History Speaks Replies to Thomas Dalton

Round I of Rebuttals

History Speaks: Rebuttal of Thomas Dalton’s Opening Statement

Thomas,

Below, I respond in turn to all the substantive points you made about the Holocaust in your opening statement. (I skip over your moralistic “implications” section, which does not directly bear on the historicity of the Holocaust.) I conclude with some remarks on your general argumentation style and the status of Holocaust denial as a form of pseudohistory.

Is the Six Million Figure Sacrosanct?

Following your introduction, you begin by attacking the figure of six million Jewish victims. It is true that six million is not an academically rigorous estimate. Rather it amounts to a symbolic representation of the Jewish dead in popular remembrance of the Holocaust. But this kind of phenomenon—the invocation of a clean, round, and not strictly accurate number to symbolically represent victims of a genocide—is hardly unique to the Holocaust, and indeed has analogues in remembrance culture for other genocides. For example, Ukrainians speak of 10,000,000 killed in the Holodomor while Bangladeshis speak of 3,000,000 killed in the Bangladeshi genocide, figures that cannot be sustained empirically. The use of such figures in popular remembrance does not imply that the Holodomor famine or the Bangladeshi genocide never happened.

But doesn’t the six million figure govern historical writing on the Holocaust, and chill serious research? Not at all. In fact, leading scholars in the field have rejected six million as an estimate of Jewish fatalities. Raul Hilberg—whom, strangely, you invoke in a paragraph deprecating the six million figure—provided an estimate of 5.1 million in The Destruction of the European Jews (1961). Hilberg’s eminence in the field discredits your claim that six million is a fixed dogma among historians.

Decades of Headlines about ‘Six Million Jews’ Prior to the Holocaust?

Next, you cite New York Times and other newspapers headlines extending back to the 1880s to suggest that the idea of “six million Jews”— dying or suffering or imperilled or persecuted—predates the Holocaust and the Nazis. I sincerely do not understand what your purpose is in this regard. Would you have our readers believe that New York Times headlines about six million Jews extending back to 1890 are evidence of a decades-long conspiracy (presumably involving the Times) to fake a genocide of Jews? If that is not your aim, what exactly is the relevance of these old headlines? What are you trying to argue?

Regardless of what this argument is supposed to imply, it is unsound because its core premise—that for decades before the Holocaust Jews or their ‘agents’ had an a priori fixation with the idea of six million Jewish deaths—is false. As Andrew Mathis has shown, between 1857 and 1939 there were more New York Times headlines invoking one million Jews, two million Jews, and three million Jews than six million. The idea that the figure of ‘six million Jews’ was a unique and longstanding fixation before the Holocaust is false, and the product of denier cherry picking.

Linguistic Arguments

Next, you argue that Hitler and his colleagues only wanted to ethnically cleanse Jews, and that the documentary record of their statements, even during the war, do not support the idea of an extermination policy. In developing this argument, you focus on the meanings of Vernichtung (annihilate) and Ausrottung (exterminate). These two terms—which were frequently used by the Nazis to describe their treatment of the Jews—can indeed lend themselves to both exterminatory as well as metaphorical usage.

Unfortunately for deniers, there are two at least two occasions in which Nazi leaders defined Vernichtung and Ausrottung of Jews as literally meaning killing. In Himmler’s 6 October 1943 Posen speech, the Reichsführer-SS literally defines the Ausrottung of Jews as ‘killing Jews or having them killed’ (“umzubringen, oder umbringen zu lassen”), and Robert Ley’s 3 May 1943 speech describes Jews who have been vernichtet (annihilated) as gestorben (dead), while noting that the Nazis will not give up their struggle until the last Jew in Europe is dead.

Your argument is further discredited by the fact that—as the quotations in my opening statement showed—Nazi leaders did not just use words like “Vernichtung” and “Ausrottung” to describe what they were (systematically) doing to the Jews. They also used unambiguous words like “kill” (“umbringen,” Himmler 06/08/1943), “kill like rats” (“wie die Ratten totschlagen,” Goebbels, 14 March 1945), “starve to death” (“Hungertod,” Hans Frank, 24 August 1942), “shoot” (“erschießen,” Hitler, 17 April 1943), and “liquidate” (“liquidieren,” Goebbels 27 March 1942). Any candid reader of our debate will recognize from these and other examples I cited in my opening statement the murderous intentions of Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Frank, and other Nazi leaders towards the Jews.

Gas Chambers at Auschwitz

You make three arguments against the plausibility of homicidal gassing at Auschwitz. First, you say that the rooms identified as homicidal gas chambers “generally had neither windows or ventilation, to later vent the poisonous gas.”  Your use of “generally” here is a weasel word that obscures the fact that the two underground gas chambers at Auschwitz—Crematoria Two and Three—were ventilated, as was Crematorium One. As to Crematoria Four and Five (and the bunkers), it is important to emphasize that they were located at ground level. The doors to these facilities could simply be opened by the Sonderkommando and the gas would dissipate harmlessly into the atmosphere. On the issue of Sonderkommando safety, it should be noted that they wore gas masks to protect themselves. In any case, the Sonderkommando were slated to be murdered eventually anyway, so it is unlikely that the Nazis were particularly concerned about their health and survival.

Your second argument is that that the Zyklon B pellets would emit poison for hours after the Jews were gassed, thereby “killing anyone who went inside” the gas chambers. However, multiple Sonderkommando testified that the pellets could be extracted from Crematoria Two and Three via a tin canister connected to a wire. Paraphrasing the testimony of Sonderkommando Henryk Tauber, Robert Jan Van Pelt summarizes this process as follows:

Within the innermost column there was a removable can to pull after the gassing the Zyklon “crystals,” that is the porous silica pellets that had absorbed the hydrocyanide. Kula, who had made these columns, provided some technical specifications.

Third, you contend that there was “no plausible way to remove the bodies in a timely manner” from the gas chamber to the crematoria. I am honestly not sure what you mean by a “timely manner.” (Can you specify the time constraints to which you refer?) However, regarding Crematoria Two and Three, a lift device was used to lift corpses from the gas chamber to the main floor in which the actual crematoria ovens were stored, thereby speeding up the body-removal and cremation process.

In sum, your forensic objections are easily answered, and fail to raise reasonable doubt about the reality of homicidal gassings at Auschwitz. Denier technical dilettantism cannot plausibly challenge the overwhelming documentary, testimonial, and forensic evidence—briefly discussed in my opening statement—for gassing at Auschwitz.

Gas Vans and the “Diesel Question”       

On your argument about the implausibility of killing by diesel engines: it is apparently true that the latter do not emit enough carbon monoxide to asphyxiate people en masse. However, multiple perpetrators, including SS functionary Eric Fuchs—who helped construct the Sobibor gas chambers—and SS-Oberscharführer Walter Piller, attested to the use of gasoline engines in the exterminations at Kulmhof the Aktion Reinhardt camps.

The most parsimonious assumption is not that the witness references to diesel engines corroborate a grand conspiracy to frame the Germans—do you actually believe this, Thomas?—but that these witnesses were simply mistaken. In any case, none of the witnesses attesting to diesel are more credible than the aforementioned Eric Fuchs. Fuchs helped install the gas chamber, was therefore in an ideal position to describe how it worked, and testified to the use of a gasoline engine (not diesel) at Sobibor.

Revealingly, you do not deny that gasoline engines are capable of killing people en masse. However, you argue that it was implausible that the Nazis would have used gasoline engines when more efficient means of mass killing were at hand. I assume here you are following the lead of the late Fritz Berg, who insisted that producer gas would have been more efficient for killing people, and therefore that the technologically savvy Nazis would never have used gasoline engines.

This underlying assumption here—that the SS would have used the most efficient method of killing available—can only be described as laughable. You have no evidence for your claims of absolute SS efficiency, and are relying entirely on Hollywood stereotypes. Invoking such stereotypes may beguile some, but among them will not be anyone who has read about the actual history of the SS.

In fact, the SS was a bunglingly inefficient organization, run by ideologues such as Himmler and Heydrich and infested with corrupt and criminal elements such as Rudolf Höss, who was a convicted murderer even before he was Kommandant of Auschwitz. Moreover, the actual conduct of the SS and the practical management of the concentration camps and Reinhardt camps was hardly a model of bureaucratic and technical efficiency. Regarding Auschwitz, for example, the incompetent planning and construction of the camp led to the spread of epidemics in 1942, causing many deaths not only among inmates but SS personnel. The construction history of Auschwitz alone discredits the Hollywood caricature that the SS consistently acted with engineering skill and technical efficiency. 

Cremation at Auschwitz

Your next argument—that at most 900 bodies could have been cremated in the 46 muffles of Auschwitz in a day—is based on a contrived extrapolation of maximal possible civilian-cremation efficiency in contemporary America to the context of a Nazi death camp. Of course, this is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Several critical variables differed in cremation at Auschwitz.

Firstly, multiple bodies at Auschwitz were cremated in a single oven, a practice prohibited in civilian cremation and criminalized in civilian society. Second, most bodies burned at Auschwitz were of children or emaciated adults, whereas most bodies cremated in modern America are those of overweight or obese adults. Third, while civilian crematoria are periodically turned off to accommodate the work and break schedules of free laborers, the Auschwitz slave force kept the Birkenau Crematoria running continuously. (The built-up heat from this continuous use increased the efficiency of the cremation process.) Fourth, and at a more general level, the goal of civilian cremation is to burn an individual corpse into a fine white powder, whereas the goal of cremation at Auschwitz was to burn corpses as quickly as possible.

In light of the four different variables mentioned above, we can make a general qualitative statement that cremation at Auschwitz was much more efficient compared to civilian cremation methods. More specifically, all documentary evidence on cremation capacity at Auschwitz contradicts your idea that a maximum of 900 bodies could be burned at Auschwitz in a day. For example, a 28 June 1943 letter from Karl Bischoff, the head of the Central Building Administration at Auschwitz-Birkenau, reported a maximal capacity of 4,756 corpses being burnt within 24 hours.

I trust the contemporaneous calculations of the Nazis—who were in a position to know the volume of their cremation capacity—over the napkin math of Holocaust deniers. Especially when such napkin math is premised on an apples-to-oranges comparison of civilian cremation methods versus cremation at Auschwitz.

Body Disposal at the Reinhardt camps

Your main argument here is that it would be technically impossible to supply adequate wood for open-air cremation at the Aktion Reinhardt camps. There are two unsubstantiated and probably false assumptions behind this argument impossibility’ argument concerning whether the Nazis could supply adequate wood for open-air cremation at the Reinhardt camps.

First, you are assuming—in contradiction to the testimonial evidence—that only the dozens of woodcutting slave-laborers stationed at the camps were involved in the procurement of wood for them.

Second, you are assuming that no wood was imported to the camps from elsewhere in German-occupied Poland, a lumbering country where forestry was abundant. (According to a 1921 New York Times article cited in the Holocaust Controversies White Paper on the Reinhardt camps, “Poland’s state forests alone furnished 3,439,047 cubic meters of building timber and 2,019,758 cubic meters of fuel wood.”) Both of these assumptions contradict the testimonial evidence, which indicates such imports took place. (There is very little documentary evidence of any kind—much less regarding the import of wood—concerning the Reinhardt camps; such evidence was systematically destroyed by the Nazis.)

Even if we adopt for argument’s sake your unsubstantiated assumptions about limitations on workforce and lumber supply, you are not able to cash out your claim of technical implausibility. According to all available testimonial and documentary evidence, a great many corpses at the Reinhardt camps—e.g. the vast majority in Treblinka—were not originally cremated, but interred in mass graves. What this meant in practice was that hundreds of thousands of exhumed corpses were decomposed and (therefore) dehydrated. Since water accounts for 60% of human weight, these dehydrated corpses required much less lumber to burn. Because these corpses were dehydrated by decomposition, they required much less lumber to burn than a fresh corpse would have.

It should also be noted that the cremations did not include all victims at the Reinhardt camps. Many such victims remain buried in mass graves at the camps. Thus, even assuming—without evidence—that no wood was imported to the camps, the forestry and workforce at hand would have been sufficient to procure sufficient lumber for the cremations performed.  

Disposing of Bones, Teeth, and Ashes

You also raise questions about the plausibility of the Nazis disposing of bones, teeth, and ashes of victims at the camps. This argument did not impress me as likely to persuade a balanced reader, so I will deal with it summarily.

The manner for disposing of bones and teeth—or more specifically, crushing them into powder and then disposing of the powder—varied from camp to camp. A ball mill was used at Belzec and Kulmhof to crush bones.

The use of a ball mall was not unique to Belzec and Kulmhof. The ball mall used to crush bones at the Janowska concentration camp is pictured below.

At Auschwitz, eyewitness testimony—on which see the below picture drawn by survivor David Olere—indicates that some inmates had to grind up bones using a crude device that resembles a thick log.

Regarding ash disposal, the ashes from Auschwitz victims were scattered into the Vistula river, or onto nearby roads. Ashes of cremated persons at the Reinhardt camps were often buried in mass graves. Sometimes—like the ashes from Auschwitz—the ashes of Reinhardt camp victims were distributed to other locations.

Body Disposal in Ghettos

Before addressing your claim about the impossibility of body disposal in ghettos, I have to call out an appalling factual error you made concerning the history of the ghettos. Specifically, you asserted that “Jews could freely come and go” to and from the ghettos. This statement is a travesty. In point of fact, Polish Jews were executed if they left the ghettos without the permission of their Nazi overlords, as were gentile Poles who gave Jews food and quarter:

Another problem with your framing of this issue is your construction of a straw man of 1,000,000 Jews dying in ghettos. This estimate is vastly higher than what the leading contemporaneous scholars believe. Using the seminal work of Wolfgang Benz’ Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich, 1991), and more recent research on eastern Europe, one can determine that the figure was much lower than 1,000,000, and probably about 450,000.

Now, to address your arguments on body disposal in ghettos: there is an important difference between Jews who perished in the ghettos versus Jews who were gassed or shot: most of the former were never cremated. For example, as one of my commentators pointed out, about 43,000 Jews who perished in the Lodz ghetto were buried in a cemetery called Ghetto Field. These bodies accounts for over 20% of the Jews who lived in the ghetto, a death rate commensurate with the overall estimates of death in the ghettos. (Of course, most of those who ‘survived’ ghettoization were deported to and murdered in extermination camps.) Similarly, as many as 3,500 Jews from the Bialystok Ghetto are known to have been buried at a necropolis on  Żabia Street, which was established at the same time the Bialystok Ghetto was being established. Another major ghetto, Terezin (in Czechia), built a crematorium in 1942, and records indicate about 30,000 victims were cremated there, while many thousands more were buried in what became known as the Jewish Cemetery.

The reader will note that I have already accounted for the remains of about 100,000 ghetto victims out of about 450,000 estimated deaths in ghettos and labour camps. I could continue along these lines. But I could not account for every last bone or body. One reason for this is that mass graves—not just mass graves of Holocaust victims, but mass graves of Stalinist, Ottoman, and other atrocities—are often difficult to find, as perpetrators build over them. Thus, Nazi mass graves are still being found to this day. For example, in 2019 a mass grave containing at least 730 victims was found near the Brześć Ghetto.

Still, neither I, nor you, nor anyone else, can account for every cadaver in any genocide. Historians do not base casualty estimates for genocides or wars on skull counts, but on documentary evidence. (You yourself said in your introduction that 50 million were killed in World War II, Thomas; on what do you base this? Can you account forensically for the disposal of 50 million bodies during the war?) The denier insistence on this is not only pig-headed, but shows their epistemic double standard, in establishing a unique burden of proof for Holocaust claims that they would never accept in other contexts.

Witnesses

Your argument regarding Holocaust witnesses relies on the assumption that, if some witnesses to an event have made false or absurd statements, we can infer that the event likely did not happen. You might as well argue that the bombing of Dresden or the Battle of Mons did not happen, because of the existence of absurd witness accounts—involving, in the case of the former, the melting of numerous victims into a green-brown liquid; and in the case of the latter, supernatural beings on the field of battle—to this event. Your argument that the existence of unreliable witnesses to an event implies that the event never happened is blatantly erroneous, and you would never find it persuasive outside the tendentious context of Holocaust denial.           

Your claim that “virtually every witness making substantive and verifiable claims about their time at a camp has said outrageous, ridiculous, and impossible things” is base calumny. Do you claim to have read “virtually every” witness accounts from survivors and perpetrators in the death camps? If so, how did you carry this research out?

Conclusion

One revealing feature of your arguments—which the attentive reader will have noticed after reading your opening or my rebuttal—is that they were all negative in nature. I imagine you would defend this style of argumentation by arguing that “orthodox” historians like me, not “revisionists” like you, bear the burden of proof in this discussion.

The line of reasoning that deniers bear no positive burden of proof for their claims—which are, to be sure, negative as a matter of formal logic—may seem plausible at first blush. But if one stops and thinks about the issue for a moment, or for that matter knows anything about how the historical method works, he will conclude that the denier has a positive case to make and a burden of proof to satisfy.

If one wants to deny documented historical events tied to concrete historical phenomena—for example, suppose one were to deny that Prussia ever invaded Denmark in 1864—one would need to provide an alternative explanation for the phenomena associated with it. The Second Schleswig War denier would need to provide an alternative explanation for, among other phenomena, how Schleswig and Holstein went from Danish to German territory in 1864; the denier would also have to explain why so much contemporaneous documentary and testimonial, pictorial, and material evidence exists (or was forged) concerning the war.

In the context of the Holocaust, a genuine historical revisionist account would develop an alternative narrative to extermination, which explained Jewish population losses and how millions of Jews disappeared in Nazi custody (especially in the Reinhardt camps and the KLs) during World War II. A revisionist would also describe how so many witnesses with different ideologies and interests—from Jewish victims to SS personnel at the camps; from Hitler’s Allies Horthy and Mussolini to Palestinian-Arab collaborator Hajj Amin-Al-Husseini; from killers testifying to their deeds in court, to Adolf Eichmann calmly discussing the extermination policy to his friend Sassen in Argentina—across various languages and generations, came to believe (or pretend to believe) in the systematic extermination of the Jews. Such a narrative would need to be supported with positive evidence of the kind and volume that supports the mainstream narrative of extermination.

However, deniers either decline to offer an alternative narrative as to what happened to the Jews—based on the assumption that they carry no burden of proof for their claims—or offer an outright ridiculous one: the idea that the Jews, or at least the 1.4 million who ‘disappeared’ in the Reinhardt camps in 1942 and 1943, were channelled out of the camps and resettled. The problem is that there is zero evidence of resettlements existing. (Common sense requires us to assume that there would be testimonial, infrastructural, economic, and communicative traces of a settlement—a nation, really—of 1.4 million Jews in 1940s Europe.)  

The failure of deniers to explain how millions of Jews ‘disappeared’ in Nazi custody during the war—that is, their failure to offer a serious counter-narrative to extermination—puts them outside the scope of historical practice. Barring the uncovering of earth-shattering new evidence of settlements of Jews channelled out of the Reinhardt camps, both Holocaust denial and the ‘resettlement’ theory developed by deniers will continue to be stigmatized as pseudo-historical.