Thomas Dalton's Closing Statement

The Debate Draws to a Close

The reader is highly encouraged to examine the earlier portions of our debate—the opening statements, as well as Rebuttal I, Rebuttal II, Rebuttal III, and History Speaks’ closing statement—before proceeding.

With that said, here is Thomas Dalton’s closing:

Thomas Dalton:  Closing Statement

NOTE:  In closing, I reiterate here my earlier note:  Because Matt and I were unable to reach agreement on embedded links to my books (‘too commercial,’ he said), the following contains no such links.  Active links will be included in the text when I post this full debate on my personal website, www.thomasdaltonphd.com, and also at the publishing site of Clemens & Blair (www.clemensandblair.com).

I hereby offer my closing statement in this online Holocaust debate.  I want to thank Matt for the opportunity to present my case and to defend it vigorously.  Under the conditions, he has been fair and reasonable in “allowing” me (as the publisher of this debate) to make my claims without interference or undue censorship—which is rare these days.

Due to the agreed-upon structure of the debate, this closing statement will reply both to (a) Matt’s second rebuttal, and (b) his closing statement.  I will distinguish them as Matt (SR) and Matt (CS), respectively.  I will also try to avoid abusing my privilege here of having the “final say” by not introducing new arguments or claims that Matt cannot rebut; rather, I will stick to analyzing his prior claims and assertions, and to summarizing my own view.

The Big Picture

For any such major event as the Holocaust, it is well-advised to never lose sight of the big picture.  This is especially true here, where discussion can often devolve into minutiae about individual documents, scientific matters, minor death statistics, and the like.  I’m happy to argue those points, but here, in a limited-format debate, we must keep our eye on the ball.  And here, “the ball” is the 6 million (or near) Jewish deaths, where they occurred, and how.  Without a good grasp on this, all is lost for the orthodox cause.  Without this, all else pales into insignificance.

Sadly, on this most essential point, Matt falls well short of the mark.  Not to blame him alone—this is true for all orthodox Holocaust researchers, none of whom can give a cogent account of the 6 million, how they died, where, and when.  And not in micro-detail, but simply in plausible, round numbers. 

Let me try to recreate Matt’s claims about the (almost) 6 million—where in fact, he seems to defend a figure of around 5.2 million, as I will explain below.  This in itself is worryingly low, and threatens to shift him into the dreaded “denier” category, but I will let that slide.  More troubling is the method and technique by which he allegedly defends his figure—virtually the same deficient method and technique employed by major researchers; he is in good company, at least!  The problem is this:  they never give a clear, concise calculation that leads to (or close to) 6 million.

Let’s look back over Matt (SR) and Matt (CS) to see what death statistics he offers.  In the former, we find:

• “1.4 million Reinhardt camp deaths”;

• “around 100,000” Auschwitz bunker gassings;

• Hans Frank’s claim that “1.2 million” would be starved to death;

• “1.605 million” total mass shooting deaths;

• “1.7 million” shootings in masses plus camps (implying 100,000 in camps);

• “almost 2 million” shot in masses plus camps plus ghettos (implying 200,000 to 300,000 in ghettos);

• “about 3 million” camp deaths, of which 2.7 million gassed, 0.3 million disease/other.

• “hundreds of thousands” of “documented deaths in the ghettos”—which, in note 18, we discover to be “about 450,000” (source?).

Now, from this, let’s try to reconstruct the 6 (or “at least 5”) million deaths.  (I’m not sure why we, the readers, must do this, but such are orthodox tactics.  If one wants clear and transparent calculations, one must turn to revisionist writings.)

First, I will take Matt’s “almost 2 million” shooting deaths to be 1.9 million, for the sake of calculation.  This is evidently composed of:

• 1.6 million Einsatzgruppen shootings

• 0.2 million ghetto shootings

• 0.1 million camp shootings

His Einsatzgruppen figure is roughly in line with conventional (though unsubstantiated) estimates; see my Table 12 in Debating the Holocaust (p. 90).¹  But where does Matt find 200,000 ghetto shootings?  I find no substantiation for such a figure, and of course, no evidence of victims’ remains.  And of the 100,000 camp shootings, his largest component is “Harvest Festival” in which he claims some 43,000 victims, of whom around 18,000 are conventionally assigned to Majdanek—in one day!  Imagine: lining up and shooting 18,000 people in one day: 750 per hour, every hour, for 24 hours.  Wow!  (Next…  next… )  And then the bodies were allegedly “buried in trenches” at Majdanek.  I’ve been to Majdanek; I have stood in those trenches; and there is no physical possibility of packing 18,000 thousand bodies into them.  Obviously they aren’t there now—so, where did they go?

Matt’s 1.4 million Reinhardt deaths (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka) is about in line with orthodoxy, though he gives us no details.  Let us say: 800,000 at Treblinka, 400,000 at Belzec, and 200,000 at Sobibor.  (Correct, Matt?) 

Therefore, his 3 million camp deaths must therefore imply 1.6 million at: Auschwitz, Chelmno, Majdanek, and assorted “other camps” – is that right?  Everyone accepts 1 million at Auschwitz, so we are left with 600,000 for Chelmno, Majdanek, and others.  But Chelmno can’t defend even the conventional figure of 250,000, and Majdanek is now officially only around 75,000, which leaves the others with at least 275,000—right?  (Whew!  Matt is really making us work here!)

If the Auschwitz bunkers killed only 100,000 (citation for this?), then 900,000 died in the crematoria.  K1 in the main camp killed 20,000 max, which is peanuts; K4 and K5 combined have never been claimed to kill more than 80,000; which leaves 800,000 killed in K2 + K3.  Wow—an impressive figure!  I would like to see anything that even remotely sustains such a figure.  And God forbid we should ask for a monthly breakdown (see my Table 27, Debating, p. 203).

Then, what about those “450,000” ghetto deaths (all causes)?  First, where are even a fraction of these bodies?  Second, is there any citation in a documented source for this number?  Third, Matt argued above for about 200,000 ghetto shootings, which leaves 250,000 non-shooting deaths—evidence for this? 

So:  If I attempt to add all this up, I get the following three components:

• 1.7 million shooting deaths (excluding ghettos, covered below)

• 3.0 million camp deaths (2.7 million from gas)

• 0.45 million ghetto deaths, all causes

If I round the ghettos up to 0.5 million, I have 5.2 million total.  Did I miss anything?  The reader will have to excuse my incompetence, if I am unable to create a better calculation.  I’m doing my best here!  Perhaps Matt wants to throw in another 200,000 or 300,000 “miscellaneous deaths”, getting him to 5.5 million.  I guess he can do this if he wants; when we are pulling numbers out of the air, pretty much anything goes.

Oh, and what about Hans Frank’s “1.2 million” starved to death?  Did that happen?  Or was that just a wish?  The same with Robert Ley—he might have wished for Jewish deaths, but he was in no position to make that happen, or to confirm that it did in fact happen.  And if the 1.2 million does not figure into the 6 million, then Frank’s claim was mere speculation and thus we can dismiss his entire statement.

And let’s say that Matt does indeed at some point tighten up his numbers and gives us a clear tabulation leading to 5.2 million, or 5.5 million, or (God forbid) 6 million.  Then what?  Then I have to say:  Congratulations Matt Cockerill!  You—an uncredentialed and unpublished blogger—have managed to succeed where dozens of scholarly experts have failed: you have provided a clear and concise calculation leading up to your chosen figure.  You are now entitled to join the pantheon of illustrious Holocaust scholars as the lone man to enumerate, and defend, the 6 (or whatever) million. 

But the reader of this debate should ask:  Why is this?  Why do none of the “experts” offer clear figures leading to 6 million, and then defend them?  None?  Matt surely knows some of these experts; in his (SR) he cites Pressac, Van Pelt, Gutman, Berenbaum, Longerich, and Benz.  I might add Arad, Bartov, Browning, Dawidowicz, Evans, Gilbert, Kershaw, Laqueur, Lipstadt, Piper, and Reitlinger.  Do you know them, Matt?  Can you cite where any of them even begins to enumerate a breakdown for the 6 million, and to defend it?  I can’t.  But you yourself can do it!  Congratulations, once again!

Of course, it would be cheating to simply take the highest published death estimates for each category, to obtain your total.  (You wouldn’t do that, would you?)  In fact, if I take the highest recent estimates for just the 6 “death camps”, I can present a figure of 4.4 million—just for 6 camps!  Nothing yet for ghettos, nothing yet for shootings!  If I then add 2 million shooting deaths, and 1 million ghetto deaths, I can argue for a figure of 7.4 million Jews!  Wow!  6 million?  That’s denial!  … Obviously, nothing is gained by doing so. 

In sum, if Matt has such a compelling case for his 5, or 5.5, or 6 million deaths, he should work to convince not me, but his fellow expert traditionalists.  Show them the data and the evidence, and get them to publish such numbers in a reputable venue.  Then we will really be getting somewhere!

A Few Assorted Replies

Obviously there are many points that neither Matt nor I can address in a limited format.  I have elected to deal with the most significant matters, whereas Matt seems anxious to press on marginal issues.  But let me add a few words in response to some of his concerns:

• In his (SR), Matt mentions Kola’s finding of 33 mass graves, with 21,000 cubic meters of volume.  Yet he ignores Mattogno’s entirely reasonable assessment that, based on the physical evidence found in core samples (not merely “total volume”), that Kola found evidence of hundreds, perhaps some thousands of bodies, at most.  A fair revisionist estimate is 40,000 deaths at Belzec, and so we would expect evidence consistent with that figure, which is what Kola found.  Matt also ignores the utter abandonment of Kola by orthodox researchers, suggesting that Kola’s study is highly damaging to the orthodox cause—which it is.

• Also in (SR), Matt cites Pressac’s claim that bunker victims (“100,000”) were buried in “the birch forest.”  There is utterly zero evidence for such a claim.  I have personally stood there, at the foundation remains of Bunkers 1 and 2; there is absolutely nothing in the area, or in the Birkenau documentation, that substantiates mass burial “in a birch forest”.

• Statements by Himmler and Goebbels about killing Jews never specify numbers or methods.  Yes, the Germans did kill Jews—many thousands.  And by the end of the war, they were surely wishing that they had killed more.  On the revisionist estimate, at least 500,000 Jews died in camps, ghettos, and shootings.  The quotations by Himmler and Goebbels don’t affect this in the least.

• Matt never addresses in any substantive way the disposal of bodies, ashes, bones, or teeth in any of the 6 death camps, the ghettos, or by the Einsatzgruppen.  “Bone mills” and “hammers” won’t cut it.  Those things don’t vaporize the evidence.  Ash, bone shards, and teeth fragments remain intact in the ground for centuries; they are thus still there, somewhere; why can’t we find them?

On this last point, let me reiterate here my proposal for a “Grand Experiment” that I outlined at the end of my Debating.  If we want to confirm the gassing, burial, and burning thesis, we have a relatively easy way to do this, empirically.  Purchase 1,000 live hogs of various sizes, in a weight range of 10 to 200 lbs. Herd them tightly into an enclosed room, with a ceiling slightly higher than the largest hog. Ensure that the room is ‘hermetically sealed.’  (Add a “peephole,” if desired.)  Take a large modern diesel engine, remove the catalytic converter, and then route the exhaust pipe into the room. Record what happens. As we recall, on the traditional view, all the animals will be expected to die within 10 or 20 minutes. If nothing happens, switch to a gasoline engine.  If, however, the engine repeatedly stalls, or the walls are blown out, or the animals simply refuse to die after, say, 1 hour, then just shoot each one.

Dig a pit in the ground of size 145 cubic meters—roughly 6m × 6m, and 4m deep. Pack all 1,000 dead hogs into the pit; this would approximate the claimed seven bodies per cubic meter. Cover the pit with dirt and wait six months.

Construct a typical Reinhardt-like pyre, using metal rails about 30 meters in length, raised one meter above ground. Exhume the dead hogs, and weigh each corpse. Then stack as many as possible on the pyre, in any configuration desired. Record the maximum number stacked, if less than 1,000. Presuming all 1,000 can be piled up, then load the pyre with approximately (1,000 × 45 × 0.56 =) 25,000 kg of dry hardwood.² Light the pyre, and record what happens.

If the traditionalists are right, the hog corpses will be largely burned to ash—except for their teeth and large bones. Gather up and weigh the full mass of ash, teeth, and bone. Then sift through the entire mass and extract all teeth and bones; weigh these. Pulverize the teeth and bones to dust, using only hammers or a 1940s-era grinder. Combine this pulverized mass with the other remaining ash, return to the original pit, measure the volume, and bury with dirt. Take core samples every, say, five years, and record the results.

Either side may conduct this Grand Experiment, but with their far greater financial resources, I would suggest that our orthodox defenders undertake it. Or better: that they fund a neutral party to conduct it. Either way, this relatively simple procedure could resolve many unanswered questions and contentious claims. It would go a long way toward settling the Holocaust debate. May the best man win.

An Alternate Narrative

Finally, Matt (CS) presses me for an alternate narrative.  I have already sketched this out, but for his sake I will do it again, with more detail.

Some 9 million Jews came under German control during WW2.  If we allow that the war ran for 5.5 years, and we assume a typical natural death rate (from old age, disease, accident, suicide, homicide, etc) of 1% per year for large populations, then around 90,000 Jews died each year of the war—or about 500,000 total, simply of natural causes, during the war.  This in itself is a remarkable fact:  500,000 Jewish deaths, even if the Germans never killed a single one.  Are these “Holocaust victims,” Matt?  How do they figure into the 6 million? 

Based the actual forensic evidence, actual transportation statistics, and actual camp registrations, revisionists estimate that around 280,000 Jews died in the camps (most of typhus); another 150,000 in ghettos (most of natural causes); and around 140,000 in mass shootings (most of whom were partisan fighters).  This gives a total of about 570,000 Jewish deaths that we might plausibly attribute to German actions.

Of the 1.4 million shuttled through the Reinhardt transit camps, as I said, the vast majority were shipped on to the east into captured (former-Soviet) territory, and then either interned in labor camps or released.  This would have occurred between roughly mid-1942 and mid-1943.  The total captured area was huge; if we combine the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the Reichskommissariat Ostland, and occupied Soviet territory, the area is roughly twice the size of France, amounting to some 400,000 square miles (about 1 million square kilometers).  That’s an average of about 3 Jews per square mile; no surprise that we can’t find them.  As the Soviets recaptured all that land over the subsequent two years, they would have swallowed up all 1.4 million Jews, who were then quickly ‘locked up’ behind the Iron Curtain, for decades.  There, with new lives, new names, new families, they were ‘lost’ to the West—and thus “disappeared.” 

With this, I draw our debate to a close.

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1. Debating the Holocaust: A New Look at Both Sides (4^th ed.), 2020, Castle Hill.

2. This is equivalent to about 46 cubic meters of solid wood. This would just about perfectly fill the space below a 30m × 2m pyre that was one meter high.  The background calculations for this can be found in Debating.