the translated Sassen papers

[bombsaway]

According to AI the Life Magazine was compiled out of Sassen interview material as well as Eichmann's private and separate writings. The submarine comes from the latter, it's definitely not in the interviews.

Browning's interpretation, if I'm not mistaken, is that Eichmann visited an experimental site outside of the known extermination centers. Another witness testimony affirms the existence of such a site. OK.

We don't have the verbatim text from Argentina about the submarine visit, the Life magazine is text is edited. They may have inserted the Majdanek part (it is near Lublin) https://ia902905.us.archive.org/32/item ... chmann.pdf

so I'll analyze this

"Höfle told the police captain to explain the installation to me. And then he started in. He had a, well, let’s say, a vulgar, uncultivated voice. Maybe he drank. He spoke some dialect from the southwestern corner of Germany, and he told me how he had made everything airtight. It seems they were going to hook up a Russian submarine engine and pipe the exhaust into the houses and the Jews inside would be poisoned."

As I understand it most submarine engines are diesel but the timing can be changed to allow it to produce more CO. Regardless all we have is second hand suggestion that Eichmann wasn't even definitive about ("seems").

Your notion that this is a lie is speculative. There are other explanations - submarine engine was used - they planned to use one and then switched it for another engine, etc etc

Because of lack of information we're both speculating about this. It's not a strong point.

AI:

Where Archie goes further is in moving from an unreliable presentation to deliberate invention of the whole episode. Those are different conclusions. A statement can be inaccurate because of deliberate lying, mistaken recollection, someone else’s misinformation, transcription, translation, or editing. The evidence must distinguish them. That is not an excuse for accepting the statement; it is a reason to be precise about what has actually been disproved.

btw I've updated the site with some quotes from Eichmann about the psychological elements of hearing about the order, carrying it out, seeing gassings/shootings.

https://sassen-reading-room.pages.dev/e ... conscience

One of course can't say Eichmann's presentation here is absolutely true, but it's also clearly beyond any cartoonish 'Hans Landa' type appreciation of the situation.

[Archie]

According to AI the Life Magazine was compiled out of Sassen interview material as well as Eichmann's private and separate writings. The submarine comes from the latter, it's definitely not in the interviews.

Like I already said, the Israeli copy is NOT COMPLETE. Stangneth gives a detailed description of the different transcripts on page 423.

Life. Copy of 600 transcript pages and a few copies pages of handwriting. Not accessible to researchers.

Israel (Hagag)/Servtius. Israel State Archives 74/3156. ... Transcript of 62 tapes (1-5, 11-67 with pages missing) ... Transcript is 713 pages in total; including File 17, it totals 795 pages (the offical number of 798 is due to double paginations). No transcript of tapes 68-73.

Linz. ... The copy comprises 900 pages (tapes 1-5, 11-67), also with pages missing, but different pages from the Israel copy...

Sassen. Original manuscripts with original corrections, and Sassen's microfilm copy, which was given to the Eichmann family in 1979 and has now been deposited in BA Koblenz by a Swiss publisher, Eichmann Estate, N/1497. This copy is the most extensive, at 835 pages plus 78 pages of Eichmann's notes on the transcript. It includes tape transcripts 6-10 (except "7," which never existed), and the rest of 68-73, though without tape 29 and page 41:3.

Since it's not complete, you can't assume that just because you can't find it it in the Israeli copy that it wasn't on any of the tapes or that it wasn't in the Life transcripts. And I don't see why it would matter to you anyway since Eichmann repeated the story various times and you believe all of them.

Browning's interpretation, if I'm not mistaken, is that Eichmann visited an experimental site outside of the known extermination centers. Another witness testimony affirms the existence of such a site. OK.

Is that what your AI told you?

Browning struggled mightily to explain this and engages in mental gymnastics to try to salvage it. He is open about the "puzzling contradictions" in the Eichmann statements and admits that his solution is shaky. I would call it desperate.

Chapter 4 of Arad has a totally different timeline and he disagrees completely with Browning.

We don't have the verbatim text from Argentina about the submarine visit, the Life magazine is text is edited. They may have inserted the Majdanek part (it is near Lublin) https://ia902905.us.archive.org/32/item ... chmann.pdf

I suspect that they assumed Majdanek because that is the camp near Lublin. In the interrogation version he says he went to Lublin and then went another camp. I think it got a bit garbled. But the story is BS any way you slice it.

[bombsaway]

Is that what your AI told you?

Browning struggled mightily to explain this and engages in mental gymnastics to try to salvage it. He is open about the "puzzling contradictions" in the Eichmann statements and admits that his solution is shaky. I would call it desperate.

Actually no, my AI didn't know that. I knew it from a previous discussion about the Sassen topic. Haven't bothered looking it up.

I think Browning is just speculating where there are gaps in the record, and he is pointing that out. Cartoon conspiracists may take a black and white view of things, but historians are more subtle and appreciative of the limits of what can be known about any historical event. That doesn't stop them from forming hypotheses and explanations. This is true across all subjects in history.

But the story is BS any way you slice it.

That's just your opinion though. The problem with everything that you just said is that it doesn't preclude other explanations.

And you haven't even provided a hypothesis that may be critiqued.

This applies to the 'submarine' business as well the broader Sassen materials. There are other explanations (arguably much more plausible) and you also have provided no hypothesis at all. I think without a hypothesis, this is an automatic loss in terms of debate.

Now would be the time to put your best hypothesis forward about the papers, especially the interview transcriptions which are the subject of this thread.

[Archie]

That's just your opinion though. The problem with everything that you just said is that it doesn't preclude other explanations.

Can you please specify which explanation you are endorsing? Browning's?

[bombsaway]

Sure

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6abb08659ff0819 ... 436928f9bf

I would ask that you give me your hypothesis about the sassen transcript as well, which is the forum topic. The U-boat stuff I think comes from Eichmanns private collection, which Sassen obtained but I wouldn't call his papers.

[JimPP6363]

I think it’s also important to note Eichmann is saying this some years after the event in question he could very easily have been muddled up by things he’s seen since for example if he read a newspaper article about camps and such that could influence he recollection this is noted in serval articles on psychology which I’m presently studying to evaluate eye witness testimony

[bombsaway]

the revisionist approach tends to start from the conclusion (it was impossible, therefore he's lying) and work backward from that, so they see these contradictory and incorrect aspects as confirming that.

It's a binary way of looking at the world.

In a vacuum, we can say for testimonies of this nature -- by perpetrators, given years after the events in question -- there should an expectation those testimonies will have problems. If they didn't, that would be maybe more suspicious.

w the Sassen papers revisionists have to make the argument that the explanation offered by orthodoxy is implausible. If Archie provides his explanation of the materials, we'll see how plausible that is, I suspect not very.

[JimPP6363]

But all eye witnesses naturally contradict each other….

If you applied that logic to the Kennedy assassination the Lincoln assassination or the sinking of the titanic you’d conclude because eye witness X says Wilkes booth said Sic semper tyrannis in the presidential box and eye witness Y says he said it on the stage when he jumped then eye witness Z says he didn’t say it at all they all contradict.

How is the natural conclusion Abraham Lincoln didn’t die? This makes zero sense all eye witnesses of major events eventually contradict each other an example I brought up previous is the splitting of the titanic many high ranking officers swore under oath titanic went down in 1 piece are these men also lying eye witnesses? Of course not! Once you accept they were mistaken then you accept an eye witness can see an event and remember details incorrectly but remember the main event (the sinking to titanic) correctly!

This should really be obvious

[Archie]

Sure

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6abb08659ff0819 ... 436928f9bf

I would ask that you give me your hypothesis about the sassen transcript as well, which is the forum topic. The U-boat stuff I think comes from Eichmanns private collection, which Sassen obtained but I wouldn't call his papers.

The standard timeline is that Wirth was sent to Belzec in December 1941. Eichmann's timeline too early (like Aug-Sep timeframe). A September 1941 tour of gas chambers with Wirth is a non-starter according to the standard history. Browning is forced to assume that Wirth was maybe setting up "experimental" gas chambers "around Belzec" earlier than usually assumed.

The only support he was able to find for this is one supposed corroborating witness. The statement is not available in full so we can't see what sort of problems might be present in the statement. But even in the very little bit quoted we see it actually doesn't match well at all.

A post-war statement by Ferdinand Hahnzog, then commandant of the gendarmerie (rural police) in the Lublin District, supports the argument that the mass-murder method of using stationary gas chambers was developed in Lublin. He reported on “a primitive facility near Bełżec hidden deep in the forest bordering on Galicia ... consisting of a sealed shed into which the Security Police and the SD from Zamość pumped exhaust fumes from the vehicles used to bring the ‘morituri’ there!” These experiments had been carried out already “in the spring of 1941, if not earlier, in the fall of 1940.”

https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/acad ... nhard.html

This is waaaay earlier. The implied timeline here makes no sense and nobody else seems to know anything about these super early exhaust fume experiments. There's also no mention of Wirth. Browning pretends Hahnzog must have meant fall 1941. He has to move the date for Wirth's arrival earlier and move Hahnzog's date later to force an artificial match.

Traditionally, chambers with exhaust gas are said to have been first developed for the gas vans by Arthur Nebe, around September 1941 in Mogilev. In the camps, stationary gas chambers with diesel exhaust were not developed until 1942. At Belzec, the gassings are said to have started in March 1942 and even later at the other AR camps. According to Arad (who knows nothing about these earlier experiments) there were experimental killings at Belzec but these were only one month before, in February 1942. And, interestingly, Arad says this experimental gassing was with bottled carbon monoxide because the exhaust-based system "was not yet ready." That doesn't fit at all with Browning's theory that they were doing experiments with stationary engine exhaust gas chambers some six months earlier. I wonder how many months it too them to figure out that the submarine engine wouldn't work. The earliest construction of Belzec camp is said to be in November 1941 and, once again, Wirth was said to have arrived in December.

Arad tries to solve this in a completely different way by assuming later dating at the actual Belzec camp. He quotes from a different Eichmann statement (Ich, Adolf Eichmann) that suggests a later timeline (late 1941/early 1942).

Browning's theory is not consistent with the broader history (of the AR camps, of the gas vans, etc) and he grants himself extremely wide allowances to try to pretend it works. All to defend a story that's ridiculous on its face.

[Archie]

But all eye witnesses naturally contradict each other….

If you applied that logic to the Kennedy assassination the Lincoln assassination or the sinking of the titanic you’d conclude because eye witness X says Wilkes booth said Sic semper tyrannis in the presidential box and eye witness Y says he said it on the stage when he jumped then eye witness Z says he didn’t say it at all they all contradict.

How is the natural conclusion Abraham Lincoln didn’t die? This makes zero sense all eye witnesses of major events eventually contradict each other an example I brought up previous is the splitting of the titanic many high ranking officers swore under oath titanic went down in 1 piece are these men also lying eye witnesses? Of course not! Once you accept they were mistaken then you accept an eye witness can see an event and remember details incorrectly but remember the main event (the sinking to titanic) correctly!

This should really be obvious

I object to your approach on multiple grounds.

1) There must be some breaking point beyond which we consider a witness to no longer be credible. If a witness is too inaccurate, incompetent, or dishonest (in whatever combination) there's a point where we can't accept things on their authority. If we can't reject witnesses due to errors and contradictions, then the stories become unfalsifiable. You seem worried about rejecting witnesses unfairly but you don't seem worried about the opposite problem: believing BS stories that aren't true. You need to calibrate in both directions.

2) For several of your examples, with Abe Lincoln being shot, unlike with the Holocaust, there's hard physical evidence. He's dead with a bullet wound in his head. If witnesses disagree on secondary points, then that in fact does create uncertainty and doubt but only on the points of disagreement that can't be established independently. The competing stories can be evaluated using elementary source criticism.

3) With something like a shooting, those situations happen in a flash and are very disorienting. People who themselves get shot often don't immediately realize what has happened. Accuracy is not to be expected. It's a very different matter for people to claim to have worked in a camp for months and to get very basic things wrong. Or to have Eichmann claim that he saw geysers of blood shooting out of a mass grave. We know that did not happen because that's not how that works. Most probably he is simply lying. Other "witnesses" like Elie Wiesel tell similar stories, so he's probably just repeating it and claiming it to be his own personal experience. I personally don't like the word lie as it's a quite loaded term and it requires us to draw an inference on the person's mental state. I prefer to focus more on whether the story is true or false.

Mr. Eichmann on the blood geysers:

But I also remember today driving through Lemberg, on the outskirts, and seeing for the first time something I had never seen before, namely a fountain of blood. I passed a site where Jews had been shot some time before and where—apparently as a result of the pressure of the gasses—the blood was shooting out of the earth like a fountain.

https://www.eichmanntrial.com/session87

I don't think things like this can be explained with your usual excuses - bad memory, confusion, etc.

[Archie]

Another point, Jim. Contradictions. Two contradictory things cannot be true. Say we want to adopt your loosy goosy attitude toward witnesses (which you no doubt apply only very selectively). Fine. But logically speaking much of what they say must be false because it's contradictory. It still remains to determine what is actually true.

See this Hoess thread where I argue not merely that Hoess's statements have errors, but that the errors are impossible to fix.
https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=803

[bombsaway]

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_6abc469cc014819 ... 174932adc6

AI states these are your main points.

But if Hahnzog's dating was fall of 1941 then objections 1, 3, 4 largely dissolve, right? Why is not plausible he might have just gotten the date wrong? In his testimony he gives a range from fall of 40 to spring of 41, so he was unsure about it.

[bombsaway]

re blood geysers

hc blog points out blood bubbling from the ground is reported elsewhere

https://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot ... sm_10.html

So it's plausibly a case of improper wording (fountain). This may be speculative, but again you are also speculating when you call it a lie. You can only do this if you show other explanations like improper wording to be implausible.