in both the London Times and the New York Times, headed in the latter case "Execution 'Speed-Up' Seen," and on which the New York Times commented editorially on February 18.[note 26] Both Shermer and his source consider the document incriminating, but I can't see why mere transmission of a story implies acceptance of it as truth. I often send a revisionist some piece of Holocaust propaganda without insulting the other's intelligence by explaining to him that I think its claims are false. In the case of the Brandt letter, the press report referred to there figured in a clash later in 1943 between the US State Department and Henry Morgenthau's Treasury Department, because the former considered the story, received from Jewish sources in Switzerland, bunk, and sat on it, as I discussed long ago in The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.[note 27] There is no reason to assume Himmler thought otherwise of it.
History should be written in cognizance of all principals, and in the case of the "Holocaust" legend the conclusion such evidence converges to is obvious. The legend's defenders got jolted in the early 80s. For example Walter Laqueur used ordinary historical methods in his study focused on Auschwitz, entitled The Terrible Secret, and the result was a book that, with just a little bit of tweaking, would be a revisionist book. Laqueur merely applied ordinary historical methods and common sense to observe that mass exterminations at Auschwitz were a "terrible secret," that is, not generally known, and that mass exterminations at Auschwitz could not have been kept secret. While Laqueur did not draw the obvious conclusion, the fact remains that he had simply taken the sort of historical and logical perspective that otherwise proves to us that New York City did not burn down, and excuses us from considering the claims of alleged eye witnesses who might say otherwise.
Ordinary historical analysis can't find a "Holocaust." They pretend to find it with the methods of funny history. Don't forget that either.
Nevertheless we should not ignore their narrow selection of evidence, especially because final comprehension of it can elucidate unpredictable matters. A special emphasis in Van Pelt's critique of my work is on the difficulties I have had, over the years, with one document. I am speaking of the "Vergasungskeller" document that I have spoken and written of before, so I will not repeat myself unnecessarily.[note 28]Suffice it to say that my 1976 book offered an interpretation that was linguistically and technically sound, but turned out to be wrong, my 1992 IHR conference paper speculated on various interpretations that made technical sense but did not fix on any one, and my 1996-1997 paper proposed that the "Vergasungskeller" was a reference to a basement morgue in crematory structure (Krema) II in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in its secondary role as a gas shelter. Van Pelt tries to present my fluctuating interpretations on this one document as ridiculous.
The point I want to make right now is not the right interpretation of the document in question. In reading Van Pelt a contrast occurred to me. I could not imagine Van Pelt or any of the other defenders of the legend giving such an extended treatment, over many years, to the interpretation of a single document. Why the difference? I think it is because for us problematic documents are exceptions or aberrations. We let documents mean what they say so that for us, for example, the countless German documents speaking of the Jewish policy as one of emigration mean what they say. "Sonderbehandlung," special treatment, has no necessary homicidal interpretation. A shower is just that, as is a morgue.
On their side, one of the hermeneutic principles (to use a more charitable term than "methods of funny history") is that documents are to be interpreted under the a priori constraint that the policy was one of extermination. Another arbitrary constraint that I have inferred is that the number of Jews killed must have been at least four million, though no scientifically acceptable evidence supports such a figure, or even half that.
That being the case, the only sorts of problems they can have with document interpretation are which of the several fixes to apply in specific cases. They are playing with a deck of Jokers. The document may have been in code language, or it may have been written by a person in ignorance of real policies, or, as in the case of crematory construction, the hygienic purposes expressed in the documents may have been genuine at the time the documents were written, but an undocumented decision was later made to apply the equipment otherwise. All these fixes are reasoned in terms of the a priori constraints, and apply to the corpus of records of several governments. They accuse us of dismissing any document that does not fit our preconceptions. They dismiss more than 99 percent of the written historical record.
If they run into a document with a single word they like, then they pounce on that word, ignoring what the document says, as they do with the Vergasungskeller document, whose natural meaning is that the Germans were in a rush to get the crematory into operation as a normal crematory. They claim that the appearance of the allegedly incriminating word was an "enormous gaff" (sic) or a "leak."[note 29]
That is also done in the case of a document that refers to hydrocyanic acid (HCN) gas detectors for an Auschwitz crematory that are supposed to be supplied by the furnace maker Topf. They like the reference to HCN, the lethal ingredient in Zyklon. However they do not observe that the Topf role challenges the assumption that the HCN in this case had anything to do with Zyklon, because there already existed a special department at Auschwitz with the relevant expertise and equipment for the use of Zyklon.[note 30]
I wish that somebody would make an objective evaluation only of the hermeneutics of the defense of the legend. I do not mean an evaluation of the merits of its conclusions. I mean only an evaluation of the historiographic logic and methods that are employed. I prefer that such an evaluation be carried out by somebody in no camp on "Holocaust" controversy. I have already indicated what I think of their methods and logic, and this is what I meant earlier when I said that "we must maintain context and perspective and above all be on our guard against being tricked into quarreling so much over details that we lose sight of simple observations." It is permissible, or at least I hope it is, to become enthralled with the problems of interpreting a single document, but we must not lose sight of the reasons why the defenders of the legend do not have such problems.
As for the idea that the Germans did not consign the extermination program to writing because it would be incriminating, I have on other occasions tried to express how silly that idea is.[note 31] Moreover this claim clashes with the claim (by Shermer, for example) that leading Nazis publicly admitted physical extermination, because such public admissions would obviate the need for code language in confidential government documents. At a 1989 conference at Northwestern University on the "Holocaust," those who wished to ask questions were required to identify themselves before asking. I was recognized by the chairman, rose and identified myself, and asked speaker Saul Friedländer the following: "I want you to clarify something you said earlier. Do you believe that the German leaders calculated that the European Jews could be exterminated in secrecy?" After listening to my question he refused to answer, claiming that I have no respect for the norms of intellectual discourse, or words to that effect.[note 32]
