Implausibility of gassing as a method for mass killing

[PangaeaProxima]

A popular holocaust talking point is the “uniqueness” of the holocaust in contrast to other mass killings because of its use of “industrial extermination” methods, in particular gas chambers. But, of course, precisely that “uniqueness” is a key reasonwhy the Holocaust story is so unplausible right from the outset, before even starting to look at specific evidence (Or lack thereof). In no real mass killings such elaborate killing devices like gas chambers are used - it would be absurd to do so. Killing unarmed people that are under your control is very easy, there is no reason to make this any more complicated and to expend any more effort than is necessary. Therefore, in real mass killings, the methods used are very basic, usually shooting, in Africa machetes might suffice. Or, if you are willing to wait a bit, you can simply let them starve, like in the Holomordor. On the other hand, when making up atrocity stories there is a natural tendency to go beyond such “boring” basics to make them more interesting and lurid. And so one gets such “exotic” killing methods like steam chambers, electrocuting machines, nuclear bombs...and gas chambers.

One attempt of explanation by Holocaust supporters is, that the German troops were considered to be too sensitive to execute people by shooting them, so another, less traumatizing, method of killing had to be used. This is in contradiction to other claims, like the supposed extreme brutality of German troops and the “Einsatzgruppen” who for some reason didn’t mind killing by shooting. Even more to the point, gassing is actually considered to be a particular “evil” form of killing, which is without doubt the main reason why it was made the killing method of choice in the Holocaust narrative.

Another attempt was the claim, that gassing is cheaper than shooting. This is, of course, laughable on its face. From 1940 to 1944 German industry produced 14.18 billion rounds of rifle and pistol ammunition (http://michaelhiske.de/Wehrmacht/Heer/S ... p02_05.htm) – theoretically enough to kill the entire population of the earth at the time of 2.3 billion six times over. However, these massive numbers were necessary, because in warfare only a small percentage of bullets actually manage to hit an enemy soldier; much ammunition is spent solely for the purpose of forcing the enemy to take cover. The situation obviously is very different when it comes to executing unarmed people that are under your control: Here you can assume that nearly every bullet will hit a victim. If you take care which part of the body you hit – like the Soviet method of executing victims by shooting them in the neck, which was, for instance, used in Katyn, you can even get quite close to getting a death for every round.

According to a one source, 1000 rounds of 7.92x57mm rifle ammunition (brass cartridge cases) did cost 61 Reichsmark (https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/inde ... -wehrmacht). One round therefore would be about 6 Pfennigs or 366,000 Reichsmark for the entire 6 million Holocaust – only little more than the cost of a single Tiger tank. If that is still too expensive, you could also use handgun ammunition which should at least halve the cost.

Building the gas chambers and operating them (Obviously we don’t have the precise costs, since in reality they were never built, but you should be able to extrapolate from the actually existing delousing chambers. I am quite sure someone has done so already - can someone point me to such information?)

While debunking the details of the alleged gassings is certainly very laudable, unfortunately revisionists usually forget to point out how preposterous and absurd the concept is in principle.

[TlsMS93]

Allegedly, the Einsatzgruppen continued to shoot even after the so-called gas chambers as an alternative method had been introduced, meaning that Himmler's police officers were suffering psychologically from these shootings is completely disproved.

Without a doubt, logistics would be easier if an Einsatzgruppen battalion were sent to each occupied country solely to make that country Judenfrei and from each country the resources would come to destroy this evidence. But the Holocaust was centralized in a single country and not all Jews were deported; 45% of European Jews survived the war unharmed. The argument is that deporting them to Poland would better hide the industrial extermination, but of course this also falls apart because they say it is the best documented event in history.

[HansHill]

Agreed.

I've often wondered would we see a shift in the mainstream narrative as it begins to collapse - that the executions were done primarily by suffocation. When you consider suffocation would be completed in approx 2x the time as an alleged gassing, and save all the embarrasing details you mentioned, such as cost, but also other elements such as the danger, the lack of introduction holes, residues etc

I'll have to refer back to Rudolf, but I believe oxygen depletion (and CO2 accumulation) begins to become fatal at approx 40 mins for a room with the dimensions of Krema II, with 2,000 people. And its free!

The updated narrative could go something like: the Zyklon method was tried initially but never really got off the ground and after one or two failed experiments (which conveniently is where all the testimony would have originated from!) they simply opted for suffocation. Sorry revisionists, now your arguments about the Kula Columns and Prussian Blue are redundant!! On this very forum, one Exterminationist agreed in principle (I forget who but I'm sure they'll introduce themselves) that some of the deaths per gassing were probably due to suffocation!

[Churchill]

Its interesting that virtually everyone asks "why gassing?", when first told of the mainstream narrative.
I think even fair-minded people who accept the mainstream account would have to admit the reason why people go to this obvious question is the implausibility of this method of mass killing at first reading.

The WJC has a similar argument to the above that gassing was "more efficient" (exactly how is not explained): https://aboutholocaust.org/en/facts/why ... s-chambers

All accounts I've seen as to why gassing was used (relying on a variation of the "efficiency" argument) do not attempt to explain the far more difficult and costly process (far more difficult than simply murdering people): turning all the corpses into ash and bone. The Aktion Reinhardt process of burying-exhumation-open air cremation-subsequent reburying of 100,000s of corpses is about as inefficient a process as one can invent.
Similarly, in the mainstream account Birkenau's crematoria is not fit to handle all the corpses and open air pits are required.
Why decide to carry out a critical operation using processes this idiotic?

[Archie]

I don't know that gassing per se is an absurd method of mass killing. During COVID when the slaughterhouses shut down the meat industry culled millions of farm animals and gassing and/or suffocation were among the methods.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... oronavirus

Faurisson and Leuchter would sometimes make the argument that mass gassings were impossible, usually based on the difficulty of gassing even one person in the US. I do think the American gas chambers provide some relevant data, but American capital punishment is also highly bureaucratic. I don't see any scientific reason why you couldn't gas a large number at once (as has been done with livestock or as sometimes happens unintentionally in mining accidents).

Things I do find implausible:

1) That the German government would have had no discussion or planning to determine the best method and that this would be left to Hoess and the other camp commandants.

2) That they would end up with such a diversity of different "gas chamber" designs, all with an ordinary/mundane interpretation (showers, morgues, fumigation chambers).

3) That they would have custom built a state-of-the-art mass gassing facility yet put the gas chamber and ovens on different floors and had to move all the bodies manually. (Along with other points along these lines).

If there had been an extermination program, I think mass gassing could have been a viable method but I would expect to see some evidence of "intelligent design."

[Nessie]

"AI Overview

An "argument from implausibility" is a type of argument that rejects a claim or theory based on it being considered highly unlikely or unbelievable, rather than on direct evidence or logical contradiction.

Here's a more detailed explanation:

What it is:
An argument from implausibility, also sometimes referred to as an "appeal to incredulity," asserts that a claim is false or unlikely simply because it seems improbable or difficult to believe.

How it works:
Instead of presenting evidence to disprove a claim, the argument from implausibility focuses on the perceived lack of plausibility or believability of the claim itself.

Example:
Someone might argue against the existence of aliens by stating that it is simply too implausible to believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe, even if there is no concrete evidence to disprove it.

Weakness:
This type of argument is often considered weak because it relies on subjective feelings of disbelief rather than objective evidence or logical reasoning."

[TlsMS93]

So is it entirely plausible, or even proven, that wood was available in abundance for a handful of Germans in a remote region to cremate 2 million people, or that gassing 2,000 people in a room as if they were robots in complete obedience to behave like perfect cubes and expecting 52 ovens to cremate 4,756 bodies per day was entirely proven by forensic and verifiable tests?

[Nessie]

So is it entirely plausible, or even proven, that wood was available in abundance for a handful of Germans in a remote region to cremate 2 million people, or that gassing 2,000 people in a room as if they were robots in complete obedience to behave like perfect cubes and expecting 52 ovens to cremate 4,756 bodies per day was entirely proven by forensic and verifiable tests?

I think it is plausible, with all the Polish forests and wood suppliers, for the Nazis to get enough wood for the pyres delivered by rail to the camps. I think gassing hundreds at a time is plausible and that thousands is a likely over estimation. I think Topf & Sons engineers did work out how to cremate multiple corpses and that Sonderkommandos further overloaded the ovens. What I, or anyone else thinks was plausible, is not evidence and it is a weak argument.

No testing is possible, as that would need a lot of corpses. There are variously, witness, documentary and forensic evidence that mass cremations took place. That evidence proves mass cremations and not being able to plausibly work out how it was done, or being able to, is moot.

[Archie]

"AI Overview

[...]

Weakness:
This type of argument is often considered weak because it relies on subjective feelings of disbelief rather than objective evidence or logical reasoning."

Once again you want to settle everything by appealing to generalities.

Try reading some scholarly books sometime (I can tell that you don't) and you will see that the sort of probabilistic arguments that you object to are exceedingly common. Some are strong. Some are weaker (or more conjectural). With complex topics (including in the sciences), there may be a chain of things to consider and there may be stronger and weaker evidence at various points in the chain.

The issue is over what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from all available data and at what level of confidence. Your side makes sweeping conclusions and claims 100% confidence based on very flimsy evidence (mostly things people said after the war) and despite massive evidentiary gaps.

[TlsMS93]

I think it is plausible, with all the Polish forests and wood suppliers, for the Nazis to get enough wood for the pyres delivered by rail to the camps. I think gassing hundreds at a time is plausible and that thousands is a likely over estimation. I think Topf & Sons engineers did work out how to cremate multiple corpses and that Sonderkommandos further overloaded the ovens. What I, or anyone else thinks was plausible, is not evidence and it is a weak argument.

No testing is possible, as that would need a lot of corpses. There are variously, witness, documentary and forensic evidence that mass cremations took place. That evidence proves mass cremations and not being able to plausibly work out how it was done, or being able to, is moot.

Who said that thousands of corpses are needed to be cremated? A dozen corpses are enough to calculate the effectiveness of the cremations in sequence, to calculate the average number of cremations and then extrapolate this to the number of muffles in the camp and obtain the theoretical maximum number per day, since not all the muffles were operational all the time, and calculate how many bodies could be cremated during the camp's existence.

Your claim that it is not possible to test this is an affront to anyone's intelligence.

The Nazis did not have battalions of lumberjacks in the camp region sufficient to cremate even 2% of the alleged number of deaths, nor did they have any records of train deliveries, nor anything registered in the local lumberyards in Poland. As I said, Germany suffered from a deficit of 6 million tons of timber during peacetime, which was exacerbated during the war due to the blockade. It is the same as saying that a bureaucracy would allow millions of diesel to be diverted to supply the isolated camps in Poland with nonexistent wood instead of being used in the more urgent war effort.

The area of ​​the Kremas was many times larger than that of the Reinhardt camps, which madmen like Kurt Gerstein said could fit 25 people in the space of a telephone booth. To say that they could not fit thousands is another mental gymnastics to fit Bischoff's exaggeration.

[Nessie]

"AI Overview

[...]

Weakness:
This type of argument is often considered weak because it relies on subjective feelings of disbelief rather than objective evidence or logical reasoning."

Once again you want to settle everything by appealing to generalities.

Try reading some scholarly books sometime (I can tell that you don't) and you will see that the sort of probabilistic arguments that you object to are exceedingly common. Some are strong. Some are weaker (or more conjectural). With complex topics (including in the sciences), there may be a chain of things to consider and there may be stronger and weaker evidence at various points in the chain.

The argument you rely upon, implausibility, is weak, as AI clearly explains.

The issue is over what conclusions can reasonably be drawn from all available data and at what level of confidence. Your side makes sweeping conclusions and claims 100% confidence based on very flimsy evidence (mostly things people said after the war) and despite massive evidentiary gaps.

You misrepresent and minimise the volume of corroborating evidence. It is far stronger than you are prepared to admit to.

[Nessie]

I think it is plausible, with all the Polish forests and wood suppliers, for the Nazis to get enough wood for the pyres delivered by rail to the camps. I think gassing hundreds at a time is plausible and that thousands is a likely over estimation. I think Topf & Sons engineers did work out how to cremate multiple corpses and that Sonderkommandos further overloaded the ovens. What I, or anyone else thinks was plausible, is not evidence and it is a weak argument.

No testing is possible, as that would need a lot of corpses. There are variously, witness, documentary and forensic evidence that mass cremations took place. That evidence proves mass cremations and not being able to plausibly work out how it was done, or being able to, is moot.

Who said that thousands of corpses are needed to be cremated? A dozen corpses are enough to calculate the effectiveness of the cremations in sequence, to calculate the average number of cremations and then extrapolate this to the number of muffles in the camp and obtain the theoretical maximum number per day, since not all the muffles were operational all the time, and calculate how many bodies could be cremated during the camp's existence.

Your claim that it is not possible to test this is an affront to anyone's intelligence.

Where will you get a dozen corpses from, to then cremate them all together on a pyre, or 3 or 4 at a time, in an oven as found at A-B? Do you seriously think that one test would be enough? Even if it failed the first time, that would not prove it was not possible, as there are so many potential variables.

The Nazis did not have battalions of lumberjacks in the camp region sufficient to cremate even 2% of the alleged number of deaths, nor did they have any records of train deliveries, nor anything registered in the local lumberyards in Poland. As I said, Germany suffered from a deficit of 6 million tons of timber during peacetime, which was exacerbated during the war due to the blockade. It is the same as saying that a bureaucracy would allow millions of diesel to be diverted to supply the isolated camps in Poland with nonexistent wood instead of being used in the more urgent war effort.

Poland had huge forests to easily supply wood to the AR camps, which would a drop in the annual consumption. Your incredulity is not evidence to prove it was not possible. How can you not understand that?

The area of ​​the Kremas was many times larger than that of the Reinhardt camps, which madmen like Kurt Gerstein said could fit 25 people in the space of a telephone booth. To say that they could not fit thousands is another mental gymnastics to fit Bischoff's exaggeration.

Studies find that people are poor at estimating numbers and size, so the claims are exaggerations. Your ignorance of how witnesses remember and estimate, leads you to making mistakes.

[Nessie]

...

One attempt of explanation by Holocaust supporters is...

Historians and other trained investigators explain, by gathering evidence to establish what happened. Holocaust revisionists are unable to do that, so their supposed revision of the history fails at the first hurdle.

While debunking the details of the alleged gassings is certainly very laudable, unfortunately revisionists usually forget to point out how preposterous and absurd the concept is in principle.

Revisionists rely on arguments that gassings (and mass cremations and graves) are preposterous and absurd, and believe they have debunked the Holocaust because of that.

Oddly, they never consider how preposterous, absurd and implausible Holocaust denial is, and that somehow, for some reason, in 1944, the Nazis hid all the Jews that had been arresting and supposedly not killing, since 1939 and then admitted to killing them.

[Stubble]

Look, while I might not be able to explain why the jews of Europe continued to hide under cupboards and floorboards and in attics after ww2, I can tell you that the death tolls are inflated and the official narrative is garbage.

I might not be able to tell you what happened yet. That still doesn't mean 6,000,000 jews were gassed in homicidal gas chambers disguised as shower rooms.

You unironically take the official narrative with not even a dash of salt Nessie.

[TlsMS93]

Poland had huge forests to easily supply wood to the AR camps, which would a drop in the annual consumption. Your incredulity is not evidence to prove it was not possible. How can you not understand that?

20% of the country was covered by forest at the time and even so, the amount of raw wood in this is debatable, apart from the fact that freshly cut wood contains only half the calorific value of a drought, so the problem here is doubled. There are no photographs of the devastated region compared to what it was before the war and even if there had been enough wood, the Germans did not have enough men to do the work. The Nazis could want whatever they wanted, they still had to work on the laws of physics, human and logistics, logistics, by the way, did not suit the Germans in the war.

Take your sweet consolation in knowing that all this was technically possible because it happened.