The Question of Conspiracy

[Nazgul]

AI is only as good as its programming which relies on input of variables. It cannot think outside of those inputs.

[Nessie]

... Once later trials were under way, defendants and their lawyers could and did try full negationist routines without consequences...

Could you please provide an example of what you mean by "full negationist"?

....
denial that something happened, ever = full negationist (there were no homicidal gas chambers, nobody was ever gassed)
pointing out something else happened = positive claim (with its own burden of proof)

....

So disputing the existence of gas chambers or that there was a specific killing action would be full negationist. And there were a few times when defense lawyers and defendants in West German trials seemed to try this on, e.g. one defense lawyer at the Duesseldorf Majdanek trial. The witness-badgering that accompanied this alienated the judges and was thought to be counterproductive, so the lawyer stepped down. There were no further consequences for the lawyer.

That was the claim I was wanting to know about. I was under the impression no one had tried a defence of no crime committed and that gassings had not happened. When a defence disputes the criminal act even took place, the onus is on them to provide evidence of what did happen. The defence cannot just accuse witnesses of lying, which appears to have happened in the trial you refer to. They have to have evidence, such as putting the accused on the witness stand, who then claims that the building was not a gas chamber, it was something else.

That could have worked at Majdanek, because the accused could reasonably claim the alleged gas chamber was only ever used to delouse clothing. But the volume of evidence from others, in particular other Nazis, was that it was used to gas people, so one voice claiming otherwise is weak. If all the Nazi accused had claimed the chambers had only been used for clothes and only the Jewish prisoners claimed it was used for people, the verdicts would have likely been not guilty.

There were no consequences for the lawyer, probably because he was working under instructions from his client, who may have insisted the witness was lying. The judges, seeing that all the defence had was to call the witnesses liars, would soon bring that line of questioning to an end.

In many trials, the accused might have accepted that the camp in question or the unit they were with had carried out mass killings using gas or shootings, but then disputed individual killings. Trawnikis did this regarding the shootings at the 'Lazarett' in Treblinka in Soviet 1960s trials, Kurt Franz certainly disputed and denied many of the individual killings he was charged with. Legally, the individual killings were more significant as they could be considered crimes of excess in West German law and thus murder (Mord), whereas collective actions would be judged at the accomplice level (Beihilfe zum Mord).

The accused only has to defend themselves against what they are accused of, in the charge. Fail to prove the events alleged in the charge and the accused walks free.

Revisionists, with their lack of legal knowledge, picture themselves in court, heroically disproving the entire functioning of the death camps, as they defend clients who have admitted to working inside death camps.

[Nessie]

...

No one is suggesting that every statement is 100% made up. Even the most fanciful of the survivor memoirs usually have a lot of correct factual information. The major disputed points like the gas chambers are what we care about. The idea is that the statements are systematically distorted on those points.

....

Can you be more specific about that? For example, do you believe Tauber when he said the Kremas were where thousands of people from the ramp selections were sent to undress and have all their property taken from them? But you do not believe him when he states those people were gassed and cremated? Same for Wiernik at TII. Do you believe him about the regular mass transports arriving at the camp, the property processing and head shaving? But you do not believe him when he describes gas chambers, mass graves, exhumations and pyres?

[bombsaway]

AI is only as good as its programming which relies on input of variables. It cannot think outside of those inputs.

I don't think anyone can look at this post closely
viewtopic.php?p=560#p560

And think my use of AI and the results were not judicious and fair. I think you need to examine why you would reflexively respond like this. It could be looked at as a programming issue as well.

[Nazgul]

When a defence disputes the criminal act even took place, the onus is on them to provide evidence of what did happen.

Nonsense, it is up to the prosecution to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. There are many instances of the defendant saying absolutely nothing. "Because a defendant is presumed to be innocent, the prosecution has the burden of proving the defendant's guilt on every element of each criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt.To do so, the prosecution must present compelling evidence that leaves little real doubt in the mind of the trier of fact (the judge or jury) that the defendant is almost certainly guilty." wiki

They have to have evidence, such as putting the accused on the witness stand, who then claims that the building was not a gas chamber, it was something else.

Bollocks, the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the building was a gas chamber and not something else. For a person who claims to have been a copper your knowledge of the justice system is pitiful. What you are saying may be true in France but not the UK or any Commonwealth country.

Of course it helps the defence if the accusers are proven liars but it is not a necessary action as you claim.

The accused only has to defend themselves against what they are accused of, in the charge. Fail to prove the events alleged in the charge and the accused walks free.

Beyond reasonable doubt is the criteria Nessie, not proven.

Revisionists, with their lack of legal knowledge, picture themselves in court, heroically disproving the entire functioning of the death camps, as they defend clients who have admitted to working inside death camps.

It is you lacking in legal knowledge.

[Nessie]

When a defence disputes the criminal act even took place, the onus is on them to provide evidence of what did happen.

Nonsense, it is up to the prosecution to prove a case beyond reasonable doubt. There are many instances of the defendant saying absolutely nothing. "Because a defendant is presumed to be innocent, the prosecution has the burden of proving the defendant's guilt on every element of each criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt.To do so, the prosecution must present compelling evidence that leaves little real doubt in the mind of the trier of fact (the judge or jury) that the defendant is almost certainly guilty." wiki

One of the defences against a criminal accusation, is to dispute and evidence that no crime was committed.

They have to have evidence, such as putting the accused on the witness stand, who then claims that the building was not a gas chamber, it was something else.

Bollocks, the prosecution has to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the building was a gas chamber and not something else. For a person who claims to have been a copper your knowledge of the justice system is pitiful. What you are saying may be true in France but not the UK or any Commonwealth country.

It is up to the prosecution to prove a building was a gas chamber. They did that at the trials by producing multiple witnesses, who gave evidence that they saw or worked at the buildings in question and that they were used to gas people.

It is a perfectly reasonable and allowed defence, for the accused to claim that is not the case, that they saw and/or worked at the buildings in question, they were not used to kill people and instead they were used to delouse clothing (or for mass showering, or to shelter in during air raids, or other revisionist suggestion).

Of course it helps the defence if the accusers are proven liars but it is not a necessary action as you claim.

A defence is limited as to when they can accuse witnesses of lying. They can make limited accusations, if their client instructs them that the witness is lying, but without accompanying evidence to prove the witness lied, the defence can only try to suggest the witness lied. They cannot bully or badger the witness to try and force them to accept they have lied.

For a defence to prove a witness has lied, needs evidence, such as their client on the stand, alleging the building in question was only used to delouse clothing. That never happened. No Nazi gave evidence that the buildings the prosecution evidenced were used for gassings, were used for another purpose.

The accused only has to defend themselves against what they are accused of, in the charge. Fail to prove the events alleged in the charge and the accused walks free.

Beyond reasonable doubt is the criteria Nessie, not proven.

The criteria is to prove beyond reasonable doubt, what is alleged in the charge. When the charge reads that so and so did kill so and so, by shooting or gassing them, then that is what has to be proven. The trials were not histories of events at the death camps. They were about specific alleged events.

Revisionists, with their lack of legal knowledge, picture themselves in court, heroically disproving the entire functioning of the death camps, as they defend clients who have admitted to working inside death camps.

It is you lacking in legal knowledge.

Your legal training consists of...what?

[SanityCheck]

I think you missed the point regarding Allied interrogations. They were much wider than a focus on the extermination of the Jews, while many German officials and officers were extremely happy to talk. Speer's interrogations by the Strategic Bombing Survey is one example.

Hoettl is another excellent example, since he wrote up very extensive reports and was very forthcoming on a wide range of issues, including Kaltenbrunner's stance to peace feelers and the Austrian bid for independence in 1944-45 (planned, rather than real). Lots and lots of detail, to be taken with the usual caution and cross referenced extensively. But he absolutely knew Kaltenbrunner, Eichmann, and many other key players in the RSHA, and had a good general overview of intelligence activities across Europe from working with RSHA Amt VI. Hoettl was a gold mine for all kinds of topics, by 1945 standards, and knew he had nothing to fear since he hadn't been in a police role, and was being exceedingly cooperative.
[...]

No one is suggesting that every statement is 100% made up. Even the most fanciful of the survivor memoirs usually have a lot of correct factual information. The major disputed points like the gas chambers are what we care about. The idea is that the statements are systematically distorted on those points.

It's a little surprising to me that you are defending Hoettl's credibility. For a reminder, this is what was in his statement (PS-2638, quick Google translate)

According to my knowledge, Eichmann was at that time the head of the department in the IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Security Main Office and had also been commissioned by Himmler to register Jews in all European countries and transport them to Germany. Eichmann was strongly influenced by Romania's withdrawal from the war at that time. That was why he had come to me to find out about the military situation, which I received daily from the Hungarian Honved (War) Ministry and the commander of the Waffen SS in Hungary. He expressed his conviction that the war was now lost for Germany and that he personally had no further chance. He knew that he was considered one of the main war criminals by the United Nations because he was responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews. I asked him how many that was, to which he replied that the number was a great secret of the Reich, but that he would tell me because I, as a historian, must also be interested in it and he would probably not return from his mission to Romania. He had just prepared a report for Himmler because he wanted to know the exact number of Jews killed. Based on his information, he came to the following conclusion:

About four million Jews were killed in the various extermination camps, while another two million died in other ways, the majority of whom were killed by shooting by the Security Police during the campaign against Russia.

Himmler was not satisfied with the report because, in his opinion, the number of Jews killed must be greater than 6 million. Himmler had declared that he would send a man from his statistical office to Eichmann so that he could write a new report based on Eichmann's material, in which the exact number would be worked out.

This is making some very specific claims. It says Eichmann prepared a report for Himmler that found that 6M had been killed, along with the 4M + 2M breakdown. Eichmann then told Hoettl about this.

Where is this report? And where is the follow-up report that Himmler ordered from his own statistical office? The only thing like this that I am aware of is the Korherr report which was prepared much earlier in the war.

The line about Himmler being disappointed because six million just wasn't enough Jews killed is a rather absurd caricature.

Regarding Hoettl's reputation, see Weber. https://ihr.org/journal/v20n5p25_weber-html

In their report, the two U.S. government researchers write: “Hoettl’s name file is approximately 600 pages, one of the largest of those released to the public so far. The size of the file owes to Hoettl’s postwar career as a peddler of intelligence, good and bad, to anyone who would pay him. Reports link Hoettl to twelve different intelligence services, including the U.S., Yugoslav, Austrian, Israeli, Romanian, Vatican, Swiss, French, West German, Russian, Hungarian and British.”

In June 1949 one U.S. intelligence official cautioned against using Höttl for any reason, calling him “a man of such low character and poor political record that his use for intelligence activities, regardless of how profitable they may be, is a short-sighted policy by the U.S.” In August 1950, CIA messages referred to Höttl as a “notorious fabricator [of] intelligence.” A U.S. Army CIC report in early 1952 deemed his information useless, noting that Höttl “is involved in extensive intelligence activities for almost anyone who is willing to purchase his findings.” In April 1952 his reports were called “worthless and possibly inflated or fabricated.”

Interestingly, numerous U.S. intelligence reports identify connections between Höttl and Simon Wiesenthal, the well-known “Nazi hunter.” One U.S. Army CIC document described Wiesenthal as the “Chief Austrian Agent of the Israeli Intelligence Bureau.” A U.S. Army CIC report in January 1950 noted that for the last three or four months Wiesenthal had “recruited the services of Wilhelm Höttl,” and had hired him to gather information for reports by the “Nazi hunter.”

In July 1952, when U.S. Army intelligence finally broke completely with Höttl, a letter on U.S. Army stationery warned: “Dr. Höttl has long been known to this headquarters and other allied military organizations in Austria as a fabricator of intelligence information. His reports normally consist of a fine cobweb of fact, heavily padded with lies, deceit, conjecture and other false types of information. This organization will have absolutely nothing to do with Dr. Höttl or any members of his present entourage. He is persona non grata to the American, French and British elements in Austria.”

In their report on his postwar career, U.S. government historical researchers Kleiman and Skwirot conclude: “The voluminous materials in Wilhelm Höttl’s personality file … trace the activities of a notorious intelligence peddler and fabricator, who successfully convinced one intelligence service after another of his value, and then proceeded to lose such support.”

Yeah, I'm not going to accept as a source for the six million a second-hand recollection of a report that doesn't exist coming from some spook who was known to be unreliable.

And yet one can cross-check a lot of the material Hoettl provided in his 1945 interrogations by 3rd US Army as well as at IMT against documents and other eyewitnesses. That is the general point - only relying on a single witness is not the conventional method for law, intelligence work, history or anything, so neither is attacking a single witness going to be especially productive.

The next point is that if one is alleging a conspiracy of either active or telepathic fabrication, as 'revisionists' inevitably do at some point, then it matters where and when the interrogations happened. Hoettl was talking about Eichmann as one of many topics in August 1945 while under the control of 3rd US Army. He was then transferred to IMT Nuremberg as a material witness who could help with the case against Kaltenbrunner. So the IMT interrogation leading to the affidavit cited in court and then in the judgement did not come out of nowhere.

One needs to break down the elements and see what else was being stated by other witnesses. Rudolf Mildner, also an Austrian Security Police officer, had fingered Eichmann as the organiser/coordinator of the deportations and extermination of Jews already on 23 June 1945 (this is taken over wholesale as 2376-PS, he was also interrogated at IMT). Dieter Wisliceny gave outlines of the entire process and Eichmann's role on 25 and 27 August 1945 (noted in Stangneth, Eichmann Before Jerusalem). The 27 August 1945 statement, a paraphrased summary by the interrogator, has Wisliceny noting that the published totals then in circulation, i.e. 5-6 million, were about right according to his knowledge. Wisliceny then broke down the numbers in a very detailed way in his IMT interrogations.

Wisliceny as well as Hans Aumeier had separately pointed to Blobel as supervising the exhumation and cremation of bodies, both in August 1945 before IMT. Hoettl only had hearsay about this and spoke at IMT of a Kommando 2500, a pretty clear garbling of 1005.

Hoettl was discussing the selection of personnel for the Einsatzkommandos as early as 9 July 1945 in an overview report on the RSHA. It's this document which contains other examples of insider knowledge, for example his discussion of the compilation and reception of the SD reports (which we now know as the Meldungen aus dem Reich) was well-informed and fits with everything else known, in the German wartime documentation and postwar testimonies.

Hoettl's statement about his conversation with Eichmann actually fits the known documentation a little better than might be thought at first glance. Himmler 100% did express dissatisfaction with RSHA reporting and in the 2 October 1945 interrogation that produced Hoettl's affidavit, Hoettl correctly noted that 'Himmler further ordered the man from his statistical office should go over to Eichmann and check the whole figures and then send out a new report'. That is exactly what happened: we know the results as the Korherr report, whose conclusion referred to a reduction of the Jewish population of Europe by a minimum of 4 million.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/57323635?objectPage=47

Aside from Wisliceny reporting a similar discussion with Eichmann about a headline total of 5 million, we also have Hoess in 1946 fingering Eichmann as the source for his initial claim of 2.5 million total deported to Auschwitz, which was significantly higher than the country-level breakdown of actions he had been giving ever since his first formal interrogation by the British in March 1946. Hoess repeated this breakdown fairly consistently and eventually realised this was right and the 2.5 million figure was wrong. But the 2.5 million figure is very close to the currently accepted number for deportations to extermination camps (topping out at 2.6 million for ABCMST in almost all calculations) and would have fitted with the data Eichmann had regarding ongoing deportations in 1943-44 over and above the Korherr report and 2nd report's numbers.

Horst Grell in the Foreign Office also noted Eichmann saying similar remarks about being high on the list of war criminals and being responsible for six million enemies of the Reich, in 1944, but this was a statement from the time of Eichmann's trial.

One can regard some or all of these numbers attributed to Eichmann whether by Hoettl, Wisliceny, Hoess or Grell as exaggerated, misremembered or influenced by later estimates, but the scenario described by Hoettl of Eichmann recounting the contretemps over RSHA statistics and the commissioning of Korherr's report is entirely accurate.

While Eichmann's absence in 1945-46 meant he became something of a 'ghost' to be invoked by other SS and a scapegoat who was being attributed greater responsibility than was perhaps the case, the pattern of conversations recounted suggests that in 1944 Eichmann was indeed being relatively forthcoming. So was Wisliceny, who leaked a lot of details to Kasztner. For Eichmann to have bandied around different numbers at different times is also plausible. The 4 million figure was for sure in the Korherr report as a total, but not identical to the extermination camps (this was too high). Eichmann would have known that Korherr's figures only captured part of the killings in the occupied Soviet territories so to throw out an estimate of 2 million is not implausible.

As a well-connected RSHA official Eichmann might even have received reports on the death toll claims in the neutral and Allied press, which were edging to 3 million by late 1943 (Der Stuermer responded to one such estimate in the Swiss press by saying 'this is not a Jewish lie), and other papers were talking of 5 million Jews being eliminated from Europe in the first half of 1944 (Danziger Vorposten). The temptation for Eichmann to boast and exaggerate or round up canot be ignored, either. So throwing around mega totals makes sense, even if Eichmann then reacted like a scalded cat to how these numbers had been turned against him.

Hoettl's comment that Eichmann gave him the estimate as he thought Hoettl would be interested as a trained historian is also plausible. It's certainly ironic that six million has thus gone down in history and in most discussions as 'the' number, even if detailed breakdowns point towards five million as more certain, the Wisliceny-Hilberg total.

There are other examples in Hoettl's interrogations at IMT where known details have shifted. He refers to Eichmann chairing multi-agency conferences on the Jewish question, which was basically true for the March and October 1942 Final Solution conferences and a garbling of Wannsee, but Hoettl's hearsay/hazy memory dated the conference to 1943. No such multi-agency conference from 1943-44 is known from other sources, there were at best practical transport planning conferences (as with the Hungarian action) since the demarcation lines had been resolved as best as they could be in 1942.

Hoettl's affidavit is not however a source on its own for a total of six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Nor was it used as such; the presentation on the 'persecution of the Jews' and the IMT judgement's summary of this theme used Hoettl as a shorthand or capstone to sum up the numbers coming through from other exhibits and witnesses about different regions, actions and camps. All of which taken together supported a high total.

The evidence in principle available by the end of 1945 across Europe, if synthesised from a God's eye perspective, i.e. combining all the sources and not just those known to any one court, investigation or person, was all pointing in the same direction. Subsequent scrutiny from a serious perspective never pushed this below 4.2 million, and that was from Reitlinger 71 years ago; the post-Reitlinger and Hilberg research just thickens up what was theoretically knowable in the 1940s. Hoettl's affidavit was certainly referenced in early literature - by Poliakov uncritically and critically by Reitlinger and Hilberg - but by the 1960s the six million figure was so universal, one might as well complain about Giden Hausner invoking 'six million accusers' at the Eichmann trial.

I still come back to Hoettl passing on his garbled recounting of Eichmann telling him about the Korherr report: Hoettl could not possibly have known about this except hearing it from Eichmann. Who introduced the extrapolations to get to 4 + 2M = 6M and why are trivial issues, unless one is a 6M obsessive, in which case congratulations, you're right, it wasn't 6M, now deal with the evidence pointing to the real number, please.

[Archie]

If we want, we can get hung up on whether some particular thing like the above was a deliberate fraud vs misunderstanding vs incompetence vs whatever. Personally I don't see it as all that important. At a certain point, you have to read people's minds or find an admission in writing that they are lying (which people don't tend to offer).

The distinction between "lies" and "mistakes" can get very fine when you consider that someone who is biased or who has an agenda will almost always make "mistakes" that are biased in their favor. Random errors by a fair party would go in both directions. The end result of "biased mistakes" vs deliberate lies can wind up being very similar.

In the document above, I think it is possible that the error was due to stupidity rather than a "conspiracy" or carefully orchestrated "hoax." I have always assumed that there was a mix of both things. Whether the people involved knew they were promoting falsehoods or not isn't something I'm going to lose any sleep.

With a lot of Jews, even ones who have given totally fraudulent testimony or written fake memoirs, I think it is quite possible they "believe" their own BS on some level. Kevin MacDonald has a whole chapter on this sort of self-deception in Separation and Its Discontents. Again, to me this sort of question is an interesting curiosity, but not really that important in terms in terms of evaluating the historicity of the Holocaust.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2 ... roduction/

[SanityCheck]

If we want, we can get hung up on whether some particular thing like the above was a deliberate fraud vs misunderstanding vs incompetence vs whatever. Personally I don't see it as all that important. At a certain point, you have to read people's minds or find an admission in writing that they are lying (which people don't tend to offer).

The distinction between "lies" and "mistakes" can get very fine when you consider that someone who is biased or who has an agenda will almost always make "mistakes" that are biased in their favor. Random errors by a fair party would go in both directions. The end result of "biased mistakes" vs deliberate lies can wind up being very similar.

In the document above, I think it is possible that the error was due to stupidity rather than a "conspiracy" or carefully orchestrated "hoax." I have always assumed that there was a mix of both things. Whether the people involved knew they were promoting falsehoods or not isn't something I'm going to lose any sleep.

With a lot of Jews, even ones who have given totally fraudulent testimony or written fake memoirs, I think it is quite possible they "believe" their own BS on some level. Kevin MacDonald has a whole chapter on this sort of self-deception in Separation and Its Discontents. Again, to me this sort of question is an interesting curiosity, but not really that important in terms in terms of evaluating the historicity of the Holocaust.

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2 ... roduction/

I deal with people's mistakes of interpretation and understanding for a living - i.e. marking student work and observing patterns of misunderstandings, while also being aware of how authors and historians make mistakes.

Misinterpreting documents and sources is extraordinarily easy, and there is usually nothing 'random' about it. The misinterpretation often occurs because of priors and expectations. Two classic examples are James Bacque misinterpreting 'other losses' in reports on German POWs to mean deaths rather than releases, and Naomi Wolf misinterpreting the 19th Century British legalese of 'death recorded' to mean executed rather than a sentence commuted.

The Gross Rosen document was undoubtedly misinterpreted through the prior of many other reports and sources on Nazi homicidal gassing, but was effectively taken out of context and detached from other evidence, just like Wolf's goof. The Americans had not investigated Gross Rosen (it was in Silesia and handed over to Poland) and likely had little knowledge of the camp, so some investigator just saw 'extermination chambers' in a document and thought, ooh. They had no idea that no one was talking of homicidal gas chambers at Gross Rosen.

That wasn't the case at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where upon liberation, witnesses were identifying homicidal gas chambers and doing so with increased detail, as former members of the Sonderkommando resurfaced. So when investigators encountered a document referring to a Vergasungskeller in Krema II, in the same space that was being identified as in use as a homicidal gas chamber, then this was conclusive. The Vergasungskeller document cannot in fact be interpreted in isolation from the other evidence pointing to it being used homicidally. Any interpretations trying to start from the document to say it was a delousing chamber, air raid shelter, carburetion chamber or morgue only will fail if they cannot provide external evidence to support the claimed reinterpretation.

This shows that priors are not necessarily 'biases' but are updated on the basis of new evidence. One lone witness babbling incoherently about this or that is not going to be believed, multiple witnesses agreeing with each other are more likely to be believed, when their claims are corroborated by other source types, they are generally considered even more believable.

Documents from one provenance simply cannot be interpreted in isolation from other evidence, nor can one simply make shit up if the preferred provenance is not forthcoming. This is the persistent mistake that Mattogno and many other revisionists keep making.

There certainly are many cases of social contagion where rumours and foaftales are repeated and become widely believed. The priors for the repeaters of the rumours are adjusted because they heard about it before and repeat the claim, but one can then see there is no original source or clear-cut eyewitness (e.g. with pure rumours) and no corroboration from other sources, perspectives or provenances.

This is also how students as much as adult investigators can end up repeating outdated information: they read sources which made a mistake or contained an error or distortion, and they honestly repeat this while being either unaware of other evidence or more likely, being too lazy to check. If one cites an older book, then one may repeat older errors.

An example of this came up in March with student presentations; one student had used Timothy Snyder's Black Earth as a source to claim that the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger had participated in the antipartisan operation 'Swamp Fever' (Sumpffieber) in August/September 1942 in the Weissruthenien district. This is repeated in a few places on the internet but is definitely wrong. I knew this was wrong from having worked through the Army Group Centre rear area records and knew that the Dirlewanger unit was operating in the military zone on entirely different antipartisan operations. I also knew from going through the Police Decodes that Dirlewanger's unit only transferred to Weissruthenien much later in the autumn of 1942. Christian Ingrao and French Maclean's books on Dirlewanger both agree with this, while Ingrao noticed that other secondary sources were wrongly claiming Dirlewanger's participation in Sumpffieber.

The student who made the mistake had not gone super-deep into the literature, but their reliance on a seemingly up to date secondary source from the 21st Century meant I was not going to penalise them too heavily, nor is it fair to crush a mark down drastically for a few errors if the rest of the work is accurate. They were not presenting on Dirlewanger in particular, but on antipartisan warfare. Another student was going to present on Dirlewanger a few days later, and was able to rub it in that there was an error in circulation in some sources whereas the reality was the unit was still operating further east.

There are numerous further examples of incorrect nomenclature, unit names, confusions of place names, and much else, and so it's difficult to get as worked up about some mistakes as revisionists like to do.


The null hypothesis should be cock-up theory, not conspiracy theory, whether one is dealing with a student or some past historical protagonist like an investigator, lawyer or indeed, historian. And then one only needs the parrot effect of repetition for a false claim to be repeated, like an exaggerated death toll. Which is certainly done for other dictators and mass casualty events. Yesterday or today, I saw someone on X claiming the Bolsheviks killed *sixty* million "Christians", which is three times the semi-standard 'Stalin killed 20 million' figure and way off the documented numbers, including the Russian Civil War and Red Terror. The poster was likely not consciously lying, but they were certainly ignorant and ill-informed.

Conscious lying should be provable, but the tendency with conspiracy theorists is to assume and then assert lying based on priors. If the US government behaved deceptively in x case, then it did so in y case, even if there is no connection or it's a different department, administration, president. Politicians and top diplomats, generals, civil servants tend to be caught out with false claims or outright lies, but it's rare that anyone lies all the time. Nixon was caught red-handed with Watergate, but that doesn't mean everything else he did or said was always based on lying or deception. One has to prove that with evidence (which might not be too difficult with various foreign policy initiatives, but is unlikely to be an explanation for why Nixon set up the Environmental Protection Agency).

Personal delusion and ideology certainly do explain why some witnesses are pathologically wrong, or have decided to believe a Walter Mitty story about themselves 'sincerely', but normally there are other clues as to whether this was a psychological disorder or deliberate fraud. There have certainly been an above-average number of Americans of all backgrounds who have tried pulling off some kind of fraud or false claim, but one can see many cases where delusion took over. This includes alleged alien abductees. Betty Hill - deluded through sheer repetition and confabulation; Travis Walton - attempting a fraud; Whitley Strieber - unclear but likely deep down conscious he is selling a story.

[Callafangers]

Documents from one provenance simply cannot be interpreted in isolation from other evidence, nor can one simply make shit up if the preferred provenance is not forthcoming. This is the persistent mistake that Mattogno and many other revisionists keep making.

To review any document in isolation once certain "other evidence" is shown to be false or invalid is not unreasonable. If you disagree that the "other evidence" is false or invalid, then that's a debate which must first be settled before you can argue one should consider any "convergences". Without this, your argument amounts to deflection, avoiding a relevant focus on any single document. Moreover, there are certain characteristics that should always be considered in isolation such as the reliability of the document (and its source), itself. This comes before questions of the actual contents and any implications.

[bombsaway]

The distinction between "lies" and "mistakes"

The central allegation isn't about interpretation of documents and witnesses -- that I think we can agree is often questionable -- it's about the veracity of the primary source materials themselves. When it comes to conspiracy, you've demonstrated 0 instances of clear fudging of documents or of witnesses to fabricate a holocaust story.

[Archie]

Misinterpreting documents and sources is extraordinarily easy, and there is usually nothing 'random' about it. The misinterpretation often occurs because of priors and expectations.

In which case that undercuts the idea promoted by bombsaway (and Nessie) that this sort of thing can only happen if everyone is meeting in a smoke-filled room to plot out a detailed conspiracy/hoax.

There are numerous further examples of incorrect nomenclature, unit names, confusions of place names, and much else, and so it's difficult to get as worked up about some mistakes as revisionists like to do.

Seems like a fair thing to point out that one of the few gas chamber documents they submitted is indisputably bogus.

[bombsaway]

In which case that undercuts the idea promoted by bombsaway (and Nessie) that this sort of thing can only happen if everyone is meeting in a smoke-filled room to plot out a detailed conspiracy/hoax.

I edited my above post to better reflect your argument. You fail to make a distinction between fabricating evidence (document or witnesses) and interpretation. Fabricating evidence is different, because if the "fabricators" believed the Holocaust was real, they wouldn't feel the need to do it. The central allegation is that they were consciously trying to push a fake story. This is what is entirely speculative on your part, and why a serious history can't be written.

[Archie]

In which case that undercuts the idea promoted by bombsaway (and Nessie) that this sort of thing can only happen if everyone is meeting in a smoke-filled room to plot out a detailed conspiracy/hoax.

I edited my above post to better reflect your argument. You fail to make a distinction between fabricating evidence (document or witnesses) and interpretation. Fabricating evidence is different, because if the "fabricators" believed the Holocaust was real, they wouldn't feel the need to do it. The central allegation is that they were consciously trying to push a fake story. This is what is entirely speculative on your part, and why a serious history can't be written.

Why do you think "interpretation" doesn't count? You can deceive people just as easily with interpretation. Take a photo of shower room and call it a gas chamber. That's taking something real and giving a false interpretation. Show people a real can of Zyklon. Tell them it's for gassing Jews instead of lice. That's interpretational. Take a document about delousing chambers and say it's about homicidal gas chambers (like the one I posted). Interpretational. Most of the Holocaust distortions are interpretational. So what?

[bombsaway]

In which case that undercuts the idea promoted by bombsaway (and Nessie) that this sort of thing can only happen if everyone is meeting in a smoke-filled room to plot out a detailed conspiracy/hoax.

I edited my above post to better reflect your argument. You fail to make a distinction between fabricating evidence (document or witnesses) and interpretation. Fabricating evidence is different, because if the "fabricators" believed the Holocaust was real, they wouldn't feel the need to do it. The central allegation is that they were consciously trying to push a fake story. This is what is entirely speculative on your part, and why a serious history can't be written.

Why do you think "interpretation" doesn't count? You can deceive people just as easily with interpretation. Take a photo of shower room and call it a gas chamber. That's taking something real and giving a false interpretation. Show people a real can of Zyklon. Tell them it's for gassing Jews instead of lice. That's interpretational. Take a document about delousing chambers and say it's about homicidal gas chambers (like the one I posted). Interpretational. Most of the Holocaust distortions are interpretational. So what?

Because, if you're doing history properly, the basis of mass events is going to be direct evidence, not the interpretations of various parties.

I guess your argument is that false interpretation is strong circumstantial evidence of a larger scale Holocaust fabrication effort of direct evidence like witness testimonies, documents, and forensic reports? (therefore all this evidence should automatically be called into question)