Blobel's Flamethrower and the Hoess Chelmno visit

[Archie]

Since the summer of 1943, there had been an order to stop creating mass graves. Bodies were to be burned immediately. A year earlier, the Reich Security Main Office had ordered the excavation and removal of the remains of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women and children murdered by shooting or gassing throughout German-occupied Europe. ...

You see here the tension between the Blobel timeline and this Aktion 1005 narrative. It is really a 1943 story but this Blobel cremating bodies with flamethrowers and dynamite story is set in 1942.

The Babi Yar cover-up (not supported by air photo evidence) was supposedly not until Sep 1943.
viewtopic.php?t=151

And even the mainstream seems to conceded that earlier cremations at Chelmno were hygienic in nature. Hoffman (quoted in HH 39, 477)

Due to the summer heat, the bodies of victims buried in mass graves had become
a hygienic problem. The murderers were worried about the quality of the
groundwater; some of them also objected to the noticeable odours and effluents
from the graves on aesthetic grounds.

and Montague (ibid)

The problem of the decomposing corpses was so acute that all transports to
Chełmno were stopped. […] To solve the problem, the notorious Standartenführer
Paul Blobel soon arrived in Chełmno. […] Blobel required a location to experi
ment and develop a method to employ throughout the East, and Chełmno proved
ideal; it was far from the front and therefore secure, and the site offered an abun
dance of material with which to work. Bothmann [the camp’s commandant] also
needed Blobel to solve his immediate problem of the decomposing corpses, as
well as the longer term issue of erasing evidence of the mass murder in the for
est.

According to Arad, cremation of corpses at Sobibor was also originally motivated by hygienic concerns, not to "cover up crimes."

Sobibor was first. The reasons for the operation there were local. As a result of the hot weather in the summer of 1942, the buried corpses swelled, and the fully packed mass graves rose up above the surrounding surface. The entire area became infested with vermin, and a terrible stench pervaded the camp and its surrounding areas (pg. 212).

If there is any truth to this Blobel flamethrower story, it would have been hygienic in nature. We have already established that a flamethrower absolutely would not work for cremation/"covering up the crimes" purposes, and 1942 is too early for that interpretation to work. Would it work for hygienic purposes/disease control? I'm not entirely sure. It would singe the soft tissues which might help some, but I don't think it would burn deep enough to eliminate disease.

[Stubble]

SOP per Wetzelrad appears to have been to turn a flamethrower on bodies in putrefaction to protect workers from infectious diseases while they were disenterring the bodies for further sanitary processing on pyres.

Spoiler

I won't comment on the larger debate, such that it is, but in the interest of truth I volunteer this evidence of flamethrowers being used for cremation as decontamination. This happened at Dresden in 1945.

Spoiler

In May 1945, a British sergeant reportedly said:

They burned bodies in a great heap in the center of the city, but the most effective way, for sanitary reasons, was to take flamethrowers and burn the dead as they lay in the ruins. They would just turn the flamethrowers into the houses, burn the dead and then close off the entire area.

Text: https://old.fpp.co.uk/History/General/D ... 50545.html
PDF: https://306bg.us/stars/ss5may45.pdf

Kurt Vonnegut also said as much, from personal experience:

Our job, it was explained, was to wade into the shambles and bring forth the remains. Encouraged by cuffing and guttural abuse, wade in we did. We did exactly that, for the floor was covered with an unsavory broth from burst water mains and viscera.

[...] women and children. The shelter I have described and innumerable others like it were filled with them. We had to exhume their bodies and carry them to mass funeral pyres in the parks -- so I know. The funeral pyre technique was abandoned when it became apparent how great was the toll. There was not enough labor to do it nicely, so a man with a flamethrower was sent down instead, and he cremated them where they lay.

Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut, p.40

Vonnegut told essentially the same story in his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, only adding that the unsanitary conditions killed one of the worker characters before they switched to this flamethrower method (pp.189-190).

A German survivor named Frau Canzler reported this memory of the cremations at Dresden's Altmarkt:

All the centre of the city was cordoned off and the dead burnt on grids, set on fire by army flamethrowers. For weeks, men passed our house with carts, with wooden boxes, with cardboard boxes, with paper parcels, with suitcases — all containing human remains they had found. They were taking them to this crematorium.

The Devil's Tinderbox by Alexander McKee, p.246

It is difficult to say whether this is something she actually witnessed or hearsay. Photos and accounts support that these pyres used wood, straw, and petrol poured over the top, not flamethrowers. Furthermore, another survivor who did watch the burnings in-person claimed the bodies were not totally rendered to ashes:

Some were completely carbonized and buried in this pyre, but nevertheless they were all burnt here because of the danger of an epidemic. In any case, what was left of them was hardly recognizable.

The Devil's Tinderbox by Alexander McKee, p.248

I judge that it's possible flamethrowers were used in this way, especially in combination with the other fuels.

Note that all these reports discussed using flamethrowers for sanitary reasons. You will have to use your own judgement as to whether this has any parallels with the alleged 1005 cremations.

This makes sense to me.

Also. Because of the risk of explosion if benzin (gasoline) was used to ignite the primary, I can see using a flame thrower to touch off a pyre from a distance.

The timeline with Blobel is still a catastrophe for the mainstream thesis however. Looking over the HH going over the timeline it is absolutely unsustainable.

Regarding any 'cover up' being the purpose of the operation, I find that doubtful. Extremely doubtful.

That book that I linked (2 actually, it is a set) reads just like the rest of the Holocaust fanfic I've run across, be it Soviet, jewish, from the USHMM, etc.

[Archie]

A far as explaining where Hoess got the flamethrower story, let's consider a couple of possibilities

-Hoess is recounting actual experience - if this is the case, I maintain, based on the timeline, that any cremations at this point would have been hygienic. The main difficulties here are 1) cremations with a flamethrower does not make sense, 2) the flamethrower document is non-specific, 3) the flamethrower document is from 15 Jul 1942 while the travel permit is dated 15 Sep 1942. So then Blobel was experimenting with flamethrower cremations for two months and invited Hoess over to observe a method that does not work? Really? 4) the travel permit is to Litzmannstadt, not Kulmhof 5) the Dejaco report discussing the Litzmannstadt visit says they toured the ghetto (Lodz) - says nothing about a 50 km trip to Kulmhof - says nothing about cremations - mentions a ball mill but these have many different uses. This is why Mattogno doesn't think this visit to Lizmannstadt was related to cremations.

See Schwensen for a discussion of bone mill/ball mill: https://codoh.com/library/document/the- ... f-lemberg/

-Hoess is repeating a story - It appears Hoess did not mention Chelmno or Blobel while in British custody or at the IMT. His statements to Goldensohn would suggest he was not yet aware (in Apr 1946) that Chelmno was supposed to have gas chambers. It is only once in Polish custody that we get this detail. It is possible that he merely "forgot" to mention it earlier but we also have to consider the possibility that this bit originated from the Polish communists. Let's remember that this digging up and destroying the bodies to cover up the crimes idea goes back to at least Nov 1943 and was a major point of emphasis in communist propaganda (see the NYT article on the press tour of Babi Yar, 29 Nov 1943). So the likely trajectory here would be the the Polish interrogators were wanting to hear about Aktion 1005 style stories from him and either Hoess himself improvised/filled in the gaps with flamethrowers and dynamite or this was suggested to him somehow (although I have not found any earlier examples of this meme). If flamethrowers were being used for sanitary reasons and Blobel was involved with this, it's very possible Hoess would have been aware of this, whether or not he actually saw any flamethrower cremations at Chelmno.

[Archie]

Here is another flamethrower reference from NMT 12. This is 1948 so this would after Hoess.

Q Well, I have just finished reading an affidavit by Fischer who was propaganda company commander of the 3d Panzer Army, and states that Feibeck asked the army for a flame thrower to destroy corpses of Jews buried at Witebsk. You have no knowledge of that incident?

A As I said earlier on, I cannot remember the details of that case, or rather, I can remember nothing but the note, the notation about the incident. I told the Prosecution at the time because at that time also the Prosecution put to me Fischer's statement. That this idea was not discussed with me is certain because if it had been the case, I don't think I would have forgotten about it.

https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/trans ... e?seq=3806

I could not find this affidavit. This is the only hit I got for Fischer and Witebsk.
https://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/documents/654670

[Wahrheitssucher]

Just out of curiouity, does anyone besides Bombsaway and possibly Hans believe previously buried then dug-up corpses from a mass grave, can be destroyed by a single flame thrower (or even multiple flamethrowers)?
That is, does anyone here genuinely believe a flamethrower can ‘cremate’ bodies? Or “destroy” them?
Or would it just charr them / carbonise them?

Anybody?
Any HolyH believers, please feel free to answer.

Here’s my answer:
NO! IT CAN DEFINITELY NOT !
Obviously, a flamethrower cannot cremate ANY bodies, whether from a mass grave or not. It would severely char, carbonise, and partially burn them, sure.
But NO it definitely could not reduce them to ash or fully destroy them.

So, …however many holyH confessions say it was done, they are OBVIOUSLY FALSE confessions.

[Callafangers]

Just out of curiouity, does anyone besides Bombsaway and possibly Hans believe previously buried then dug-up corpses from a mass grave, can be destroyed by a single flame thrower (or even multiple flamethrowers)?
That is, does anyone here genuinely believe a flamethrower can ‘cremate’ bodies? Or “destroy” them?
Or would it just charr them / carbonise them?

Anybody?
Any HolyH believers, please feel free to answer.

Here’s my answer:
NO! IT CAN DEFINITELY NOT !
Obviously, a flamethrower cannot cremate ANY bodies, whether from a mass grave or not. It would severely char, carbonise, and partially burn them, sure.
But NO it definitely could not reduce them to ash or fully destroy them.

So, …however many holyH confessions say it was done, they are OBVIOUSLY FALSE confessions.

This is true, and they simultaneously believe that a flamethrower could not be used for hygienic purposes, clearing debris/rubbish/brush, or any other purpose necessitating fire.

[bombsaway]

A far as explaining where Hoess got the flamethrower story, let's consider a couple of possibilities

-Hoess is recounting actual experience - if this is the case, I maintain, based on the timeline, that any cremations at this point would have been hygienic. The main difficulties here are 1) cremations with a flamethrower does not make sense, 2) the flamethrower document is non-specific, 3) the flamethrower document is from 15 Jul 1942 while the travel permit is dated 15 Sep 1942. So then Blobel was experimenting with flamethrower cremations for two months and invited Hoess over to observe a method that does not work? Really? 4) the travel permit is to Litzmannstadt, not Kulmhof 5) the Dejaco report discussing the Litzmannstadt visit says they toured the ghetto (Lodz) - says nothing about a 50 km trip to Kulmhof - says nothing about cremations - mentions a ball mill but these have many different uses. This is why Mattogno doesn't think this visit to Lizmannstadt was related to cremations.

See Schwensen for a discussion of bone mill/ball mill: https://codoh.com/library/document/the- ... f-lemberg/

-Hoess is repeating a story - It appears Hoess did not mention Chelmno or Blobel while in British custody or at the IMT. His statements to Goldensohn would suggest he was not yet aware (in Apr 1946) that Chelmno was supposed to have gas chambers. It is only once in Polish custody that we get this detail. It is possible that he merely "forgot" to mention it earlier but we also have to consider the possibility that this bit originated from the Polish communists. Let's remember that this digging up and destroying the bodies to cover up the crimes idea goes back to at least Nov 1943 and was a major point of emphasis in communist propaganda (see the NYT article on the press tour of Babi Yar, 29 Nov 1943). So the likely trajectory here would be the the Polish interrogators were wanting to hear about Aktion 1005 style stories from him and either Hoess himself improvised/filled in the gaps with flamethrowers and dynamite or this was suggested to him somehow (although I have not found any earlier examples of this meme). If flamethrowers were being used for sanitary reasons and Blobel was involved with this, it's very possible Hoess would have been aware of this, whether or not he actually saw any flamethrower cremations at Chelmno.

This is what Hoess said about the meeting

"By order of the Reichsfuhrer, Globel [Blobel] had been assigned the task of locating
mass graves and totally eliminating their traces. In this context, he ordered me
to visit Chelmno in order to observe the experiments that were carried out
right there to eliminate these mass graves. There they worked with fame-
throwers, chemicals and explosives, even with various types of furnaces used
for cremation. For example, there were furnaces utilized as field furnaces, or
they cremated with the aid of wood soaked with gasoline."

So there's no reason to believe he saw Blobel using the flamethrower firsthand. There's also no indication that Blobel was at this time committed to the use of flamethrowers as the method, the other witness statement posted by Hans alludes to his mind being changed at some point.

Do you doubt the authenticity of the British intercept?

If I'm strongmanning revisionism, it seems like the best theory is the hygienic one. That was the purpose of Hoess's visit, to learn about Blobel's methods of body destruction, which by his own description encompassed far more than pure flamethrower based destruction.

Any issue with this before I continue? I just want to nail you down on a given narrative that you deem plausible.