On consistency of revisionists vs holohoaxers

[Archie]

Nessie frequently says the holohoaxer side is in complete agreement and is therefore correct while revisionists supposedly cannot agree among themselves and are therefore wrong.

Back on topic, and away from attacks on a forum member, having been there too many times before, a question about evidence and implementation.

Can any so-called revisionist explain why, when they try to revise history, they come up with so many alternatives?

For me, the reason is because of their failure to evidence any revised alternative in a convincing way. They are all so unconvincing that none are able to appeal to a majority and for there to be a consensus.

The implication that the more "consistent" side must also have the stronger case is dubious to begin with. The Holocaust side is indeed very "consistent" in some respects, as are all religions. However, this is a reflection of dogmatism rather than justified certainty. Conversely, disagreement is not necessarily bad but is often a healthy sign of rigorous investigation.

Wildly contradictory positions often do reflect inadequate evidence or very conjectural interpretations, but if hard evidence is in fact lacking then it is more honest to have disagreement than to present a fraudulent certainty.

How Consistent or Inconsistent Are Revisionists?

Contrary to Nessie, revisionists are in reasonably good agreement. The main example he harps on is over potential secondary uses for the Birkenau Kremas where there is the Butz/Crowell air raid shelter hypothesis vs Mattogno's disinfestation hypothesis. It is fallacious to say that disagreement per se disproves either position. It is fair to say that such disagreement does indicate that the evidence for either position is not conclusive (note that this is not the same thing as not true). But so what? This is also true of the mass homicidal gassing position. The mass gassing position has the additional problem of denying the well-established primary use which was corpse storage.

Sometimes there is some uncertainty over interpretation. Interpreting construction documents decades after the fact without complete context is generally hard. Nessie pretends like it is easy. It is only "easy" for him because he is working from a predetermined conclusion.

How Consistent is the Orthodox Side?

Nessie also implies that the orthodox side is consistent. Because they all agreement on the gas chambers, for example. But if Nessie had ever bothered to read any of the Holocaust literature (I can tell from his ignorance that he never has even after all these years), he would know that there are major inconsistencies in the Holocaust histories, especially if you look at how the story has shifted over time.

On the Birkenau Kremas, Nessie says revisionists are inconsistent while being totally ignorant of what his own side says about this. The story for years was that these facilities were planned from the beginning as extermination facilities with gas chambers. But in the late 1980s, Pressac gave a very different story.

Concerning the history of the camp, it could be demonstrated that the Kremas had started off as normal sanitary facilities; then later changed into liquidation centers for “Jews unable to work”, that is women, children and the elderly.

What I indicate as being " criminal traces" arise from the difference between the normal installations of a normal crematory, one intended just to incinerate the dead and primarily including one or more mortuaries, along with an autopsy room which was legally mandated and a room for furnaces and coke storage; and those in an abnormal crematory which would have a homicidal gas chamber. This installation or this transformation required particular pieces of equipment which one finds mention of in the SS correspondence with the civilian firms or in their building site logs. A better definition would be “traces of criminal installations”. The search for such “traces” would not be possible if the Kremas had a criminal beginning, as the Polish historians believed for 40 years.

We see here that the orthodox side has been anything but consistent.

The "final solution" is another place where we find major contradictions. Some have argued that Hitler was planning to exterminate the Jews from the 1920s and that the extermination program kicked into high gear around the time of Barbarossa. The Goering decree in the summer of 1941 is interpreted as an extermination order. The Nuremberg judgment also concluded that the "final solution" began in the summer of 1941. Meanwhile others say Hitler was not planning a full extermination until late in 1941, months later. Gerlach claims Hitler made the decision in December 1941 (based on rather flimsy evidence). This is the view Nick endorses. Browning says October 1941 based on his differing interpretations. The more modern theories also stress the more gradual and improvised nature of the process.

We could add to this the many contradictions over numbers.

[Nessie]

Nessie frequently says the holohoaxer side is in complete agreement and is therefore correct while revisionists supposedly cannot agree among themselves and are therefore wrong.

My point is not as simple as you make it out to be. As is normal, you miss out the role of evidence. You do that, because so-called revisionists cannot revise and produced an evidenced chronology, a point I need to repeat, much to your annoyance.

The historians are in agreement, because of the evidence and it is the evidence, rather than the agreement, that means they are correct. So-called revisionists cannot evidence what happened, so they come up with various completing hypothesis, which proves how weak their case is.

[Nessie]

....

How Consistent or Inconsistent Are Revisionists?

Contrary to Nessie, revisionists are in reasonably good agreement. The main example he harps on is over potential secondary uses for the Birkenau Kremas where there is the Butz/Crowell air raid shelter hypothesis vs Mattogno's disinfestation hypothesis. It is fallacious to say that disagreement per se disproves either position.

It does when one hypothesis is that they were used as delousing chambers, when many argue they were barely exposed to any HCN. It is possible to shelter in a gas chambers, during a raid, as is evidenced to have happened. Taking a shower in a corpse store is not "good agreement".

As for secondary uses, the Leichekeller can only have had one use at a time, excepting impromptu sheltering from an air raid. There is no such thing as a combined shower and corpse store, or delousing chamber.

It is fair to say that such disagreement does indicate that the evidence for either position is not conclusive (note that this is not the same thing as not true). But so what? This is also true of the mass homicidal gassing position. The mass gassing position has the additional problem of denying the well-established primary use which was corpse storage.

It is untrue to claim that the primary use was evidenced as corpse store. None of the eyewitnesses who worked there state it was used to store corpses. There are documents about sending corpses being stored around the camp to the Kremas, but not about storage at the Kremas. The corpses will have gone straight to the ovens.

Sometimes there is some uncertainty over interpretation. Interpreting construction documents decades after the fact without complete context is generally hard. Nessie pretends like it is easy. It is only "easy" for him because he is working from a predetermined conclusion.

Construction Office and Topf & Sons documents record the construction of undressing rooms, gas chamber/cellars and mass creamtion ovens. They make zero reference to corpse stores, showering, bomb shelters or delousing. Those documents do not require interpretation, unless one is trying to interpret something that the documents do not mention. It is "easy" for me, because I am following the evidence, for 100% of the eyewitnesses, corroborated by the documents and circumstantial evidence.

You have a "difficult" time, because you are not following the evidence and cannot produce a chronology of the usage of the Kremas and the two farm house bunkers at Birkenau.

When were they all used for storing corpses and when and where did the secondary uses take place?
How is corpse storage correct and all the other suggested uses wrong?

How Consistent is the Orthodox Side?

Nessie also implies that the orthodox side is consistent. Because they all agreement on the gas chambers, for example. But if Nessie had ever bothered to read any of the Holocaust literature (I can tell from his ignorance that he never has even after all these years), he would know that there are major inconsistencies in the Holocaust histories, especially if you look at how the story has shifted over time.

There is historical consistence about the usage of the AR camps, Chelmno and A-B Kremas. Mass transports arrived, there were some selections (mostly in A-B), those not needed for work were gassed, the corpse cremated, or buried then cremated and property stolen.

On the Birkenau Kremas, Nessie says revisionists are inconsistent while being totally ignorant of what his own side says about this. The story for years was that these facilities were planned from the beginning as extermination facilities with gas chambers. But in the late 1980s, Pressac gave a very different story.

There is historical disagreement, and some unknowns, about the planning for the Kremas. There is far less about the planning of Chelmno and A-R.

Concerning the history of the camp, it could be demonstrated that the Kremas had started off as normal sanitary facilities; then later changed into liquidation centers for “Jews unable to work”, that is women, children and the elderly.

Correct, historians can produce an evidenced chronology. For example, Krema I was a mortuary/crematorium, then a gas chambers, then an air raid shelter when additional internal wall were constructed and the chimney removed. The farm houses were homes, then seized and used as gas chambers and then demolished.

What I indicate as being " criminal traces" arise from the difference between the normal installations of a normal crematory, one intended just to incinerate the dead and primarily including one or more mortuaries, along with an autopsy room which was legally mandated and a room for furnaces and coke storage; and those in an abnormal crematory which would have a homicidal gas chamber. This installation or this transformation required particular pieces of equipment which one finds mention of in the SS correspondence with the civilian firms or in their building site logs. A better definition would be “traces of criminal installations”. The search for such “traces” would not be possible if the Kremas had a criminal beginning, as the Polish historians believed for 40 years.

We see here that the orthodox side has been anything but consistent.

It is not clear where the historical inconsistency is, there. Buildings originally designed as mortuaries/crematoriums were repurposed as gas chambers. All historians agree on that. So-called revisionists claim the buildings were converted from their intended use to be showers, delousing chambers or bomb shelters.

The "final solution" is another place where we find major contradictions. Some have argued that Hitler was planning to exterminate the Jews from the 1920s and that the extermination program kicked into high gear around the time of Barbarossa. The Goering decree in the summer of 1941 is interpreted as an extermination order. The Nuremberg judgment also concluded that the "final solution" began in the summer of 1941. Meanwhile others say Hitler was not planning a full extermination until late in 1941, months later. Gerlach claims Hitler made the decision in December 1941 (based on rather flimsy evidence). This is the view Nick endorses. Browning says October 1941 based on his differing interpretations. The more modern theories also stress the more gradual and improvised nature of the process.

We could add to this the many contradictions over numbers.

There is a disagreement about the development of the Holocaust. You admit that disagreement can be as minor as a few months. That is nothing like the disagreements between so-called revisionists and the usage of the Kremas and farm house/bunkers.

[Wetzelrad]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

[Nessie]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

That you example uncertainty about chemistry and the Kremas, shows how consistent the history of the operation of the Kremas is.

[Archie]

It is not clear where the historical inconsistency is, there. Buildings originally designed as mortuaries/crematoriums were repurposed as gas chambers. All historians agree on that. So-called revisionists claim the buildings were converted from their intended use to be showers, delousing chambers or bomb shelters.

Nessie, you are being intentionally obtuse.

The Kremas were planned in summer of 1942. This is AFTER the "final solution" was supposedly declared. Hence it was assumed these were purpose built FOR extermination and WITH gas chambers from the beginning. Given this timing, no "conversion" should have been necessary since the purpose should have been clear.

The Pressac theory is a radical revision. There is a huge difference between saying that the Kremas started as "ordinary" crematoria and morgues and that they decided to do mass gassings there on the fly sometime during construction and saying that Himmler ordered facilities to be built that were intended for mass gassings from the beginning.

I also don't know that it is true that "all historians" (even if we limit it only to the holohoax side) agree with the Pressac theory. It seems they try to avoid the issue for the most part. But I suspect some still favor the traditional view.

There is a disagreement about the development of the Holocaust. You admit that disagreement can be as minor as a few months. That is nothing like the disagreements between so-called revisionists and the usage of the Kremas and farm house/bunkers.

Look at this spin! A range from spring of 1941 to December 1941 is a very big spread for something as major as when Hitler ordered the extermination. For one thing, implicitly this shows that they don't have any proof for an extermination order. They not only don't have an order, they can't even work out indirectly when the order might have been issued. That is major. You saying "as minor as a few months" reveals your colossal ignorance as in the context of the war an awful was happening in "a few months." There is a world of difference between spring 1941 and December 1941. The different timelines require you to interpret documents during that period in a vastly different way. With the earlier timeline, documents in summer of 1941 would generally be interpreted genocidally whereas for the later timeline you'd be working with the the assumption that genocide had not even been decided upon yet.

There is also a massive difference between saying that Hitler was planning the Holocaust years before he came to power and saying that Hitler sort of stumbled into doing the Holocaust in the middle of the war.

[Archie]

Holocaust Believers have claimed that the reason there are Iron Blue cyanide stains in delousing chambers but not in the gas chamber morgues is because:

• Dynamite destroyed them. (JC Pressac)
• The exposure time "per day" was 1/100th as long. (Pressac, with less extreme claims by others)
• They weathered away. (Pressac, Jan Markiewicz et al, Werner Wegner)
• The walls were neutral pH. (Richard Green)
• Cyanide-soaked clothing created the stains. (Green)
• The blue stains are actually paint. (Josef Bailer, also parroted by Markiewicz et al)
• The walls were sealed against it. (bombsaway, also implied by Wegner)

This cannot be called consistent. This looks like grasping at straws, or, more graciously, it is rampant speculation to find a hypothesis that fits the facts. That same ethos is applied by every Holocaust historian in interpreting documents and witness accounts. Revisionists can hardly be blamed for engaging in their own speculation. And yet it's only revisionists who have had their work criminalized.

Excellent example. In a Markiewicz thread, Nessie made the mistake of assuming that assuming that Markiewicz and Green had the exact same arguments which is of course not the case. He was not aware of this because he had/has not actually read any of the relevant material.

[Archie]

It does when one hypothesis is that they were used as delousing chambers, when many argue they were barely exposed to any HCN. It is possible to shelter in a gas chambers, during a raid, as is evidenced to have happened. Taking a shower in a corpse store is not "good agreement".

As for secondary uses, the Leichekeller can only have had one use at a time, excepting impromptu sheltering from an air raid. There is no such thing as a combined shower and corpse store, or delousing chamber.

LK1 was large, 7x30 meters, and LK2 was even larger. And then there was even more space when you consider the entire building. Under revisionist assumptions there would have been around maybe around 800 bodies a week to deal with. The cellars would not have been packed with bodies.

Your assumption that it would be impossible to have showers in e.g. Krema III is silly. Why not? Crowell presents a document from 1943 about a plan to add 100 showers to one of the Kremas. This never happened, but we know these planned showers were real because it talks about making use of the heat for hot water. In fact, it seems they often had showers in the crematoria for precisely that reason, so you are just totally wrong about this. I might ask you, why were they proposing adding 100 hot water showers to a gas chamber, hmm? Pressac has another inventory document referring to 14 showerheads in Krema III with no detail provided. Pressac GUESSES where these were installed and ASSUMES they were fake. He imagines that these "fake" showerheads were spread out in the gas chamber, but there is no justification for these assumptions of his and there is no reason there couldn't have been 14 real showers somewhere in the crematorium building.

Mattogno presents a document that talks about installing a hot air disinfestation device in the kremas. So you are also wrong about disinfestation uses being impossible. The Central Sauna was not completed and so it is reasonable that they might have tried (or at least considered) moving some disinfestation tasks to the kremas in the meantime.

Keep in mind as well that in many cases documents may refer to plans or proposals that never actually materialized.

[Nessie]

It is not clear where the historical inconsistency is, there. Buildings originally designed as mortuaries/crematoriums were repurposed as gas chambers. All historians agree on that. So-called revisionists claim the buildings were converted from their intended use to be showers, delousing chambers or bomb shelters.

Nessie, you are being intentionally obtuse.

The Kremas were planned in summer of 1942. This is AFTER the "final solution" was supposedly declared. Hence it was assumed these were purpose built FOR extermination and WITH gas chambers from the beginning. Given this timing, no "conversion" should have been necessary since the purpose should have been clear.

The Pressac theory is a radical revision. There is a huge difference between saying that the Kremas started as "ordinary" crematoria and morgues and that they decided to do mass gassings there on the fly sometime during construction and saying that Himmler ordered facilities to be built that were intended for mass gassings from the beginning.

Or there is a third option of, they were intended to start use as gas chambers, but that would be temporary and they would revert to being crematoriums after the ending of the Jewish transports. So it would make sense to have a design for the long term purpose.

Or there is a fourth option of, they were built as crematoriums, as that would help maintain secrecy over the actual purpose.

I also don't know that it is true that "all historians" (even if we limit it only to the holohoax side) agree with the Pressac theory. It seems they try to avoid the issue for the most part. But I suspect some still favor the traditional view.

The lack of definitive evidence, is why historians agree. Just as all the revisionist hypothesis for the Kremas do not reach consensus, due to a lack of definitive evidence for any.

There is a disagreement about the development of the Holocaust. You admit that disagreement can be as minor as a few months. That is nothing like the disagreements between so-called revisionists and the usage of the Kremas and farm house/bunkers.

Look at this spin! A range from spring of 1941 to December 1941 is a very big spread for something as major as when Hitler ordered the extermination. For one thing, implicitly this shows that they don't have any proof for an extermination order. They not only don't have an order, they can't even work out indirectly when the order might have been issued. That is major. You saying "as minor as a few months" reveals your colossal ignorance as in the context of the war an awful was happening in "a few months." There is a world of difference between spring 1941 and December 1941. The different timelines require you to interpret documents during that period in a vastly different way. With the earlier timeline, documents in summer of 1941 would generally be interpreted genocidally whereas for the later timeline you'd be working with the the assumption that genocide had not even been decided upon yet.

That is still nothing like the disagreement between revisionists over the usage of the Kremas.

There is also a massive difference between saying that Hitler was planning the Holocaust years before he came to power and saying that Hitler sort of stumbled into doing the Holocaust in the middle of the war.

How involved Hitler was, in the planning, is uncertain, due to a relative lack of evidence. What you fail to acknowledge is that the more the evidence, the greater the consistency. Hence, there is 100% consistency between historians about Babi Yar being the location of a mass shooting in 1941, of the Jews from Kiev, and that hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews were sent to Birkenau in 1944 and gassed.

[SanityCheck]

Look at this spin! A range from spring of 1941 to December 1941 is a very big spread for something as major as when Hitler ordered the extermination. For one thing, implicitly this shows that they don't have any proof for an extermination order. They not only don't have an order, they can't even work out indirectly when the order might have been issued. That is major. You saying "as minor as a few months" reveals your colossal ignorance as in the context of the war an awful was happening in "a few months." There is a world of difference between spring 1941 and December 1941. The different timelines require you to interpret documents during that period in a vastly different way. With the earlier timeline, documents in summer of 1941 would generally be interpreted genocidally whereas for the later timeline you'd be working with the the assumption that genocide had not even been decided upon yet.

There is also a massive difference between saying that Hitler was planning the Holocaust years before he came to power and saying that Hitler sort of stumbled into doing the Holocaust in the middle of the war.

A lot of the variation dates back 40-50 years or more, to the first few decades after 1945. The adherents of various positions on the extremes are also dead, and their interpretations aren't being cited except as historiographical curiosities. It's quite striking that Lucy Dawidowicz, Martin Broszat and Helmut Krausnick all died in 1990.

So the consensus over the past thirty years or so has been much tighter, also because the prior debate brought to light documents and sources which hadn't been considered in 1945-1975 or weren't available.

The key difference between conventional historiography and revisionism is how earlier incorrect interpretations are treated. Dawidowicz-style waywardness was criticised and rejected; she survived as a reference point for a while out of historiographical curiosity. Thus, Longerich only references her in a footnote to the introduction to Holocaust (2010), while Browning in Origins of the Final Solution (2004) includes her in the bibliography but there doesn't seem to be a single citation or mention of her anywhere before that. So she was irrelevant by the 2000s for these historians. If a student brings her up, one can tell that they've raided the intentionalism vs functionalism Wiki page, or at best used Kershaw's Nazi Dictatorship historiographical introduction, which dates back many decades in its original form despite being reprinted repeatedly.

Revisionism's various interpretations of the crematoria documents by contrast seem to allow for contradictory not-gas chamber claims by the same remaining authors (Rudolf and Mattogno), while despite refutations of the air raid shelter thesis by Mattogno, this claim remains quite popular among revisionist readers and aficionados. The main problem is there just aren't enough revisionist takes to assemble a consensus or form factions as would be the case with conventional historical disputes.

The design for what became Krematorium II dated to October 1941, 15 muffles and a single crematorium for a camp of over 100,000 prisoners at maximum strength, with definite design changes by autumn 1942/early 1943. Thus Pressac's conversion thesis is the one quite clearly supported by the blueprints and documents. The design of Kremas IV-V rapidly progressed to include gas chamber spaces within a matter of weeks of their being proposed/ordered, whereas the Krema II/III design sat on drawing boards for months before they needed to be adapted. It's an extraordinarily long lead time from initial design in October 1941 to Krema II becoming operational in March 1943. There were lots of hold-ups and much else to be constructed in the complex before pressure to complete the damn things was seriously felt.

There's also a bit of asymmetry in that when revisionist hot takes are abandoned there's no sense of responsibility to acknowedge, okay, we thought wrong on this back in the 1960s-1980s, whereas revisionists expect every past conventional error to be front and centre and indeed hype them up, even if they're fifty years old.

There were many other misinterpretations in conventional scholarship on the Third Reich which have been refuted and eliminated over subsequent decades. One good example is the 'blitzkrieg economy' thesis, which originated from US interrogations and solicited writings by Speer and his associates in 1945. Speer and his associates were already hyping the 'armaments miracle' in wartime propaganda in 1942-1944 and had every incentive to downplay the degree of mobilisation, and the type of economic and manpower mobilisation, of the 'blitzkrieg' era. And thus historians swallowed this. The thesis wasn't refuted until more or less the end of Speer's life, and was finally buried after his death in 1981.

The terms intentionalism and functionalism were borrowed from extensive debates about Hitler's foreign policy and the degree to which he had planned it, as well as interpretations of the Nazi regime as a whole which noted his style of rule and the polycratic competition of the key subordinates, leading some to argue that Hitler was a 'weak dictator', which overstates how he operated. The contrast between Hitlerian micromanagement of some fields and delegation in other areas took a while to become clear, after researching all kinds of topics.

Ultimately, research into any topic or set of topics will be cumulative, especially when new source bases emerge, which is clearly the case with the Holocaust (opening of East European archives in the 1990s). The other mechanism visible in the mainstream is thrashing out the disputes and teaching them. Sometimes the bitter disputes of yore fade away, other times the controversies are solved and things cool down. In other cases what were estimates become more precise with considering sources that can clarify things, which is why camp death tolls dropped, just as other death tolls have been refined (while still more for non-Holocaust mass deaths remain estimates).

The insinuation that everything should have been known perfectly 50-80 years ago is obvious nonsense. Still, the older accounts remain recognisable portrayals - one can however spot the gaps filled in by later discoveries or further corroboration, and conversely marvel at how early xyz source was being discussed and used.

[Nessie]

It does when one hypothesis is that they were used as delousing chambers, when many argue they were barely exposed to any HCN. It is possible to shelter in a gas chambers, during a raid, as is evidenced to have happened. Taking a shower in a corpse store is not "good agreement".

As for secondary uses, the Leichekeller can only have had one use at a time, excepting impromptu sheltering from an air raid. There is no such thing as a combined shower and corpse store, or delousing chamber.

LK1 was large, 7x30 meters, and LK2 was even larger. And then there was even more space when you consider the entire building. Under revisionist assumptions there would have been around maybe around 800 bodies a week to deal with. The cellars would not have been packed with bodies.

Your assumption that it would be impossible to have showers in e.g. Krema III is silly. Why not? Crowell presents a document from 1943 about a plan to add 100 showers to one of the Kremas. This never happened, but we know these planned showers were real because it talks about making use of the heat for hot water. In fact, it seems they often had showers in the crematoria for precisely that reason, so you are just totally wrong about this. I might ask you, why were they proposing adding 100 hot water showers to a gas chamber, hmm? Pressac has another inventory document referring to 14 showerheads in Krema III with no detail provided. Pressac GUESSES where these were installed and ASSUMES they were fake. He imagines that these "fake" showerheads were spread out in the gas chamber, but there is no justification for these assumptions of his and there is no reason there couldn't have been 14 real showers somewhere in the crematorium building.

Mattogno presents a document that talks about installing a hot air disinfestation device in the kremas. So you are also wrong about disinfestation uses being impossible. The Central Sauna was not completed and so it is reasonable that they might have tried (or at least considered) moving some disinfestation tasks to the kremas in the meantime.

Keep in mind as well that in many cases documents may refer to plans or proposals that never actually materialized.

You are merely confirming that so-called revisionists have competing, contradictory hypothesis for the usage of the Kremas, from corpse stores, to showers, to dis-infestation and then there is insufficient evidence to prove any actual usage, so that there is then an agreement on the revision. You cannot sufficiently evidence anything, so that you can reach a consensus. That proves how weak so-called revisionist evidencing is.

On the other hand, historians have reach a consensus on usage, they were used as gas chambers. There is some disagreement as to the planning, but not the usage. That disagreement is due to the relative lack of evidence about planning, compared to usage.

The better evidenced something is, the greater the consensus.

[HansHill]

The insinuation that everything should have been known perfectly 50-80 years ago is obvious nonsense.

???

What even is this reply. Orthodoxy has nothing approaching consistency on any of the major points and this waffle does nothing to impress us otherwise.

There's also a bit of asymmetry in that when revisionist hot takes are abandoned there's no sense of responsibility to acknowedge, okay, we thought wrong on this back in the 1960s-1980s, whereas revisionists expect every past conventional error to be front and centre and indeed hype them up, even if they're fifty years old.

I'm sorry you feel its such an inconvenience for you that these people's blatant falsehoods should be held to account for being what they are; such outrageous falsehoods, but that's simply not good enough Dr.



These are hardly "outliers" to be swept up after the fact. 80 years should do it, well done chaps, you've figured out which of these blatant lies are blatant lies. Similarly, Orthodoxy has nothing but it's head to hang in shame for it's farcical treatment of the introduction holes.

Van Pelt tells us they are not longer there:

Today, these four small holes that connected the wire-mesh columns and the
chimneys [on the roof of Morgue #1, Crematorium II] cannot be observed in
the ruined remains of the concrete slab.

So WTF are we looking at in this photo, Dr SanityCheck other than tampered evidence or a hamfisted attempted at forced convergence? You're a high IQ operator Dr, you know the polar treatment of these holes are mutually exclusive. Someone's to blame, and revisionists have every right to pull these contradictions apart and watch it unravel.

One of the biggest tragedies of all this nonsense is that the Germans themselves, let alone revisionists, were never offered the chance at competent legal defense. Imagine an alternate universe where the brilliant legal minds of the 3R were afforded the chance to introduce into evidence at Nuremberg, certain arguments like the lack of PB staining, the lack of introduction holes, the non-existence of Kula's Magical Mystery Columns (you know, the trifecta of the murder weapon) - and watch in satisfaction as the Allied Goons kvetch and cope that their fanfiction is unravelling infront of them.

[Nessie]

...Orthodoxy has nothing approaching consistency on any of the major points ...

Wrong. From the earliest Polish intelligence reports of mass arrests, transportations, ghettos, shootings and camps where people were being killed inside chambers, to the historical narrative today, there has been total consistency on the major points.

The inconsistency has been on the details, such as what killed people inside the chambers, the planning and who had what knowledge?

One of the biggest tragedies of all this nonsense is that the Germans themselves, let alone revisionists, were never offered the chance at competent legal defense.

The Nazis had ample opportunity to get their defence in when they were tried in courts in West and unified Germany, by German prosecutors, defended by German lawyers.

Imagine an alternate universe where the brilliant legal minds of the 3R were afforded the chance to introduce into evidence at Nuremberg, certain arguments like the lack of PB staining, the lack of introduction holes, the non-existence of Kula's Magical Mystery Columns (you know, the trifecta of the murder weapon) - and watch in satisfaction as the Allied Goons kvetch and cope that their fanfiction is unravelling infront of them.

Argument is not evidence. Say Rudolf had been presented as an expert witness for the defence, arguing that the lack of staining meant that gassings did not happen, there would have been three issues.

1 - The accused Nazis were admitting to gassings, so the defence cannot admit evidence of no crime, when the accused is admitting to the crime. That crime was also very well evidenced, something that so-called revisionists cannot admit or accept, but it is fact.

2 - Under cross-examination by the prosecution, Rudolf would have to admit he wrote that he may be wrong about the chemistry in his book, which undermines his testimony.

3 - The prosecution can bring in their own expert evidence, as to why there was no staining, so the court has two sides to consider, so it will decide based on evidence of usage, who is correct and the evidence is that the Kremas were used as gas chambers.

The same applies to the alleged lack of holes in the Krema roof. There is witness and photographic evidence to prove holes, along with examination of the roof that has identified where the holes are. All the defence can do is claim a lack of holes, which is not proven by perfectly intact concrete that has clearly never been breached.

As for the Kula columns, they are proven by eyewitness and documentary evidence of their construction. The defence has no evidence to prove those columns never existed and they cannot argue their incredulity about their existence, as courts use evidence, rather than argument.

[Archie]

It does when one hypothesis is that they were used as delousing chambers, when many argue they were barely exposed to any HCN. It is possible to shelter in a gas chambers, during a raid, as is evidenced to have happened. Taking a shower in a corpse store is not "good agreement".

As for secondary uses, the Leichekeller can only have had one use at a time, excepting impromptu sheltering from an air raid. There is no such thing as a combined shower and corpse store, or delousing chamber.

LK1 was large, 7x30 meters, and LK2 was even larger. And then there was even more space when you consider the entire building. Under revisionist assumptions there would have been around maybe around 800 bodies a week to deal with. The cellars would not have been packed with bodies.

Your assumption that it would be impossible to have showers in e.g. Krema III is silly. Why not? Crowell presents a document from 1943 about a plan to add 100 showers to one of the Kremas. This never happened, but we know these planned showers were real because it talks about making use of the heat for hot water. In fact, it seems they often had showers in the crematoria for precisely that reason, so you are just totally wrong about this. I might ask you, why were they proposing adding 100 hot water showers to a gas chamber, hmm? Pressac has another inventory document referring to 14 showerheads in Krema III with no detail provided. Pressac GUESSES where these were installed and ASSUMES they were fake. He imagines that these "fake" showerheads were spread out in the gas chamber, but there is no justification for these assumptions of his and there is no reason there couldn't have been 14 real showers somewhere in the crematorium building.

Mattogno presents a document that talks about installing a hot air disinfestation device in the kremas. So you are also wrong about disinfestation uses being impossible. The Central Sauna was not completed and so it is reasonable that they might have tried (or at least considered) moving some disinfestation tasks to the kremas in the meantime.

Keep in mind as well that in many cases documents may refer to plans or proposals that never actually materialized.

You are merely confirming that so-called revisionists have competing, contradictory hypothesis for the usage of the Kremas, from corpse stores, to showers, to dis-infestation and then there is insufficient evidence to prove any actual usage, so that there is then an agreement on the revision. You cannot sufficiently evidence anything, so that you can reach a consensus. That proves how weak so-called revisionist evidencing is.

On the other hand, historians have reach a consensus on usage, they were used as gas chambers. There is some disagreement as to the planning, but not the usage. That disagreement is due to the relative lack of evidence about planning, compared to usage.

The better evidenced something is, the greater the consensus.

Non-responsive. You never address anything.

Prior discussion here. I'm not going to repeat myself.
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=315

[SanityCheck]

The insinuation that everything should have been known perfectly 50-80 years ago is obvious nonsense.

???

What even is this reply. Orthodoxy has nothing approaching consistency on any of the major points and this waffle does nothing to impress us otherwise.

Archie asserted the following on another thread, apropos his example of the decision-making process

The fact is that if the Holocaust were true they would not have needed to radically alter the timeline as more and more contradictions became apparent.

https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=10487#p10480

This doesn't follow for *any* historical topic, especially not when the evidence is incomplete. Earlier interpretations based on less evidence will need to be revised when *new* evidence is incorporated.

There's also a bit of asymmetry in that when revisionist hot takes are abandoned there's no sense of responsibility to acknowedge, okay, we thought wrong on this back in the 1960s-1980s, whereas revisionists expect every past conventional error to be front and centre and indeed hype them up, even if they're fifty years old.

I'm sorry you feel its such an inconvenience for you that these people's blatant falsehoods should be held to account for being what they are; such outrageous falsehoods, but that's simply not good enough Dr.

Now you're confusing primary sources with secondary literature.

These are hardly "outliers" to be swept up after the fact. 80 years should do it, well done chaps, you've figured out which of these blatant lies are blatant lies.

Uh, no, your screenshot mixed up visitors to the Birkenau crematoria who did not necessarily stay long enough to observe everything correctly, with survivors who were never in the crematoria at all and were passing on hearsay, with different Sonderkommandos discussing Kremas II/III versus Kremas IV/V. There are also hearsay and direct witnesses to the Bunkers mixed in.

It also isn't a complete list of the eyewitness accounts for any of these sites.

Similarly, Orthodoxy has nothing but it's head to hang in shame for it's farcical treatment of the introduction holes.

Van Pelt tells us they are not longer there:

Today, these four small holes that connected the wire-mesh columns and the
chimneys [on the roof of Morgue #1, Crematorium II] cannot be observed in
the ruined remains of the concrete slab.

So WTF are we looking at in this photo, Dr SanityCheck other than tampered evidence or a hamfisted attempted at forced convergence? You're a high IQ operator Dr, you know the polar treatment of these holes are mutually exclusive. Someone's to blame, and revisionists have every right to pull these contradictions apart and watch it unravel.

Here's a reality check for you: the revisionist effort expended on trying to debunk Kremas II/III as gas chambers applied to at best 10% of the entire Holocaust and half of Auschwitz. 'No holes' as an argument utterly fails with Kremas IV-V because they were levelled down to the floor with no walls surviving, it also fails with the Bunkers for the exact same reason. It only extends to Krema I.

The argument wasn't advanced by any revisionists until, as far as I recall, the early 1990s - it seemed to come along after the failure of the Leuchter report to resonate more widely. The preconditions were the discovery of the USAAF air photos at the end of the 1970s (highlighting what seemed to be introduction portholes on the roofs of the Krema II/III types) and Pressac's work published in 1989, which included a lot of study of the Bauleitung ground level photos of the crematoria, including the 'little train' photo showing portholes above the crematorium II roof. Pressac did not from what I remember discuss whether the holes were visible for this type, he did discuss the attempted reconstruction of Krema I's holes in the postwar period. He seems to have concluded that Kremas II/III were ruins and not fussed further.

Along comes Faurisson et al screeching 'no holes!' Essentially nobody in the mainstream had cared about this for 45+ years, and once revisionists made it a fetish, then the responses were pretty limited because frankly, you guys had become pretty boring after a decade plus of Faurissonian antics. Some deniers had overegged their arguments with forgery claims, eg John Ball asserting forgery of the air photos. So Michael Shermer looked into the air photos a bit more, leaving just Van Pelt to ask whether it's reasonable to expect them to be visible today.

That was a valid enough point that a judge did not rule in favour of Irving in his libel suit against Lipstadt. Irving's arguments were dramatically more unconvincing on other aspects, and they were also self-contradictory sometimes within minutes of each other. He could not explain the basement cellars and their documentary trail, the 'kitchen sink' approach of air raid carburetion delousing morgue did not work.

For the appeal, the Holocaust History Project group submitted a study correlating air and ground photos with their inspection of the crematoria ruins. That was published after the appeal was withdrawn and is basically where things have sat for over twenty years. Van Pelt got to go mea culpa about this in his book on the trial. The entire issue was a storm in a teacup: it never progressed outside an anti-denial context.

Naturally there have been revisionist rebuttals including from Mattogno, but Mattogno has churned out so much it would be hard to say what he thinks is the parsimonious time-saving argument, and therefore what might matter. Things aren't exactly much clearer with the other remaining revisionist authors, whose main arguments have different emphases. Germar Rudolf unsurprisingly pushes his claims from chemistry re Prussian Blue, but the much more productive and better-read Mattogno doesn't emphasise this argument at all, and seems very skeptical of it.

The parts-versus-whole problem persists regardless: none of the arguments about Birkenau (Krema I being so infrequently used as to be close to irrelevant in the 'debate') work on the other extermination camps or the mass shootings, and as noted several of the arguments about Birkenau don't work on Kremas IV/V or the Bunkers. They also don't tell us what happened, or provide a plausible explanation for how the 'falsehoods' arose, which requires a lot more detail than simply shrieking about lies and falsehoods. They don't therefore actually revise anything.

One of the biggest tragedies of all this nonsense is that the Germans themselves, let alone revisionists, were never offered the chance at competent legal defense. Imagine an alternate universe where the brilliant legal minds of the 3R were afforded the chance to introduce into evidence at Nuremberg, certain arguments like the lack of PB staining, the lack of introduction holes, the non-existence of Kula's Magical Mystery Columns (you know, the trifecta of the murder weapon) - and watch in satisfaction as the Allied Goons kvetch and cope that their fanfiction is unravelling infront of them.

This is your fanfiction, and not really very plausible fanfiction at that, since you presume that arguments evolved by revisionists in the late 1980s-early 1990s were THE best ones to exculpate SS officers and men on trial and get them acquitted.

In reality, the failure of anyone on trial in the postwar era to advance any of the technical arguments concocted later on by deniers casts more than severe doubt on the validity of the denier arguments. If they are so obvious why wouldn't a defense lawyer in West Germany have been told to use them by an accused SS man who was 'there'? Why wouldn't Nazis on the run in Latin America have published detailed explanations of these claims? Neither thing happened.

There were multiple networks of veterans and sympathisers, the Kameradenhilfe, the NPD, right-wing journals and publishers, by the 1960s, and still ties with Latin America despite some platforms like Der Weg fading out. Early revisionism was certainly circulating in the early 1960s. The laws against reviving Nazism or incitement to racial hatred were often brand new and focused elsewhere, this wasn't like the lex Deckert revision to Article 130 on Volksverhetzung which criminalised the 'simple Auschwitz lie'.

The actual defense lawyers involved in 1960s cases were often the same as those who had experience of the 1940s cases - Laternser, Aschenauer and others were highly sympathetic and published often with right-wing presses, but somehow not a single SS/Police veteran of the camps or elsewhere managed to inform them of the magic bullet panacea defences?

Technical rebuttals might satisfy the minds of a later generation coming from a different culture, but they'd likely have proven as off-putting and rebarbative as they did in Irving vs Lipstadt.

Most of all, they would still be confronted with the basic question of what actually happened - in a court room, what would be much more convincing would be a unified front from within the camp staffs but also from other German witnesses who could have explained in detail how the documented evidence of transports to the camps had been cut off and in fact this was how the transit camps worked - and here's proof by way of eyewitness testimony from the arrival points and reception centres elsewhere.

This strategy might have been more convincing - but would still have been confronted by the contrary body of evidence of documents and witnesses pointing to extermination and gassing at the various camps. There would have been hard questions to answer, such as why the SS in the Warthegau located Chelmno well away from a main rail line, or where in the Auschwitz-Birkenau compex 'transitees' were held while awaiting outward transport. The same ones that revisionists today cannot answer.