Where'd They Go? (An inverted question from exterminationists)

[Keen]

Now, I'm being told I'm intellectually defective for believing my lying eyes... It is absolutely ridiculous and I have no words to respond to the accusation.

Yep, that's what gaslighting is. And bombsaway, the lying, cowardly, mentally ill POS cult member is still working on you.

[Keen]

I think if you decide to answer this (so far you have deflected), certain things will be brought to light

If no evidence ever surfaces, would that make a difference when it comes to believing/disbelieving in the Holocaust story, to you?

Asks the lying coward who cravenly refuses to answer these simple questions:

4 - In total, how many single, disconnected human teeth have been tangibly discovered within the 20 alleged Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question: _?_.

9 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove actually exist and currently contain at least an iota of human remains: _?_.

* "Grave" numbers can be found here: viewtopic.php?p=15633#p15633

14 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove currently contain the remains of at least 2 human beings: _?_.

19 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove currently contain the remains of at least 22 human beings: _?_.

24 - Of the 20 alleged Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question - the one that you can conclusively prove currently contains the most human remains is number: _?_.

[bombsaway]

For posterity, to those lurking, to those who will see these words in the times that come, I want you to see just exactly what Bombsaway here is claiming a quarter of a million people in a hole looks like;

https://codoh.com/?s=Sobibor+excavation+

These reports, they have been scrubbed from the internet repeatedly, I recommend, if this link still provides them, that you archive them. Do not let this be shoved down the memory hole.

The intellectual dishonesty of defending this is mindblowing. Bombsaway here is trying to say that I'm some kind of dishonest party working backwards from a conclusion. That's a wild misframing. I started out a firm believer in the lies I was told from teachers, institutions, documentaries and indoctrination.

In my youth, I knew the holocaust of 6 000,000 of the jews of Europe was real, because I'd seen the pictures. Step by step I learned I was fed lie after lie after lie after lie. The lies have never stopped. Now, I'm being told I'm intellectually defective for believing my lying eyes.

It is absolutely ridiculous and I have no words to respond to the accusation.

You're still deflecting and in my mind, have been misinformed, being quite gullible. The recent study that asserted crematory contents (from 2001)

https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... l#_Sobibor

was not the one you referenced https://www.yadvashem.org/press-release ... iquidation.

the 2013 one wasn't done w mass graves

Again I believe you have been misinformed and just gobble it up, for whatever reason. All of this is at the very least debatable, but you don't see it as such. Which brings me to the bigger issue, my question

If no evidence [of resettlement] ever surfaces, would that make a difference when it comes to believing/disbelieving in the Holocaust story, to you?

Will you answer it this time? Hmmmm

[Stubble]

Check 'grave 2', 'grave 7','grave 12','grave 3','grave 6'...

On and on...

Where, are, the, mass, graves.

READ the STUDY.

READ IT.

'Gullible'...

Go sit on your thumb Bombsaway

[bombsaway]

Check 'grave 2', 'grave 7','grave 12','grave 3','grave 6'...

On and on...

Where, are, the, mass, graves.

READ the STUDY.

READ IT.

'Gullible'...

Go sit on your thumb Bombsaway

You can see the maps here

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/holocau ... t1071.html

He reports eg a grave with dimensions " 70 x 20-25 m
with the depth of around 5m. In bottom layers the grave is bony, with human
remains in wax- fat transformation. The upper layers are a mixture of burnt
body remains with layers of lime stone, sand and charcoal."



what is "a fact" is that you haven't answered my simple question

[Keen]

He reports eg a grave with dimensions " 70 x 20-25 m with the depth of around 5m. In bottom layers the grave is bony, with human remains in wax- fat transformation. The upper layers are a mixture of burnt body remains with layers of lime stone, sand and charcoal."

Yoram Haimi:

"Graves one and two are not mass graves."

bombsaway,

4 - In total, how many single, disconnected human teeth have been tangibly discovered within the 20 alleged Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question: _?_.

9 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove actually exist and currently contain at least an iota of human remains: _?_.

* "Grave" numbers can be found here: viewtopic.php?p=15633#p15633

14 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove currently contain the remains of at least 2 human beings: _?_.

19 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove currently contain the remains of at least 22 human beings: _?_.

24 - Of the 20 alleged Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question - the one that you can conclusively prove currently contains the most human remains is number: _?_.

What are you waiting for bombsaway?

What are you so afraid of?

[SanityCheck]

Men were fucking hung over a pack of lies, and the very system meant to seek truth in the name of justice instead, refined, codified and cobbled together a story which the accused were not allowed to defend themselves from.

This whole fucking thing is so abhorrent, so evil, so wicked it is hard to define or put in to words.

Germans were executed for a whole variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You focus on just one aspect.

The legal history is pretty clear: acquittals were not uncommon in most systems (including IMT and NMT, even Polish courts acquitted a significant number of Germans), many death sentences were commuted, prison sentences were truncated due to early releases, many escaped any kind of justice.

The national programs inevitably focused heavily on crimes against the majority, and the British and Americans did likewise, on crimes against their servicemen and then other Allied nationalities; hardly any of the British and US zonal trials dealt with the Holocaust at all. The British and Americans sentenced quite a few SS men to death for crimes in Germany or in 'normal' KZs who had been involved in the Final Solution in Poland: Stroop, Schoengarth, Entress, Moll. They could also extradite Germans accused of involvement in the extermination of the Jews to other countries, only for those countries (like Poland) to put them on trial for killing the majority nationality and ignoring the Holocaust.

It's hard to see how Hoess as the commandant of the most lethal KZ for registered inmates could have escaped a death sentence if there were going to be trials; the same for Gauleiter Greiser and others (including various Nuremberg defendants) who were accused of crimes against non-Jews as well as Jews. There was enough on Friedrich Jeckeln that he would have dangled from a gallows in Riga even if there had been literally no Jews in the Ostland at all.

All these accused had every opportunity to explain themselves; and there were plenty of defenses available for many: my department wasn't involved in the killing part and I didn't have need-to-know and didn't know; it was the SS; it was that part of the SS and not mine; these defenses worked.

The ones who really did know and were involved could still have explained themselves. Some were able to name KZ prisoners or Jewish notables who they had known - that level of knowledge means it should have been quite easy to explain the workings of 'transit' and 'resettlement', or point to people who could provide an alibi ('yes I took these deported Jews off his hands').

Achieving the level of coercion and intimidation claimed by revisionists was impossible even in 1945-49, and beyond impossible in the long run.

The Third Reich collectively whiffed on coming up with plausible alibis for what was happening to the Jews in 1941-45; their cover up was incompetent and the cover stories lacking support. Then the Germans whiffed in 1945-49 in the phase of intensive investigations and trials across Europe. Other Germans who had made their escape also whiffed from 1945 to 1958, both outside Europe (in the Latin American enclaves) and in the two Germanies and Austria from 1949-58 when states were restored and occupations ended. Two out of three successors were democracies, there were entire networks of former Nazis and various far right parties but none delivered the alibi. Eichmann especially whiffed and affirmed mass murder rather than the hoped-for denial of it, when he was well beyond the reach of anyone. Then they all whiffed again from 1958 with renewed investigations, scrutiny and more trials. Still the same networks of former Nazis and far right parties who still failed to provide the alibi.

[bombsaway]

Yoram Haimi:

You are a troll and Haimi's photo has nothing to do with Kola's study from over a decade earlier. He wasn't looking for mass graves except to determine their boundaries so as to not dig there.

[Keen]

He wasn't looking for mass graves

bombsaway,

4 - In total, how many single, disconnected human teeth have been tangibly discovered within the 20 alleged Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question: _?_.

9 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove actually exist and currently contain at least an iota of human remains: _?_.

* "Grave" numbers can be found here: viewtopic.php?p=15633#p15633

14 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove currently contain the remains of at least 2 human beings: _?_.

19 - List all of the Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question that you can conclusively prove currently contain the remains of at least 22 human beings: _?_.

24 - Of the 20 alleged Sobibor graves / cremation pits in question - the one that you can conclusively prove currently contains the most human remains is number: _?_.

What are you waiting for bombsaway?

What are you so afraid of?

[Keen]

they all whiffed again from 1958 with renewed investigations

Yeah, investigations that resulted in the following statement that can be LEGALLY established as fact in a U.S. court:

It is alleged in orthodox historiography that; during WW II, the bodies and burnt remains of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of jews were buried in numerous “huge mass graves” at Belzec, Chelmno, Ponary, Sobibor and Treblinka II. However, despite all the deceptive allegations to the contrary, the truth is, the largest (in terms of quantity of remains) of the 96 graves / cremation pits in question that are fraudulently alleged to have been “scientifically proven” to currently exist at these five sites, in which verified human remains have been uncovered / tangibly located via bona fide, verifiably honest and conclusively documented archaeology, contained the remains of -

ONLY SIX PEOPLE.

https://thisisaboutscience.com/

Poor Nick, he's got an IQ lower than his BMI.

[Stubble]

Men were fucking hung over a pack of lies, and the very system meant to seek truth in the name of justice instead, refined, codified and cobbled together a story which the accused were not allowed to defend themselves from.

This whole fucking thing is so abhorrent, so evil, so wicked it is hard to define or put in to words.

Germans were executed for a whole variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You focus on just one aspect.

The legal history is pretty clear: acquittals were not uncommon in most systems (including IMT and NMT, even Polish courts acquitted a significant number of Germans), many death sentences were commuted, prison sentences were truncated due to early releases, many escaped any kind of justice.

The national programs inevitably focused heavily on crimes against the majority, and the British and Americans did likewise, on crimes against their servicemen and then other Allied nationalities; hardly any of the British and US zonal trials dealt with the Holocaust at all. The British and Americans sentenced quite a few SS men to death for crimes in Germany or in 'normal' KZs who had been involved in the Final Solution in Poland: Stroop, Schoengarth, Entress, Moll. They could also extradite Germans accused of involvement in the extermination of the Jews to other countries, only for those countries (like Poland) to put them on trial for killing the majority nationality and ignoring the Holocaust.

It's hard to see how Hoess as the commandant of the most lethal KZ for registered inmates could have escaped a death sentence if there were going to be trials; the same for Gauleiter Greiser and others (including various Nuremberg defendants) who were accused of crimes against non-Jews as well as Jews. There was enough on Friedrich Jeckeln that he would have dangled from a gallows in Riga even if there had been literally no Jews in the Ostland at all.

All these accused had every opportunity to explain themselves; and there were plenty of defenses available for many: my department wasn't involved in the killing part and I didn't have need-to-know and didn't know; it was the SS; it was that part of the SS and not mine; these defenses worked.

The ones who really did know and were involved could still have explained themselves. Some were able to name KZ prisoners or Jewish notables who they had known - that level of knowledge means it should have been quite easy to explain the workings of 'transit' and 'resettlement', or point to people who could provide an alibi ('yes I took these deported Jews off his hands').

Achieving the level of coercion and intimidation claimed by revisionists was impossible even in 1945-49, and beyond impossible in the long run.

The Third Reich collectively whiffed on coming up with plausible alibis for what was happening to the Jews in 1941-45; their cover up was incompetent and the cover stories lacking support. Then the Germans whiffed in 1945-49 in the phase of intensive investigations and trials across Europe. Other Germans who had made their escape also whiffed from 1945 to 1958, both outside Europe (in the Latin American enclaves) and in the two Germanies and Austria from 1949-58 when states were restored and occupations ended. Two out of three successors were democracies, there were entire networks of former Nazis and various far right parties but none delivered the alibi. Eichmann especially whiffed and affirmed mass murder rather than the hoped-for denial of it, when he was well beyond the reach of anyone. Then they all whiffed again from 1958 with renewed investigations, scrutiny and more trials. Still the same networks of former Nazis and far right parties who still failed to provide the alibi.

Where are the missing persons Mr Terry, where did they go? Where are they?

They aren't in the ground along the Bug River in tightly packed mass graves Mr Terry. They went somewhere. Where did they go?

As far as mounting a legal defense, once Hoess's confession was extracted, there was no argument 'of the fact'. No judge was going to hear it. Instead the judges in the various trials said 'streamline it' and they convicted men on testimony alone. No real investigation, no identification of the dead, nothing.



Any of the Soviet ever swing for the purge? The holodomor? Any allied pilot ever swing for dam busting or firebombing?

It wasn't about justice, truth, warcrimes or anything else, it was a witchhunt to neuter the German intelligentsia.

[Callafangers]

Germans were executed for a whole variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You focus on just one aspect.

The legal history is pretty clear: acquittals were not uncommon in most systems (including IMT and NMT, even Polish courts acquitted a significant number of Germans), many death sentences were commuted, prison sentences were truncated due to early releases, many escaped any kind of justice.

This doesn't tell us much of anything. Trial proceedings and outcomes necessarily involved many stakeholders, many of whom acted with good and serious intentions. This doesn't shed light into the patterns or fundamental imbalances of power, resources, forms of coercion, etc., which are widespread and indisputable in all of the major trials where your core 'Holocaust' narrative and its key components are derived.

The balance was in effective reshaping of the postwar world which also necessitated not coming off as a too much of a "lynching fest". This entails a range of convictions, releases, etc., within what the general public could perceive as reasonable. The existence of a range of outcomes, therefore, does nothing to support your case.

The national programs inevitably focused heavily on crimes against the majority, and the British and Americans did likewise, on crimes against their servicemen and then other Allied nationalities; hardly any of the British and US zonal trials dealt with the Holocaust at all. The British and Americans sentenced quite a few SS men to death for crimes in Germany or in 'normal' KZs who had been involved in the Final Solution in Poland: Stroop, Schoengarth, Entress, Moll. They could also extradite Germans accused of involvement in the extermination of the Jews to other countries, only for those countries (like Poland) to put them on trial for killing the majority nationality and ignoring the Holocaust.

Yes, and surely if Germany had won the war, they could have conducted many different trials against their enemies, and these would be met with due suspicion. I imagine you would have no difficulty accusing the Germans of rigging trials and planting (or destroying) evidence in such a situation. It seems you have a moral/ideological bias.

Moreover, none of the nuances you portray here add weight to your case -- in the postwar world, many nations sought to be a part of the denazified "new world order" which was coming about and the redistribution of power it entailed. Many nations (and political/legal authorities and figures) actually believed in the 'Holocaust' tales, whether or not they had means (or desire) to independently verify these claims. Most of the nations you would refer to (e.g. Poland) had lost family, friends, neighbors, property, etc. in the war and had no reason to cast doubt upon claims of 'German evil' (and plenty of reason to seek revenge).

Once again, you are empty-handed.

It's hard to see how Hoess as the commandant of the most lethal KZ for registered inmates could have escaped a death sentence if there were going to be trials; the same for Gauleiter Greiser and others (including various Nuremberg defendants) who were accused of crimes against non-Jews as well as Jews. There was enough on Friedrich Jeckeln that he would have dangled from a gallows in Riga even if there had been literally no Jews in the Ostland at all.

All these accused had every opportunity to explain themselves; and there were plenty of defenses available for many: my department wasn't involved in the killing part and I didn't have need-to-know and didn't know; it was the SS; it was that part of the SS and not mine; these defenses worked.

Just imagine if British, American, or Soviet soldiers could be held individually to account for their own atrocities in the war. Just imagine if Germany had the resources to probe into the actions of these nations post-war, including their confidential records and archives. Even with what has now made it onto the historical record, there is no question that atrocities of Allied nations exceed those of the Axis (Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Dresden, Soviet mass rapes, Allied mass rapes of Japanese and French, etc.). For you to highlight (or claim) actions of specific 'Nazis' in desperate, brutal warfare brought upon them as evidence of 'Holocaust' beliefs is quite the stretch.

Again, you get no points.

The ones who really did know and were involved could still have explained themselves. Some were able to name KZ prisoners or Jewish notables who they had known - that level of knowledge means it should have been quite easy to explain the workings of 'transit' and 'resettlement', or point to people who could provide an alibi ('yes I took these deported Jews off his hands').

Achieving the level of coercion and intimidation claimed by revisionists was impossible even in 1945-49, and beyond impossible in the long run.

The ones "who really did know" were worried about their families, and were well-known by their captors as the ones 'who really could know'; thus were high-value targets for coercion. This coercion is not deniable; it's been proven in some individual cases and the general character of the postwar trials ("victors against the vanquished") has been rightly challenged at its face, given no fair trial can be possible with as much animosity and vitriol that follows a world war, with the defendants' families (all, without exception) at the whim of the prosecution, which included the Soviet Union currently on a rape-spree against all German women.

The Third Reich collectively whiffed on coming up with plausible alibis for what was happening to the Jews in 1941-45; their cover up was incompetent and the cover stories lacking support. Then the Germans whiffed in 1945-49 in the phase of intensive investigations and trials across Europe. Other Germans who had made their escape also whiffed from 1945 to 1958, both outside Europe (in the Latin American enclaves) and in the two Germanies and Austria from 1949-58 when states were restored and occupations ended. Two out of three successors were democracies, there were entire networks of former Nazis and various far right parties but none delivered the alibi. Eichmann especially whiffed and affirmed mass murder rather than the hoped-for denial of it, when he was well beyond the reach of anyone. Then they all whiffed again from 1958 with renewed investigations, scrutiny and more trials. Still the same networks of former Nazis and far right parties who still failed to provide the alibi.

Yes, their 'cover up was so incompetent' that you can't seem to find a shred of contemporary wartime documentation or physical evidence; thankfully, your incoherent pool of witnesses and coercive show trials postwar came in to expose what was 'covered up'. Surely, the Allies and their seething Jews just politely asked Germans what was true, until the Germans finally 'whiffed it all up', all thanks to the noble and diligent efforts of the victors (*cue patriotic songs*). The Soviet Union initially demanded that show trials be the approach... but good ol' Americans and British told them to sit back and quiet down while justice was served , and then all was honest thereafter. Just brilliant.

Surely, the series of 'whiffing' that happened at various locations had nothing to do with the prosecutors of the latter 'whiffings' pointing to the prior 'whiffings' as evidence against the latter 'whiffers'.

Ah, yes, and Eichmann's 'whiff' was one for the ages. Your senseless reading of his Sassen interview speaks volumes to how you interpret 'Holocaust' statements and records across-the-board. Tell us: if Eichmann was telling the truth at this interview, why did take him becoming furious at Sassen in order to start really 'spilling the beans'? And was it mere coincidence that he invited the entire town over for these interviews, almost like the fame and social incentives of it all were of special importance to him? What about his lies of the Majdanek 'gassing' which did not happen (per Browning)? What about his claim of 'only a few hundred thousand' Jews killed, said to his colleague, Habel?

Overall, selective readings of evidence and documentation is unbecoming of an historian, Nick. Are your students reading this? How will they feel, seeing their esteemed professor forced to veer so far from sound intellectual/scientific methodology? Notice I left out 'historical method', which seems more and more to have become defined by [source-uncritical] 'Holocaust scholarship', rather than the other way around.

[Nessie]

...Notice I left out 'historical method', which seems more and more to have become defined by [source-uncritical] 'Holocaust scholarship', rather than the other way around.

Your source critical method, involves disbelieving any evidence for mass murder. No so-called revisionist has ever been able to produce an evidenced, chronological revised history, going from the first arrests of Jews, through to 1945. That would show where they went.

[Keen]

Your source critical method, involves disbelieving any evidence for mass murder.

There is NO clear, convincing, credible or conclusive evidence for mass murder at B, C, P, S & T II (36% of the alleged holohoax murder victims) and the physicl evidence is virtually NON EXISTENT.

That's why the following statement can be LEGALLY established as fact in a U.S. court:

It is alleged in orthodox historiography that; during WW II, the bodies and burnt remains of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of jews were buried in numerous “huge mass graves” at Belzec, Chelmno, Ponary, Sobibor and Treblinka II. However, despite all the deceptive allegations to the contrary, the truth is, the largest (in terms of quantity of remains) of the 96 graves / cremation pits in question that are fraudulently alleged to have been “scientifically proven” to currently exist at these five sites, in which verified human remains have been uncovered / tangibly located via bona fide, verifiably honest and conclusively documented archaeology, contained the remains of -

ONLY SIX PEOPLE.

https://thisisaboutscience.com/

The so-called "scientific evidence" (archaeological / forensic) that allegedly "proves" the existence of 96 graves containing the remains of 2.145 million jews at these 5 camps has been PROVEN to be fraudulent.

https://thisisaboutscience.com/

NOTE: If you have any doubt about the veracity of the above statements, just ask any one of the lying, cowardly, low IQ reality deniers on this forum to answer the following simple question:

26 - Of the 96 alleged graves / cremation pits of Belzec, Chelmno, Ponary, Sobibor and Treblinka II in question - the one that you can conclusively prove currently contains the most human remains is number: _?_.

Then sit back and watch the lying cowards avoid the question like the plague.

[SanityCheck]

Germans were executed for a whole variety of war crimes and crimes against humanity. You focus on just one aspect.

The legal history is pretty clear: acquittals were not uncommon in most systems (including IMT and NMT, even Polish courts acquitted a significant number of Germans), many death sentences were commuted, prison sentences were truncated due to early releases, many escaped any kind of justice.

This doesn't tell us much of anything. Trial proceedings and outcomes necessarily involved many stakeholders, many of whom acted with good and serious intentions. This doesn't shed light into the patterns or fundamental imbalances of power, resources, forms of coercion, etc., which are widespread and indisputable in all of the major trials where your core 'Holocaust' narrative and its key components are derived.

The balance was in effective reshaping of the postwar world which also necessitated not coming off as a too much of a "lynching fest". This entails a range of convictions, releases, etc., within what the general public could perceive as reasonable. The existence of a range of outcomes, therefore, does nothing to support your case.

The national programs inevitably focused heavily on crimes against the majority, and the British and Americans did likewise, on crimes against their servicemen and then other Allied nationalities; hardly any of the British and US zonal trials dealt with the Holocaust at all. The British and Americans sentenced quite a few SS men to death for crimes in Germany or in 'normal' KZs who had been involved in the Final Solution in Poland: Stroop, Schoengarth, Entress, Moll. They could also extradite Germans accused of involvement in the extermination of the Jews to other countries, only for those countries (like Poland) to put them on trial for killing the majority nationality and ignoring the Holocaust.

Yes, and surely if Germany had won the war, they could have conducted many different trials against their enemies, and these would be met with due suspicion. I imagine you would have no difficulty accusing the Germans of rigging trials and planting (or destroying) evidence in such a situation. It seems you have a moral/ideological bias.

Moreover, none of the nuances you portray here add weight to your case -- in the postwar world, many nations sought to be a part of the denazified "new world order" which was coming about and the redistribution of power it entailed. Many nations (and political/legal authorities and figures) actually believed in the 'Holocaust' tales, whether or not they had means (or desire) to independently verify these claims. Most of the nations you would refer to (e.g. Poland) had lost family, friends, neighbors, property, etc. in the war and had no reason to cast doubt upon claims of 'German evil' (and plenty of reason to seek revenge).

Once again, you are empty-handed.

You're utterly delusional about the "reshaping of the postwar world". Talking of a "denazified new world order" is completely delusional since there was this little thing called the fucking Cold War that followed 1945. That wasn't a "new world order" but a global geopolitical rivalry between two blocs competing for influence over the rest of the world as well - with decolonisation thrown into the mix from the 1940s in Asia.

Europe didn't need much 'denazification' after 1945 since National Socialism was so resoundingly unpopular across the continent before, during and after the war. National Socialism had also brought utter disaster and ruin onto Germany. More importantly: the core aims of National Socialism to create a German hegemony in Europe, at the very least, were henceforth impossible in the atomic age. The Nazi 'system' proved to be a flash in the pan, lasting only twelve years, which is less time than the Tory government of Britain between 1979 and 1997, much less the post-Stalinist Soviet Union or many other long lasting governments.

To account for the actual postwar order, you need to include NATO, the Bundeswehr, the Warsaw Pact, Bretton Woods, GATT, the WTO, United Nations, Comecon, the EEC, the consequences for the British, Dutch and French empires (in Asia then Africa), and a host of socioeconomic developments starting with television, increased car ownership, fridges and white goods, tourism (on both sides of the Iron Curtain) and soon enough jet travel, as well as the agrarian revolution which led to the formation of EEC butter mountains and west European farmers being paid off not to produce food once in a while. To name but a few manifestations.

The postwar trials were a temporary phenomenon across Europe - much like UNRRA was as a relief agency. The UNWCC and mechanisms for seeking extraditions of accused war criminals was wound up in 1948. The Cold War accelerated the end of the remaining trials and the early release of almost all convicted war criminals, including from Polish and Soviet prisons.

The Cold War also led to extensive equations of Nazi camps with Soviet concentration camps, and to emphasising other similarities between the dictatorships, at least in the west.

The legacies of the war *and* its aftermath hardly went undiscussed - Katyn suddenly became very useful in the Korean War, the repressions of the Soviets across Eastern Europe were manifest and the US was broadcasting propaganda via Radio Free Europe, with its role in the 1956 Hungarian Uprising much discussed. Meanwhile, East Germany commemorated Dresden as a way of striking back at Anglo-American barbarism, and the East Bloc could easily find former Nazis somewhere in the West German government or military because of the compromises (which were rational - enlisting the old elites was a necessity to turn the BRD into a proper partner in NATO).

None of that changed through to the 21st Century, the mobilisation of different memories or emphases on different crimes just fluctuated; in 2022 more European states could acknowledge the Holodomor and remember the Red Army mass rapes of 1945 because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The EU expanded and East European members emphasise double genocide, Nazi *and* Soviet crimes, West European members didn't experience Stalinism directly so those crimes resonate less, but still get researched and written about.

In 1970 critics of America could recall WWII bombing and the threat of another Hiroshima because of Vietnam. In the 1980s the Reagan administration helped publicise the Holodomor (this is when it received its name) and was lambasting the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire'. Other parts of American society were interested in the Nazis, without this being necessarily competitive in the way you think it should be, since totalitarianism and dictatorship were both coded as objectionable - and the point about dictatorship was used to lambaste the hypocrisy of US tolerance for repressive military dictatorships in Central and Latin America.

The postwar trials were not the foundation of the postwar order.

It's hard to see how Hoess as the commandant of the most lethal KZ for registered inmates could have escaped a death sentence if there were going to be trials; the same for Gauleiter Greiser and others (including various Nuremberg defendants) who were accused of crimes against non-Jews as well as Jews. There was enough on Friedrich Jeckeln that he would have dangled from a gallows in Riga even if there had been literally no Jews in the Ostland at all.

All these accused had every opportunity to explain themselves; and there were plenty of defenses available for many: my department wasn't involved in the killing part and I didn't have need-to-know and didn't know; it was the SS; it was that part of the SS and not mine; these defenses worked.

Just imagine if British, American, or Soviet soldiers could be held individually to account for their own atrocities in the war. Just imagine if Germany had the resources to probe into the actions of these nations post-war, including their confidential records and archives. Even with what has now made it onto the historical record, there is no question that atrocities of Allied nations exceed those of the Axis (Hiroshima/Nagasaki, Dresden, Soviet mass rapes, Allied mass rapes of Japanese and French, etc.). For you to highlight (or claim) actions of specific 'Nazis' in desperate, brutal warfare brought upon them as evidence of 'Holocaust' beliefs is quite the stretch.

Again, you get no points.

Your whataboutery simply isn't a refutation of the points made.

Firstly, to reiterate, the likes of Hoess, Greiser and Jeckeln were also charged with inflicting mass death and suffering on large enough numbers of Poles and Soviet citizens that in comparison with others charged only with such crimes, we can see the trial outcomes would not have changed even if there had been no Jews in Auschwitz, the Warthegau or the Ostland.

Secondly, pretty much every official and officer was captured (subject to 'automatic arrest') and interrogated. The conditions for these trawls were such that it is not plausible that any one state could have enforced a false story via coercion or intimidation, or that all of the interrogated Germans would have remained silent about what "really" happened. By this I mean the revisionist minimum of no gassings in extermination camps and therefore dispersal elsewhere - the latter is what would have been the OBVIOUS alibi and refutation for accusations coming from Auschwitz survivors and others. If the Germans hadn't been exterminating Jews in camps with gas but instead dispersing them elsewhere, then their officials and officers would have said so, and given details. They did not.

The ones who really did know and were involved could still have explained themselves. Some were able to name KZ prisoners or Jewish notables who they had known - that level of knowledge means it should have been quite easy to explain the workings of 'transit' and 'resettlement', or point to people who could provide an alibi ('yes I took these deported Jews off his hands').

Achieving the level of coercion and intimidation claimed by revisionists was impossible even in 1945-49, and beyond impossible in the long run.

The ones "who really did know" were worried about their families, and were well-known by their captors as the ones 'who really could know'; thus were high-value targets for coercion. This coercion is not deniable; it's been proven in some individual cases and the general character of the postwar trials ("victors against the vanquished") has been rightly challenged at its face, given no fair trial can be possible with as much animosity and vitriol that follows a world war, with the defendants' families (all, without exception) at the whim of the prosecution, which included the Soviet Union currently on a rape-spree against all German women.

On the contrary, your claim of total, seamless coercion which left no trace on this specific issue is easily deniable, since there's just no evidence for it. As in, not one single later note from a defense lawyer, memoir, deathbed confession - there's nothing saying that Allied, Polish or Soviet interrogators twisted the arms of Germans in 1945-49 about extermination by gas.

The number of claims of being roughed up is ultimately minimal when contrasted with the number interrogated.

"General character of the trials" is just waffle. You are generalising hopelessly about not just trials but a whole variety of interrogation situations preceding any extraditions, indictments or hints that someone might be tried, and doing so regarding multiple military formations, agencies/investigative bodies, and then multiplied by the countries involved.

Moreover, to come back to the issue of the proper baseline, not only do you need to consider all trials not just statements about extermination camps, you need to consider all interrogations after the war. A much, much larger sample.

Then to note how so many Germans could disclaim knowledge or offer other defences, or outright deny a particular accusation, thus disproving the total-coercion necessary condition to maintain your irreducible delusion.

The Third Reich collectively whiffed on coming up with plausible alibis for what was happening to the Jews in 1941-45; their cover up was incompetent and the cover stories lacking support. Then the Germans whiffed in 1945-49 in the phase of intensive investigations and trials across Europe. Other Germans who had made their escape also whiffed from 1945 to 1958, both outside Europe (in the Latin American enclaves) and in the two Germanies and Austria from 1949-58 when states were restored and occupations ended. Two out of three successors were democracies, there were entire networks of former Nazis and various far right parties but none delivered the alibi. Eichmann especially whiffed and affirmed mass murder rather than the hoped-for denial of it, when he was well beyond the reach of anyone. Then they all whiffed again from 1958 with renewed investigations, scrutiny and more trials. Still the same networks of former Nazis and far right parties who still failed to provide the alibi.

Yes, their 'cover up was so incompetent' that you can't seem to find a shred of contemporary wartime documentation or physical evidence;

Stop lying to yourself, it'll save on brainhurt and butthurt for you later on.

Are you seriously going to argue there's no contemporary wartime documentation of the extermination of the Jews, and of gassing? It's not true for the German documents and it's certainly not true for all contemporary sources.

Are you seriously going to say that NO physical evidence of cyanide traces, burnt remains, mass graves was found in the 1940s? Because that quite obviously isn't the conclusion reached in the mainstream.

thankfully, your incoherent pool of witnesses and coercive show trials postwar came in to expose what was 'covered up'. Surely, the Allies and their seething Jews just politely asked Germans what was true, until the Germans finally 'whiffed it all up', all thanks to the noble and diligent efforts of the victors (*cue patriotic songs*). The Soviet Union initially demanded that show trials be the approach... but good ol' Americans and British told them to sit back and quiet down while justice was served , and then all was honest thereafter. Just brilliant.

Surely, the series of 'whiffing' that happened at various locations had nothing to do with the prosecutors of the latter 'whiffings' pointing to the prior 'whiffings' as evidence against the latter 'whiffers'.

Ah, yes, and Eichmann's 'whiff' was one for the ages. Your senseless reading of his Sassen interview speaks volumes to how you interpret 'Holocaust' statements and records across-the-board. Tell us: if Eichmann was telling the truth at this interview, why did take him becoming furious at Sassen in order to start really 'spilling the beans'? And was it mere coincidence that he invited the entire town over for these interviews, almost like the fame and social incentives of it all were of special importance to him? What about his lies of the Majdanek 'gassing' which did not happen (per Browning)? What about his claim of 'only a few hundred thousand' Jews killed, said to his colleague, Habel?

Why did Eichmann discuss any gassing and killing sites to Sassen at all, if "Nazi gassings never happened"? That is the point; he continued to minimise things both in Argentina and after capture, as one would expect from someone being accused of complicity in enormous crimes. And over a decade after the war, memories can be easily confused on some aspects. But Eichmann should never have conceded or discussed gassing and killing in the first place, if "Nazi gassings never happened".

To repeat:

1. The Nazi regime failed to offer a plausible cover story, point to Potemkin villages or alibis, or explain what was happening to the deported Jews in a believable way, long after it had been repeatedly accused of mass murdering Jews by mass shootings, gas vans and then extermination camps in 1942. Pointing to Theresienstadt, as one propagandist did in mid-1944 after yet more reports of gassings, is clearly inadequate as a proper response. It isn't even good deflection, it's just incompetent. 'Resettlement' was apparently just as secret as extermination - it just wasn't discussed publicly. But it clearly should have been, as that left the field wide open for the ever accumulating number of accusations. Anyone sympathetic to the National Socialists should be utterly ashamed of their complete PR and propaganda incompetence.

2. Not one German interrogated in 1945-49 in the postwar investigations and trials could point with concrete details to a 'resettlement' camp or reservation and explain the whereabouts of the known deportees. The best they could offer were vague ideas of 'somewhere in the east'.

3. No German who escaped Europe did so, either, and that obviously includes Eichmann.

4. No German did so from 1949-58 when the trials had died down and before the establishment of the Zentrale Stelle in Ludwigsburg, renewing war crimes investigations.

5. No German did so after 1958, before or after the Eichmann trial.

Overall, selective readings of evidence and documentation is unbecoming of an historian, Nick. Are your students reading this? How will they feel, seeing their esteemed professor forced to veer so far from sound intellectual/scientific methodology? Notice I left out 'historical method', which seems more and more to have become defined by [source-uncritical] 'Holocaust scholarship', rather than the other way around.

The selective readings of evidence are coming from your side, I'm afraid.

You keep relying on that kneejerk accusation, like other revisionists, and are basically parroting it from somewhere, but without ever demonstrating how it supposedly works. That's because you've never really sat down to plough through the files, nor are you interested in other Nazi policies, whereas I very much am. So that is what my students get, not a sole focus on the extermination of the Jews, or a sole focus on gassing, since starvation, overwork and shootings were all such obvious parts of the picture, both for Jews and non-Jews to varying degrees.

Source criticism works in two ways. The first is to ask what sources have survived on a cluster of events, a specific event, a fact, detail, phenomenon. This generally means the number of sources increases over time, especially after the end of an archival thirty year rule, or if other collections become available. Source types will vary as well. One does not simply throw out sources on a particular 'splash' in a pond for arbitrary reasons or applying restrictive criteria. There is still plenty of room to apply criticism to individual sources to ascertain hearsay, potential exaggeration or political/religious/ideological spin, and even rule out some sources because they are wholly contradicted by others. What counts as contradiction is conventionally not as frivolous as we see in revisionism, since the sources might have been hearsay, not well placed as eyeball observers, misinformed by subordinates, or writing a self-serving account, and so on.

The second is when a source covers multiple events, details, facts, which is quite typical of diaries, memoirs, lengthier accounts, all of which will have an element of subjectivity (religious etc bias, positionality as an observer, and so on). The whole of the source must be considered and the events, facts, details broken down.

The standard use of sources is to cite one or more to support a particular claim or point of detail. If multiple eyewitnesses recall a specific event then their accounts can be contrasted. The standard vagaries of testimony make it very hard to articulate a conspiracy just because of some differences. If there are serious differences then the contradiction is left unresolved and open noting the conflicting accounts - this is hardly unknown in histories of other eras, and can become he-said, she-said if there are axes being ground, etc.

There are infinite examples of self-serving accounts, the classic examples being the memoirs of politicians and generals. These memoirs can be highly reliable and corroborated on some points and then turn out to be dissembling or skating past the true facts on others - everyone likes to paint themselves in the best light.

So in the second mode of considering an entire memoir (etc), it is not enough to find one error or case that might be considered dissembling or whatever other cause of inaccuracy. One must assess the whole and note cases of corroboration as well as misrememberings and other sources of distortion.

The principle was articulated in Marc Bloch's book The Historian's Craft, written in 1941-2 before his death at the hands of the Gestapo in France, where he distinguished between intentional and non-intentional evidence. Intentional evidence is any source created for a specific purpose, which can include a speech, newspaper article, memoir, and many other source types routinely used in history, social science and journalism. Writing history without intentional evidence is as impossible as doing any kind of journalism without it.

As an example, let's consider Rudolf Hoess's autobiography written in prison in Krakow before his trial. It has a wealth of supporting materials since Hoess was repeatedly interrogated from his capture by the British in March 1946 to cross-examinations in court a year later in Krakow. He was also interviewed by a psychiatrist and psychologist at Nuremberg, and wrote a series of supporting pen-portraits of key SS leaders as well as an essay on the Final Solution.

Hoess's memoir is often cited in modern studies of the Freikorps since he fought in the Baltic states after WWI. Such citations place him on a par with other Freikorps memoirists of whom there are quite a few. He admitted participating in a political assassination for which he was jailed; this could also be used in studies of political violence in Weimar.

There is a lot on his service in Dachau and Sachsenhausen before being sent to Auschwitz, and some on his time as head of Amtsgruppe D in 1943-45, interrupted by his return to Auschwitz for the Hungarian action. Notably this material was also in the autobiographically narrative statement recorded by the British after his capture. Hoess was also interrogated frequently about the KZ system as a whole, giving details on the number of guards he remembered, and suchlike.

Hoess comments a lot on Auschwitz in general, Auschwitz inmates, the SS-Aufseherinnen and male Auschwitz SS staff. He emerges as a "biased" witness in that he sounds excessively grumpy and critical of the SS men and women he has been given to build up the camp. But some of these tensions are confirmed from other sources, some are just his subjective personal opinion. He is somewhat racist about various prisoner groups, but that speaks to his honesty, as he is not glorifying the prisoners to suck up to his captors in Poland.

Alas, it seems that Hoess had a problem with dates even regarding irrefutable, undeniable developments documented copiously in other sources, such as when the Slovakian Jews arrived and when the new crematoria began operating. In both of these cases, he backdates them by about six months. Not all of his dates are unreliable, but this test on one matter makes it possible that other dates could be out as well.

Which we indeed find, with the same misdatings going back to his first statement. The slip seems to have been when he received orders to construct Birkenau as a POW camp; he remembered this as March 1941 when in fact it was late September 1941. There may have been earlier loose discussions but the formal order came through then.

Hoess's essay on the Final Solution starts with him recounting a one-on-one meeting with Himmler in the summer of 1941 when he supposedly received the order to exterminate the Jews. This could be considered a potentially self-serving claim since it places everything he subsequently describes under the auspices of a clear order from Himmler. The dating is also 'early', and this is where comparisons with other SS officers helps. Ohlendorf had claimed a pre-Barbarossa general extermination order and stuck to this, to try and rely on superior orders.

In Hoess's case, the being-ordered, 'I wasn't the first' aspect seems to lead to further distortions, such as claiming that Himmler mentioned other camps in existence when there were none, and visiting Treblinka in 1941 before even Treblinka II existed. In two separate sources Hoess identified his visit to Treblinka as occurring in March 1943, ignoring the contradiction with his 1941 claim.

Hoess's claim that Himmler passed on the order directly was confirmed by Gerhard Maurer, who said Hoess told him this was how it happened. Yes, hearsay, but the corroboration is helpful. Hoess was surely told something by Himmler when the latter visited in July 1942, an earlier meeting not recorded in Himmler's appointments diary is also possible since meetings without adjutants could end up being not recorded. But the subsequent narrative of meeting with Eichmann fits early 1942, with Eichmann saying he didn't visit Auschwitz before spring or March 1942. That in turn fits with a variety of documents about Himmler ordering Jews to be sent to KZs in January 1942, and the arrival of Slovakian Jews from the spring, necessitating creating a women's section.

These comments are illustrations of source criticism: why is this intentional evidence phrased as it is, why are claims being made in this way and with possible inaccuracies? Can the claims be corroborated and a probable explanation advanced? Having read the entire memoir (several times over a 40 year period), Hoess clearly wants to portray himself as something of an obedient soldier made unhappy by being given the booby prize of overseeing extermination at Auschwitz. It's also not uncommon for reminiscences to mangle chronology in a self-serving way and distort things. This was Hoess's self-portrayal.

Hoess is superabundantly corroborated on the setting up of different gassing sites in Auschwitz and Birkenau. For the new crematoria there are numerous documents which cannot be interpreted independently of the sum total of witnesses, SS or prisoner, or other contemporary sources. For the 'bunkers' quite a lot of documents referring to Sonderbehandlung, designing gastight doors 'as with the doors for the Sonderbeh. d. J.', and so on. Before Hoess was captured, 32 Auschwitz SS officers and men had given statements, which must be evaluated with the same slightly gimlet eye (why is this one spinning in this way and that one spinning in another way). Then there are all the prisoner witnesses both to the facilities and procedures.

A final classic detail is the numbers Hoess gives in his essay on the Final Solution written before the memoir. He has been interrogated several times already but now resiles from his earlier estimate of 2.5 million killed. At his trial he is asked about this and explains that the British interrogators had badgered him with higher numbers, i.e. the then-prevailing 4 million overestimate. If Hoess had been coerced by the British, he is likely to have affirmed a higher number. He noted that this number came from Eichmann in 1944, and indeed 2.5 million would fit with *all* deportations not just to Auschwitz. Hoess from his first statement to his memoir/essay consistently recalled the same national figures totalling nearly 1.1 million. This consistency is especially striking since it is what he settles on in the essay, rejecting higher figures, showing the limits of what could be badgered into someone. The Poles evidently couldn't badger or coerce him to raise the number to a more congenial propagandistic level.

Hoess claimed to have been roughed up in his first interrogation; records of his capture show that on the first night he was merely interrogated about his identity and admitted this, with the full statement being recorded a day later.

The full statement is as noted replete with autobiographical details and his career progression which are easily confirmed from documents. There are some evident errors of memory and names, which persisted through the IMT interrogations in some cases. But the transcripts of those interrogations indicate he had a memory which he recounted repeatedly, and largely stuck to. This was his self-portrayal, not beaten into him by interrogators, since he could recount it fluently to entirely different interviewers and interrogators, including some of the contradictions he may not have been fully aware of (such as correctly dating his visit to Treblinka to early 1943 rather than 1941 before there was any kind of camp there). There is no evidence he received harsh treatment at Nuremberg and the protocols don't read like he was being badgered or steamrolled. Hoess even was confronted by Otto Moll who was trying to minimise his role at Auschwitz, and almost gleefully corrected him.

I'm afraid the revisionist efforts to discredit Hoess entirely have been flawed from Rassinier onwards; one reason is that there's no explanation of the undeniable, corroborated parts nor a clear indication of where the seams or joins are with the supposedly false parts. Moreover, the contested parts - the brute fact of mass gassing at Auschwitz-Birkenau - is superabundantly confirmed from numerous other sources independent of Hoess. Any hoaxing claim must explain all of those sources (witnesses, contemporary reports, manuscripts, photos, German documents). But that hasn't been done.

Thus, Hoess continues to be cited in conventional literature, and it's not exactly difficult to cite him corroborated by other sources for specific details, while noting the subjective elements which come solely from Hoess - not exactly an unusual situation in writing history, or the estimates which create a range, as with countless other events and procedures in history.