On consistency of revisionists vs holohoaxers

[Archie]

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.

If you believe the bold part, then you are implicitly disagreeing with Nessie here who says that revisionists and only revisionists are not allowed to revise earlier interpretations or have tentative or incomplete interpretations. Same for his implication that the mainstream has not had any significant disagreements.

[HansHill]

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.

The list provides a clear indicator (1) or (2) as to whether the witness is delivering primary or second hand testimony. For an example of one such (1) witness, please see:

https://holocaustencyclopedia.com/witne ... sofia/664/

inb4 cherrypicking - I was satisfied to leave the list in toto for the curious mind to explore by himself, until you pressed the issue.

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.

What even is this argument - the merits of discrediting a claim do not increase linearly with number of victims it would pertain to. Investigating the shrunken heads of Buchenwald, were it even one or two victims, holds every bit of merit as investigating the absent holes at Krema II or the fields of Treblinka. You could argue it gives a rank order in preference in a tight turn around, but we're in no rush, are we?

In fact, I could argue it's not linear at all, in that arguments are weighted heavily towards Kremas I/II as that is what "the Holocaust" is for Joe-Bag-Of-Donuts. Matt Cockerill and Mike "Enoch" Peinovich famously discussed this point once, "the holocaust" is gas chambers, for all intents and purposes. Discrediting that is kinda the meat and potatoes of it.

'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.

This is dishonest - had Kremas IV / V been available to revisionists to study, "No Holes" would not even be pertinent to Revisionists, as that is not the alleged introduction method. It would be "No Hatches No Holocaust" and the anti-revisionist cope would have to focus on something else entirely.

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.

Well done on attempting to make it sound completely irrational to draw attention to an alarming inconsistency with the Holocaust narrative. It is however, not irrational at all. All you've really done is narrated on Pressac ignoring x-important thing and Revisionists drawing attention to x-important thing.

That was a valid enough point that a judge did not rule in favour of Irving in his libel suit against Lipstadt.

Not the point - the point was Holocaust TM being caught with its knickers down until somebody bothered to develop a """fetish""" for something so basic as to, you know, how all the genocide was supposedly done in one of the key sites.

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.

Correct, and for their part - the HHP used the obvious presence of the rebar issue as a +1 to their case that the building was modified....



"But hey, that's a Revisionist argument" - Any Eagle Eyed Observer

It most certainly is

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.

Chemist focuses on chemistry, got 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.

Not sure how this is a problem exactly - why would arguments pertaining to Zyklon->Holes->Shaft->Cremation via furnace be expected to "work" against the backdrop of Jury rigged engine ->CO->bury ->excavate -> incinerate on pyres? You would absolutely expect different arguments for both sets of camps, and an entirely different set of arguments for the shootings.

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.

My fanfiction would, if nothing else, force a compelling and legally sound answer to all the open questions your lot still have. The closest to anything "technical" being introduced and accepted by a modern day court of law is Van Pelt's testimony that the holes exist, and subsequent embarrassment for Orthodoxy as noted above, and James Roth attesting to the methods and results of the Leuchter samples, and his subsequent reversal in the Mr Bean i mean Death movie.

[SanityCheck]

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.

If you believe the bold part, then you are implicitly disagreeing with Nessie here who says that revisionists and only revisionists are not allowed to revise earlier interpretations or have tentative or incomplete interpretations. Same for his implication that the mainstream has not had any significant disagreements.

I'd explicitly disagree with Nessie on both points.

The problem is comparing like with like. Conventional historiography is simply much more extensive as there are many thousands of proper studies, whereas revisionism is a much smaller genre, with also a much narrower set of concerns. It would be inevitable that there are more errors and disagreements in a much larger volume of studies, the question is their proportion and how significant they are.

By contrast, with fewer revisionist works, a higher rate of outright errors is more damaging, even once one has excluded the parrots and popularisers. Disagreements may be more serious as contradictions if one takes a small set like the 52 volumes of the Holocaust Handbooks, or the entire output of a particular publisher like Castle Hill and now ARMREG.

Staeglich isn't included in the Holocaust Handbooks series, but was republished by Rudolf via Castle Hill and now ARMREG. He had to write an introduction distancing contemporary revisionism from some of Staeglich's claims. Those did rear up online over the past 20 years, including a mini-craze for what is called Krema Denial (denying the Birkenau crematoria were even crematoria at all) which had to be called out on CODOH and elsewhere. Some of Staeglich's other arguments are relatively standard for revisionism so are repeated by subsequent works. He was the originator of the air raid shelter thesis propagated by Crowell, which does not really feature at great length in the Holocaust Handbooks series.

Butz however is in the Holocaust Handbooks series, so his original arguments remain visible despite 'revisions' with footnotes pointing to more recent studies. His original argument was that Vergasungskeller was a carburetion chamber, which did not catch on. It's fine to see this as a tentative interpretation but it was still rather discrediting. By the 1990s he had circled back to other claims including somewhat endorsing the air raid shelter thesis, but ultimately it's entirely unclear what his interpretation really is, which he more or less admitted regarding some other documents in the 1990s, before he largely went silent. There are many other arguments in Butz which have not stood the test of time even within revisionism, such as his denial of the Hungarian Action's scale, which Mattogno, Graf and Crowell all refuted circa 2000. The 'hoax' thesis for wartime reports rested on a rather cursory skim through the New York Times, which is by now seriously underwhelming when one should be looking at the reports written in Poland.

Staeglich passed away some time ago, and has probably only been occasionally cited in 21st Century revisionist literature. Which is another good criteria for relevance and significance. Outdated work tends to be superseded so there is no reason to reference it, and this ties in with books going out of print or not becoming legal ebooks. On a particular point like Krema denial which Staeglich only flirted with, he is an obvious outlier. On the air raid shelter thesis he is a much clearer source of inspiration, and so his tentative Krema denial matters to establish his overall credibility.

Rassinier's books are still accessible but seem to be rarely cited or read these days. But they were given due attention in Van Pelt's report and book for the Irving vs Lipstadt trial - twenty five years ago, when they would have mattered more due to being closer in time. Rassinier cannot be totally disowned as he was the first proper revisionist (after 1940s critics of the trials and proto-revisionists), but it's not that even a contest when contrasting him with Poliakov, Reitlinger and Hilberg. Which matters since that was the contrast which remained current for the 1960s and 1970s. Butz read Rassinier and other revisionists after him, and then the conventional authors and decided to become a revisionist. Which wasn't that common, at least in terms of becoming a published author. One reason may be because Rassinier's books were not as impressive as they were hyped to be in the 1960s on the right.

All of these authors are now thoroughly superseded because of the availability of more sources and more evidence. This also applies to other Cold War era revisionist authors like Walter Sanning, who tried developing Rassinier's demographic arguments. Sanning is also now in the Holocaust Handbooks series, so like Butz has apparent current official endorsement, and he was certainly being somewhat ritualistically cited in 1980s to 21st Century revisionism. There has been virtually no effort to follow up on Sanning's approach, certainly no book-length study. Such a work would require engaging with a hell of a lot more conventional studies on emigration, immigration and Jewish communities, so it naturally would look too much like hard work for most. But that means the demographic argument which was at the core of original revisionism in Rassinier has basically died a death. What is left are very crude numbers games which will not come across as serious.

[Nessie]

You have accused me of not addressing anything with my last response, so.....

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.

Correct, "revisionist assumptions", as you have no evidence from anyone who worked inside a Krema, or a document, that specifically refers to using the Leichenkeller to store corpses, 1943-4. That lack of evidence is why revisonists have not unified around the corpse store as the revised history of the buildings.

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?

I have not assumed that it would be impossible to use the Leichenkellers as showers, as that was well within German engineering and design capabilities. You then go on to admit there is no evidence beyond planning, and that the Leichenkellers were never used as showers. That will be why revisionists have not unified around showering as the revised history.

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.

Pressac is not making an assumption, because of the eyewitnesses and circumstantial evidence for the gas chambers being made to look like showers. A shower head has also been found inside the ruins of Krema II. You are assuming there were 14 real showers somewhere in the building, because you have no evidence of people taking showers there. No eyewitness, nothing.

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.

According to revisionists Rudolf and Leuchter, the Kremas cannot have been used for delousing, because of the lack of HCN residue and Prussian Blue staining. That is why revisionists have not unified around the Leichenkellers for delousing/dis-infestation.

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

I do keep that in mind, which is why I say the Kremas were used to gas people, because of the 100% of Krema workers who state that happened and all the documentary, physical and circumstantial evidence that corroborates them and proves actual usage 1943-4. That volume of corroborating evidence, is why all historians have unified around the gas chambers narrative.

[SanityCheck]

@HansHill: this thread is about in essence, historiography, both revisionist and conventional historiography, and whether revisionists are more or less consistent than conventional historians. Your latest reply has descended to details and sources so is basically just a rehash of the same Auschwitz debates which could have happened at any time over the past 20-30 years online, and for me over the past 19 years personally.

Unsurprisingly, you also dodged the point about the best defense being explaining what actually happened, since that is still the question you guys hate most. If you ignore such aspects and can't even offer any comments on what would have been the best way for the SS to defend itself after 1945, then I can't be bothered to follow you down the usual rabbit holes.

[HansHill]

That's fine Dr, I invite the mods to move my reply if they feel its necessary - however i believe they will agree it touches on enough inconsistencies to stay put.

[Nessie]

.... Nessie here who says that revisionists and only revisionists are not allowed to revise earlier interpretations or have tentative or incomplete interpretations.

I did not say you were not allowed to, I said you are wrong to claim you are revising history, when you admit to only producing tentative of incomplete interpretations. You were just discussing Crowell and the showers revision, which you admit did not happen, so it is not a revision! You admitted to assumptions about corpse storing, so that is also not a revision. The suggestion of delousing is explicitly contradicted by many revisionists. That is why you are so-called revisionists, as you fail to revise.

Same for his implication that the mainstream has not had any significant disagreements.

They have not. From the earliest reports of the Kremas being used to gas people, from escaped prisoners, through to the present day histories of the buildings, there is 100% agreement, they were gas chambers.

[Nessie]

....

If you believe the bold part, then you are implicitly disagreeing with Nessie here who says that revisionists and only revisionists are not allowed to revise earlier interpretations or have tentative or incomplete interpretations. Same for his implication that the mainstream has not had any significant disagreements.

I'd explicitly disagree with Nessie on both points.

...

I did not make either of the points attributed to me, by Archie, who has used the strawman fallacy.

[SanityCheck]

....

If you believe the bold part, then you are implicitly disagreeing with Nessie here who says that revisionists and only revisionists are not allowed to revise earlier interpretations or have tentative or incomplete interpretations. Same for his implication that the mainstream has not had any significant disagreements.

I'd explicitly disagree with Nessie on both points.

...

I did not make either of the points attributed to me, by Archie, who has used the strawman fallacy.

Can you find and point to where you came closest to these points?

[Archie]

Nessie, everyone has heard you make these arguments ad nauseum. See the quote in the OP. And here are a couple more from the same day from multiple threads.

The Auschwitz museum website publishes photos with the name, date of birth, date of deportation and the supposed end of this individual, usually saying that after selection he was killed in a gas chamber. You offer nothing more, only your authority. But for the exterminationists it is up to us to prove that this did not happen.

The museum states that certain people from transports were killed, because;

1 - there is evidence to prove those not selected for work, were sent to the gas chambers and killed.
2 - there is evidence that person was not selected for work.
3 - there is no evidence of that person appearing on any transport or camp record, or being traced, after the date of the selection.

If revisionists really were revisionists, they would understand that it is their job to produce a revised history of what happened to people not selected for work. They would prove gassings did not happen, by proving what did happen. It is rather comical when some do try to revise the history, as they fail to produce any evidence to prove what really took place inside the Kremas and two farm house bunkers at Birkenau and they fall apart into contradictory disagreement. That is why, despite some objecting, so-called revisionists are really deniers, as all they do is deny that mass gassings took place killing nearly a million people.

.....

The historians are correct, because they have by far the best evidenced history.

So-called revisionists are wrong, because their various suggested histories are so poorly evidenced, they cannot even agree amongst themselves what the history was, and they cannot produce an evidenced chronology of events, that concludes with millions of Jews still alive in 1945.

You say revisionists are inconsistent because we have some differing interpretations of 80 year old construction documents for which the necessary context has been lost.

You ignore 100% of the eyewitness evidence, and a lot of the circumstantial evidence around the operation of the Kremas, and then come up with wildly different, unevidenced "interpretations". You fail at the basics of historical investigation. It should tell you something important, that so-called revisionists cannot even agree on the revision. It should tell you the evidence is just not there, to support any suggested revision.

Meanwhile your side cannot even agree on the most basic, major things like when Hitler ordered the Holocaust, and the story has evolved rather significantly over the years. Even now there are many inconsistencies in the literature.

I have pointed this out to you before and you just say that the disagreements on the orthodox side don't count as long as they "agree" in some vague sense. You are totally unprincipled in your arguments.

Not agreeing on a date, is very different from not agreeing on what the Kremas were used for, especially when that disagreement includes it was, and it cannot have been, used for delousing.

Historians agree, the mass killings happened with Hitler's approval and knowledge and A-B had its Kremas, two farm houses and a cellar room variously used as gas chambers. That is because the evidence is there, to prove gassings happened.

Your view on this is 100% bias and special pleading.

You say revisionists are not allowed to have disagreement on the interpretation of construction documents while pretending there are no disagreements on your side. When disagreements on your side are pointed out, you reflexively dismiss it as "minor."

[Nessie]

I'd explicitly disagree with Nessie on both points.

...

I did not make either of the points attributed to me, by Archie, who has used the strawman fallacy.

Can you find and point to where you came closest to these points?

No to the first one. The second will be from where I have said that there have been no significant disagreements about things like the process of mass arrests, transports, ghettos, selections and deaths inside chambers, or the use of the A-B Kremas for gassings. I have stated that there have been disagreements over issues such as death tolls and the start of and planning for the mass murders. Archie has cherry-picked the times I have exampled no significant disagreement.

[Nessie]

Nessie, everyone has heard you make these arguments ad nauseum. See the quote in the OP. And here are a couple more from the same day from multiple threads.

The Auschwitz museum website publishes photos with the name, date of birth, date of deportation and the supposed end of this individual, usually saying that after selection he was killed in a gas chamber. You offer nothing more, only your authority. But for the exterminationists it is up to us to prove that this did not happen.

The museum states that certain people from transports were killed, because;

1 - there is evidence to prove those not selected for work, were sent to the gas chambers and killed.
2 - there is evidence that person was not selected for work.
3 - there is no evidence of that person appearing on any transport or camp record, or being traced, after the date of the selection.

If revisionists really were revisionists, they would understand that it is their job to produce a revised history of what happened to people not selected for work. They would prove gassings did not happen, by proving what did happen. It is rather comical when some do try to revise the history, as they fail to produce any evidence to prove what really took place inside the Kremas and two farm house bunkers at Birkenau and they fall apart into contradictory disagreement. That is why, despite some objecting, so-called revisionists are really deniers, as all they do is deny that mass gassings took place killing nearly a million people.

You say revisionists are inconsistent because we have some differing interpretations of 80 year old construction documents for which the necessary context has been lost.

You ignore 100% of the eyewitness evidence, and a lot of the circumstantial evidence around the operation of the Kremas, and then come up with wildly different, unevidenced "interpretations". You fail at the basics of historical investigation. It should tell you something important, that so-called revisionists cannot even agree on the revision. It should tell you the evidence is just not there, to support any suggested revision.

Meanwhile your side cannot even agree on the most basic, major things like when Hitler ordered the Holocaust, and the story has evolved rather significantly over the years. Even now there are many inconsistencies in the literature.

I have pointed this out to you before and you just say that the disagreements on the orthodox side don't count as long as they "agree" in some vague sense. You are totally unprincipled in your arguments.

Not agreeing on a date, is very different from not agreeing on what the Kremas were used for, especially when that disagreement includes it was, and it cannot have been, used for delousing.

Historians agree, the mass killings happened with Hitler's approval and knowledge and A-B had its Kremas, two farm houses and a cellar room variously used as gas chambers. That is because the evidence is there, to prove gassings happened.

Your view on this is 100% bias and special pleading.

You say revisionists are not allowed to have disagreement on the interpretation of construction documents while pretending there are no disagreements on your side. When disagreements on your side are pointed out, you reflexively dismiss it as "minor."

You are allowed to, I have no authority to stop you and I leave you to it in the research and discussion part of the forum. Your suggestion that I get to allow, or stop anything, is made up nonsense. My point is that your disagreement proves how poorly evidenced your so-called revisionism is.

The disagreements on my side are minor, especially when compared to the disagreements on your side. A disagreement over a start date, by a few months, is nothing compared to revisionists claiming a Krema was used for delousing and that it cannot have been used for delousing.

[Archie]

You are allowed to, I have no authority to stop you and I leave you to it in the research and discussion part of the forum. Your suggestion that I get to allow, or stop anything, is made up nonsense. My point is that your disagreement proves how poorly evidenced your so-called revisionism is.

The disagreements on my side are minor, especially when compared to the disagreements on your side. A disagreement over a start date, by a few months, is nothing compared to revisionists claiming a Krema was used for delousing and that it cannot have been used for delousing.

"My point is that your disagreement proves how poorly evidenced your so-called revisionism is."

It should suggest only that the evidence is lacking on that particular point, the interpretation of 80 year old, out-of-context, building maintenance records.

"A disagreement over a start date, by a few months"

The story that was told through the 1970s is utterly different than the one told now. It's not minor at all. And approximately 100% of the general public still believes the old version.

"...revisionists claiming a Krema was used for delousing and that it cannot have been used for delousing"

You can't even tell me why Himmler ordered the crematoria to be built.

[Nessie]

You are allowed to, I have no authority to stop you and I leave you to it in the research and discussion part of the forum. Your suggestion that I get to allow, or stop anything, is made up nonsense. My point is that your disagreement proves how poorly evidenced your so-called revisionism is.

The disagreements on my side are minor, especially when compared to the disagreements on your side. A disagreement over a start date, by a few months, is nothing compared to revisionists claiming a Krema was used for delousing and that it cannot have been used for delousing.

"My point is that your disagreement proves how poorly evidenced your so-called revisionism is."

It should suggest only that the evidence is lacking on that particular point, the interpretation of 80 year old, out-of-context, building maintenance records.

Yes, agreed, your interpretations lack evidence.

"A disagreement over a start date, by a few months"

The story that was told through the 1970s is utterly different than the one told now. It's not minor at all. And approximately 100% of the general public still believes the old version.

The public were being told Auschwitz was a death camp, with gas chambers, during the war, based on the earliest intelligence reports, from escaped prisoners. That has never changed. Even the death toll being reduced from 4 to 1.1 million was not a full change, rather it was an alignment between eastern and western historians.

"...revisionists claiming a Krema was used for delousing and that it cannot have been used for delousing"

You can't even tell me why Himmler ordered the crematoria to be built.

It was to be crematoriums, which were temporarily repurposed as gas chambers, 1943-4. Whether Himmler anticipated or ordered the repurposing, we do not know. It is likely he did not expect to lose the war, so the future of the buildings was to be crematoriums, in a Birkenau that was also planned to be expanded, with the addition of "Mexico".