David Irving – Free speech defender?
See also: The parallels between AIDS denial and Holocaust negationism
It’s becoming something of a modern media tradition that whenever freedom of expression is discussed on TV, the pseudo-historian David Irving needs to be wheeled out to talk about the trials he has faced over his denial of the holocaust. Irving was famously jailed in Austria for a while after falling foul of the country’s laws that make denying the holocaust a criminal offence. Irving had given an inflammatory speech in Austria in 1989 which resulted in the case being initiated, and was arrested and put on trial when he returned in 2005.
I don’t doubt that there are some interesting (well, mildly interesting) questions around the wisdom and morality of locking people up for telling lies about the holocaust. The writer Deborah Lipstadt has argued that such measures are heavy-handed and counter-productive. Far more effective, she argues, to confront and expose a racist liar rather than giving him a chance to make a play for the moral highground by claiming martyrdom.
Lipstadt is in a good position to make this call. In 2000, Lipstadt’s legal team trounced David Irving in court, after he had sued her libel for describing him as a falsifier of history, a liar, an anti-semite and a holocaust denier. Armed with some of the most draconian and plaintiff-friendly libel laws in the western world, Irving had sought to impose a heavy penalty on Lipstadt for her criticisms of him. The move had backfired disatrously. Lipstadt had definitively proven her criticisms of Irving to be true, and helped in the process to destroy what was left of his reputation as a historian.
Irving, it seems, is a supporter of free speech only when it suits him. He has sought actively to use Britain’s libel laws to suppress legitimate criticism of his work, and arguably has rather more in common with the litigious fraudster Robert Maxwell than with the likes of Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi…
In “Don’t Get Fooled Again” I look at David Irving’s pseudo-history as a classic example of “bogus scepticism”.
Richard Wilson's blog 
What do you think free speech is if it’s not defending a man like David Irving? Irving is an historian with some excellent books to his credit. To write history properly, you must research, investigate and then publish your findings depite the official party line. It is my right to read those books just as it is yours not to read them. I refuse to let others decide what I can read and think especially someone as obviously bigotted as the writer.
Lynda Mortl
December 11, 2008 at 12:50 pm
David Irving was a well respected historian until he started studying the holocaust. He was and still is well respected by other historians of repute. It is the press and governments that have attacked Irving.
If someone libels you, you have a right to take that person to court. He went up against a well funded team who received millions from people like hollywoods Steven Spielberg. As Norman Finkelstein said, they had to keep Lipsatdt’s mouth shut in order to win the trial. They would have lost if she had been allowed to speak.
The holocaust is being used to alllow Israel to do what it wants in the middle east, steal billions from Europeans to build holocaust museums and colllege studies programs around the world and spread hate of Germans.
The average person in the world has a very negative opinion of Germans, many bordering on hatred, others just with complete disrespect.
Other atrocities of similar nature are not discussed at all: Belgiums murder of 25 million africans in the Congo for example. Britains conduct in africa over several centuries is not much better.
The constant attacks on everything German is bigotry at its worst.
Peter
December 11, 2008 at 3:33 pm
the jailing Irving in Austria has been the best way to interesting many people (everyday more like me) in investigation what really happen. ¿Why the memorial of Auschwitz about 4.000.000 victims was removed from the camp? Thankls to the “jailling opinions” I know now the truth. Everytime somebody go to jail for “opinions”, more people don´t believe in many things about holocaust, and think, this history it is to support the Israel Estate freedom to destroy and kill the palestinian people. I see clearer now, thanks to “jailing opinions”. – A. Chapa
alfonso chapa
December 11, 2008 at 3:54 pm
People have as much right to disagree with the official Jewish version of the history of WWII as they have to disagree with the Protestant version of the history of the Protestant Reformation, the French version of the French Revolution or the Irish version of the history of the Irish Potatoe Famine. Free speech and history belong to everyone, not just to Jews…who rake in billions of dollars based on making people feel guilty for WWII by means of the Holocaust Cult.
Donn
December 11, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Free societies which cherish free expression have invariably also allowed private redress, in the form of libel and slander actions, when words which have been disseminated are defamatory. It is not inconsistent for Irving or anyone else to argue that being imprisoned for stating a belief is different in kind from being held civilly liable for defaming someone. Irving’s action against Lipstadt failed, and under British law he was held answerable for her enormous legal fees, which may or may not be just. (In America, parties bear their own fees, win or lose, with a few statutory exceptions.)
Irving is a good choice for interviews precisely because his views are so objectionable to so many people, and he gives the appearance of being a thoroughly unpleasant person. But if his views were accepted and he was universally loved, he wouldn’t need the protections a free society offers.
Lipstadt, for her part, commendably criticized the statute under which he was imprisoned, but seemingly tried to shut him up when American television proposed including him in a discussion, and is outraged he is allowed to appear on the BBC.
As for Irving producing “pseudo-history,” a number of reputable historians, including Keegan, have spoken highly of much of his work, including his original research, while not agreeing with his more questionable and controversial opinions.
Eddie
December 11, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Typical garbeage. You just do not get it, do you. YOU guys are the liars not Irving. What rubbish!
Joe Btfsplk
December 11, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I have read many of David Irving’s books, and I think he has got it right for the most part. The western nations, with their Jewish/Zionist puppet masters, are the real culprits here. Nobody anymore, in his or her right mind, believes anything that is told to them by their government, press or paid and bought for Jewish apologists. White European peoples, should consider joining altogether, so that they speak as one. In this way we would have the necessary power to break the chains of our Jewish mastersonce and for all.
John Tillmann
December 11, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Have you ever read any of his books ?? Please quote where he actually denies the holocaust !
Once again you jump on the hate band wagon,just because some one dares to question the actual “holocaust”, Irving asks pertinent questions as to the possibility of such mass murderers in a war torn Europe,the feasibility of using gas,and questions the real numbers of victims etc…
For an historical researcher to shy away from controversy and avoid seeking answers to such questions is tantamount to cowardice-see Richard Evans works for example.
Ricsi
December 11, 2008 at 7:05 pm
People who condemn David Irving without having read his books (and it’s clear that the writer HAS NOT READ THEM) is on a par with the crazed muslims who condemned Salman Rushdie without even seeing the cover of “The Satanic Verses”. I challenge anyone to find holocaust denial in those thousands of pages.
David Irving was NOT jailed in Austria for “Holocaust Denial.” His “offence” (i.e. a 30 minute talk) occured 20 years ago, long before the current law and so he could not be prosecuted retrospectively.
He was jailed under a post-war, Sovet-occupied Austrian law making it an offence to challenge established history on Nazi Germany. So Stalin is now our guide on free speech.
If Mr Irving was a “Holocaust denier” why would he consider it libellous to be labelled one? His biggest error was in representing himself and this was what he was punished for. Mr Spielberg & co. paid for the best lawyers in the world to destroy the man. If you don’t believe that money can buy justice ask OJ.
I note that Ms Lipstadt did not even have the moral character to testify in the case. Can anyone even name a book of hers?
In the absence of public opinion one way or the other, pressure groups are slowly tightening the noose around the neck of free expression. Soon one will not be legally able to criticize Islam in the UK…although de facto self-censorship has already rendered such a law moot.
Mr Irving has the right to express his opinions or else we fought the Nazis for nought.
Erwin
December 11, 2008 at 7:38 pm
The newspapers are all going out of business because of stupid false misleading articles like this one. Who needs garbage information? It’s like eating bad food. Those who help build the Orwellian State (like Wilson) are de facto hate-mongers, not Irving. His books are terrific, by the way, great reading. I’ve read them all, and GOSH, I’ve never read a single line where he denies the holocaust (denying it, and not wanting to live it and breathe it, are two different things. How come no talk about the many more Christians slaughtered in Bolshevik Russia? Not a word about that!!!)! Rather, in his Hitler’s War, he talks about large numbers of jews being murdered by the Nazis (Jews had declared war on Germany in 1934, let’s remember, so they were enemies of the German State). Screw Wilson and his kind.
Joseph Romanov
December 11, 2008 at 7:57 pm
David Irving is a writter of magnificent gifts.His research indifagitable..His efforts on behalf of true history and freedom of speech is of Herclean proportions.Who amongst us would throw away everything to challange the Judiac establishment? The efforts to attack anyone who disrupts the lies surrounding Word War 2 and Zionist totalitarian myth making by jail and ruin prove the malelolence of this all powerfull,utterly Orwellian, tribal and racist force.How much more of humanity must suffer;so this Old Testament/Talmudic ideology of hate,greed, and chauvenism can maintain control of human events with such disasterous results?I will never let anyone control my thoughts.What I read.Who I admire(Mr,Irving)and how I think.
David Stolz
December 11, 2008 at 8:47 pm
David Irving is one of the worlds best historians. He is a researcher of unmatched tenacity, all real historians will
agree with this. Read his books,you will not see any anti semetic writing or holocaust denial.
Sadly there are writers,lawyers,forensic scientists languishing
in jail for their critical views on the holocaust industry.
In particular the German sheeple are being fleeced by their
government
grendon underwood
December 11, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Thanks for the comments folks – there’s a good general outline on Irving’s work here: http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=Irving
Richard Wilson
December 11, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Nice to read your opinion Mr. Wilson. Next time why not make it an informed one.
Todd
December 11, 2008 at 11:01 pm
David Irving is a WWII biographer. As a revisionist he is not in the same league as Zundel, Rudolf, Faurisson etc.
During his career he has not found any order from Hitler, or anyone else for that matter, even the conformist Hilberg admitted at the Zundel trial in Toronto, that no written orders exist in any form. As you all know, no physical evidence exists, except for those tiresome typhus victims at Belsen and Dachau (caused by the terror bombing of Germany, and the total collapse of the German infrastucture.)
Imposing penal servitude on someone for expressing opinions on a specific era in history, is like a red rag to a Bull to anyone with one iota of awareness. It should tell us something is seriously wrong with the official truth.
I advise everyone to take a look at this:
http://www.codoh.com/newsite/multimedia/piper1of2.wmv
http://www.codoh.com/newsite/multimedia/piper2of2.wmv
Tolerance
December 11, 2008 at 11:06 pm
For Richard Wilson — Wow, a good general unbiased outline on Irving’s work on the ADL website!!! In the “extremism” category! Gosh, I’ll bet we can take that little write-up seriously!!! Of course the ADL is an extremist organization itself, so an extremist organization calling an individual an extremist is a likely double negative! I had a friend in the JDL (cousins?), they used to throw bombs and terrorize people and so on. I’d love to see their list of “extremists.” Or more like “enemies,” a la Nixon or Joe McCarthy or Joe Stalin or….
Joseph Romanov
December 11, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Showing your colours there Wilson. An article on an ADL website. Now that is REAL bias. Who’s paying your wages Schmuck?
Truth Seeker
December 11, 2008 at 11:15 pm
I happen to know Irving personally. I do not like him as he is always trying to borrow monies at favorable terms, which he never repays.
He loves being a martyr.
As a historian of the 3rd Reich he is without peer. No one can match his personal knowledge of the 2nd WW, the European Civil War.
As for the rest, he is overbearing, personally sloppy, a poor dresser and rude beyond belief.
Further, he is poorly educated and has the manners of a peasant. As for representing himself in Court he had “a fool for counsel” and “an idiot for a client.” A prodigious memory does not an attorney make.
Don’t lend this mountebank monies as you will never see the principal again except as a loss.
Irving loves to promise sunlight at midnight.
Robert Lynch
December 12, 2008 at 5:14 am
Really, Mr. Wilson, is that the best you can do – quoting ADL?
You don’t have to agree with Mr. Irving’s politics to respect his work as a historian.
He is on the right and I am not. He is far too right wing for my taste. But the typical view of WW II is lopsided and unfair and I am glad there is someone out there writing about things no one else does. Examples: 1) 1941 book by Theodore Kaufman with a detailed plan to sterilize all the Germans. 2) The Morgenthau Plan to lay waste to the entire German nation and make it a strictly agricultural nation (which would have resulted in millions of additional dead Germans)
The way the anglo-saxons write about the massacre at Dresden is disgusting. There is no balance in the way these people write.
How the war started is another issue. Germany wanted land back that had been there’s for centuries (Bohemia and Moravia was Austrian until 1919) and much of Poland was German. But all of this is forgotten. The English and French made what would have been a local war (between Germany and Poland) into a world war.
The Germans are not allowed to have their land (including millions of Germans that lived in those newly created countries), but the British are allowed to attack Argentina in 1982 to take back the Falkland Islands that lay just off the coast of Argentina – land the British never had any right to anyway.
Now the British will be sending all their schoolchildren once a year to Auschwitz. This is 2008, 63 years after the war ended. This wasn’t done before, but for some reason they find it necessary now.
With this propaganda (I don’t know what else to call it) getting worse as the years go by (soon the war will be a century old), the other nations will soon feel justified in doing anything to Germans.
Maybe they will want to put Germans in concentration camps?
The Germans have the third largest economy in the world. If they stop lying down in the face of this hatred, what are the other countries going to do?
Peter
December 12, 2008 at 6:21 am
In a Thousand years from now, Mr Irving’s books on the insane fratricidal European war will still be read by scholars while pathetic scribblers like you are forgotten shadows and dust. Irving is a giant, a man of courage whose reputation is constantly besmirched by a corrupt cabal of internationalist swindlers.
Bernie in OZ
December 12, 2008 at 7:06 am
Thanks again – well there’s also lots of info over at Deborah Lipstadt’s blog, here: http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/ – and also here: http://www.hdot.org/
Richard Wilson
December 12, 2008 at 8:25 am
See also this discussion here, in the Irving v Lipstadt court judgment as published on the HDOT site: http://www.hdot.org/trial/judgement/08.02
Richard Wilson
December 12, 2008 at 8:48 am
Quote:
As for representing himself in Court he had “a fool for counsel” and “an idiot for a client.” A prodigious memory does not an attorney make.
During show trials, it matters little who your counsel is. Most revisionists have lawyers and if anything they come out of it worse than Irving. Sylvia Stolz (one of Germany’s top women lawyers) was Ernst Zundel’s Lawyer and she is now in Solitary confinement for defending him.
The H-Industry is used to cover up thr ‘real’ crimes of WWII and to make Jews and the artificial creation, and genocidal state of Israel beyond criticism.
Quote:
Now the British will be sending all their schoolchildren once a year to Auschwitz. This is 2008, 63 years after the war ended. This wasn’t done before, but for some reason they find it necessary now.
Dual loyalty elements within the government will be state mandating the forced brain-washing of innocent children without their parents permission you mean?
They can all look at the post-war mock-up’s the Poles built.
I bet they cannot find one single mass grave though!
Bernsky
December 12, 2008 at 8:52 am
Mr. Wilson, its interesting you feel its necessary to respond to the responses about your book. This seems to indicate you don’t think your arguments are very powerful.
I’m encouraged by the number of people coming to Mr. Irving’s defense. Apparently the censorship has not affected everyone.
Peter
December 12, 2008 at 8:55 am
Mr. Wilson, I would suggest you read how the respected publisher Saint Martins Press came under pressure from the ADL in 1996 not to publish Mr. Irving’s book “Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich”.
They judged the book to be valuable, but it has never been published in the USA because of the threats against them by the ADL.
Peter
December 12, 2008 at 9:13 am
>Now the British will be sending all their schoolchildren once a year to Auschwitz.<
Not exactly!
“Two sixth-formers from every school in England are to visit Auschwitz to learn about the Holocaust, under a government-funded initiative to help to ensure that the lessons of the Nazi genocide live on with a new generation.”
http://tinyurl.com/67osdy
Allen Esterson
December 12, 2008 at 9:46 am
Richard who?
I couldn’t care any less for the obviously uniformed opinion of someone I’ve never heard of.
Oh… Hang on? Is he the “I don’t believe it!” man? Well, the current BBC rehash of “Merlin” that you’re in is the worst kind of revised history I’ve ever had the misfortune to watch, so, “people in glass houses”, etc.
Scott Dean
December 12, 2008 at 10:54 am
Robert Lynch, thanks for that story! I actually find Irving’s boundless egotism and prickly personality appealing, although you are definitely not the first person who has found him personally disagreeable. Thanks for the heads-up about not loaning him money ;).
Mr. Wilson, I am getting the impression that like most of the people who trash Irving, you have never actually read any of his books. I am no fool when it comes to history, and Irving’s work is indespensible for understanding the military history of WWII.
From Mr. Justice Gray’s decision:
It was plain from the way in which he conducted his case and dealt with a sustained and penetrating cross-examination that his knowledge of World War 2 is unparalleled. His mastery of the detail of the historical documents is remarkable. He is beyond question able and intelligent. He was invariably quick to spot the significance of documents which he had not previously seen. Moreover he writes his military history in a clear and vivid style. I accept the favourable assessment by Professor Watt and Sir John Keegan of the calibre of Irving’s military history (mentioned in paragraph 3.4 above) and reject as too sweeping the negative assessment of Evans (quoted in paragraph 3.5).
David F.
December 12, 2008 at 10:56 am
Mr. Wilson, are you really serious to refer people to the ADL website and Deborah Lipstadt’s blog to see what David Irving is all about? Please. This shows an incredible naivety on your part. It’s rather like asking the head of the Israeli Security for an unbiased report on the situation in Gaza.
Again, thank you very much but I will decide for myself.
Lynda Mortl
December 12, 2008 at 11:56 am
You would do well to delete this blog, because if you run into a head-to-head confrontation with any knowledgeable revisionists, it could all get rather embarrasing–you won’t last five minutes!
Remember the Stockholm conference?
“Care must be taken not to give a platform for deniers… or seek to disprove the deniers’ position through normal historical debate and rational argument”.
from: ‘Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust’ at the Stockholm International Forum, 2000
Bob
December 12, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Here’s an idea – Instead of having Irving’s ideas viewed through the ADL or Lipstadt prismatic lenses why not suggest your readers read Irving’s own words? Are you afraid his words will corrupt on contact? You can’t “catch” the Irving virus by reading his books.
Chubbarow
December 12, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Dickie Wilson should consider a career in stand up comedy.
sid guvnor
December 12, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Mr Wilson has the usual unschooled – or rather, the usual indoctrinated – stance on things here. His sources are all of far more bias than David Irving himself would put forth. In fact, it was Irving himself who sent me to this page. The real shame here is that non-critical wags like Mr Wilson have the mouthpieces while critical historians are being pensioned off or silenced by numerous and diverse forces.
As to Mr Lynch’s personal attack on Mr Irving I must say that having had the latter as my houseguest not a few months ago that all of Lynch’s assertions are completely false. After many hundreds of hours on the road and a tremendous amount of stress Mr Irving was perfectly tidy and well-groomed, pleasant, affable and as friendly as ever; likely far more so than I would be were our immediate situations reversed. Further, I was more than compensated for my up-front monies for a small Stammtisch I hosted for David. I expected no less from a gentleman of his public persona.
Yours
WCWL
WCWL
December 12, 2008 at 6:20 pm
So much for free speech! Mr. Wilson dared to criticize David Irving, idol of the Really Wacky Right, so has received a string of nasty messages from his followers. (which HE prints). From listening to Irving’s speech here in Eugene sponsored by the local anti-Semitic “Pacifica Forum” , I learned he is not at all the “holocaust denier” he is portrayed in the media. Instead, he made clear he is a “holocaust sympathizer”. He smirked like a devil when he declared that the real horror of the holocaust, “The Great Jewish Tragedy”, as he called it, was not that masses of Jews were killed, but rather that they never understand why people hate them so and wanted to kill them.
Having lived through WII, been a soldier in Germany a few years after the war, married a German woman, and studied that era for years, I understand that the Nazis killed Jews for the same reason they killed Poles, Gypsies, socialists, gays, the disabled, etc. , because they themselves were evil. Irving, like all bullies is a coward– he won’t allow opposition in his meetings– I waved my arm in his “question” period and he was afraid to call on me. Ironically, Irving, and Orval Etter’s “Pacifica Forum” in Eugene are as vicious and extreme as their opposite Zionist number Daniel Pipes and his “Middle-East Forum”, with whom I also tangled. These hateful extremists on both sides are a plague to the weary world. We could just laugh them off, just as most Germans did in the 1920s–until you remember how those creatures came to power with the help of the chaos of the economic collapse. Could that happen here if things keep getting worse? There are those who hope so.
Doug
Douglas Card
December 12, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Albert Esterson says, ““Two sixth-formers from every school in England are to visit Auschwitz to learn about the Holocaust, under a government-funded initiative to help to ensure that the lessons of the Nazi genocide live on with a new generation.”
I don’t know what “two sixth formers means”, but the British now have a regular program to send schoolchildren to Auschwitz every year. Twenty years ago they didn’t have this program and twenty years ago historians could didn’t go to jail for their opinions on the holocaust. Are the English school children going to stop at Dresden so that the lessons of the English and American genocide live on with a new generation?
Maybe the English schoolchildren should take a trip to Africa or India so that colonization and the Atlantic slave trade is not repeated. Will the English or for that matter German or Belgian school children learn about the 25 million Africans murdered in the Congo by Belgium in the early 20th century?
Europeans (and Americans) seem to think a Jewish life is more valuable than an African or non-Jewish European life.
The Americans have built holocaust museums in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles and others will be built. They haven’t built any museums for all the Africans and Indians they murdered. The lesson seems to be its alright to kill people who aren’t Jewish.
Peter
December 12, 2008 at 10:11 pm
hahaha….the comments section of this article just goes to show how many people can see through the lies of the Jewish invented holohoax. That’s why our traitors in Parliament are now funding yearly “guilt trips” with taxpayers money to keep the lie alive in the next generation. That’s why we have a few more holohoax movies hitting the screens this year. How much are “those nice folks” paying you to write this crap?
Richard Wilson, you are the liar and judging from the response to your crap expose on “free speech”, I’m not alone in thinking this.
Alex
December 12, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Douglas Card is also an ignoramus. You don’t have to be a member of the “really wacky right” to be interested in what Mr. Irving has to say.
The publishing company St. Martins Press is not from the wacky right. But when they wanted to publish Mr. Irving’s book on Goebbels because they thought it was an important book, the ADL threatened them and forced them to break off the deal they had made with Mr. Irving.
I’m sorry a German woman married an ignoramus like yourself filled with hatred towards Germans.
Peter
December 12, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Quote:
I understand that the Nazis killed Jews for the same reason they killed Poles, Gypsies, socialists, gays, the disabled, etc. , because they themselves were evil.
Shame you cannot bring any evidence forward to support this babble. Constant repetiton is your lot, and when the Zundel’s of the world expose your nonsense, the only response is jail.
The Jewish NKVD murdered the Poles:
http://www.katyn.org.au/naziphotos.html
Can you show me one exhumation from the easily debunkable H-industry to compare to the exhumations at Katyn that the Germans carried out?
Never has a single grave been shown to exist in more than sixty years, concerning the Holohoax industry, even though the exact locations are supposedly known.
———————–
Quote:
We could just laugh them off, just as most Germans did in the 1920s–until you remember how those creatures came to power with the help of the chaos of the economic collapse.
After International Jewry declared war on Germany and Jewish Banking boycotted them. Then they whinge to high heavens when Germany responses with a Jewish boycott, and they get treated as enemies of the state. Why us – why us?
Archi
December 12, 2008 at 11:49 pm
What interesting postings!
I never miss a chance to hear Mr. Irvin speak when he is in my part of the world.
I always find his lectures bold, stimulating and enlightening, a great improvement over the politically correct claptrap emanating from the academic ghettos these days.
Consider how much fraudulent evidence, how many forged documents (such as the “Hitler Diaries”) he has exposed, after conformist historians had put their seals of approval on them.
What are ad hominem attacks and official persecutions by vassal European regimes except admissions that the “Holocaust Industry” has lost the great debate?
J M Damon
December 13, 2008 at 12:14 am
The term “holocaust denier” must have been coined by desperate people whose sole desire was to silence those who questioned the “official” story from which they profited so much – otherwise why use a term that, upon even the slightest examination by an intelligent, rational, open-minded person can be seen for the red herring that it is? Irving and others given this ridiculous label are simply historians and researchers whom, upon examining the evidence, came to a conclusion – one that is obvious to those willing to see it – that things simply weren’t what they have been made out to be. When studying history it is always good to remember that the victors write the “official” story – thus official stories should always be questioned.
Indeed, it is those whose with small, closed minds who are the true “bad” guys here – upset as they are that not everyone is willing to buy their fictional account of “history”. Irving has done excellent work – what a historian is supposed to do. He researched and drew conclusions from the evidence he found, unlike those psudo historians who reach a conclusion and then set out to find evidence to support it (while ignoring anything to the contrary).
Koda
December 13, 2008 at 5:20 am
Bravo! It’s always entertaining when great minds share their thoughtful eloquence. For example, Peter labels me an “ignoramus” who hates Germans. In fact, if he rereads my remarks he’ll see I had nothing negative to say about the German people. It wasn’t just the German Nazis, for racist fascism can strike anywhere, as with Russian Pamyat, American skinheads, etc. Germany is a tragic example that even an educated, cultured politically sophisticated society can fall prey to racist madness in times of economic and political turmoil. Just as with the Germans I knew in the late 1950s, 60s and 70s, most Germans today totally repudiate the sort of extremism expressed by Irving and his groupies. They understand the German people themselves were also great victims of Hitler’s madness, and some of their greatest minds died in his camps..
Archie is mad because I wrote that “I understand that the Nazis killed Jews for the same reason they killed Poles, Gypsies, socialists, gays, the disabled, etc. , because they themselves were evil.”
His defense is that it was the (“Jewish”) Soviet NKVD that killed the Poles at Katyn. He is correct, of course, that at Katyn Forest it was a vile Soviet crime. Their massacre of some of the best of the Polish military and cultural elite at Katyn was one of the great horrors of WWII. However, this does not minimize the guilt of the Nazis whose killings were on a much vaster scale. It was Poland’s misfortune to lie between those two tyrants Hitler and Stalin, and the later crushing of Warsaw and its citizens by German troops while the Soviet Army stood by was another of WWII’s disasters. It’s hard to argue, who was more evil, Hitler or Stalin? Plenty of evidence for both!
David Irving made his name as a “holocaust denier”, but as the facts rolled in, even he had to admit that mass killings took place, so he can only bicker about the details. Instead, he has moved on to justifying the slaughter with his clever little “Why Us? syndrome.”, which you’ll find on his daily online newsletter tucked in between the Nazi memorabilia. Just as with Archie in his strained attempt to justify mass murder because of supposed Jewish economic acts, Irving can always get his audience to snicker at the thought of Jewish culpability for their own destruction. It’s time to return to decent human values before we plunge the world in to another maelstrom like WWII.
Doug
Douglas Card
December 13, 2008 at 6:24 am
Deborah Lipstadt is my hero. If she had not attacked David Irving and blackmailed his publisher to renege on their contract to publish Irving’s book on Goebbels, I would still be uninformed of the facts and would still believe in the Holocaust(tm) myth.
When I heard that Irving’s book had been “banned”, I was curious and started reading up on the subject. I have since purchased almost all his books and attended several of his lectures. I have also contributed cash to Irving to help defray his costs and help him continue in his work. None of this would have occurred if she had left well enough alone and allowed him to publish his books without interference.
As for the Holocaust(tm), I don’t really care whether Irving believes in it or not. I know that I certainly do not believe it ever happened. If the Nazis did have an extermination policy, they were damned inefficient. The American Army managed to kill about 1.5 million German soldiers in about 1 year after the war, through deliberate starvation and withholding of medical care. The Nazis only managed to kill 6 million Jews in 5+ years of war, with food and medicine in short supply and near daily bombing attacks from Allied planes during the latter half of the war? Where is the vaunted German efficiency in this?
No, if the Nazis had an extermination policy, there would not have been any survivors from any of the camps. They wouldn’t have bothered to tattoo people they planned on killing, they just put a bullet in their heads and be done with it. In particular, those incapable of working, such as the young Anne Frank, would have been exterminated on arrival instead of surviving long enough to be transferred to Bergen-Belsen. And what was she doing in a hospital when she died of typhus? If there was an extermination policy, why hospitalize potential victims when you could just let the germs do the job?
There were death camps in Poland during WWII. They were operated by Jews who had been liberated by the Soviets and their victims were German civilians, as documented by John Sachs in his book “Eye For An Eye”. The stories we hear today about the Holocaust(tm) are just a case of psychological projection as the Jews project their own crimes on their German victims.
Doug@usa.com
December 13, 2008 at 7:52 am
This is the Richard Wilson? I remember you on the Mrs. Merton show with Bernard Manning. You’ll have about as much luck reforming Irving and friends as you did Manning.
But I suggest that you read one book of Irving’s, if youdo nothing else. His Hitler’s War truly is a masterpiece. Superbly written and even Penguin’s defence team have vetted it as essentially correct in all major details.
Fred
December 13, 2008 at 8:05 am
You have not answered my question Douglas Card!
I specifically asked you for evidence of these ‘Nazi crimes’ and you have offered nothing but demented waffle.
Take Auschwitz for instance, can you show me the examination of the massive pit where the million (used to be four until the early nineties) bodies where buried? I mean this pit was about 15 times the size of Wembley Stadium, impossible to hide!
Or do you think as the Germans where in the chaos of full retreat, they stopped as they were passing through Birkenau, logged four thousand hectares of forest, exhumed the pit and burnt these bodies on open-air pyres in the middle of winter, being very careful to put every stone back in it’s place?
In fact they did such an incredible job, that when the Russian rapist’s rolled up. Illya Ehrenburg, Stalin’s hate crazed Jewish propaganda mninister, had it reported in Pravda, that they found a conveyer belt leading up to a huge blast furnace where Jews toppled into and were burnt to cinders.
Of course, this nonsense about collosal mass graves, has only come about because revisionist’s have pointed out the crude crematoria at these transportation/delousing camps wasn’t anywhere near capable of dealing with the lies of mass murder. These crematoria where the same as you find anywhere, just hygenic ways to dispose of corpses from natural deaths. They even had the urns for the ashes.
It’s good to see you have conceded who murdered the Poles at Katyn. It is odd that the Bolshevik Russians tried and hung Germans after the war for these crimes. It tells one a great deal about the ethical value of Marxist propaganda and show trials.
Douglas Card Says:
David Irving made his name as a “holocaust denier”, but as the facts rolled in, even he had to admit that mass killings took place, so he can only bicker about the details.
What fact’s? Show me the fact’s?
Irving recanted, because he is seventy years old and didn’t want to die in Gaol. He also has no evidence of mass murder by Germans. No-one has! If they had it, the whole world would have been forced to watch it, over and over, until they vomited from boredom and nausea. The same way David Cole recanted, after the JDL put a death warrant on his head.
Stop trying to paint Irving as the defacto revisionist. He is a biographer of the second world war, and an opportunist, who didn’t calculate the wrath of the H-Industry correctly. The big boy’s are all in solitary confinement in occupied Germany, because you cannot prove their arguments wrong in rational debate.
So can I ask you again for this evidence? This is a large crime, and unlike the millions, the Jewish revolution starved to death in the Ukraine with artificial famines. It is not spread over massive swathes of land, but confined to very small, known locations.
Even though the Auschwitz plaque dropped it’d embarrassing communist figures from four to one million, the total still remains at ‘eleven million’ So where is the evidence?
Archi
December 13, 2008 at 9:46 am
Irving undoubtably is intelligent and has a prodigious memory. As Judge Gray said in his summing up his knowledge of WW2 is unparalleled. He can sometimes be wrong, and stubborn as well, but we all have our failings as we get older.
The myth of the “holocaust” will I am sure go on for centuries now it is well and truly established in the collective consciousness. Undoubtably the German government pursued an anti Jewish policy in WW2 ,seeing the Jewish population as enemy aliens. They ruthlessly exploited them in labour camps thoughout the occupied areas, and at the end of the war many camps were overwhelmed by typhus eg Belson (Most of the Belson victims had trudged all the way from eastern camps voluntarily as they didnt want to fall into the hands of the Russians). Thousands were also killed in attempts to destroy the partisan movement in Russia.
However there is no evidence of any order to exterminate the Jewish population and there is definately no forensic evidence for the existence of gas chambers. Those who point out the lack of forensic evidence end up in Jail, eg Germar Rudolf. This was a tale made up by US psych ops and came straight out of the mind of someone who had just read Hansel and Gretel…in they go into the ovens!
Today it is used by those in power to defend their interests in the middle east and by the military industrial concerns in the US.
Peter Johnson
December 13, 2008 at 11:22 am
Douglas Card: I’m not going to address all of what you say. Just this quote: ‘David Irving made his name as a “holocaust denier”’. You could not be more wrong. His first big hit, one of several bestsellers was “The Destruction of Dresden”. He did not address the holocaust until late in his career. Like many other people he was not interested in it. After all, over 50 million Europeans died in the war, not just 6 million jews. Of course the term “holocaust denier” is an insult coined to keep people from expressing an opinion that would say that it didn’t happen in such a brutal way or its extent was not as great as a lot of people suggest.
The holocaust was hardly talked about in the 40’s, 50’s and early 60’s. Norman Finkelstein, the son of Polish Jews says it was considered improper to write about the holocaust because West Germany was the USA’s ally in its struggle with the Soviet Union during the cold war. He also says that for jewish organizations the holocaust is personal, political and economic. He then wrote the book “The Holocaust Industry” detailing how jewish organizations have extracted billions of dollars from European countries through what Finkelstein said was extortion aqnd blackmail.
The Holocaust was not mentioned often in movies or books. It started in the 1970’s. Now we have several major holocaust movies a year, every year, not to mention the every day drip feed of holocaust talk.
Germany was an occupied country until 1991. Occupied by USSR, USA, France and Great Britain. Fortunately there are some important Germans who believe they should stop beating themselves up over Hitler. Its only been 17 years since the occupation ended. At some point I hope they will be able to treat it as Americans and Brits treat the atrocities they coimmited.
Peter
December 13, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Peter says:
Germany was an occupied country until 1991. Occupied by USSR, USA, France and Great Britain.—-
That is not quite true is it?
http://www.rpmonitor.ru/en/en/detail.php?ID=8857
Augustav
December 13, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Is doubt the beginning of wisdom, Or the end of ones career ?
sid guvnor
December 13, 2008 at 6:38 pm
A jolly good day to Merry Old England from soggy Oregon! And what a delight to find that Archie and Peter continue to exemplify that very characteristic which Richard Wilson described– the ability to believe any piece of nonsense if it fit their ideology, but to “question” the most obvious truths if they don’t fit their schemes.
Peter claims Irving made his name with his book on Dresden, and the holocaust denial came later. I admit that many years ago I not only read, but believed, and shared, his interesting book about Dresden, one of the tragic episodes of WWII. It was not until much later that I learned he had greatly inflated the casualty figures in order to somehow gain moral equivalence between the tragic Allies’ bombing of civilians in Dresden, and the Nazi’s mass extermination of millions of non-Aryans. In short, his “holocaust minimizing” had already began with his first well known “history” book.
Peter also asserts that the holocaust was not talked about much until the ’70s– Balderdash! I had read and heard about it in detail much earlier, including from my German friends who knew it had happened, experienced its ramifications, and felt terrible about it, unlike Irving and his friends. In fact, I wish my America could face up to own brutal mistreatment of Indians and African-Americans as well as has Germany with its own WWII war crimes.
Peter did get one thing right– it wasn’t just Jews who died in WWII, the Nazis killed millions of Russians, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Gypsies, the disabled, etc. as well.
Now, our friend Archie claims: ”
“You have not answered my question Douglas Card!
I specifically asked you for evidence of these ‘Nazi crimes’ and you have offered nothing but demented waffle.”
Fine, Archie, for evidence lets’ begun with the only source you’re likely to believe– David Irving himself. Check out his online newsletter. For example, you can find a concentration camp pondering what to do with the 50 kilos of gold teeth they have extracted from their dead victims, whom Irving estimates must be from 50,000 to 100,00 people.
Then there’s the Grand Mufti who wrote that Himmler bragged in 1943 about having killed 3 million Jews;
Finally, there are the “Himmler decodes” from the beginning of the mass killings of Jews and “partisans” on the Eastern front. However, once the Nazis realized that the British might be monitoring their dispatches, they became much more circumspect. Also, realizing that even their own German people were becoming revolted by stories circulating about these mass shootings they switched over to the more private and efficient death camps.
Peter and Archie, please read these macabre reports, and ask yourself, why are you trying to defend such a horrid system?
Read these– direct from Irving’s own web– and then, please shut up about trying to deny the Nazis killed masses of Jews.
Just before Irving showed up here in Oregon, I spent a couple of evenings on his web site reading his sources, including the Himmler Decodes PDF Irving proudly posted on his web site among his ads for Nazi memorabilia. Fascinating stuff (though there are better reports on this subject elsewhere.)
As a former Cold War radio monitor of Soviet military activity for the USASA myself, I was fascinated by what the British achieved with their WWII radio intercepts and Enigma decoding, and it is a goldmine of horrors. Ghastly, macabre stuff. A true nightmare.
Also, as most of it is in German, except for some occasional comments in English carelessly scattered throughout, a little German and a dictionary will help make sense of the nonsensical.
Irving falsely claims in his introduction that there is little material about killing Jews, only ” one or two references to Zyklon” [I found two, including a March 3 1943 reference to 22 cases of Zyklon and an “Implement” sent to the camp at Warsaw]; claims “very few, 2 or 3” references to Auschwitz [I found several]. Much of what Irving does include from the decodes is about how the Germans, especially at Dresden, suffered from the Allied bombings. It is clear the SS had tight radio security and thus have few clear references to the “Vernichtung” (extermination) of Juden, especially after a severe warning on radio secrecy in September 1941.
After the very long section on the parts of the decodes Irving chose to include, the final section has a group of German military messages that specifically refer to atrocities Nazis committed in the early years of the war in Russia and Poland—for example, a typical August 1941 report included: ” Pol. Reg Sud: ……In Slawuta…..911 Juden erschossen. Pol. Batl. 3w20 bei Action in Minkowzy, 2200 Juden erschossen. Verluste: 1. SS Brigade: 2 Mann durch Auffahren auf Mine verletzt; Pkw total zerstort.”
[Police Regiment South….In Slawuta…911 Jews shot. Police Battalion 3w20, in an action in Minkowzy, 2200 Jews shot. Casualties: 1. SS Brigade: 2 men killed running over a mine, the vehicle totally destroyed.”]
In this section, there are several pages of similar messages of shooting Jews and Poles in Poland and Russia by the hundreds and even thousands in the early years, and the Germans’ only concern seemed to be their own losses, which in massacring helpless civilians, they would naturally have few casualties!
……………………………
In his own words, Irving summarizes this as “the SS are shooting all Jews in their path, whom they describe in reports willy-nily as Freischarler, Plunderer, partisans and Bolshevists. The reports make no distinction as to the sex or age of the Jews; the units appear to vie with each other to kill the most. After the well-known Daluege secrecy signal of Sept. 13,1941 the messages become more circumspect.” [that message ordered that because of the danger of enemy decoding, all transmissions of a certain type, including numbers killed in executions, were to be sent by courier rather than by air; thus, little of that sort of material appears in the decodes later.]
What really chills me in all this is not just the reports of all the killings,( though reading about the hundreds and thousands killed, and then putting all these together to total millions, is just overwhelming;) but also the bland, almost sociopathic manner in which Irving treats these killings suggests to me that Irving knows full well what happened, but just isn’t bothered by it. He seems to believe that by “overwhelming” us with his highly edited historical material, he will convince us that he knows more than we, and that while a lot of killings took place, it wasn’t near as bad, there weren’t as many, as was claimed….to minimize, rather than totally deny, the Holocaust. All in all, it is a sloppy, careless and amoral piece of “history” which actually reveals much more about the Nazi system and Irving himself, than Irving realized.
Cheers, Doug
Douglas Card
December 13, 2008 at 6:56 pm
I believe recent research in the archives – by Irving, apparently one of the very few who even bother – has discovered English decodes of German internal messages that confirm his original far higher estimates of the Dresden death rate. The propaganda and pressure against Irving’s original numbers caused even he himself to revise his works. Nice to find out he was correct in the beginning.
noway
August 24, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Doug obviously does some research and his conclusions generally support my observations that many thousands of Jews were shot in Russia in the war. I would say that few “revisionists” dispute this. The Germans would have contended that it was part of their anti partisan actions.
As an intelligent observer though I still doubt the existence of homicidal “gas chambers”, and am compltetely puzzled about how the alleged gas chamber in Aushwitz krema 2 could do away with supposedly 2000 people every hour with the only exit from it being a 6 foot by 4 lift. Surely that would have been a bottleneck? Also Zyclon B was allegedly fed through roof vents of which there is absolutely no evidence today in the concrete roof to confirm this.
I feel the main reason for my doubt is that intelligent researchers who have looked at this problem have been jailed in Europe. Germa Rudolf has a phd and did research on the matter and languishes in Mannerheim Jail. Obviously there is something to hide and heretics must be punished.
Peter Johnson
December 13, 2008 at 11:41 pm
Doug interesting piece though I disagree on many points , however the question I have for you is this – Do you believe the Germans used “homicidal gas chambers” at Auschwitz? Yes or no?
Lex
December 13, 2008 at 11:45 pm
Douglas Card: You don’t know what you are talking about. Its not that the killing of jews was not discussed at all before the 1970’s, but it was not written about much, and did not appear very often in film. Someone might discuss the American Indian today, but not very often. The first major book about the holocaust was by Raul Hilberg in the 1960’s. Read Norman Finkelstein – http://www.normanfinkelstein.com.
Also, you say “Peter did get one thing right– it wasn’t just Jews who died in WWII, the Nazis killed millions of Russians, Poles, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Gypsies, the disabled, etc. as well”.
The Russians, British, Americans and others killed 8 million Germans. The cowards raped 2 million German women before murdering many of them and their children. Your Russian allies did this. In the East Prussian town of Nemmersdorf, they crucified the women, nailing them to the doors of barns and houses. They smashed the children’s heads in. The allies mass murder at Dresden is discussed thanks to David Irving. The allies would have liked to sweep that under the rug like everything else they did to the Germans.
What makes you an expert on Dresden? Have you gone to the capitals of the countries involved, researched the archives and developed the number of people killed. Americans still write books justifying this atrocity on the grounds that Dresden was an important military target. Maybe your historians minimize the figure like they minimize or simply don’t discuss or censor what they did to the Germans.. Just like you did above. You mentioned all the people who suffered in WW II except for the Germans.
Peter
December 14, 2008 at 1:07 am
Its interesting that the biggest mouth in this discussion is an American, known for their ignorance of other cultures and history. But the American Doug Card explains European history to Europeans. The Americans never even entered concentration camps in Poland where the killings are said to have taken place, but the American Mr. Card knows exactly what happened there and explains it to the Europeans.
Its a little like the Obama quote during the presidential campaign on how the Americans liberated Auschwitz. Only one problem, the Russians liberated Auschwitz, the Americans were never there.
Hot air from Obama, Doug Card and all the other know nothings in the USA.
Peter
December 14, 2008 at 1:21 am
Oh, I’m an Obama supporter, but he doesn’t know history.
Peter
December 14, 2008 at 1:32 am
Well done Mr Card….you have confirmed the Germans exterminated Bolshevist Jews in WW2. I don’t think you’ll find many sympathisers. Mr Irving has never claimed to deny the Germans shot and killed partisans and Communist sypathisers in WW2 so this is nothing new. I actually applaud the Germans for doing so as this allowed me to enjoy freedom of speech for the past 60 years and possibly allowed you that luxury too!
You have neglected to prove any existance of gas chambers in Auschwitz or any other so called death camps. You are a traitor to your people (unless you are a jew) and I look forward to the day when you sit on a Nuremburgesque trial and hang from a rope!
Alex
December 14, 2008 at 1:56 am
Thank you Augustav for your post regarding the occupation of Germany. That website is now one of my favorites.
Peter
December 14, 2008 at 2:50 am
Douglas Card Said:
Fine, Archie, for evidence lets’ begun with the only source you’re likely to believe– David Irving himself.
Not at all! Irving is a WWII biographer and should stick to it, instead of trying to jump on a bandwagon he knows nothing about. I do not take anything Irving says about the industry too seriously. After all, there is a reason he served only a year, whilst Zundel, Rudolf, etc are going the full five.
—————-
Mr Card Said:
Check out his online newsletter. For example, you can find a concentration camp pondering what to do with the 50 kilos of gold teeth they have extracted from their dead victims, whom Irving estimates must be from 50,000 to 100,00 people.
Then there’s the Grand Mufti who wrote that Himmler bragged in 1943 about having killed 3 million Jews;
Finally, there are the “Himmler decodes” from the beginning of the mass killings of Jews and “partisans” on the Eastern front. However, once the Nazis realized that the British might be monitoring their dispatches, they became much more circumspect. Also, realizing that even their own German people were becoming revolted by stories circulating about these mass shootings they switched over to the more private and efficient death camps.
Peter and Archie, please read these macabre reports, and ask yourself, why are you trying to defend such a horrid system?
Read these– direct from Irving’s own web– and then, please shut up about trying to deny the Nazis killed masses of Jews.
Easily forgeable paperwork! It seems odd that after recently highlighting some of the most disgusting lies the Jewish/ Bolsheviks have been caught at. You then once again resort to their vile archives and drag out a few scraps of paper.This is all you have for the systematic slaughter of ‘ELEVEN MILLION’, three communist scrawlings?
Where is the physical evidence, where is the murder weapon?
—————-
Mr Card Said:
Just before Irving showed up here in Oregon, I spent a couple of evenings on his web site reading his sources, including the Himmler Decodes PDF Irving proudly posted on his web site among his ads for Nazi memorabilia. Fascinating stuff (though there are better reports on this subject elsewhere.)
As a former Cold War radio monitor of Soviet military activity for the USASA myself, I was fascinated by what the British achieved with their WWII radio intercepts and Enigma decoding, and it is a goldmine of horrors. Ghastly, macabre stuff. A true nightmare.
Also, as most of it is in German, except for some occasional comments in English carelessly scattered throughout, a little German and a dictionary will help make sense of the nonsensical.
There is nothing in the enigma decodes! If there was it would have been produced at the many big Zundel show trials.
You can watch the media in 1988 telling the world that top industry promoter Raul Hilberg (who had his backside whipped by the way) admitted whilst testifying in court, that there is no documentry evidence, and it was all spoken. What a dismal situation:
There is also no reference to killing Jews in the other much more advanced “Lorenz” Encoding scheme used by
Hitler to communicate with his Generals exclusively.
Mr. Card, Can they *please* release all Messages refering to Hitler’s most important war project, the extermination of millions of jews in eastern poland ?
(Used to be in Germany until the seventies., when they abandoned Belsen and Dachau
because revisionists turned the heat up)
If the ‘death camps’ move any further east,
your going to end up in Moscow!
—————————-
Mr Card said:
Irving falsely claims in his introduction that there is little material about killing Jews, only ” one or two references to Zyklon” [I found two, including a March 3 1943 reference to 22 cases of Zyklon and an “Implement” sent to the camp at Warsaw]; claims “very few, 2 or 3″ references to Auschwitz [I found several]. Much of what Irving does include from the decodes is about how the Germans, especially at Dresden, suffered from the Allied bombings. It is clear the SS had tight radio security and thus have few clear references to the “Vernichtung” (extermination) of Juden, especially after a severe warning on radio secrecy in September 1941.
The top secret encoding schemes used by Germany were cracked, and were being monitered, and nothing was on them to suggest mass murder, so stop telling porkies. It’s a dull, sad way of conceding you have no documentry evidence.
————————
Mr Card said:
After the very long section on the parts of the decodes Irving chose to include, the final section has a group of German military messages that specifically refer to atrocities Nazis committed in the early years of the war in Russia and Poland—for example, a typical August 1941 report included: ” Pol. Reg Sud: ……In Slawuta…..911 Juden erschossen. Pol. Batl. 3w20 bei Action in Minkowzy, 2200 Juden erschossen. Verluste: 1. SS Brigade: 2 Mann durch Auffahren auf Mine verletzt; Pkw total zerstort.”
[Police Regiment South….In Slawuta…911 Jews shot. Police Battalion 3w20, in an action in Minkowzy, 2200 Jews shot. Casualties: 1. SS Brigade: 2 men killed running over a mine, the vehicle totally destroyed.”]
In this section, there are several pages of similar messages of shooting Jews and Poles in Poland and Russia by the hundreds and even thousands in the early years, and the Germans’ only concern seemed to be their own losses, which in massacring helpless civilians, they would naturally have few casualties!
The only graves I have heard of being found in the east are from Jewish/communist mass murder.
Besides, The “Holocaust” (TM) — the alleged one and only inimitable greatest crime in history — is supposed do be a state sponsered extermination, resulting in ‘ELEVEN MILLION’ dead, most of them industrially chain-murdered in the gas chambers of the “extermination camps,” not a few mass graves with bones in it in the midst of war zones.
You seem to have a real problem Mr.Card. To an innocent onlooker it seems you are trying to draw attention away from The easily debunkable ‘death camps’ and trying to make out un-uniformed partisans sabotaging German supplies and murdering German troops is a holocaust. I do not know of any army in the world who would not sort out un-uniformed partisans attacking their troops. But it seems you know the exact location of this grave ‘Minkowzy’. Can you show us it, and the exhumation and forensic study carried out? Think of the sympathy you could create for yourselves?
————————-
Mr Card said:
In his own words, Irving summarizes this as “the SS are shooting all Jews in their path, whom they describe in reports willy-nily as Freischarler, Plunderer, partisans and Bolshevists. The reports make no distinction as to the sex or age of the Jews; the units appear to vie with each other to kill the most. After the well-known Daluege secrecy signal of Sept. 13,1941 the messages become more circumspect.” [that message ordered that because of the danger of enemy decoding, all transmissions of a certain type, including numbers killed in executions, were to be sent by courier rather than by air; thus, little of that sort of material appears in the decodes later.]
Supposed talk from partisan warfare on the eastern front in a war zone, doesn’t equal a state sponsered plan to kill people in ‘death camps’ Christ, this is sad!
I want you back at the camps Mr.Card. Why won’t you comply? Why do you persist in whittering on about communist partisans? I so want to discuss the industrialized killing centres, and the methods employed, the logistics involved, the methods of disposal, the fuel, the evidence…It’s as if you are trying to evade the issue.
—————–
Mr Card said:
What really chills me in all this is not just the reports of all the killings,( though reading about the hundreds and thousands killed, and then putting all these together to total millions,is just overwhelming;) but also the bland, almost sociopathic manner in which Irving treats these killings suggests to me that Irving knows full well what happened, but just isn’t bothered by it.
What millions? Is a few scraps of communist atrocity propaganda, that cannot be backed up with hard evidence chilling Mr.Card? I’ll tell you what, it’s not half as chilling as what you maniacs have been doing to those Palestinians the last seventy years.
It’s odd that you seem disturbed no-one cared, yet very pleased with the fact that no-one cares in regard to what’s left of Palestine.
Well, we have some highly dubious accounts of mass graves in the east that no-one can find after nearly seventy years!
Getting back to the Holohoax, when are you going to show us the evidence and the weapon at these ‘killing centres’?
None of the supposed Reinhardt camps had crematoria, Chelmo, Treblinka, Sobibor etc, so there must be some serious evidence in the ground at these locations. Can you show us it?
We all know how pissed off Ehrenberg was when Goebels had Katyn exhumed, and British officers flown in as witnesses. A forensic study carried out. He must have been desperate for revenge, but it seems he could not find a grave that the Germans created. So he started making lies up about Soap, Lampshades, shrunken heads, conveyer belts, electrified floors, Four million to compensate.
You haven’t got any have you? This is why you need laws to protect your lies, because they cannot suppoirt themselves. This is why you need prison sentences to cull curiosity and criticism.
Archi
December 14, 2008 at 11:03 am
@Peter:
Its a little like the Obama quote during the presidential campaign on how the Americans liberated Auschwitz. Only one problem, the Russians liberated Auschwitz, the Americans were never there.
And what did they find? Nothing!
John
December 14, 2008 at 11:06 am
Alex Says,
Well done Mr Card….you have confirmed the Germans exterminated Bolshevist Jews in WW2. I don’t think you’ll find many sympathisers. Mr Irving has never claimed to deny the Germans shot and killed partisans and Communist sypathisers in WW2 so this is nothing new.
Many Russians joined the Germans in their fight against communism. The Cossacks formed horse mounted SS cavalry divisions. After the war during operation Keelhaul, the Zionist Jew Churchill (His mother was Jenny Jerome an American Jewess) handed the Cossacks over to their favourite ally, Uncle Joe. Who had them and their horses exterminated.
It was a dodgy exercise daring not to fight for communism, any Slav who disobeyed was shot on the spot, or kept for penal columns.
Mr.Pool
December 14, 2008 at 2:31 pm
See this
by Arthur Butz, an honest straightforward revisionist, on Irving’s questionable status as a revisionist despite his considerable standing as a war historian.
Syed A R Zaidi
December 14, 2008 at 3:53 pm
The link did not show in my post. Try searching for a review by Arthur R. Butz of “Jailing Opinions” to find the said critique of Irving as a questionable revisionist.
Syed A R Zaidi
December 14, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Archi: That is a very interesting video of the Zundel trial you posted. I’ve never seen that before.
I don’t voice an opinion on what happened, because I have no idea. There are smart people on both sides making their case. One of the reasons I don’t say it didn’t happen is because I don’t want to be insulted and called a holocaust denier.
One thing is for certain, there is no “smoking gun” and I’ve read where Hilberg has said this.
There was persecution of jews no doubt. And actions by jewish organizations prompted retaliation by the NAZIS and vice-versa.
I am certain of this – When Hitler came to power he had an agenda with jews. Many historians (Including jewish historians such as Saul Friedlander) say it was not Hitler’s intention to kill the jews when he came to power. He wanted them out of the government and civil service. There were exceptions. Jews who fought in WW I had the right to keep there job.
Great Britain forced the war on Germany. France, and the USA colluded and also made war on Germany. I’ve read that Hitler blamed the jews for getting Britain and the USA to initiate a war with Germany. I have no doubt he believed that and there is no doubt that some jews were working hard on that effort.
Peter
December 15, 2008 at 1:06 am
Here is an interesting article on Israelis. It discusses Israeli tourists and their behavior abroad. In Vietnam, they taught some Vietnamese women how to say “f**k me” in Hebrew. The article discusses how Isrealis have taken over illegal drug distribution around the world. The artlcle says Israeli behavior is atrocious because those are the values they have been taught – to take advantage of anyone you can that isn’t Jewish. The Israeli tourists reputation abroad is terrible: South America, Asia, the warm places people travel to.
I was not aware of this. David Irving always posts things of this nature on his site, but you won’t read it anywhere else in the USA or Europe. Why, because of self-censorship. Americans and Europeans won’t criticize anything Jewish in they’re media. The same goes for dicussions regarding WW II.
Douglas Card, please read this.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3630144,00.html
Peter
December 15, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Peter, I think you may be giving yourself away a little here… I’ve read through the article you’ve linked to and I don’t see anything in it that justifies the general conclusions that you try to draw. It is not a generalised attack on all Israelis. Rather, it is an article written by an Israeli journalist who is concerned about the behaviour of a particular group of his countrymen abroad.
I’ve been to SE Asia, and I could have written a similarly exasperated article about the behaviour of some of my (British) compatriots there. I could, for example, have expressed my outrage at the number of Brits who go to SE Asia to engage in sex-tourism. And I’m sure a virulent Brit-hater could then come along and try to use that as evidence that all Brits are perverts and that the global sex trade is secretly controlled by the British.
Also, I’m afraid that I don’t see how your ill-conceived comment relates to the topic of the blog post that you’re commenting on – other than perhaps to demonstrate once again the close association between David Irving and various extreme forms of clumsy anti-semitism…
Richard Wilson
December 15, 2008 at 9:07 pm
The article is a very critical article of Israeli behavior. My point is you would never see an article like that in the USA or Europe although Israelis are often spoken about in glowing terms. You could see an article like that critical of others though.
I don’t think I’m given anything away.
The term anti-semitic is thrown around so much it might be in danger of losing its value. If David Irving is an anti-semite, I don’t think reading what he has to say makes that person an anti-semite.
I assume his critics have read what he has written, although that may be in doubt.
I believe I may have said this earlier. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he points out certain facts that others don’t want to discuss. (Morgenthau plan, Germany must Perish! book calling for sterlisation of all Germans, Judea Declares War on Germany – boycott of Germany 2 months after Hitler got into power)
Peter
December 15, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Hmm – you do realise that the piece you’re quoting was actually written by an Israeli journalist, and published in an Israeli news outlet, don’t you?
Richard Wilson
December 15, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Yes, Richard I do. Norman Finkelstein states that in Israel there is more criticism of Israeli policies than in the USA. In the USA criticsim of Israeli po;icies is almost non-existent.
Peter
December 15, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Well the dialectic up until now has been interesting and informative but we seem to have gone off topic into other related areas but not dealing with the main topic which is why should some people in Europe be sent to prison for stating that they feel a certain aspect of history has been falsified to the benefit of the winners of World War II and in support of a colonial regime in the middle east.
In particular it is regularly repeated nearly daily in most newspapers , radio and tv the story of the 6 million and the gas chambers. Today it was only the 5th item on the morning news; of course there will be a build up of stories next month with holocaust memorial day on the 26th. Every month or two there is a new holocaust film from Hollywood to see at the movies eg the boy in striped pyjamas. I would like to know why that is, and why intelligent people with phd s languish in jails in Europe for saying correctly there is no forensic evidence for the existence of homicidal gas chambers. Among the 10 tons of nazi archives captured in 1945 in Berlin not one piece of paper has ever been found, no paper trail to confirm the accepted story. Apparently it was all word of mouth…thats right,Himmler to Hoess, ” could you go off and build gas chambers and kill six million people?”
Now I know Germans very well and they always like “Deutsche ordnung”. They would certainly want something in writing if they were going to knock off six million!
Peter Johnson
December 15, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Peter Johnson: Yes, I just walked by the theatre where I live on my way to the coffee shop. There it was, “the boy in striped pyjamas”. Thats the same theatre theatre where I saw “The Pianist” (another holocaust movie) a few years ago. “The Pianist” won an Oscar at the academy awards, I’ll bet “the boy in striped pyjamas” wins one too. If I was a director and only cared about making a name for myself, that would be the way to go, make another holocaust movie.
Peter
December 16, 2008 at 12:28 am
This all rather reminds me of the denialism of the people who claim that HIV doesn’t exist – or if it does exist that it isn’t the cause of AIDS. The parallels are quite interesting – I should really try to do a separate post on it when I get a moment.
Richard Wilson
December 16, 2008 at 12:30 am
Um no there is no comparison whatsoever. Nobody has ever been jailed for five years for HIV denialism, unlike in contemporary Europe where at this present moment Germar Rudolf who has a PhD in chemistry languishes in jail for publishing a forensic study which showed the so called gas chambers in Aushwitz were a Soviet fraud. After WWII credulous reporters talked about the fake showers which were actually gas chambers in Dachau…remember that from the newsreels Richard?? Now every reputable historian will tell you that was wrong and there were no homicidal gas chambers in Dachau.
I suggest you do a comparison with the Iraqui weapons of mass destruction. These are still credulously believed in by 50% of the US population and even Bush confesses they were made up! Now that is a real paralell.
Peter Johnson
December 16, 2008 at 1:11 am
Perhaps there should be a law outlawing claims that Iraq had WMD. Its interesting though. Reliable estimates have been made that over 1 million Iraqis died in a war that had no justification whatsoever. But I don’t sense any remorse or guilt on the part of Americans. Instead, as Peter Johnson says, many Americans think Iraq had WMD’s, despite the fact that none were found. Maybe Americans think a single Iraqi bullet qualifies as a WMD.
Peter
December 16, 2008 at 1:41 am
Peter, I suspect that your definition of what constitutes a “credible historian” will differ somewhat from mine. But I agree that Iraq does provide some interesting parallels – there certainly have been many people who’ve been seriously in denial about the true extent of the atrocities committed there and/or attempted to justify those atrocities with various forms of sophistry.
The similarity between AIDS denial and holocaust denial is partly to do with the way that both centre not around genuine “scepticism” but rather on a dogmatic defence of a preconceived ideological position, and on the way that adherents of both will pick on small gaps in the established account and treat them as a knockdown refutation. But as I said, this is a separate discussion that probably merits a separate post.
As it happens, I’m not at all convinced that it’s right or necessary to lock people up simply for expressing a view about some historical or scientific fact, however crazed and irrational their view may be. I tend to share Deborah Lipstadt’s opinion on that issue. But I think my point with Irving was that while he’s often portrayed as some ardent free speech defender, we also need to remember that he was quite happy to use our famously one-sided and repressive libel laws to try to silence his critics when it suited him, so I think there’s a bit of a double-standard there. A bit like a mass-murderer suddenly becoming an ardent defender of the sanctity of life only after he’s been threatened with execution…
Richard Wilson
December 16, 2008 at 8:43 am
I have no preconceived ideas or notions I tend to examine the facts as I find them. The evidence for HIV being the primary vector for AIDS is overwhelming; the evidence that those in power with wealth will lie to defend their interests is overwhelming.
I am pleased that you at least say that nobody should be languishing in jail for five years without parole for publishing a thorougly researched article which those in authority have decided is an act of heresy. We nearly had ” holocaust denial” defacto law in this country with the extradition of Tobin last month to Germany for publishing material on the internet. Even the Times thought that was going too far!
Peter Johnson
December 16, 2008 at 9:35 am
[…] Posts David Irving – Free speech defender?The judgement that brought down David IrvingEchoes of Sally Murrer case as senior UK opposition […]
The parallels between AIDS denial and Holocaust negationism « Don’t Get Fooled Again
December 16, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thanks again for all these comments. I’ve just done an updated post on this issue here: https://richardwilsonauthor.wordpress.com/2008/12/16/the-parallels-between-aids-denial-and-holocaust-negationism/
Richard Wilson
December 16, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Douglas, many thanks for being a quiet voice of sanity here in the face of some extremely obnoxious comments. I was very interested in the background that you’ve given on Irving, and thanks also for debunking so many of the bogus claims that have been made here.
Richard Wilson
December 16, 2008 at 9:07 pm
Richard WIlson if you want any credibilty DO NOT REFER YOUR CRITICS TO THE ADL. Stop being naive.
Phil
December 16, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Here is an example of one historian who has praised David Irving’s contributions to the study of WW II, but wants to distance himself from Irving because of Irving’s views on the holocaust. I think its safe to say very few historians would agree on everything regarding WW II. Irving regarded this request as cowardly.
Leading German historian Professor Hans Mommsen writes from Feldafing, Bavaria, July 21, 1998:
WHILE I still recognize several among your scholarly contributions in the field of Nazi history, although I altogether reject the turn in your judgement with respect to the Holocaust and other aspects, I certainly do not appreciate to get involved in your internet campaign.
Hence, I urge you to omit quotations like the utterance made by me in 1978 [see below, quoted on front page of this Website] the context of which is no longer comprehensible for the public.
Yours sincerely,
Hans Mommsen
Bavaria
Mommsen is considered a leading historian of WW II. He is the great-grandson of Theodor Mommsen, generally regarded as the greatest classicist of the 19th century and recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1903.
The key phrase is “I still recognize several among your scholarly contributions in the field of Nazi history”. Mommsen is a German historian. Many British historians have praised Irving also.
Peter
December 16, 2008 at 10:23 pm
Peter Hofmann writing in the New York Times reviews David Irving’s biography of Hermann Goring in 1989. He is extremely critical of Irving’s book, but starts off his article by referring to Mr. Irving as “one of the most successful researchers on Nazi Germany”.
Peter
December 16, 2008 at 10:49 pm
Wow Phil, I never before realised the rhetorical power of TYPING EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS. If you’d written the same thing in lower case I’d have dismissed it out of hand, but whack on caps lock and somehow I suddenly feel strangely compelled to believe you…
Richard Wilson
December 19, 2008 at 12:04 am
Greetings from snowy Oregon! Snow reminds me of my arrival in the beautiful German city of Hansestadt Luebeck just at Christmastime 1959, a place where I learned to appreciate Germany, Germans, and especially Marzipan. Only 14 years after the end of that horrible war, conditions were getting back to normal, people were happy, and life was good again. One of the first
phrases I learned was “Froeliche Weihnachten”, Merry Christmas. Another was “Ohne Mich”, “without me”, for people wanted nothing ever again to do with the sort of lunatic politicians who had plunged them in to years of war and misery. Saddest were the tales of those German army vets with their tales of brave struggle and incredible suffering, all for nothing.
“The Holocaust Didn’t Happen, But I’m Glad It Did.”
Since I wrote my last (3rd) message, I’m flattered to see that a number of you have paid me the honor of commenting on my thoughts. There were seven of you, with 9 messages and about 19 separate references, mostly negative. Thus I feel it is incumbent upon me to attempt a modest response to those fine folks: Peter Johnson, Lex, Peter, Alex, Archie, Mr. Pool and Richard Wilson. It seems Mr. Wilson was the only positive one, though Peter Johnson and Lex were both polite, if critical. The others were pretty harsh, and seemed to express the theme that “The Holocaust Didn’t Happen, But I’m Glad It Did.” First they tried to give evidence of why the holocaust couldn’t have happened, and then they tell us why the Jews deserved ever bit of it.
The most amazing was Alex, with his 1933-style threat:
“You are a traitor to your people (unless you are a jew) and I look forward to the day when you sit on a Nuremburgesque trial and hang from a rope!”
Alex, I’ve been on a few blogs, but you are the first to threaten me with death! As I mentioned earlier about David Irving, bullies are cowards, and you, hiding behind your anonymity hurling death threats at a person you don’t even know, exemplify that very spirit. A real Brownshirt who can’t stand to hear contrary opinions, you are beyond the bounds of civilization and I owe YOU no response.
Also telling was Our Old Friend Archie, who accidentally revealed more than he realized when he demanded:
“I want you back at the camps Mr.Card. Why won’t you comply?”
Even sadder, is that other than Mr. Wilson, not one responder, including the many other persons who commented on this blog, bothered to criticize Alex for his death threat. This, unfortunately, fulfills my worst expectations of dealing with David Irving’s followers. Express a contrary opinion, and you are threatened with death.
Peter Johnson commented toward the end of these 80-some responses that we have lost the thread:
“Well the dialectic up until now has been interesting and informative but we seem to have gone off topic into other related areas but not dealing with the main topic which is why should some people in Europe be sent to prison for stating that they feel a certain aspect of history has been falsified.”
Good point, we are dealing with the question of the accuracy of history and freedom of speech.
The whole question has been, “IS DAVID IRVING A FREE SPEECH DEFENDER?”
Let’s imagine Mr. Irving is about to write a new book on the history of Nazi Germany, titled “Free Speech Under the Nazi Regime”.
Wonderful, he could make this the shortest book in the history of the English language, for he could encapsulate the entire topic in just one word, “NONE.”
I would add that I’m sorry Mr. Irving has been imprisoned for stating his views, however wrongheaded and malicious they may be. First, because of our strong belief in freedom of speech– as a social historian myself I understand that there are always mistakes in history, and we must be free to pursue the truth and dump myths; and second, because it made him a “martyr to free speech”, a role he adores. In his Eugene presentation, he’d have had little to say without his prison lament.
However, as an American, I have no right to demand the Europeans follow our approach, for I never had to live under a Nazi occupation and endure their cruelty. I can see why they are more cautious than I would be.
But we are dealing with another point as well:
What we have lost sight of here is that we are arguing over the lives, and deaths, of real human beings. We throw out numbers as casually as if we are talking about football scores. I know a few if you want to shrug them of , but take another look at those photos of piles of bodies found in various death camps. These are the people we are talking about, not some vague “partisans.”
However, I don’t know that rational argument will carry the day on this holocaust debate. Naziism was a system ultimately based on the irrational, on German blut, “blood” and German “Will”. The furious rantings of Peter, Alex, and Archie are right in line with that great old Nazi propaganda sheet, the Volkischer Beobachter. These anti-Semitic statements are 80 years old and best forgotten.
I believe there is incontrovertible evidence that Nazi Germany, without justification, killed masses of European Jews, as well as others. I am not going to argue here about specific numbers– two million or ten million?– or specific techniques at specific places, although I believe historians should be free to find the Truth wherever it leads. The evidence is overwhelming that this was a crime against humanity. When you ignore the testimony of tens of thousands, when you try to include discredited “science”, such as the supposed test which “proved” there was no gas used at Auschwitz, there is no use trying to argue with you. If you can’t believe the overwhelming evidence of objective researchers I have no further arguments to give you. Lex, and Peter Johnson, with all due respect, I am not going to argue with you about the gas. Regarding certain technical details, I am not an engineer, and am not going to pontificate about subjects of which I am not knowledgeable. You have access to all the same information as I, and if this does not convince you, nothing I could add would change your mind. We’ll agree to disagree agreeably.
Some of you are so extreme as to even deny the incriminating evidence of David Irving himself! For example, those British radio intercepts (Himmler decodes PDF) don’t just show some random killing of partisans, they reveal massive killings of whole communities, of all ages and genders. Was the SS so weak it was terrified of Jewish toddlers? As several of you have noted, Irving has a reputation for being very knowledgeable about the Nazi era, with a huge number of facts at his command. For sure he has collected many excellent primary materials, such as the Himmler Decodes. However, he also has a reputation, as has been frequently noted, of twisting and manipulating his material so as to come out with conclusions opposite of the facts, which fit his peculiar ideology that it was all the fault of the Brits and the Jews and the Communists. This view of Irving was the conclusion of the judge.
Look on Irving’s web site, and you’ll see his neurotic obsessions with all things Jewish, and all things Nazi. Even hyping such absurd nazi memorabilia as Hitler’s walking stick, or some silver goblet Himmler gave Goering or whatever. Sick! This makes you want to scream, “Grow up Irving, the war is over, the Germans are happy and democratic and prosperous and they don’t want to get dragged back in to your lunatic WWII killing games and destruction again!!!!”
To those who deny that this massive, immoral persecution of the Jews happened, or admit it happened but believe the Jews “deserved it”, I can have no communion. Nazi Germany started out with the racist ideological goal of destroying Jews, and it pursued that goal from the time it came in to power with increasing cruelty. First the expulsion of German Jews from society, then the mass shootings of Eastern Europeans, then the more effective use of temporary or portable gassing facilities, finally the more efficient death camps. The holocaust was the end result of racist arrogance, technology, and a long range plan.
There is no equal comparison, in spite of Irving’s attempts, in contrasting the deaths of Germans to that of their victims. There is no moral equivalency.
First, Germany started the war. Don’t try to deny that with sophomoric excuses. the Allies had to end it.
Second, while large numbers of Germans died in the war, it was more often from collateral damage caused by bombings and warfare. It was not from intentional murder, as was carried out by the Nazis. One of the exceptions was the brutal treatment of German civilians by the Soviet army as it advanced across Germany.
Peter, you brought up the example of Russian atrocities in East Prussia. Yes Peter, that is terribly true– I know, someone who was dear to me who had been a small girl who barely escaped to the West from the Memel land and Konigsberg with her mother. I heard terrible atrocity stories.
However, those Germans generally understood that, horrible as this was, it was the expected payback for the grotesque damage Germany had inflicted upon the Soviet Union and its people during its brutal occupation of the USSR, which had turned even Ukranians and Cossacks against the Germans. Most of all, Peter, please remember that if Hitler had not attacked the USSR none of this would have happened.
What about Dresden, Irving’s favorite topic of Allied war crimes? Whether there were 30,000 or 130,000 civilian deaths, that was a terrible human tragedy. (The movie “Slaughterhouse Five” captured the horror of that nightmare.) Yet whether there were 30,000, as research has shown, or 130,000 deaths, as irving claimed, that was still a small amount compared to the millions killed by German armies and German death squads in their assault across Europe.
These crimes were intentional and they were the result of long range planning.
From start to finish, the destruction of Europeans Jews was a mainstay of Nazi ideology. Though they tried to portray their actions as reactions against Jewish threats, in reality they would assault the Jews, then take their defensive reaction as an excuse to attack them again. Even today, as is obvious in these anti-Semitic responses, there is an attempt to blame their sick anti-Semitism on the actions of Jews themselves. Note the “why us” blurbs on Irving’s web.
Hitler, with his sociopathic hatreds, was already in the 1920s talking about gassing Jews and throwing them in to camps. He followed his obsessions from the beginning to the end.
Death came to German society with the Enabling Act the Nazis forced on Germany March 23, 1933, with only the heroic Socialist Otto Wels standing up to the jeering Nazis as they eliminated democracy and achieved a path to full, totalitarian power. Much of the world was horrified, and the Nazis used their angry reaction to justify cracking down even harder on Jews, socialists, Catholics, unions, and anyone else who expected democratic rights and freedoms. Even Hindenberg protested the unfair treatment of Jews, especially Jewish war veterans.
In one of their first acts, just eight days after seizing full control with the Enabling Act, Nazi Prussia, which was two thirds of Germany, threw all the Jewish judges and prosecutors out of office, and severely restricted the rights of Jewish lawyers. Then, just a day later, on April 1, 1933, Julius Streicher led a nationwide “Boycott Day”– Nazi thugs kept shoppers out of Jewish stores, Jewish students off of campuses, and professionals out of work. Jews were warned that if there were any opposition worldwide, they’d receive even worse treatment.
Within a week, April 7, the vaunted German Civil Service was totally politicized, with all non-Aryans thrown out of office– except Jewish frontline WWI vets or those who lost a father or son in WWI, (but even those exemptions were removed in 1935).
A few days later, these laws were clarified that a person with at least one Jewish grandparent was not Aryan.
During this same time, Nazi students, showing the same spirit towards free speech as our Old Friends Archie, Peter, and Alex, began their book burnings.
Now, can any of you justify this intense, immediate attack upon German Jews, (who made up less than 1% of the population) by any normal political or social explanation? This was the first step towards the holocaust. To most decent people, by this time, any opposition to the Nazis was justified within or without Germany, for this new regime had proved to be nothing short of a gangster mob. To me, anyone–Socialist, Jewish, Catholic, Communist, Unionist, soldiers, students, anyone who bravely opposed this cruel dictatorship from this time on is My Hero.
Finally, in September 15, 1935, at the massive Nuremberg rally, Hitler put forth the racial laws which came to be known as the “Nuremberg Laws”. 1), Only Aryans could be German citizens—– Jews could only be “subjects” of the state, non-citizens with no political rights.
2) No sexual or marital relations allowed between Jews and people of pure German blood.
The dark curtain of the Nazi German Reich had closed off the world of Germany. It was full totalitarianism with no opportunity for open dissent, NO free speech. Again, my heroes are anyone, such as the brave kids of “Die Weisse Rose” who literally lost their heads for attempting to continue free speech and decency in that world gone mad. It’s unfortunate they couldn’t stop the system before it destroyed so much of Europe.
I’ve tried to give a general response to many of the points made by some of my critics. Now I’ll just take a little time to specifically answer a few of your direct comments before closing; however, as I’ve gone on far too long, I’ll try to be brief:
Old Friend Archie, as you don’t even believe Irving, I’m afraid there is no evidence at all you would accept from me for all your complaints.
And then Archie, you wrote this statement about me:
“What millions? Is a few scraps of communist atrocity propaganda, that cannot be backed up with hard evidence chilling Mr.Card? I’ll tell you what, it’s not half as chilling as what you maniacs have been doing to those Palestinians the last seventy years.
It’s odd that you seem disturbed no-one cared, yet very pleased with the fact that no-one cares in regard to what’s left of Palestine.”
Sir, do you know that you are full of crap? You know nothing about me. What do you mean, “what you maniacs have been doing to Palestinians”? Where in the hell do you come off, claiming I’m “very pleased no one cares about Palestine.”
Equality for Palestinians is an issue I’ve supported for some 40 years; I spoke out for a fair two state solution which respects the rights of both Palestinians and Jews long before it became fashionable in some quarters. For this I was vilified by Daniel Pipes, Ultra-Zionist– who is as extreme and maliciously brilliant on one end of the Zionist spectrum as Irving is as the other. When he attacked me and others, we were showered with hundreds of obscene racist emails– I learned just how vicious extreme Zionists could be! In fact, Archie and Alex, in their language they remind me of you, for angry extremists all tend to sound the same.
On the other hand, here in Eugene the local Jewish community– my students, rabbis, etc. all stood up for me, defended me against Pipes! While some of America’s Jewish leadership may be questionable– many neo-cons, like Krauthammer, Lieberman, Pipes, etc., supported Bush– yet polls showed 78% of American Jews supported Obama!
Though we settled out of court, Pipes continues to print malicious and misleading material on his web site. To me Irving and Pipes are just two angry egoists who are misusing their brilliance and knowledge to make our world a darker place.
Alex, you claimed that we should be happy the German army killed all those “Partisans” of all ages and genders, as that saved our free speech all these years.
Oh Dear, Alex, how can you be so wrong? Had the Germans defeated the Soviet Army, you and I very likely would still be living under a Nazi dictatorship with no free speech at all. (Or excuse me, perhaps you wouldn’t be living “under” it.).
Finally Peter, you had so many criticisms, some which I’ve already answered, (such as that I supposedly hate Germans) I can’t cover them all, but here’s a couple–
You do seem truly nationalistic and for sure don’t care for Americans. It seems we have no right to discuss Europe, though of course Europeans should be free to tell America everything that’s wrong with us. Well sorry, I won’t play that game. I’ve traveled too much and met too many good (and occasional bad) people from all over the world, to make such ethnocentric slurs on others’ societies. You seem to be unaware that besides dying quite a bit in these two European wars, Americans did liberate some of the death camps in western Germany.
You throw out a nice ad hominum slur at me, that naturally it’s Card the ignorant American who is “full of hot air”. Well, I grew up in a seaport chatting with sailors, and I’ve been traveling and studying the world for quite a few years, listening to others, and know a little about it. I was fortunate I learned both German and Russian in the army so I was able to travel more easily in those cultures.
As far as Americans being too unaware of the rest of the world, Peter, I’m afraid I have to somewhat agree with you. I’ve been continuously frustrated all my life in the lack of interest too many of my countrymen have with the rest of the world. Maybe we are too big, and too isolated. When I watch DW and BBC, for example, I’m always impressed with how much of the world they cover.
However, I think the Iraqi war disaster woke up a lot of Americans to the need to understand the world, especially the Middle East, much better. Many Americans feel terrible about the damage and deaths we have caused the Iraqis in a war in which our government lied about the cause.
Well, our eight year nightmare is about over; we overwhelmingly voted to bring in a new leader who will see our role as that of being more of a fellow nation and less the “World’s Number One Superpower, Cowboy Style”.
We have a lot of hope for life under Obama, please give us a chance to make up for our recent stupidities! (though for you White Supremicists out there, you’ll just have to put up with our “colored” president!)
Finally Peter, you requested that I read that article about the terrible behavior of Israeli tourists in Viet Nam. I read it. Not having been there, it’s hard for me to know what to make of it. It shows a great ability at journalistic self criticism in Jewish society, a quality we should all cherish. However, if much of it is true, it’s a sad story. It’s human nature, sad but true, that those with more power, status, and wealth tend to become a bit arrogant and pompous– we see it everywhere. When I was in Europe years ago, it pained me to see the arrogance of too many American tourists– if there were loud voices in a restaurant, they were probably speaking in English with an American accent. Remember the book “The Ugly American?” So yes, rich tourists from any society can be pretty obnoxious. Have we ever read accounts of how German officers acted in the countries they occupied?
You also raised another serious and controversial topic, the view of the Middle East as seen in American media. You suggested there is a total bias towards Israel. I’m afraid I have to agree with you somewhat, but not because there is some great conspiracy, for in the history of America, all groups have had the right to support their old homelands, whether Ireland, England, Germany, etc. Quite naturally both American Jews and American Muslims compete to gain as much good publicity as possible. Because of the greater resources of the Jewish-American community, such as more professionals, they naturally do a better job, though Muslims, through such organizations as CAIR are starting to catch up. Many more academicians are also trying to look at both sides of the issues there.
As far as the numerous movies that deal with the Holocaust, it is true, there is a great deal of interest still in the topic, as their should be. However, I admit I would like to see a great movie here which shows the removal of the Arabs from Palestine from their own point of view, sort of an Arabic “Exodus”. As I’ve often taught, “Both the Jews and the Palestinians have been victims of history, and both deserve a fair and secure state.”
Well enough, in case anyone ever reads this. Sorry, I guess I got wound up reading all those criticisms.
I began by mentioning today’s beautiful snow reminding me of Christmas in Germany, but that’s not completely true….Out my window I see green trees with snow; in Luebeck, we were surrounded by incredible Medieval architecture, the Holstentor, “The city of the seven towers”, looking like a a Christmas card ….I remember the booths of the Volksfest in the snow along the Wakenitz or Trave selling hot wine grog and wursts of all descriptions. Finally security and enough to eat…today Germany is a prosperous democratic country. (we used to ask, “do you think democracy will survive in Germany?” but with Bush, they probably asked if democracy would survive in America!
I’d like to think that this evening, Luebeckers are strolling through their ancient Innerstadt, the moon rising over the Marienkirche and shining across the snowy Markplatz, sipping their steaming weingrog and munching Neideregger’s famous marzipan.
So Please, my radical revisionist friends, leave the Germans alone, they have suffered enough from the wild dreams of mad men, give them and the rest of Europeans– and the Middle East– a chance to live in peace, joy, and prosperity.
Froeliche Weinachten,
Doug
Douglas Card
December 20, 2008 at 7:25 am
This is an article by Joel Stein who writes for the Los Angeles Times. The title of the article is “How Jewish is Hollywood?” Mr.Stein says he is proud to be Jewish, proud that Jews run Hollywood and would like them to continue doing so. As Norman Finkelstein said, “What if Jesse Jackson said this?”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein19-2008dec19,0,6620255.column
This article goes a long way to explain why Doug defends the murder of millions of innocent German people on the grounds that Germany started the war, but condemns the murder of Jewish innocents. I’m not sure if he mentioned the other 35 – 40 million people that died in the war in the “book” he wrote above.
I recommend Patrick Buchanan’s book “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War” published recently. It explains how Hitler (and virtually all German’s) wanted their cities and land back that had been given to Poland to create that country in 1919. They wanted Danzig and “the Polish Corridor back”. Poland refused to negotiate and Britain gave Poland a guarantee that if Germany attacked, they would come to Poland’s aid.
When Germany attacked Poland to take back their land and the German people living on it, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany. Thus, what would have been a three week long war between Germany and Poland became WW II.
War is terrible, but if you compare Germany’s rights regarding Poland and the USA’s rights regarding Iraq, I think its clear the US is much more guilty of unjustifiably starting a war than Germany is. If China and Russia had attacked the USA to create WW III after the USA’s vicious aggression towards Iraq, would the USA then be accused of starting WW III? In this case, the accusation would be justifiable, but not in Germany’s case regarding WW II.
Doug is happy there are holocaust films galore and Joel Stein would like 90 year old Nazis to be hunted down. I would have liked those Russian rapists and British and American mass murderers that ordered the murder of hundreds of thousands of German civilians in their cities to have been hunted down.
I think hunting down the murderers of today, such as the Israelis that torture and kill Palestinians is more important than a 90 year old Nazi or for that matter a 90 year old British, Russian or American child killer. But I’m sure Doug would disagree.
Peter
December 22, 2008 at 2:16 pm
The media (films, television, newspapers, etc.) are more powerful than any President or Prime Minister in my opinion. I personally think Rupert Murdoch might be as powerful as the President of the United States. He can shape how people think and his “FOX News” got Americans calling for blood in Iraq, a country most of them couldn’t even find on a map.
The media helps explain what happened to me over the weekend. I was having a drink at a bar, when an attractive lady and her husband sat down next to me. We had a nice conversation and it turned out the husband was Jewish and from Riga, Latvia, not far from where my mother was born (Memel / now called Klaipeda) Lithuania. I explained my mother was German. His wife was from Brazil and of Greek extraction.
We were talking about different things and his wife explained how in Brazil her family did business with Jews and others, but didn’t do business with Brazilians of German extraction. I asked her why and she said because the Germans attacked Greece in WW II. When I explained that the Italians attacked Greece and German’s only went there when Mussolini’s troops were losing the fight, she said “but the Italians didn’t make us leave our homes, the Germans did”.
I don’t know much about the fighting in Greece, but she was from Brazil so her knowledge was not first hand and reminded me so much of a Hollywood film I saw a few years ago. The Italians had attacked Greece and the Italian soldiers were all nice guys, one of whom sang Italian opera songs to the Greek women and the Germans were of course the bad guys as usual. I can’t remember the name of the movie right now or the director, but I’m sure Joel Stein of the LA Times would approve of him.
So after all was done, the lady sitting next to me made some compliment regarding my mother to make up for the comments she made earlier. But it didn’t make me feel any better.
Peter
December 22, 2008 at 3:46 pm
The movie is called “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” (2001) with Nicholas Cage and Penelope Cruz. I was just looking at peoples comments on the movie and a Greek said the movie was an accurate depiction of the war in Greece, just as his father told him it was, the Italians would sing to the Greeks.
Someone else commented he did not like the movie. In the book from which the movie was derived, the Italian soldier raped the girl instead of singing to her and courting her. The girl is played by Penelope Cruz.
Apparently the author of the book thinks WW II in Greece was different than the Hollywood director thinks it was. I personally think an author has more credibility than a hollywood director.
Peter
December 22, 2008 at 4:09 pm
Peter, Peter, Peter!
How you do carry on! You keep trying to put words in my mouth, pin some sort of anti-German position on me without a shred of evidence. I explained myself perfectly in that previous message, read it. I consider the German civilian deaths a tragedy, and put the blame squarely where it belongs, the Nazi leadership. I don’t blame whole nations, I blame brutal rulers of whatever society.
I have the highest regard and respect for today’s Germany and its people. They knew they did wrong in WWII, apologized, paid restitution, and are now a free, prosperous democracy. If only today’s revisionists would quit harassing them with their neo-nazi nonsense!
Your mother came from Memel/Klaipeda, now in Lithuania? A truly sad story for those Ost Prussians, as I wrote earlier. A dear friend of mine fled Soviet troops, from near there, Hohenbruck, Kries Labiau near the Memel.(now Russia, Konigsburg became Kalinangrad).
I understand how those Ost Prussians suffered, and I grieve as much as you over the German misery caused by Hitler’s foolish and immoral war, and the Soviet’s brutal revenge seeking caused by their own losses of 10 million. Germany lost that land because they invaded others’ countries first, because, in your words, Hitler and the Germans “wanted that land”, which they surely did, for German “Lebensraum”, so they used a Blitzkreig war to get it. Their huge scheme backfired on them. Now is no time for revenge seeking.
Hitler and his psychological twin Stalin signed a treaty dividing Poland between them, and the two brutal totalitarian military giants rushed in to gobble up that brave, new little nation– one of the true crimes of the century.
Unfortunately, France and England, who had promised to defend Poland, put up almost no fight at all following this invasion, producing the infamous “Sitzkreig”. Germany had to invade France, create Dunkirk, and bomb England to get any real action out of them. And our isolationist America sat here twiddling its thumbs, lulled by the lies of our own “America Firsters”.
As far as Greece, Nazi Germany, and the singing Italian– my God Peter, you are so off the mark, and I hope some Greeks who know what happened chime in on this one! The brave Greeks, who first drove out Mussolini’s crazy Italians, in trying to fight off the Nazis then suffered one of the highest casualty rates of the war. You might want to go back and apologize to that pretty Brazilian lady and her husband, perhaps buy them a drink of Steinhager or Ratzeputz.
As far as Hollywood movies and the Holocaust, hard to respond, I’m afraid they don’t affect me, I’ve hardly been to a Hollywood movie in decades. If there are “too many Holocaust movies”, as you claim, I’m sorry, but this is a free country and I don’t have a role in censoring others’ movies. However, as I wrote earlier, I would like to see more balance, such as a good film on the Nakbar.
DOES DAVID IRVING LIE? IS HE A REAL HISTORIAN? And his wild Schadenfruede….
David Irving has a reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts. Here is a perfect example, of evidently lying on his own web site!
On his current web site, (noted December 20, but still there), he has a headline for his Radical’s Diary which claims “LONGERICH NOW AGREES THAT HEINRICH HIMMLER DID NOT INFORM HITLER WHAT HE WAS DOING….”
Shocking!
However, click on that headline, and you find the probable truth, that actually, Longerich is quoted as saying “German-born professor says Adolf Hitler MAY NOT have been informed” what Himmler was doing——-
What a huge difference between “did not” and “may not!” Yet, still Irving has the gall to write “which is what I have been saying all along!” Rubbish. How can we believe anything Irving writes?
One more thing, this is about Himmler talking about murdering “men, women, and children”—–oops, David and Peter, I thought the Holocaust didn’t happen!
What difference does this really make, whether Himmler flat-out told Hitler all the details? Millions of innocent people were dead because of the Nazis, and in your own words, Irving, you admit Himmler assumed Hitler would approve of the killings!
===================================
dec. 20 Irving web site
# David Irving, A Radical’s Diary: Peter Longerich now agrees that Heinrich Himmler did not inform Hitler what he was doing. As for Bernie Madoff Investment Securities LLC: “It almost hurts to write these words, but the laughter ringing round the world just won’t stop”
# That nice Mr Madoff: Jewish leaders fear anti-Semitic backlash over $50 billion Madoff scam – and $50 billion us”
———————————–
(actual story, inside)
“Interesting is an item in December 15’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: Reviewing the 1,000-page academic-turgid Heinrich Himmler biography by Peter Longerich, journalist Rainer Blasius states that the German-born professor admits that Adolf Hitler may not have been informed of what Himmler was up to: “Several careful wordings chosen by Himmler in his speeches indicate for Longerich that he [Himmler] may in fact have taken the decision to murder women and children on his own responsibility, firmly convinced that such a procedure would meet with the approval of the Supreme Leadership.”*
“In other words, Hitler may not have been informed — which is what I have been saying all along. In fact the conclusion is inescapable, if you study Himmler’s speeches carefully.”
================================
Does David Irving think we are all so stupid we don’t know the difference between “did not” and “may not?”
What shallow minds David and Peter must have, if they believe this somehow exonerates Hitler and the Nazis!
———————
———–
IRVING’S SCHADENFREUDE: Is he a historian?
Another part of irving’s “Reactionary’ Diary” gloats over the suffering caused by Jewish Bernie Madoff’s $50 billion fraud–laughter round the world—– true, Madoff is an SOB, hurting so many victims, and probably deserves capital punishment as much anybody. But Irving has no sympathy for the victims, (such as charities, schools, hospitals, etc.) because many were Jewish, and instead thinks the whole thing is so funny he can’t stop laughing. A truly sociopathic man.
Irving’s blatant hatred for all things Jewish , his twisting of facts to produce opposite results, and his anti-Jewish bias, disqualify him from any serious consideration as a responsible historian.
Mir i druzhba from sunny Oregon,
Doug
Douglas Card
December 22, 2008 at 9:03 pm
Doug, first off I never said the holocaust never happened. Like you, I wasn’t there so I can only make a judgement from what I read and see on film.
Doug, you deliberately misquoted me. You quoted me as saying “Germany wanted that land” as if that land had not been German twenty years earlier.
As I said earlier, the Germans wanted Danzig and “the Polish Corridor” back, land that was taken from Germany in 1919 with over one million Germans living there. Britain gave the Poles a war guarantee, giving the Poles what they needed to keep that stolen land. By giving that war guarantee, the British guaranteed we would have WW II.
Doug, you really are a bigot. You want me to apologize to the Brazilian woman for saying my mother was German and from Memel, near her husbands hometown. Thats when she displayed her prejudice, saying she would never buy from German Brazilians, many of whom have lived there since the 19th century.
Yes, Doug the films and other media have affected you greatly. You were not in the war and didn’t experience anything first hand, so everything you say you read or viewed on the screen years after the fact.
Doug, you say “I grieve as much as you over the German misery caused by Hitler’s foolish and immoral war”. Hitler was immoral as were many other people in that war fighting on the allied side. I blame the rape and murder of German civilians on the people who committed those rapes and murders, the Soviet British and American soldiers. Just as Germans that committed murder are guilty for what they had done. But, Hitler and the Nazis are not guilty for the crimes of the brutal Stalin and the allies that backed that dictator (Churchill and Roosevelt).
Read Buchanan’s “Churchill, Hitler and the Unnecessary War”. You will also read how Churchill was an extreme racist towards Germans, Blacks, Indians and others. He used the “N” word frequently.
Peter
December 22, 2008 at 10:27 pm
“There shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages. People are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference… “Self Determination” is not a mere phrase” – Woodrow Wilson, February 1, 1918
In direct violation of his own statement, the allies took the following lands from Germany with Germans living on them: Northern Schleswig, Eupen and Malmedy, Alsace Lorraine, Polish Corridor & Poznania, the city of Danzig (population about 90% German) in it, Memel (more than 50% German) and Eastern Upper Silesia.
This does not include Austria which was also chopped up and divided among the other countries of Europe. Bohemia, Moravia and the Sudenland (containing over three million Germans). The Sudeten Germans had a larger population than the Slovaks in the new nation of Czechoslovakia. The Autrian/Germans went from being the rulers over these lands to having almost no say in the Czechoslovakian parliament.
This is why the Germans in Memel and other areas greeted Hitler and his soldiers as liberators. Not because they were Nazis, but because they were German. If the German-Jewish scientist Albert Einstein or the Soviet Stalin had been leading those troops, they would have been considered a national heros.
Peter
December 22, 2008 at 11:30 pm
For those of you interested in the latest contretemps involving holocaustania:
http://www.tnr.com/talkback.html?id=f458c2c8-0d4f-4dc7-8cba-15e465c2201a
sid guvnor
December 26, 2008 at 9:00 pm
Hello Peter, from the rainy land of the Webfoots.
As you’ve written 3 messages, with many points criticizing my last message I feel obliged to respond somewhat. However, as you have quaintly described me as an “ignoramus” who is “full of hot air”, I’ll try to be brief.
First, I agree that the people living in the area of the Memel Gebiet, the region your mother is from, have suffered terribly in the nationalistic conflicts of the 20th century.
Second, the geographic national history of Central Europe over the centuries is one of incredibly mixed up tribes and nationalities, with the borders– particularly between the Slavs and the Germans– shifting back and forth depending on who won and who lost the wars.
Example: The great kingdom of Poland lost a major war and was destroyed, divided up by 3 craven imperial powers, Germany, Austria, and Russia. After WWI, Poland was finally reborn, with a long, awkward Polish Corridor to regain a route to the sea, only to be divided up again in ’39 by the Stalin/Hitler pact, then fully occupied by Germany. Peter, do you really want to go back to either of those cruel conditions? If so, you’ve lost me.
Austria’s kings ruled much of Central Europe before WWI, and many of her peoples longed to be free- would you put the Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, etc. back under Austrian imperial rule? If so Peter, You and I are on a different wave length all together.
Therefore, when you claim I misquoted you for leaving out the second part of a statement, it was:
“Hitler and the Germans wanted those lands—-which had belonged to Germany before.”
The first part is a fact, Hitler and the Germans wanted all those lands; the second part is conjecture– for example, Hitler wanted all of the USSR, which certainly had never belonged to Germany. He wanted, and got, all of Poland as well. In fact, the line between the Slavs and Germans had shifted for centuries– there were parts of Russia, Poland, or Lithuania which used to be “German”, yet parts of “Germany” had been ruled earlier by the Slaves! So how far back to you go?
The situation after WWI was a real nationalistic mess, with every ethnic or national group wanting “their territory”to the maximum; unfortunately, some got greedy, and as you point out Wilson’s standards of “no annexations” were violated; as Germany was seen as having been an aggressor which lost the war, there is no doubt it lost a lot of land in this chaos.
Third, the arguments you give justifying Hitler’s war are the same as he himself was using in the 1930s, they didn’t wash then and they don’t wash now. They are based on a selective view of the effects of the treaty of Versailles, and while Germany had reasons to complain about the treaty, boundary disputes were no excuse for starting a massively destructive world war to grab lands far beyond what they could claim “they lost”.
If you and your friends succeed in pushing these old revanchierist territorial demands to the political forefront again, you will produce the same results the Nazis achieved in 1939-45, the destruction of Germany and much of Europe. Please don’t try to do that to today’s prosperous, democratic and culturally stimulating Germany.
A note on the Memel Gebiet: This is a microcosm of the problems and complexities of the nationalities of Central Europe. The whole area both north and south of the Memel River had been a mixture of Germans, Lithuanians, Russians and other Slavs, Jews, etc.
Before the Teutonic Knights won it in battle, it had belonged to Slavic tribes related to the Lithuanians, so the Lithuanians continued to feel it belonged to them. The border was drawn to create a mainly Lithuanian part to the north, and German to the south, though the nationalities were mixed throughout.
After WWI, the Lithuanians made a demand on the northern section, Memel land, and aided by representatives of the Allies, and local militias, managed to seize control, and create an autonomous zone within Lithuania. However, the population was almost half German, plus more than a fourth Prussianized Lithuanians, Memelanders, who were culturally Germans, so at least three fourths of the population would have preferred annexation to Germany rather than Lithuania. A lot of people were angry. Lithuania made a belated attempt to assimilate these Germans, which only aggravated the ethnic issues worse.
So, as you described, Peter, when the Germans marched in to the Memeland in 1939, the majority of the people were happy and cheered them–it was more of a national than a political statement. The world’s reaction was quiet, and seemed to be a recognition that this was probably a reasonable solution to what had been a mistake after WWI.
Towards the end of WWII the Ost Prussia area suffered terribly, as it was the first place the Soviet army reached. A powerful description of the horrors of the civilians’ flight from the advancing Russians is found in Nicholas Stargardt’s excellent book, “Witnesses of War, Children’s Lives Under the Nazis.” Unlike too many earlier history books which focused only on the suffering of the Russians, French, Jews, Poles, etc., Stargardt describes in painful detail the terrible suffering of German children as well. And yet, for anyone who still insists on denying, minimizing, or justifying the Holocaust, this book is a “must read” of facts. You won’t be trying to minimize the suffering, quibble over the gas at Auschwitz, or blame the Jews, if you read this powerful book carefully.
Oops, Peter, sorry to have gone on so long, but I wanted you to know I did take your concerns about Central European national issues, particularly Memel land, seriously.
Regarding the pretty Brazilian lady, Peter, the apology owed, I think, is for trying to convince this couple that it was not the Nazi Germans who devastated Greece. It was. Don’t split hairs.
Finally a note for Sid Guvnor about this strange new “Angel” book by Sherman- sure seems like a “ringer” to me too, not like any Holocaust description I’ve heard about. (There are schemers and fakers and the confused in every population.) So Sid, I agree, everyone should go to this site you have highlighted for us, and read carefully the excellent statement by someone named Peter Kubicek, who thoroughly critiques this book from the point of view of a former KZ survivor who wants to set the record straight (assuming that this Peter Kubicek himself is a valid concentration camp survivor!). Kubicek knew about the gas, about the guards at the fence, and knew no one could stand there and throw apples in to the inmates every day without getting shot! Also, if there’d been one apple, 10 starving people would have fought for it.
Anyway, all the best and I hope you’ve enjoyed the holidays,
Doug the Webfoot
Douglas Card
December 27, 2008 at 6:25 am
Doug, just like your skewed view of history you have a skewed view of the conversation I had with a woman in which you were not present.
Both demonstrate how prejudiced you are and how one sided your view of history is.
My comments explain perfectly well why Hitler got into power and how WW II came about and yours are just justifying what was done to Germany.
You really should shut up now.
Peter
December 28, 2008 at 2:35 am
Oh Happy Holidays!
Says Alex:
“Mr. Card: You have neglected to prove any existance of gas chambers in Auschwitz or any other so called death camps. You are a traitor to your people (unless you are a jew) and I look forward to the day when you sit on a Nuremburgesque trial and hang from a rope!”
Says Peter:
“Doug…..You really should shut up now.”
Old Friends, I’d like to thank all of the revisionists, such as Peter and Alex, who have proved what I have long suspected — they have no respect for free speech unless it agrees with them.
I’m truly sorry, Peter, you had to resort to name calling rather than deal seriously with the issues I raised; I had expected better from you. You seemed like an intelligent, caring chap who loved his mother and who has studied history.
My Friend from the Konisberg/ Kreis Labiau/Gumbinnen area of the southern part of the Memel region had a wonderful Mutti; a good hearted decent Frau who understood the evil created by the Nazis– before the war she and her various Slavic neighbors got along wonderfully until the arrogant German nationalists had to screw things up.
However, Mutti was hilarious when she spoke to us in the “Platt Deutsch” of her old rural Ost Prussian region– a mixture of old German, Russian, Lithuanian, etc. A true language mixture for a multicultural village.
She represented what the great German philosopher and historian Gottfried Herder meant when he eloquently stated that all Folk cultures, not just German, are good and should be enjoyed and respected.
Mutti did.
Hitler and the NSDAP did not.
And that, Friends, is why the world was subjected to WW II.
All good wishes from the rainy land of the Webfoots,
Doug
PS Peter, just ask an Old Greek what he or she thought of the German occupation. It wasn’t all olives and ouzo.
Douglas Card
December 28, 2008 at 5:36 am
Doug, you should not talk so much, especially about things you know so little about. You can blabber all day long with your one sided, prejudiced ideas. I feel confident throughout this conversation I out pointed you and I simply got tired of arguing with such a small mind. You never raised any serious issues throughout this conversation and continuously ignored the issues that I raised, citing historians.
Doug, I don’t have to ask a Greek what they thought about the German occupation. Why don’t you ask a German who was there? But that is something you don’t do. All of your ideas come from the allied side (American and English writers and TV). The woman wasn’t even from Greece. The point was Italy attacked Greece before the Germans got there.
Your lack of knowledge and bias was displayed throughout the conversation. Arguing with you is like arguing with a child in kindergarten who insists he has the answer.
Americans like you have some nerve. The little bit of knowledge you have makes you think you can tell people about their own history.
Every word that comes out of your mouth is vile hatred for the Germans of that period. Meanwhile the USA wiped Iraq off the map and is responsible for 1 million deaths just recently. But you would rather talk about Greece in WW II which suffered a tiny fraction of the deaths the USA inflicted on Iraq. You should concentrate on improving the behavior of your own country and stop acting like the ugly American.
Peter
December 28, 2008 at 10:10 am
P.S. I would suggest you speak to Germans from Memel, Danzig, Sudetenland and all the other territories stolen from Germany after WW I. Ask them about being placed under foreign rule and being stripped of political power.
Memel was founded by Germans in the 13th century and historians say the Germans were the first to settle Prague, but you have the nerve to talk about arrogant German nationalists.
Peter
December 28, 2008 at 10:28 am
From the Associated Press:
The publisher of a disputed Holocaust memoir has canceled the book, adding the name Herman Rosenblat to an increasingly long line of literary fakers and bringing down with a crash his story — embraced by Oprah Winfrey among others — of meeting his future wife at a Nazi concentration camp…..
The cancellation is sure to outrage survivors and scholars, who have worried that Rosenblat would encourage Holocaust deniers, and likely revive the debate over why publishers don’t fact check books. Even after such fabrications as James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” another Winfrey favorite, publishers have said that with more than 100,000 books coming out each year, fact-checking is too time-consuming and too expensive.
More than 100,000 books a year. Thats amazing! If that is not propaganda to push hatred of Germans, what is? It is no wonder you defend everything the allies did in WW I and WW II, including the rape and mass murder of millions of Germans. You also rail against German nationalism, but overlook the biggest nationalists, the allies in WW I who exploited the wishes of a few to create the new nations of Czechoslovakia, Poland, etc. at Germany and Austria’s expense. Wilson’s whole self-determination push was nationalism.
Peter
December 28, 2008 at 5:02 pm
My final comment is that you should concentrate on your own history (American), because you know next to nothing about my history (German) and rather than whitewash your history by ignoring the genocide’s the United States committed, study and discuss them as you have German history here.
Peter
December 28, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Something else should be mentioned. The Anglo-American and French racists ran the transatlantic slave trade and were the major colonizers of the world. When these countries robbed Germany and Austria of land, some of which had been German for seven hundred years, they stated the reason was self-determination. They made themselves out as moral do-gooders, when their true motivation was not moral or good. They wanted to weaken and punish Germany by taking huge amounts of land from them.
While they preached self determination for minorities that lived in Austria and Germany and took Germany’s colonies for themselves, Great Britain expanded its colonial empire by 1 million square miles and the French colonial empire expanded as well, placing many more millions of africans and middle easterners under their control. The hypocrisy and racism displayed by Britain, France and the USA in taking land from Germany and Austria and at the same time colonizing the darker races is really telling. Britain and France never had any intention of releasing these people to rule themselves, but after WW II they were finally forced to release these people that they considered inferior to themselves. So much for self-determination. This high-minded sounding phrase was used to steal a huge amount of land from the losers of WW I and place millions of Germans under foreign rule in order to weaken and punish them.
There is so much more to say about the hypocrisy and half truths that you state. One is that I have no doubt that if Britain and France had decided to go to war over Memel, you would be arguing today that WW II was Germany’s fault for taking Memel back.
Doug, you are incapable of thinking in an unbiased way. The anti-German propaganda that you have heard your whole life is the foundation of every thought you have on the subject.
The nationalistic mess you talk about, was what the British had successfully created during the war. I will grant you that they had existing resentments to work from. They took Czech revolutionaries to Britain during WW I so these people could work on undermining the Austro-Hungarian empire while Czechs back home fought for Austria in the war.
Peter
December 29, 2008 at 1:25 am
Meanwhile the biggest murderers in the world today have just killed 300 Palestinians in two days. Bush says nothing and Barack Obama’s spokesman has proclaimed solidarity with the murderers in Israel. Is it ignorance, bigotry or Jewish control of Hollywood and maybe other media that explains the USA’s actions? Doug, maybe you should spend less time discussing history and more time discussing the war criminals in Washington, D.C. that back the gangsters in Israel.
The whole world protests while the cowards in the USA say nothing to Israel and actually criticize the Palestinians. The next time there is a 9/11 attack on Israel the whole world will cheer, not just a few Palestinians. I think if Joel Stein is correct (and many people believe he is) it helps explain not only your attitude towards Germany, but towards Palestinians as well.
Heres Joel Steins article on Jewish control of Hollywood again:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-stein19-2008dec19,0,6620255.column
Peter
December 29, 2008 at 6:29 am
Correction: Above I said “The next time there is a 9/11 attack on Israel the whole world will cheer”. That was a typing mistake. I meant to say “The next time there is a 9/11 attack on the USA the whole world will cheer”.
Peter
December 29, 2008 at 6:33 am
[Because of the similarities of the many criticisms I have received on both of Richard Wilson’s busy blogs, and the importance of clarifying the morality of this issue, I am posting identical statements on both of his blogs]
Sunday musings: Morality, Germans, ethics, and the Holocaust:
This I Believe.
Sunday is a day many of us use to ponder philosophical, spiritual, socio-political, moral and ethical questions. It’s a good day to review our critical values of integrity, compassion, kindness, diligence, honor, thoughtfulness, tolerance, fairness, and most of all, the courage to stand up against evil.
With our recent discussions on these blogs, today seems a perfect time to challenge David Irving’s views of the morality of the Holocaust.
First, lets’ question the terrible stereotype most people of the world had of the Germans after WWII— according to this biased view, all Germans were bad and responsible for WWII and the Holocaust; evil was embedded in their character and culture; and all Germans were Nazis or Nazi sympathizers.
Balderdash!
Most people forget that the Nazis never won a free election in Germany! They were a minority party which came to power by terror, manipulation, and their control over free speech. The so-called “Good Germans” were the majority, but they suffered. It was because of this decent majority that Germany was able to reconstitute itself as a democracy so quickly after the war.
In the last truly free election of November 1932, the Nazis had just 33.1% of the vote; in March of ’33, even with many of their opponents thrown in jail, they still had just 43.9%, and to control the government, had to partner with the naive Nationalists whom they soon destroyed along with all the rest of their opposition.
So please do NOT blame the majority of the Germans for supporting the NSDAP– they didn’t, but once the Nazis had their totalitarian power, after passing the Enabling Act, the majority of good, decent Germans no longer had a say in anything. With the glories of the first German military victories, and no freedom of speech, no free newspapers or radio, and the book burnings, even the majority were eventually, but temporarily, brought over to the Nazi’s views.
I was fortunate to live for two great years 1959-61 in beautiful Luebeck, and in such smaller Gemeinde as Boizenhagen, Radenbeck, and Gartow, where I found the people were wonderful, nothing like the ugly “arrogant Nazi” stereotypes which had been put out in the media and propaganda about the supposedly still-Nazi Germans.
It’s past time for everyone to totally put those obsolete, ugly stereotypes aside and respect Germany for what it is today, a strong, pluralistic, freedom loving democracy. The “revisionists” are a small but noisy minority. While many Europeans still carry scars from their brutal treatment at the hands of the Nazis years ago, I think it is also past time for putting people in jail for espousing Nazi-like beliefs. It only makes martyrs out of them for those who still see themselves as victims. Lets’ not let this small band of “revisionists” mess up Europe again.
Ah, but it’s Sunday– what about the Church, the priests and ministers, the Christians– where was their morality? Didn’t they compromise too much with the Nazis?
Well yes, most people would agree that their opposition to the Nazis was too little and too late. Still, there were members of both the Catholic and Evangelical faiths who bravely stood up against NSDAP bullies for Christian decency.
Though often criticized for the Concordat, German Catholics were especially impervious to Nazi political mythology– in that crucial election of 1933, for example, while Protestant East Prussia voted 56.5 for Hitler, Koln-Aachen’s Nazi vote was a much lower 30.1%
There were many brave Christian individuals who stood up for decency, and often paid the price– among Evangelicals, for example, with the support of the “Confessing Church”, there were the well known pastors Martin Neimoller, Dietrich Bonhoffer and Karl Barth, as well as such others as Paul Schneider, Max Joseph Metzger, and Bishop Theophil Wurm.
Courageous Catholics included Cardinal Faulhaber, Otto Dibelius, Fr. Rupert Mayer, Count von Galen, Otto Mueller, Karl Klinkhammer, Jacob Kaiser, and eventually, Cardinal Bertram.
Occasionally Catholics were able to present a united front against the Nazis. For example, early on, Austrian prelates cited four specific errors in the Nazi ideology: Racial hatred, radical anti-Semitism, extreme nationalism, and attempts to establish a “National Church.”
These brave German and Austrian prisoners of conscience often endured great punishment for standing up against evil: at one point, the cleric block at Dachau had 387 German and Austrian Catholic clerics, and 35 Protestant pastors; Wheaton asserted that a very large number of Catholic priests died at Dachau.
And let us not forget those amazing Jehova’s Witnesses, the “Bible Students”, whose courage and compassion in the death camps astounded even the Nazi guards.
Now, back to the other question of morality: David Irving’s justification of the Holocaust.
There are four basic views of the Holocaust, loosely defined as the massive brutalization and killing of Jews as Jews across Europe in an organized and intentional manner by agents of the Third Reich, 1933-45.
1) It happened, and was a terrible crime against humanity. (the majority of the world’s view.)
2) It happened,(though a bit less than claimed) but it was justified, as it was the Jews’ own fault. (David Irving’s current view.)
3) It didn’t happen, (or was much less than claimed) but would have been a terrible thing if it had.
4) It didn’t really happen, (or was much less than claimed) but would have been justified if it had. (The view of many of the revisionists who have attacked me and Richard Wilson on these blogs).
While there are various combinations of these ideas, Irving earlier had a reputation as almost a “Holocaust Denier”, as he has often minimized the extent of the killings, thus fitting number 4, but today he is clearly no denier!!!
I am using Irving because he is so well known, recently spoke here in Oregon, and most revisionists seem unwilling to believe any source written by a Jew, liberal, American, university professor or professional historian or journalist– though some of the most extreme revisionists even call Irving himself too moderate and pro-Jewish these days!
When I heard Irving here at the UO, where he was forced to have an open door at the university so could not screen his audience for political conformity as usual, I was astounded to hear him proclaim his current views:
While trying to somewhat minimize the extent of the killings, and claiming Hitler didn’t know what Himmler was up to, Irving explained he didn’t like the term “Holocaust” and instead preferred the term “The Great Jewish Tragedy”, and that by the term ” The Great Jewish Tragedy” he did NOT mean all those Jews who were killed, but rather, that the Jews never ask why they are hated so, why people want to kill them!
The ultimate in “blaming the victim.”
As I wrote in a letter to the editor here, it was the most reprehensible statement I had ever heard in a public forum in America.
Irving, however, was so proud of himself, he actually put my letter on his web site, in his “diary”. (see below) Most important, he did not attempt to deny any of it, (the facts were too clear), so just did what revisionists generally do when trapped in an argument– like a child, resorted to name calling, writing:
“Reprehensible”- that’s a long word for such a shallow brain.”
So here is a challenge to all you revisionists:
Staying to the topic!, please:
“Do you agree with Irving that the mass killing of Jews during the Third Reich was justified by their own behavior, or do you feel these murders were a crime?” Or was Irving wrong to admit these mass killings took place?
I’ll be looking for your specific answers to this question! (and please, no “Apples and Oranges” analogies.)
Cheers from the rainy land of the Webfoots,
Doug
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(Irving’s web site)
June 30, 2008 (Monday)
Dubuque (Iowa) – Chicago (Illinois)
The Eugene Register-Guard [rgletters@guardnet.com] has printed this letter:
IRVING STATEMENTS REPREHENSIBLE
On June 20, The Register-Guard printed a letter from Bob Bussel criticizing the newspaper’s “bland” coverage of the presentation of Holocaust denier David Irving.
However, the situation was even worse than Bussel realized, for Irving’s horrifying talk made clear he is no longer simply a Holocaust denier but rather something even uglier, a Holocaust apologist or sympathizer.
Our normally reliable newspaper missed the point on this one, for while it correctly noted that Irving “generally avoided using the word Holocaust” and “instead he called the mass killings during World War II ‘the great Jewish tragedy,” the story left out the punch line.
Irving explained that he meant the tragedy was not that all those Jews were killed, but rather that “Jews never asked themselves why they were killed … why they are hated so.” This claim that Jews were responsible for their own death is the most reprehensible statement I have ever heard from a public platform in the United States and deserves complete condemnation.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews, Poles, Russians and Roma (Gypsies) because they were brutal, racist thugs. It’s unfortunate that at a time when reasonable people are raising serious questions about such issues as the Jewish lobby in America and Israel’s endless expansion into Palestinian land, the Pacifica Forum chooses to immerse its intellectual arguments in the most foul, bigoted anti-Semitism.
To rephrase Voltaire, “Though I loathe what you say, I will defend your right to a university room in which to say it.”
Douglas Card
Veneta
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“Reprehensible”- that’s a long word for such a shallow brain.
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Douglas Card
December 29, 2008 at 9:06 am
Says Douglas Card: \”Americans did liberate some of the death camps in western Germany.\”
-> Which ones? I know of no alleged death camps in Western Germany in the orthodox history.
Says Douglas Card: \”I know a few if you want to shrug them of , but take another look at those photos of piles of bodies found in various death camps\”.
-> You refer to photos of starved and/or diseased emaciated – i.e. not gassed – corpses found at labour camps which are not deeded \”extermination\” camps in the orthodox history. What\’s your point?
Says Douglas Card: \”Hitler, with his sociopathic hatreds, was already in the 1920s talking about gassing Jews and throwing them in to camps\”
–> When did AH mentioning gassing in the 1920\’s (or at all for that matter)?
Blinky
January 3, 2009 at 2:25 am
Greetings from soggy Oregon and a Happy New Year to All (although “Happy” fails to describe the human tragedy unfolding in Gaza.)
Blinky, thanks for the 3 nice specific questions which I’ll answer in a moment, but first:
So far, none of the Revisionists who have been relentlessly attacking and ridiculing me, not even dear Peter, have been able to answer my challenge (see details above in previous comment) regarding how you really feel about the Holocaust, and David Irving’s comments thereof:
“Do you agree with Irving that the mass killing of Jews during the Third Reich was justified by their own behavior, or do you feel these murders were a crime?” Or was Irving wrong to admit these mass killings took place?
Now, Blinky, beginning with your highly significant third question:
–> “When did AH mentioning gassing in the 1920\’s (or at all for that matter)?”
The answer, “in Hitler’s own Mein Kampf, where he blames Jews for causing Germany’s defeat in WWI”:
“If only at the beginning of the war or during its course, twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been subjected to poison gas, the way hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers of all classes and professions had to endure it on the battlefield, then the sacrifice of millions of men would not have been in vain. On the contrary, had twelve thousand of these scoundrels been done away with at the right time, perhaps the lives of a million honest Germans, people valuable for the future, would have been spared.”
[Mein Kampf, 1st ed., 1925-27 Munich, ii, 344, in Wheaton, “The Nazi Revolution 1933-35” p. 521]
Wheaton also cites a couple of statements Hitler made in the early 1920s about putting Jews in concentration camps:
In 1921 at a meeting of the rightist National Club, Hitler had foretold “an open campaign against German Jewry” and “spoken of building concentration camps” for Jews and others. [Wheaton, pp. 376 and 520-21]
“On September 18, 1922, excoriating the Jews in a party statement, he had said that people with their ideas ‘must feel how life tastes in a concentration camp.”
[“The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, i, p.108, in Wheaton p. 521)
So here we have a clear picture of Hitler’s early sociopathic hatred of Jews and his desire to get rid of them. While Wheaton cautions that Hitler probably did not yet in the 1920s have the specific idea of gassing Jews and others in those concentration camps, we can see how his early motivation (possibly heightened by his own gassing in WWI) led to the eventual perfection of this lethal system.
“It was the peace that killed”, say the Indians.”
Now, Blinky, to your other two questions, which can best be answered together:
-> “Which ones? I know of no alleged death camps in Western Germany in the orthodox history.”
> “You refer to photos of starved and/or diseased emaciated – i.e. not gassed – corpses found at labour camps which are not deeded \”extermination\” camps in the orthodox history. What\’s your point?”
First, Blinky you are correct, that the Allies did not, as a group, liberate any of those Eastern European death camps. Thanks for catching that careless mistake, as I had just been reading about the Allies’ liberation of Matthausen KZ— that they had had to bury some twelve thousand emaciated bodies (not all Jewish) when they arrived, and they estimated that over a hundred thousand people had died there.
But Blinky, as you correctly note, by the official designation Matthausen, as all those camps liberated by the Allies in the West, was not a “death camp.” Yet they were part of the early vision of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders, to terrify, lock up, and kill as many as possible Jews and other “enemies” from one end of Europe to the other.
If your family had been killed during the Holocaust, would you have cared whether they had been shot, killed by typhus in a crowded camp without medical care, gassed by carbon monoxide, gassed by Zyklon B, beaten to death, starved to death, hung, worked to death, or froze to death in a RR boxcar?
You see, here in America, we are aware that in our own terrible case of genocide, a terrible portion of Indian deaths occurred not in wars, but rather afterwards, in crowded unhealthy reservations without adequate food, medical care, or habitation. As the Indians said later, “IT WAS THE PEACE THAT KILLED.”
What historian would not count those reservation deaths as part of our nation’s brutal genocide against the Indians?
Who can not count those Jewish deaths from many Nazi sources as not part of the Holocaust?
I’m concerned that our Revisionists are so hung up on particular technological questions and specific numbers , that they have lost sight of the big picture– which I am trying to regain by getting them to respond to my challenge concerning Irving’s “Great Jewish Tragedy” statements.
In fact, as I read their comments, I get the feeling that many of them, as Irving, seem not to remember we are talking about the deaths of good decent humans, not football scores.
Thus, Blinky, I mentioned photos of dead KZ victims, to urge you to remember that we are talking about the deaths of real people at the hands of the Nazis, no matter what killed them. Somehow these photos are more graphic than just showing piles of ashes of the victims of the death camps where they were gassed and burned in the crematoria. But it’s all part of the plan Hitler was dreaming about back in the 1920s.
Note, Irving is thrilled that he’s found an expert who says Himmler “may not” have told Hitler about the death camps. That’s possible, but when Hitler’s maid, on Irving’s own web site, states that Himmler was “always” around Hitler at the Berghof, can we believe those two scoundrels never discussed carrying out Hitler’s long-held fantasy? I could accept that as easily as I would believe that “nice Mr. Madoff” didn’t know what his own devious underlings were up to with that $50 billion Ponzi scheme.
So again, Blinky, I want to thank you for your three good specific questions (one of which revealed an accidental error of mine); they were so much better to create a decent discussion than the usual name calling, as for example, Irving just responding that I had a “Shallow Mind.” Remember, the key question on this blog was, “Is David Irving a Free Speech Defender?”
Now that I have answered your 3 specific questions, Blinky, I’d appreciate it if you (or any other Revisionists) would address yourself to the specific question I’ve asked concerning Irving’s statements.
All the best from
Doug the “Shallow Mind” Webfoot
Douglas Card
January 6, 2009 at 8:32 pm
[…] a comment » Douglas Card, eloquent bane of the Holocaust denialists commenting on this blog, has just had an interesting piece published on the historical parallels between Lincoln’s […]
Douglas Card on Lincoln and Obama « Don’t Get Fooled Again
January 7, 2009 at 9:16 pm
These Holocaust Revisionists are so full of hot air. All their endless messages denouncing historians, Jews, Richard Wilson and Douglas Card etc. But as soon as Card gave them a specific challenge to respond to David Irving’s statements about the Holocaust, they all disappeared, even loud mouthed Peter. It looks like every time someone puts them in the corner with facts, all they do is hurl threats and insults then run and hide.
The funniest is Blinky, who challenged Card to tell where Hitler talked about gassing Jews “in the 1920s or ever”.
Card came right back with the answer, in Hitler’s own rotten book Mein Kampf.
So Blinky also disappeared, couldn’t face the truth.
It’s time you Holocaust Deniers grow up, World War Two is over! One Holocaust was enough.
JD Eugene Oregon
Jay Dee
January 16, 2009 at 6:55 pm
If Card’s “poison gas” stuff had any legs I would have heard about it endlessly on Wikipedia. Any documentation from WW2 and from/about/to/for Hitler points away from a Holcaust. I’ll have to go back to the original Mein Kampf to reread this section – it certainly didn’t jump out the first time.
noway
August 24, 2009 at 2:17 pm
I checked the quote – it is accurate, easy to find. Hitler used the word “poison” an awful lot – at least in the Englisg translation. The sentence is plain and unmisleading – he would have loved to gas ( at least instead of having German soldiers ) corrupt leaders/businessmen etc. His ambition, even when he was on a raving rhertorical roll, didn’t seem to extend to anyone other than the “crooks”. Anyway, several memos have been unearthed concernig Jews, Hitler and WW2 that point directly away from any homicidal passions, plans or actions. No memos pointing to such plan, etc have been found. If we write history based on fact we are stuck with no Holocaust. If we write based on passion,propaganda and “code words” we have a Holocaust – of course we could have anything if we don’t like facts.
noway
August 24, 2009 at 2:41 pm