Problem with the Air Raid Shelter Thesis

[Nazgul]

Why are you taking the witness literally, to mean 24/7 without there being no breaks at all?

Why not, they were slaves right working for their masters.

Gassing operations were also not 24/7

It is the cremations that are important here.

There is witness evidence of wood being delivered to Sobibor for construction. It stands to reason that wood could also be delivered for the pyres. In 1942-3 when the AR camps were at the height of their operations, little was being decoded at Bletchley and a wood delivery to a camp in Poland would not attract any attention or be retained. I know that because I have been to Bletchley and spoke to staff about AR decodes.

Bletchley Park was a top-secret World War II codebreaking facility, but it closed in 1987, it is no longer used for SIGINT. Any staff there are curators not intelligence people. Curators would know nothing about what you suggest. Dr Terry by the way wrote some material on decrypts.
There is a huge difference in the quantity of wood needed for construction and that required for burning thousands of corpses.

I am not ignoring Mattogno's maths. I am countering his maths by pointing out that just because he cannot work out to his satisfaction how much wood was used, does not therefore mean he has proved no mass pyres.

It is known precisely how much energy is needed to cremate a corpse.

[Nazgul]

It has clearly never crossed your mind that you, with no relevant qualifications or investigative experience, are arguing that thousands of historians, criminal investigators, lawyers and journalists, who all have relevant qualifications and experience, have all got it wrong and somehow, you have got it right.

Do you act that way in other walks of life? If you have had to go to hospital, do you tell all the medical staff that they are wrong and you, with no medical training at all, know exactly what to do?

We are discussing history, appealing to authority as you are doing is not worthy of discussion. Doctors in the past have made apalling mistakes such as prescribing cigarettes for lung issues during Napoleonic times. The US was full of snake oil salesmen in historical times, still existing today with covid cures, using bleach.

[Nessie]

Back on topic, the problem with the air raid thesis is a lack of evidence that 1943-4 the Kremas II to V were being used as air raid shelters. Krema I was used and how it was converted is evidenced. There is no corresponding evidence for II to V, which the Nazis chose to demolish, leaving only Krema I untouched. There was also no need to use so many buildings, for the occasional air raid after the camp came into range of bombers in July 1944, as Monowitz was the target for raids.

[curioussoul]

Mirroring is a problem, which I made clear when I said, "We were warned to look out for it in interview training, as it could create the impression undue influence had been applied to the interviewee."

No, your argument was that mirroring was used by witnesses (in this case Pruefer) to gain the favor of their interrogators, but that their testimony was otherwise accurate and trustworthy, when in reality the witness simply stated what he thought the interrogators wanted to hear. This is also why Pruefer called the Germans "Hitlerites" and told countless verifiable falsehoods that he thought the Soviets wanted to hear. As for witnesses interrogated by the Soviets in particular, SMERSH and its successor were notorious for torturing and threatening witnesses, making up false accusations, mock trials, kangaroo courts, etc. Pruefer's colleague Fritz Sander died shortly after he was taken into custody, by completely natural causes I'm sure. Not even real scholars take these interrogations at face value. That's not to say they're completely useless. As for matters that we know for certain Pruefer was familiar with, he for the most part told the truth, such as when it came to the capacity of the cremation ovens.

[Nessie]

Mirroring is a problem, which I made clear when I said, "We were warned to look out for it in interview training, as it could create the impression undue influence had been applied to the interviewee."

No, your argument was that mirroring was used by witnesses (in this case Pruefer) to gain the favor of their interrogators, but that their testimony was otherwise accurate and trustworthy, when in reality the witness simply stated what he thought the interrogators wanted to hear.

How do you know that Pruefer just agreed with a made up Soviet narrative?

This is also why Pruefer called the Germans "Hitlerites" and told countless verifiable falsehoods that he thought the Soviets wanted to hear. As for witnesses interrogated by the Soviets in particular, SMERSH and its successor were notorious for torturing and threatening witnesses, making up false accusations, mock trials, kangaroo courts, etc. Pruefer's colleague Fritz Sander died shortly after he was taken into custody, by completely natural causes I'm sure. Not even real scholars take these interrogations at face value. That's not to say they're completely useless. As for matters that we know for certain Pruefer was familiar with, he for the most part told the truth, such as when it came to the capacity of the cremation ovens.

Pruefer is corroborated by other evidence. That is how historians know he told the truth about his work to modify the Kremas for mass gassings and cremations.

[Scott]

I'm not a big fan of the bomb-shelter thesis. Mr. Crowell makes many interesting points, such as the observation that the gas-tight doors on the fumigation chambers at Majdanek are simple bombshelter doors and these typically have DIN Norm peepholes.

But other than dispatching some of Pressac's straw dog arguments like there having been no reasonable explanation for peepholes in gas-tight doors other than for homicidal gaschambers, I don't think the bomb shelters idea explains all that much.

The simple reason that morgues had gas-tight doors is to help control the temperature and to keep vermin out. This is extremely important.

Come to think of it, your home refrigerator works the same way. There are even some versions for sale where you can see inside the ice box so that you don't have to open the door for too long whilst you are trying to decide what to have for a snack.

Before the war there was more worry about poison gas attacks in bomb shelter design and there was an effort to harden many ordinary structures like basements and cellars. Barring a direct hit, this would improve survivability during air attacks which also kills from the smoke and gases from fires. And although it is lighter than air, our old friend carbon monoxide penetrates easily and is a major threat in bunkers and cellars during bombardments and fires.

However, given that there were no aerial poison gas or biological attacks, such standard gas-tight door improvisations proved to be no real match for aerial bombardments compared to purpose-built bomb shelters. And you rarely saw civilian gas masks sported in the media later in the war.




Yes, hiding in the partially-sunken concrete morgues at one of the Kremas during an air raid might have been better than anything else barring a direct hit on the building.

But the Kremas II and III morgues were sunken despite the high water table to help mitigate temperature swings not because of air defense. That is perfectly logical for a morgue that was built with electric ventilation but not actual refrigeration. And the concrete Kremas II and III morgue structures themselves was not nearly as robust anyway as Krema I, which is earth-sheltered concrete but not underground.

There is a big difference in what would be needed for air defense against chemical, biological, and radiological attacks from what would be needed as an actual bomb shelter capable of withstanding blasts and fire-storms. Mr. Crowell drew some attention to this in prewar and wartime German thinking which was enormously helpful.

Below is a page taken from a Textbook on Military Hygiene in a "Luftschutz" chapter, published in Berlin in 1936. On the left is an oxygen bottle station used to treat patients in a bomb shelter. And at right, is a hand-operated air pump which puts fresh and filtered air into a bomb shelter during a bombarment. The same equipment is used in Fallout Shelters (remember those?) to filter not just poison gas or smoke but radioative fallout dust. A larger shelter will have electric-powered air filtration, but if the power fails, you can always crank it from the inside.

I would agree that bomb or gas/fallout-refuge shelters would have doors that open inwardly because of the possibility of outside debris blocking the doors and trapping people inside; whereas, I can't imagine why you would have doors opening inwardly in a supposed homicidal gaschamber where dead bodies might block the door and keep it from opening.

The problem with this argumentation is that it is often hard to tell how architectural remains were originally configured.

[Nazgul]

I would agree that bomb or gas/fallout-refuge shelters would have doors that open inwardly because of the possibility of outside debris blocking the doors and trapping people inside; whereas, I can't imagine why you would have doors opening inwardly in a supposed homicidal gaschamber where dead bodies might block the door and keep it from opening.

My analysis of Krema II, Birkenau show the inside doors to the alleged gaskammer opening outwards as do the other doors. The plan below shows the location of the doors and how they open. You may need to expand this. I am not an expert on this but this is how I see it.

[Scott]

Well, the Leichenkeller were actually morgues not bomb shelters, so the doors opening outwards make sense.

The gas-tight doors at the Brausebad (shower-bath) in the new crematorium building at Dachau open outwardly too. This was a refrigerated morgue that had originally been a shower and had the ceiling lowered for better insulation.

When the Americans liberated the camp, they also probably put fake showerheads into the ceiling. They also seem to have removed the large air conditioning unit on the side of the building and put in postal-style mailslots where the cooling ducts had been, supposedly to insert the Zyklon-B fumigant. But this makes no sense as the clay Zyklon-B granules would have spilled out and clogged the floor drain, and then been hard to retrieve.

[Archie]

Well, the Leichenkeller were actually morgues not bomb shelters, so the doors opening outwards make sense.

The gas-tight doors at the Brausebad (shower-bath) in the new crematorium building at Dachau open outwardly too. This was a refrigerated morgue that had originally been a shower and had the ceiling lowered for better insulation.

I think all revisionists are agreed that they were primarily morgues.

But there remains the question of how to interpret the documents referring to LK1 as a "gassing cellar" or a "gas cellar." Assuming the documents are legit, there must have been some "gas-related" secondary function for these rooms. Mattogno favors a delousing/fumigation explanation. Butz and Crowell had the air raid or gas shelter hypothesis. You favor Mattogno's hypothesis?

Also, I assume you are aware but Fritz Berg is actually one of the earliest to suggest the air raid shelter hypothesis. He cited the Nyiszli quote in a footnote of one of his JHR papers in the 80s. But he never really developed the thesis. Do you know if he had an opinion about it later in life?

[fireofice]

Well, the Leichenkeller were actually morgues not bomb shelters, so the doors opening outwards make sense.

Can you please explain what a door opening outward has to do with it being a morgue? I am at a loss with this.

[Scott]

Well, the Leichenkeller were actually morgues not bomb shelters, so the doors opening outwards make sense.

Can you please explain what a door opening outward has to do with it being a morgue? I am at a loss with this.

Well, if it's a bombshelter, you want the doors to open inwards so the bombardment debris can't block the doors and trap people inside. The people in the bomb shelter are probably not packed inside like sardines, and the door opening inwards is not that much of an impediment.

If it is a morgue, then it doesn't really matter one way or the other, but you do waste some cold-storage space if the door opens inwardly.

If it is a homicidal gaschamber, and the people are not restrained somehow, or unless you have a inner jail cell grill with bars or something that keeps people and corpses clear from the inward-opening door, then the door simply has to open outwards instead.

[Scott]

Well, the Leichenkeller were actually morgues not bomb shelters, so the doors opening outwards make sense.

The gas-tight doors at the Brausebad (shower-bath) in the new crematorium building at Dachau open outwardly too. This was a refrigerated morgue that had originally been a shower and had the ceiling lowered for better insulation.

I think all revisionists are agreed that they were primarily morgues.

But there remains the question of how to interpret the documents referring to LK1 as a "gassing cellar" or a "gas cellar." Assuming the documents are legit, there must have been some "gas-related" secondary function for these rooms. Mattogno favors a delousing/fumigation explanation. Butz and Crowell had the air raid or gas shelter hypothesis. You favor Mattogno's hypothesis?

Also, I assume you are aware but Fritz Berg is actually one of the earliest to suggest the air raid shelter hypothesis. He cited the Nyiszli quote in a footnote of one of his JHR papers in the 80s. But he never really developed the thesis. Do you know if he had an opinion about it later in life?

Well, I'm not really disagreeing. Morgue or undressing area is the usage for the two Leichenkellers 1 or 2 in each K II or K III crematorium building ─ but there might have been some early plans for a disinfection or fumigation room also in the building or cellar.

Butz originally speculated that "gassing cellar" (Vergasungskeller) might be an equipment room that mixed the combustible fuel and air mixture like the Vergaser (carburetor) on an old German car. This interpretation was wrong, however, as the ovens were coke-fired and this process was integral to the oven itself. Most cremations are arguably done with natural gas (methane) today rather than with coke.

Jan Van Pelt thinks that the terminology "gassing cellar" is a Freudian slip and that the killers meant gas-chamber but were still not being nearly coded enough in their memos, and that somebody vainly red pencilled it for later redaction (which then never happened). This explanation is kind of dumb in my opinion.

It is possible that the Germans might have been originally planning to put a fumigation cellar in the building for obvious reasons, and they might even have done so.

On the other hand, they might have decided that it was not worth it and simply burned much of the dirty and worn clothing that was removed from corpses or else carted it off for proper fumigating, laundering and repair ─ assuming that they decided to keep it at all and that not all corpses taken to the Kremas were infested with body or clothing lice.

If the corpses are lousy, and especially if they died of typhus, it is important to burn the clothing or fumigate and sterilize it right away because lice can hibernate in a pile of dirty clothing for over a year ─ and that is where the lice will gather instead of following the dead bodies.

In each of Kremas II and III, there was a trash incinerator on the ground floor on the opposite side from the crematoria ovens. There were no trash incinerators with Kremas IV or V, which is what I think is really going on with the famous Sonderkommando photos.

No, they are not burning overflow bodies from the 1944 Hungarian Action in water-sogged pits behind Krema V. But they are undressing corpses, and the clothes or uniforms are being immediately burned upon bonfires just inside the wire in the "ash disposal area."

The corpses will probably go into the Krema V morgue for cremation later. The photos are taken from just inside the Krema V morgue door, which the Polish Resistance is calling the gas-chamber and claiming (per the legend) that bodies are being burned in pits.

As far as Mr. Berg and the Nyiszli passage, I don't recall exactly what he said, but it seems like a minor slip on Dr. Nyiszli's part if the thesis is that the cellar space is being used for homicidal gassings around the clock.

It is probably just a simple admission that people could hide in a basement (or morgue) during an air raid if the room were not chock full of bodies. Dr. Nyiszli was performing forensic autopsies, so he would have been around in such areas. And this shelter would not provide a lot of protection in any case, but it would have been safer than otherwise and might be a consideration during the few 1944 air-raids. It is not a hardened space, for sure, but digging slit tenches at Birkenau was very hard because of the high water table.

Anyway, Pressac thought that gas-tight doors showed homicidal intent, but not hardly. In reality, it would be quite normal to have gas-tight doors in either a morgue or a cellar that could be used as an occasional bomb-shelter.

And if there was a fumigation/disinfection room, cellar, or closet in the building, then of course they always have gas-tight doors anyway. And peepholes, if any, are fairly standard Luftschutz equipment too.

[Nessie]

Scott, if a historian, police officer or journalist was to investigate what the Kremas were used for in 1943 to 1944, they would look for evidence from witnesses, documents, physical items, imagery and the circumstances around the usage of the buildings, at that time.

You don't do that. Instead, in this post, you looked at evidence not from the Kremas, not even A-B, but from other camps.

viewtopic.php?p=1197#p1197

Then you gathered competing, contradicting theories about the usage of the buildings, from Butz, van Pelt, Berg, Pressac and your own thoughts.

Why do you not gather evidence directly pertaining to the work of the Kremas in 1943-4, to determine what took place?

[Scott]

The exact doors from the Birkenau Leichenkellers aren't there anymore and the blueprints of the Kremas are not that detailed.

Here are some blueprints for a Luftschutz bunker.



We do know that morgue doors were air-tight and sometimes had peepholes.

Pressac found some gas-tight doors kicking about the camp and determined that it was weird that they had peepholes if they were for fumigations.

Well, not that weird. Crowell shows that gas-tight bombshelter doors were standardized equipment and that peepholes were a common DIN (German Industry Norm) feature.

The gas-tight door copied at the USHMM museum ─ and extant today at the fumigation chambers at Majdanek, are standard duty gas-tight doors for bombshelters. The Mauthausen museum originally claimed that people were gassed in those fumigation and disinfection buildings.



The lie-witness testimony varies.

In the "Liturgy" evidence below from New York and published in mid-1944, the implication is that poison gas cannisters were just tossed in from windows like smoke grenades, and that Nazi dignitaries watched the gassings from windows.



Having windows makes sense for a shower. Here is the one at Majdanek.



The gas-tight door at the refrigerated morgue and shower at Mauthausen near the crematorium and probably a shower for the workers or overflow morgue, is still extant ─ and as David Cole observed, the gas-tight doors open the wrong way and you can get out if you really wanted to. Leuchter also found no chemical residue there.



Here OSS Lieutenant Jack Taylor, USN who was imprisoned in Mauthausen as a spy, demonstrates a Zyklon-B fumigation gas-generator. This is what we would need for fumigation of clothing and also a homicidal gas-chamber. But no cyanide traces were found in the shower/morgue, so no banana.

[curioussoul]

How do you know that Pruefer just agreed with a made up Soviet narrative?

Your argument was that he "mirrored" his captors, but that this somehow still doesn't undermine the credibility of his testimony.

Pruefer is corroborated by other evidence. That is how historians know he told the truth about his work to modify the Kremas for mass gassings and cremations.

If so, why would he lie to his interrogators? Keep in mind, Pruefer confirmed the crematoria would have been unable to manage the number of alleged victims.