Exterminationist Tactics - part 2

[Numar Patru]

1) Focus on Rows 1-3, which are the gas chamber walls. Higher levels on the walls; lower levels at greater depth into the wall (Row 3) and outside the gas chamber (Row 4).

2) If these are human test subjects, then they would never have been placed in any actual danger since that would have been unethical -- unless these studies are retrospective, which is possible but unlikely given the same type of engine being used on all subjects in each study.

3) But your focus on diesel is cherry picking.

[SanityCheck]

The citation is:

Stalin's Defectors - pg 134 of the Oxford 2017 edition.

Interestingly, where he states this, he doesn't offer any citation - thanks for drawing even more attention to this, as it further indicates exactly as I am arguing, that he presents such genocidal arguments as self evident when they are anything but.

There's a footnote at the end of the relevant paragraph, which is about the recruitment of Trawnikis from Soviet POW camps. So yes he does offer references.

The camp Bukreev now found himself in had been constructed to serve as an SS training ground in woods close to Trawniki, about 35 kilometres outside the Polish town of Lublin. Between September 1941 and June 1944, when both trainers and trainees were evacuated to escape the wrath of the advancing Red Army, just under 5,000 guards (Schutzmannschaften) were trained here in the fine art of SS brutality. After graduation, they served, often with remarkable cruelty, in antipartisan operations, the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto Rising, and in ‘Operation Reinhard’: the extermination of 1.7 million Jews from the formerly Polish ‘Generalgouvernement’. Trawniki served in all majo extermination camps: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Majdanek.59

59 - Kudryashov, ‘Ordinary Collaborators’, 227, 229, 231, 232; Konrad Kwiet, ‘Trawniki’, in Lexikon des Holocaust, ed. Wolfgang Benz (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2002), 235–6; Yitzhak Arad, TheHolocaust in the Soviet Union (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009), 274, 585 n. 3; and Black, ‘Foot Soldiers’; Benz, Handlanger, 65–6.

note 52 on the previous p.133 gives the full details of these studies if they were given abbreviated citations (Arad's Holocaust in the Soviet Union was new)

57 On the ‘standard procedure’ of recruitment of Trawniki guards see Sergei Kudryashov, ‘Ordinary Collaborators: The Case of the Travniki Guards’, in Russia: War, Peace and Diplomacy. Essays in Honour of John Erickson, ed. Ljubica Erickson and Mark Erickson (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005), 226–39; here: 230; also: David Alan Rich, ‘Reinhard’s Footsoldiers: Soviet Trophy Documents and Investigative Records as Sources’, in Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide, ed. V. John Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 688–701; here: 690. The most
thorough explorations are Peter Black, ‘Foot Soldiers of the Final Solution: The Trawniki Training Camp and Operation Reinhard’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 25, no. 1 (2011):1–99; and Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS. Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2015). On variations to the recruitment procedure see ibid. 70–8.


So there's no lack of references. Edele seems to have taken the figure of 1.7 million from Peter Black's article on the Trawnikis, which then gives a lower figure of 1.5 million in the next paragraph on p.2. But the footnote to the 1.7 million figure references ghetto deportations, which Black goes on to discuss as Trawnikis took part in these as well, while the 1.5 million 'direct' figure references the then-standard literature on the Reinhard camps (Black's article appeared in 2011).

15. For the killing centers and deportations, see Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka:The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Ru¨ckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, 132–242. Only Sobibor has a solid historical monograph: Jules Schelvis, Sobibor: A History of a Death Camp (Oxford: Berg in association with the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007). For Treblinka 2, see Jacek Młynarczyk, “Treblinka—Ein Todeslager der ‘Aktion Reinhardt,’” in Musial, Vo¨lkermord, 257–81; for Belzec, see Michael Tregenza, “Belzec—Das vergessene Lager des Holocausts,” Jahrbuch des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts (2000): 241–67.

So we rapidly find Arad 1987, a widely cited reference whose conclusion uses the 1.7 million figure and presented data on deportations in appendices citing also commonly cited overview articles on the regions of the Government-General. Arad 1987 has at least 486 citations according to Google Scholar (likely a slight underestimate, but this fits well with how often I've seen it cited)
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=e ... inka&btnG=

I would not consider this 'self evident' since the referencing swiftly connects via the literature on Trawnikis to the literature on the Reinhard camps, which in turn cites and discusses the key trial judgements and Polish investigation reports from 1945. (Note that Black also cites Rueckerl.)

It is an entirely unreasonable expectation to rehash an adjacent topic (how many died in the Reinhard camps) in a book which is only peripherally connected to the Reinhard camps; Edele cited most of the key studies of the Trawnikis (but missed a few more) which was his real subject. He could have cited Sara Berger's 2013 book Experten der Vernichtung, which recalculated deportations in the wake of further regional studies and the discovery of the Hoefle telegram, offering a figure of 1.6 million in the conclusion (p.387). If he had written a whole chapter on the Trawnikis instead of a few pages I would have expected him to have cited Berger, that's all.


Citing references and using someone else's calculations is not an 'appeal to authority' or 'appeal to consensus' or 'circular reasoning'. It is quite clearly standard practice, since the same mechanism can be observed with every other case of mass death discussed in scholarship or summarised on Wikipedia.

The estimate ranges for such mass fatalities can be quite drastic, and one soon realises surveying Wikipedia as well as secondary literature and tertiary sources (encyclopedias) that some of the figures bandied about are even more 'estimated' and less grounded in sources than Arad in 1987 on the number of victims of the Reinhard camps.

Try digesting this table and following the sourcing used by an internet poster who compiled a list of death tolls to address the arguments bandied around on the internet 25 years ago. The website author, Matthew White, went on to publish a book, Atrocitology, which stuck to the same secondary-tertiary sources level.
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm

The sheer uncertainties with often largely uninvestigated (in a war crimes investigation sense) mass fatalities and estimate ranges with other six and seven figure mass fatalities are one of many reasons why I can't take you guys seriously.

[curioussoul]

No, it doesn't.

It very much does. Mainstream Holocaust historians skirt the historical method and do not critically examine previous research or conclusions, but rather uncritically build upon previous conclusions as if they were absolute truth. This is a common problem in the humanities as a whole. The reproducibility crisis and the crisis of modern peer review is not limited to the humanities but the problem is at its absolute worst in those disciplines, and reaches its peak within Holocaust academia.

This is one of the reasons almost nothing of value has been published in terms of primary Holocaust research from orthodox historians in the past 20 years. Most "research" consist of rehashed meta studies, reviews, etc.

Um, just no.

You clearly have not got the slightest familiarity with the conventional research literature on the Holocaust if you think most research is "rehashed meta studies, reviews, etc".

The lack of specificity in your handwaving is a bit telling.

I'm very much familiar with conventional, mainstream, orthodox research on the Holocaust and I try to stay up-to-date with the latest findings and publications (which, to be fair, is not an awful lot), in addition to the latest revisionist research (which tends to be higher in quality but also in its historiographical rigor and utilization of primary source documents). Since I've been involved in academia for many years and know the comings and goings of academic research in the humanities there's no point pretending that what mainstream Holocaust studies have accomplished in the last 20 years is anything short of laughable in the strictly scientific and historical sense.

[curioussoul]

The absolute gall of saying this while it's currently illegal to be a revisionist in the places where the relevant archives would be.

The digitisation of archives in the past 5-15 years has pretty much sunk that excuse, I'm afraid.

That's obviously complete nonsense as most of the key archives, such as the Polish Auschwitz Museum archive, is yet to be digitized (let alone in its entirety), as well as the Soviet archives in Moscow. The fact that almost nothing from the Polish Hoess trial is digitized should tell you everything you need to know about how serious this supposed historical field actually is. But even if these archives were entirely and completely digitized, that doesn't mean Holocaust revisionists attempting to publish their findings are not in legal jeopardy, not to mention the complete lack of funding for conducting large-scale, broad primary revisionist research on the Holocaust. In that sense, what only a few handful of revisionists have accomplished with little to no funding is almost superhuman. Compared to the lazy, sloppy and unscientific research conducted by most mainstream historians, it's truly remarkable how little the mainstream has accomplished since the war.

[SanityCheck]

I'm very much familiar with conventional, mainstream, orthodox research on the Holocaust and I try to stay up-to-date with the latest findings and publications (which, to be fair, is not an awful lot), in addition to the latest revisionist research (which tends to be higher in quality but also in its historiographical rigor and utilization of primary source documents). Since I've been involved in academia for many years and know the comings and goings of academic research in the humanities there's no point pretending that what mainstream Holocaust studies have accomplished in the last 20 years is anything short of laughable in the strictly scientific and historical sense.

Still no specifics, not even any indication of which languages you're talking about, nor any acknowledgement of the sub-literatures.

[SanityCheck]

That's obviously complete nonsense as most of the key archives, such as the Polish Auschwitz Museum archive, is yet to be digitized (let alone in its entirety), as well as the Soviet archives in Moscow. The fact that almost nothing from the Polish Hoess trial is digitized should tell you everything you need to know about how serious this supposed historical field actually is. But even if these archives were entirely and completely digitized, that doesn't mean Holocaust revisionists attempting to publish their findings are not in legal jeopardy, not to mention the complete lack of funding for conducting large-scale, broad primary revisionist research on the Holocaust. In that sense, what only a few handful of revisionists have accomplished with little to no funding is almost superhuman. Compared to the lazy, sloppy and unscientific research conducted by most mainstream historians, it's truly remarkable how little the mainstream has accomplished since the war.

As you're still failing to demonstrate any *actual* familiarity with mainstream historiography, the concluding bluster is rather cute.

Digitisation has proceeded on several levels. The first public level of open access archives online has put more than enough out there to keep someone busy for years- all the NMT trials, all the key captured German records NARA microfilm series, many of the Bundesarchiv originals also added (Himmler's papers being brought to a high percentage just before Christmas), many other archives around the world uploading key collections. Yad Vashem and the Arolsen Archives provide a wealth of extra sources, so do the translations of Polish investigations at Chronicles of Terror. All of the West and East German trial judgements are open access now. The Eichmann trial has been online in full (with document exhibits) for almost 15 years. The key files of the German Foreign Office archive (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts) have been online for about 3 years now. The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial investigation files have been digitised for several years open access, as they're now part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The Ringelblum Archive is also part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, and has been completely published alongside uploads of the originals, in Polish with a quarter of the volumes already translated to English.

Document editions, diaries and published sources beyond the Justiz und NS-Verbrechen series are pretty numerous, many being open access now - the entire VEJ series of 16 volumes for one. Others are accessible with a university login. The logic of document editions might be called into question with open access digitisation, but translations and annotations still add value. There are new editions of significance and relevance virtually every year. Russian and Ukrainian language document editions also abound on respective elibraries or websites, some new and some old. Retrospective digitisation of older works has made serious inroads into many early publications, too.

All of this represents a complete sea change from 15 years ago. A number of collections which were marketed through the commercial digital archive providers like Gale Cengage are now open access - the Wiener Library testimonies collection (open access and now also translated), Hans Frank's Diensttagebuch, and other things which looked rather limp when these were seemingly the only things on offer.

The pace has accelerated since 2020, and will only snowball in the coming years. One outcome of the 2022 war in Ukraine was the digitisation of USHMM's copies of various Ukrainian archive collections from their microfilms, while the archives in Ukraine also picked up their pace and have put more online.

The third level is digitisation internal to archives, which is where your complaints about the Hoess trial et al fall entirely flat. USHMM has digital copies of all of these collections, either in full (all of the NTN trials) or in extensive sample form (the former Osobyi Arkhiv collections, with the ZBL Auschwitz collection in full). Most cannot be put online open access due to the copying agreements or national privacy law concerns. But they can be downloaded on-site and taken away on personal hard drives. One signs waivers for a few of the European archives, with relatively little detail, the main concern seems to be people slapping things online without permission, beyond that the materials are fair game, and for the Polish and former Soviet archives, there are no forms, just statements about not publishing things without permission (which also holds true for British archives, among others, so is not some sinister conspiracy). The waivers aren't for specific files, just entire archives if the originating archive demanded this. So not even vaguely traceable.

David Irving was reported through the grapevine as visiting USHMM back in the 2010s, along with the reply to someone's query about why he was being let in, that he couldn't be turned away, as USHMM is a public archive. There are exceedingly few name 'revisionists' with any real notoriety, and a new researcher would pass entirely under the radar, especially as they might well decide to use a pseudonym for publications (like Thomas Dalton has).

[Archie]

If you can't convince someone of something, the next best option is to try to confuse matters. Make the topic seem really complicated and expansive. That is exactly what I would do if had to defend something like the Holocaust.

Because murdering millions of people across a whole continent while a war is going on is easy and compact?

Large scale events should be easier to prove because they're harder to hide and leave more evidence. And that's especially the case here given that the Third Reich fell soon after the events in question (which greatly limits the extent of a potential cover-up.) It is true that with large scale events that endless volumes can be written about them, but that is neither here nor there. If our purpose is merely to determine whether the Holocaust is substantially true or whether it's a hoax, that should, in theory, be relatively easy to settle.

[Nazgul]

The Jews can also be tracked, but often only so far and then trail stops. Revisionists need to produce evidence of their trail continuing.

Yes the trail stops. 99% of the Todt and Schmelt records have gone. I think it might have something to do with the Polish and Soviet Extraordinary commissions. However, there is enough evidence left from witnesses to draw a different picture from the one you promulgate with religious fervour.

[Archie]

That's obviously complete nonsense as most of the key archives, such as the Polish Auschwitz Museum archive, is yet to be digitized (let alone in its entirety), as well as the Soviet archives in Moscow. The fact that almost nothing from the Polish Hoess trial is digitized should tell you everything you need to know about how serious this supposed historical field actually is. But even if these archives were entirely and completely digitized, that doesn't mean Holocaust revisionists attempting to publish their findings are not in legal jeopardy, not to mention the complete lack of funding for conducting large-scale, broad primary revisionist research on the Holocaust. In that sense, what only a few handful of revisionists have accomplished with little to no funding is almost superhuman. Compared to the lazy, sloppy and unscientific research conducted by most mainstream historians, it's truly remarkable how little the mainstream has accomplished since the war.

As you're still failing to demonstrate any *actual* familiarity with mainstream historiography, the concluding bluster is rather cute.

Digitisation has proceeded on several levels. The first public level of open access archives online has put more than enough out there to keep someone busy for years- all the NMT trials, all the key captured German records NARA microfilm series, many of the Bundesarchiv originals also added (Himmler's papers being brought to a high percentage just before Christmas), many other archives around the world uploading key collections. Yad Vashem and the Arolsen Archives provide a wealth of extra sources, so do the translations of Polish investigations at Chronicles of Terror. All of the West and East German trial judgements are open access now. The Eichmann trial has been online in full (with document exhibits) for almost 15 years. The key files of the German Foreign Office archive (Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts) have been online for about 3 years now. The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial investigation files have been digitised for several years open access, as they're now part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. The Ringelblum Archive is also part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, and has been completely published alongside uploads of the originals, in Polish with a quarter of the volumes already translated to English.

Document editions, diaries and published sources beyond the Justiz und NS-Verbrechen series are pretty numerous, many being open access now - the entire VEJ series of 16 volumes for one. Others are accessible with a university login. The logic of document editions might be called into question with open access digitisation, but translations and annotations still add value. There are new editions of significance and relevance virtually every year. Russian and Ukrainian language document editions also abound on respective elibraries or websites, some new and some old. Retrospective digitisation of older works has made serious inroads into many early publications, too.

All of this represents a complete sea change from 15 years ago. A number of collections which were marketed through the commercial digital archive providers like Gale Cengage are now open access - the Wiener Library testimonies collection (open access and now also translated), Hans Frank's Diensttagebuch, and other things which looked rather limp when these were seemingly the only things on offer.

The pace has accelerated since 2020, and will only snowball in the coming years. One outcome of the 2022 war in Ukraine was the digitisation of USHMM's copies of various Ukrainian archive collections from their microfilms, while the archives in Ukraine also picked up their pace and have put more online.

The third level is digitisation internal to archives, which is where your complaints about the Hoess trial et al fall entirely flat. USHMM has digital copies of all of these collections, either in full (all of the NTN trials) or in extensive sample form (the former Osobyi Arkhiv collections, with the ZBL Auschwitz collection in full). Most cannot be put online open access due to the copying agreements or national privacy law concerns. But they can be downloaded on-site and taken away on personal hard drives. One signs waivers for a few of the European archives, with relatively little detail, the main concern seems to be people slapping things online without permission, beyond that the materials are fair game, and for the Polish and former Soviet archives, there are no forms, just statements about not publishing things without permission (which also holds true for British archives, among others, so is not some sinister conspiracy). The waivers aren't for specific files, just entire archives if the originating archive demanded this. So not even vaguely traceable.

David Irving was reported through the grapevine as visiting USHMM back in the 2010s, along with the reply to someone's query about why he was being let in, that he couldn't be turned away, as USHMM is a public archive. There are exceedingly few name 'revisionists' with any real notoriety, and a new researcher would pass entirely under the radar, especially as they might well decide to use a pseudonym for publications (like Thomas Dalton has).

There's no question revisionists have a major disadvantage in terms of resources. Our only real advantage is that we are correct, and it turns out it's way easier to argue the correct side. If the orthodox side were right along with the resource advantage, they would have mopped the floor with us decades ago. Yet here we are.

Additional sources are well and good. I'm glad they are becoming more available. I think it will only help us. But it will take us some time to go through since there aren't a lot of full-time revisionists. It is what it is. It's just not economically viable or personally practical for most people to do that sort of work in their spare time.

I'm fine with additional research, but I very much doubt that the material I have not seen tells a radically different story that the stuff I have seen, so I don't put much stock in vague claims about supposed documents proving the Holocaust that hardly anyone has seen. A while ago when Cockerill was still on the forum, he was talking about how he had to delay a debate because he wanted visit archives in Europe. It struck me as rather ridiculous that he would feel the need to do original research in the archives for a debate for a general audience! Why would you need to do that to prove the most certain historical event of all-time? Implicitly, he seemed to be conceding that the huge amount of published materials didn't do the job.
https://archive.codohforum.com/20230609 ... =2&t=14982

[SanityCheck]

There's no question revisionists have a major disadvantage in terms of resources. Our only real advantage is that we are correct, and it turns out it's way easier to argue the correct side. If the orthodox side were right along with the resource advantage, they would have mopped the floor with us decades ago. Yet here we are.

It's impossible to persuade 100% of people of *anything*, and there are more than enough examples of manifestly irrational beliefs shared by much larger percentages of the population to make the persistence of diehards not a persuasive argument in favour of the correctness of the idea.

Your 'correctness' apparently still does not extend to being able to explain what actually happened. I know you hate it when this is pointed out but it's still the #1 question asked when someone pauses long enough to hear a revisionist out, and it's why there's no place for you guys in serious venues, since what happened rather than what supposedly didn't happen is quite obviously the typical focus of pretty much everything. Finding out either that more of something happened or that there are better ways of establishing that less happened are also the bread and butter of proper discussions. Then there's the wee problem of a total lack of clarity about what supposedly did not happen, since gassing and killing by the Nazis (and their allies and accomplices) affected non-Jews who were gassed and Jews who were killed by other means (as well as non-Jews killed by other means).

Additional sources are well and good. I'm glad they are becoming more available. I think it will only help us. But it will take us some time to go through since there aren't a lot of full-time revisionists. It is what it is. It's just not economically viable or personally practical for most people to do that sort of work in their spare time.

A while ago when Cockerill was still on the forum, he was talking about how he had to delay a debate because he wanted visit archives in Europe. It struck me as rather ridiculous that he would feel the need to do original research in the archives for a debate for a general audience! Why would you need to do that to prove the most certain historical event of all-time? Implicitly, he seemed to be conceding that the huge amount of published materials didn't do the job.
https://archive.codohforum.com/20230609 ... =2&t=14982

The issue with archives was an apparent insistence on originals, which Matt Cockerill eventually realised was a blatant delaying tactic from Enoch. The linked thread and linked piece from there on his Substack has him saying he was translating German documents for Enoch. The archives thing didn't have anything to do with original research. It seemed to be more about retracing old footsteps.

Bear in mind that Matt was talking also about a debate negotiation going back to 2020-2021, when he was just starting out as a postgrad student, it all seems to predate him even beginning his PhD. He was on his own learning curve, probably largely on his own (not taking a particular course; his PhD topic is not squarely focused on camps-in-Poland), and frankly it's crystal clear that everyone has a learning curve with this subject because there really is more to it than appears at first glance, especially when considering the revisionist arguments.

Germar Rudolf manifestly rushed into print in the early 1990s, while still working on his chemistry PhD, so as a hobby, and the earliest publications, such as the original Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, are woeful. No archival research, limited engagement with the extant mainstream literature, and across his early writings a recycling of some rather dire revisionist memes and dubious claims which he would surely reject now; they certainly were not all carried over to the expanded Lectures on the Holocaust 2nd edition in the 2000s.

The same can be observed with Juergen Graf's books in the first half of the 1990s, before he started accompanying Carlo Mattogno on research trips (from 1995 onwards). Ditto with Thomas Dalton; the first edition of Debating the Holocaust contained no primary research of significance, whether in archives or with published sources, or with the literature, especially since he ruled out using most texts not in English.

Time and again revisionists have started out making very bold claims on the basis of very little research or reading. This pattern goes back to Butz and earlier; Butz helpfully spelled out how much time it took him to do the little research he did, again as a hobby alongside his real job.

I'm fine with additional research, but I very much doubt that the material I have not seen tells a radically different story that the stuff I have seen, so I don't put much stock in vague claims about supposed documents proving the Holocaust that hardly anyone has seen.

Well, no, the material you've not seen won't tell a radically different story because it would generally confirm the story you currently don't believe. It's a very convenient immunising strategy to preemptively declare that things you've not read aren't going to change your mind, even when they're often things which have been seen by quite a few people and discussed/cited in numerous publications dating back decades, or which might even now be open access online, erasing the excuse of inaccessibility.

And 'documents proving the Holocaust' - what does that even mean? There's an awful lot of prior and anticipatory goalpost-moving going on in a remark like that, starting with not defining the Holocaust and making sure you're using the same conception as others (you know mine: the persecution and murder of European Jews between 1933-1945, eventually resulting in just over 5 million deaths through a variety of means including gassings, shootings and privation), and then what is meant by 'documents', since an interrogation protocol from the 21st Century is also a document, just not the same kind as a contemporary source. I have a fair idea of your prior assumptions which I don't agree with regarding what constitutes proof, but it's really your remark which is vague.

[Archie]

Well, no, the material you've not seen won't tell a radically different story because it would generally confirm the story you currently don't believe.

In which case, why not focus on the most common material? Why make vague promises about more obscure material you are hoping/assuming people have not seen?

My guess is that something like 20-30 hours of research is enough to start reaching a tentative conclusion on this issue (whether the Holocaust is false). Once you get to 100 hours, 200 hours, 500 hours, I don't think many people will still be on the fence at that point. Most will have a fairly confident conclusion by then, and it would need to be something quite dramatic to swing things.

The polarized conclusions between the two sides are due to fundamental differences in perspective. It's not driven by the n+1th document or testimony.

[HansHill]

....So there's no lack of references. Edele seems to have taken the figure of 1.7 million from Peter Black's article on the Trawnikis, which then gives a lower figure of 1.5 million in the next paragraph on p.2. But the footnote to the 1.7 million figure references ghetto deportations, which Black goes on to discuss as Trawnikis took part in these as well, while the 1.5 million 'direct' figure references the then-standard literature on the Reinhard camps (Black's article appeared in 2011).

15. For the killing centers and deportations, see Yitzhak Arad, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka:The Operation Reinhard Death Camps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987); Ru¨ckerl, NS-Vernichtungslager, 132–242. Only Sobibor has a solid historical monograph: Jules Schelvis, Sobibor: A History of a Death Camp (Oxford: Berg in association with the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2007). For Treblinka 2, see Jacek Młynarczyk, “Treblinka—Ein Todeslager der ‘Aktion Reinhardt,’” in Musial, Vo¨lkermord, 257–81; for Belzec, see Michael Tregenza, “Belzec—Das vergessene Lager des Holocausts,” Jahrbuch des Fritz-Bauer-Instituts (2000): 241–67.

So we rapidly find Arad 1987, a widely cited reference whose conclusion uses the 1.7 million figure and presented data on deportations in appendices citing also commonly cited overview articles on the regions of the Government-General. Arad 1987 has at least 486 citations according to Google Scholar (likely a slight underestimate, but this fits well with how often I've seen it cited)....

Here, Sanity Check is attempting to show us that his cited scholars are not guilty of appeals to consensus, circular reasoning and self-evident gassings. Join me in reading carefully what he has written to see for ourselves!

Edele's citation for 1.7m murders, is not a citation for murders, but rather a citation for deportations from Peter Black's article (we'll ignore the 1.5 to 1.7 million discrepancy as that is "close enough" for now). Peter Black's figure in turn is taken from the "then-standard literature" on the Reinhard camps (whatever that means)

Black in turn, cites Yitzak Arad! Those of you familiar with Arad will know he in turn, cites our good friend Jankiel Wiernik, amongst others. While on the topic of i) Arad, ii) Circular reasoning, and iii) appeals to consensus, here was an interesting artilce i remember reading, which has become relevant since Sanity Check has brought it up, which yet again demonstrates my exact point:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-i-mea ... holocaust/

key paragraphs

The full scope of this genocidal slaughter appears to be undocumented in history. Available information before this study was mostly reconstructed indirectly, partially conjectured, and usually given on an annual timescale, rather than daily or monthly. That meant completely missing the three-month slaughter.

My analysis was based on carefully compiled train records presented in a 1987 book by Holocaust historian Yitzhak Arad. Arad documents approximately 500 transportations from some 400 different Polish Jewish communities, recording for individual days the location, number of victims of each transportation and final death camp destination.

There you have it friends, the exact state of affairs from our friends in the Orthodox community! Remember, I am using his chosen citations, despite him telling me I've cherrypicked anything (in fact he;s cherrypicking my observation of poor old Mark Edele who's out here catching strays it seems, as in my original rebuttal I exposed approx half a dozen others he has yet to try defend!)

[Stubble]

The self referential nature of holocaust historians and their generated literature is indeed disturbing. More interesting would be real history composed from source, though that is rare.

[HansHill]

....2) If these are human test subjects, then they would never have been placed in any actual danger since that would have been unethical -- unless these studies are retrospective, which is possible but unlikely given the same type of engine being used on all subjects in each study....

Exactly, they were not endangered because diesel exhaust is not fatal in the manner described. This is my exact point, and it seems like we've agreed on that for now, and since you're likely about to pivot to petrol engines as the murder weapon, we'll save that for another thread, as this is a meta-thread about debating tactics.

[Nessie]

...this is a meta-thread about debating tactics.

Historians use evidence. Revisionists, who cannot evidence what happened, use debating tactics. They rely heavily on the logically flawed arguments from incredulity and strawman.