Convergance of evidence.

[Nessie]

This is worthy of its own thread;

The majority of the evidence from eyewitnesses and the vast majority of the documentary, physical and circumstantial evidence comes from Nazi sources and is confirmed by them.

For all newcomers: If it weren't obvious enough, but when our good friend Nessie says things like the above, what he means are things like:

- "Evidence from eyewitnesses" = wild claims which often contradict each other and are not supported by the physical evidence
- "documentary" = Inventory sheets from Krema II saying "mesh device" as the murder weapon
- "physical" = Lidar findings of human remains and craters at known transit camps like Treblinka
- "circumstantial" = nobody claimed there wasnt gassings, therefore there were

Nessie also conveniently begins from the position that gassings did occur, and the """""""evidence""""""" listed above is self-evident and therefore anything contradicting this is a logical fallacy.

Welcome to Codoh, you're going to see alot of this!

Nessie does a poor man's version of Shermer's "convergence of evidence" argument.

Here is a good critique of Shermer by Crowell.

By “convergence of evidence” Shermer means a situation in which data from a variety of different fields all point to a specific factual conclusion. Shermer argues that there are eighteen kinds of data that converge on the fact of the Holocaust: five testimonies, four Nazi speeches, blueprints of the crematoria, photos of dead inmates, more testimonies, Zyklon B orders, Eichmann’s confession, postwar statements of the German government, and many missing Jews (p. 118). No, the list does not add up to eighteen, and no, we are not making fun of Shermer’s argument: this is exactly what he says, except that by the end of his litany the eighteen kinds of data have become eighteen proofs “all converging on one conclusion.”

There are at least three things wrong with Shermer’s argument. The first problem is that if we accept the word “Holocaust” as a rubric to describe everything that happened to Jewish people in the Second World War we immediately run into a problem of relating the disparate parts to each other. For example, it is well known that thousands of dead persons were photographed by the Americans and the British in such camps as Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau: these photographs prove that there were many dead, Jews and others, in these camps when they were captured, nothing more. Sophisticated exponents of the Holocaust are in agreement with revisionists that such evidence has no bearing on what did or did not happen in alleged “extermination” camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka.

The second problem is that the evidence does not necessarily converge on the stated conclusions. For example, when discussing the mass gassing claim, Shermer argues that we know mass gassings took place because of (1) testimonies, (2) blueprints of crematoria, (3) Zyklon B traces, (4) photographs, ground level and (5) aerial, and (6) existing ruins. But these categories of evidence provide distinctly different levels of evidentiary value. The testimonies, as is well known, are frequently implausible, were generated at a time when gassing stories had been widely disseminated, and were given before courts committed to upholding the gassing claim. The blueprints, on the other hand, only show that crematoria were planned. The existence of Zyklon B traces, in camps where the product was widely used for disinfection, is automatically moot. The ground level photos show piles of dead bodies. The aerial photos prove that crematoria were built. The ruins provide evidence that delousing stations, as well as crematoria, were built. None of the non-testimonial classes of evidence would necessarily lead to a conclusion that mass gassings took place, while the testimony itself remains unreliable.

Shermer’s “convergence of evidence” argument appears to be rather that, if various classes of evidence do not contradict the central assertion, these other classes of evidence corroborate, or converge, on that central conclusion. In the same way, an old woman in the seventeenth century could have been shown to have gamboled in a midnight glade with Satan — and then been burned at the stake, so long as a broom and a cat were produced.

The third problem with Shermer’s “convergence” model is that by returning again and again to rather weak categories of evidence — such as eyewitness stories, aerial photos, cans of Zyklon, the use of the word “Ausrottung” (extirpation) in public speeches — he passes over the enormous gap in the documentary record. It is precisely this documentary gap — the absence of any reliable documentation at any level that points to homicidal gassing, and the absence of documentation to indicate that the Third Reich was pursuing a policy of exterminating all Jews — that leads people to the revisionist perspective.

https://ihr.org/journal/v20n1p45_Shermer.html

And here is another by Lyle Burkhead.

Two pieces of false or irrelevant evidence do not “corroborate” each other. It doesn’t matter if they are two pieces of the same type, or different types. There could be a million witnesses and a million photographs: if each piece of evidence is false or irrelevant, then the whole mass of them is no better than any individual piece. This applies equally to ESP, UFOs, and gas chambers.

This is the heart of the matter.

Michael Shermer presents eyewitness reports, each of which is questionable. This is the only evidence for the gas chambers. To “corroborate” this testimony, Dr. Shermer presents many other pieces of evidence which prove conclusively that Hitler and the other Nazis hated the Jews enough to kill them, that concentration camps existed, and that many Jews died in the camps and were cremated. But none of this evidence corroborates what the witnesses said about the gas chambers. Dr. Shermer gives us photographs which do not show gas chambers, documents which do not mention gas chambers, reports of brutal treatment of prisoners, and so forth: the “18 bits of evidence.” This whole mass of evidence taken together is supposed to prove that there were gas chambers. No, it doesn’t.

According to Dr. Shermer, this is how “convergence” works: First you construct a picture of the whole thing, the Holocaust — the menacing speeches, the trains, the unloading platforms, the gas chambers, the ovens, the burning pits, the mass graves, the starving prisoners in the camps at the end of the war. Then you say that any evidence for any part of this picture is a “proof” of the whole thing; and if you have 18 “proofs,” they “converge” to the conclusion that the whole picture is true, even if you don’t have a proof of every part.

https://historiography-project.com/misc ... gether.php

[Nessie]

The evidence of the Holocaust, converged, as it arrived. That evidence started to arrive in late 1941, when the very first reports of mass murders were made. They were rumours, there was nothing firm and deniers on X like to quote from the then head of British Intelligence, who thought the reports were fake, atrocity stories. However, there were genuine fears as to what the Nazis intended to do to Jewish people, whom they had declared to be an enemy of the Reich, needing elimination or liquidation. That is evidence of motive.

Through 1942-4, more evidence arrived, in the form of eyewitness testimony and reports from escaped Polish and Slovakian prisoners, variously describing what had happened inside TII and A-B.

By 1944, there was also the circumstantial evidence of the millions of Jews arrested all over occupied Europe, who were primarily being transported to the General Government area, the location of the death camps. With the exception of Denmark and Finland, every country occupied by, or aligned to Nazi Germany, was experiencing significant drops in its Jewish population. The last ghetto at Lodz closed in August. That is evidence of opportunity.

By 1944, evidence of motive and opportunity were established and the initial rumours were being replaced with eyewitness evidence. The evidence from different sources is converging. The first camp trial, was for Majdanek, in Poland, in 1944. Revisionists only concentrate on the senior war crimes trials, in Nuremberg, where the Holocaust was hardly featured. The camp staff trials were separate and from the start, the staff did not deny mass murders had taken place and offer any evidence to explain where all the missing Jews were located.

When the Allies, East and West, poured into Germany in 1945, it was now proven that millions of Jews who had been arrested, had disappear. The Soviets found mostly empty camps and ghettos, the Western Allies found packed camps, but not packed with millions of Jews. Displaced Persons Agencies, dealing with millions of displaced people, reported only a few hundred thousand were Jewish.

As more camp staff were traced, arrested and interviewed, and, there are many occasions where there is no evidence of torture or coercion, the Nazis themselves provided eyewitness evidence that mass murders had taken place. That took place from 1944 and has continued to the present day, no matter where the Nazis has been arrested, or put on trial, they have all presented no evidence of the whereabouts of millions of Jews supposedly not murdered, and evidence of their murder.

In 1945, the first physical examinations of the death camp sites took place. At the AR camp sites, it was found the majority of the camp had been razed to the ground and there were large areas of disturbed ground containing cremated remains. That is exactly as described by surviving prisoners, who related the Nazis attempts to hide their crimes. The only buildings at Birkenau that were destroyed by the Nazis, were the four Kremas and two farmhouses, where gas chambers had been located. The Krema gas chamber at Auschwitz main camp was now an air raid shelter. That is evidence of guilty conduct, consistent with criminal acts being covered up.

That is how the evidence converged from 1941 to 1945, to corroborate and prove mass murders. Since then, as historians have combed through archives and more witnesses have been traced and interviewed, there has been nothing to evidence millions of Jews were not killed. Every country that was occupied by or aligned to the Nazis, except Denmark and Finland, has admitted to losing Jewish citizens, arrested by the Nazis, often with their assistance, who never returned. Denmark and Finland resisted and they are able to account for their Jewish citizens up to 1945. That is because alive people leave evidence they are living.

Revisionists do not like the convergence of evidence as a process, as they cannot make it work to support their beliefs. Instead, they try to pass off illogical arguments and misrepresentation, as if that is a reliable way to investigate history.

[HansHill]

Except very little if any of the Holocaust evidence actually converges at all. Example:

Hoess - 2,500,000 killed at Auschwitz
Soviet Union & Poles - 4,000,000 killed at Auschwitz
Modern Interpretation - 1,100,000 killed at Auschwitz



In order to get your charade to work, you aggressively dismiss inconvenient "evidence" as outliers. That is not how it works, unfortunately for you!

[Nazgul]

Jewish people, whom they had declared to be an enemy of the Reich, needing elimination or liquidation. That is evidence of motive.

They were interned. The same happened to the Germans and Japanese in the UK and USA, even though they were citizens.

The Reich did not declare Jews to be enemies of the German people, they did.

[Archie]

Note that Nessie failed to counter any of the points raised in the critiques I quoted.

The evidence of the Holocaust, converged, as it arrived. That evidence started to arrive in late 1941, when the very first reports of mass murders were made. They were rumours, there was nothing firm and deniers on X like to quote from the then head of British Intelligence, who thought the reports were fake, atrocity stories. However, there were genuine fears as to what the Nazis intended to do to Jewish people, whom they had declared to be an enemy of the Reich, needing elimination or liquidation. That is evidence of motive.

Through 1942-4, more evidence arrived, in the form of eyewitness testimony and reports from escaped Polish and Slovakian prisoners, variously describing what had happened inside TII and A-B.

The earliest war-time sources are wildly contradictory and absurd. They do not "converge" in any meaningful sense. Contradiction is the opposite of convergence. Below is an excerpt from the most detailed account of Treblinka from 1942.

The people finally realize that they are going to their death. At the entrance of death-house No.1 the chief himself stands, a whip in his hand; beating them in cold blood, he drives the women into the chambers. The floors of the chambers are slippery. The victims slip and fall, and they cannot get up for new numbers of forcibly driven victims fall upon them. The chief throws small children into the chambers over the heads of the women. When the execution chambers are filled the doors are hermetically closed and the slow suffocation of living people begins, brought about by the steam issuing from the numerous vents in the pipes. At the beginning, stifled cries penetrate to the outside; gradually they quiet down and 15 minutes later the execution is complete.

Now comes the turn of the grave diggers. Shouting and cursing, the German overseers drive the diggers to their work, which consists of getting the bodies out of the execution chambers. The grave-diggers stand at the scoop, near the valves. The valves open but not a body falls out. Due to the steam all the bodies have become a homogenous mass stuck together with the perspiration of the victims. In their death agonies, arms, legs, trunks are intertwined into a gigantic macabre entanglement. To make it possible for the grave-diggers to get out single bodies, cold water from the near-by well is poured over the mass. Then the bodies separate and may be taken out.

It also says that 2M Jews were buried in Treblinka and that the Germans had constructed a new, bigger death house to gas the Poles.

By 1944, there was also the circumstantial evidence of the millions of Jews arrested all over occupied Europe, who were primarily being transported to the General Government area, the location of the death camps. With the exception of Denmark and Finland, every country occupied by, or aligned to Nazi Germany, was experiencing significant drops in its Jewish population. The last ghetto at Lodz closed in August. That is evidence of opportunity.

By 1944, evidence of motive and opportunity were established and the initial rumours were being replaced with eyewitness evidence. The evidence from different sources is converging. The first camp trial, was for Majdanek, in Poland, in 1944. Revisionists only concentrate on the senior war crimes trials, in Nuremberg, where the Holocaust was hardly featured. The camp staff trials were separate and from the start, the staff did not deny mass murders had taken place and offer any evidence to explain where all the missing Jews were located.

Majdanek is so fake even the mainstream has had to retract it (more or less).

When the Allies, East and West, poured into Germany in 1945, it was now proven that millions of Jews who had been arrested, had disappear. The Soviets found mostly empty camps and ghettos, the Western Allies found packed camps, but not packed with millions of Jews. Displaced Persons Agencies, dealing with millions of displaced people, reported only a few hundred thousand were Jewish.

As more camp staff were traced, arrested and interviewed, and, there are many occasions where there is no evidence of torture or coercion, the Nazis themselves provided eyewitness evidence that mass murders had taken place. That took place from 1944 and has continued to the present day, no matter where the Nazis has been arrested, or put on trial, they have all presented no evidence of the whereabouts of millions of Jews supposedly not murdered, and evidence of their murder.

In 1945, the first physical examinations of the death camp sites took place. At the AR camp sites, it was found the majority of the camp had been razed to the ground and there were large areas of disturbed ground containing cremated remains. That is exactly as described by surviving prisoners, who related the Nazis attempts to hide their crimes. The only buildings at Birkenau that were destroyed by the Nazis, were the four Kremas and two farmhouses, where gas chambers had been located. The Krema gas chamber at Auschwitz main camp was now an air raid shelter. That is evidence of guilty conduct, consistent with criminal acts being covered up.

That is how the evidence converged from 1941 to 1945, to corroborate and prove mass murders. Since then, as historians have combed through archives and more witnesses have been traced and interviewed, there has been nothing to evidence millions of Jews were not killed. Every country that was occupied by or aligned to the Nazis, except Denmark and Finland, has admitted to losing Jewish citizens, arrested by the Nazis, often with their assistance, who never returned. Denmark and Finland resisted and they are able to account for their Jewish citizens up to 1945. That is because alive people leave evidence they are living.

Revisionists do not like the convergence of evidence as a process, as they cannot make it work to support their beliefs. Instead, they try to pass off illogical arguments and misrepresentation, as if that is a reliable way to investigate history.

This is a mess of confusion.

-The concentration camps were not in pretty shape at the end of the war and these scenes were played up for general propaganda purposes and were subsequently played up as evidence of the "the Holocaust." This is outrageously misleading. Even according to the mainstream, only some tens of the thousands died in camps like Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and the deaths spiked in 1945 as the German supply lines collapsed due to Allied bombing. Not only is this not proof for the Holocaust, it is suggestive of a propaganda hoax.

-The most relevant territory like Auschwitz was in Communist territory and the reports are characteristically unreliable and propagandistic.

-All of the war crimes trials essentially assumed at the outset that the "extermination" of the Jews was true. The most important evidence produced for the Holocaust were things like the Hoess confession, the Gerstein confession, etc., which have been absolutely ripped to shreds.

[Nazgul]

Even according to the mainstream, only some tens of the thousands died in camps like Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and the deaths spiked in 1945 as the German supply lines collapsed due to Allied bombing. Not only is this not proof for the Holocaust, it is suggestive of a propaganda hoax.

Wolfram Aïchele a German radio operator was captured and interned in the USA. After the war he and his comrades were shown the following pictures of Belsen to make them feel ashamed of their loyalty. This image as a video was shown to the world as proof of gassed Jews. Of course we know it was typhus.

[TlsMS93]

This “convergence of evidence” was the same thing a prosecutor from the Public Ministry here in Brazil did to accuse the current president, who has already been arrested in this customary legal system, even though the law that prevails here is civil law and was absorbed in the higher courts due to these nullities that the judge sowed.

He created a kind of PowerPoint with balls in the shape of a ring and inserted accusations in them, pointing to a photo of the president in the center. It was bizarre and even became a meme here at the time.

The Holocaust would not prevail depending on the legal system, it prevails because the West dictates the historiographical rules of the post-war period through its elastic legal system, where circumstantial evidence creates a case, a monstrosity in fact.

[Nazgul]

This “convergence of evidence” was the same thing a prosecutor from the Public Ministry here in Brazil did to accuse the current president, who has already been arrested in this customary legal system, even though the law that prevails here is civil law and was absorbed in the higher courts due to these nullities that the judge sowed.

He created a kind of PowerPoint with balls in the shape of a ring and inserted accusations in them, pointing to a photo of the president in the center. It was bizarre and even became a meme here at the time.

The Holocaust would not prevail depending on the legal system, it prevails because the West dictates the historiographical rules of the post-war period through its elastic legal system, where circumstantial evidence creates a case, a monstrosity in fact.

"whoever controls the past, controls the future; whoever controls the present, controls the past" i

[Nessie]

Jewish people, whom they had declared to be an enemy of the Reich, needing elimination or liquidation. That is evidence of motive.

They were interned. The same happened to the Germans and Japanese in the UK and USA, even though they were citizens.

The Reich did not declare Jews to be enemies of the German people, they did.

The Jews were imprisoned and made slave labourers and murdered. Hitler and senior Nazis repeatedly declared the Jews to be an enemy of the Reich. A newspaper headline no more evidences a declaration of war, than a newspaper headline that declares the Nazis ran death camps.

[HansHill]

The Jews were imprisoned and made slave labourers and murdered. Hitler and senior Nazis repeatedly declared the Jews to be an enemy of the Reich. A newspaper headline no more evidences a declaration of war, than a newspaper headline that declares the Nazis ran death camps.

This wasn't a literal declaration of war, as "Judea" was not a sovereign entity to declare war. It was a declaration of intent by organised Jewry to boycott, protest and to otherwise agitate against German interests. No offense, but I'm not surprised you need this explained to you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_anti-Nazi_boycott

[TlsMS93]

The Jews were imprisoned and made slave labourers and murdered. Hitler and senior Nazis repeatedly declared the Jews to be an enemy of the Reich. A newspaper headline no more evidences a declaration of war, than a newspaper headline that declares the Nazis ran death camps.

Chaim Weizmann, chairman of the WZO and future first president of Israel, declared war on Germany, in 29 august 1939, placing at Chamberlain's disposal any assistance that the world Jewish community could offer.

[Nessie]

Note that Nessie failed to counter any of the points raised in the critiques I quoted.

I can do that for you.

The evidence of the Holocaust, converged, as it arrived. That evidence started to arrive in late 1941, when the very first reports of mass murders were made. They were rumours, there was nothing firm and deniers on X like to quote from the then head of British Intelligence, who thought the reports were fake, atrocity stories. However, there were genuine fears as to what the Nazis intended to do to Jewish people, whom they had declared to be an enemy of the Reich, needing elimination or liquidation. That is evidence of motive.

Through 1942-4, more evidence arrived, in the form of eyewitness testimony and reports from escaped Polish and Slovakian prisoners, variously describing what had happened inside TII and A-B.

The earliest war-time sources are wildly contradictory and absurd. They do not "converge" in any meaningful sense. Contradiction is the opposite of convergence. Below is an excerpt from the most detailed account of Treblinka from 1942.

The people finally realize that they are going to their death. At the entrance of death-house No.1 the chief himself stands, a whip in his hand; beating them in cold blood, he drives the women into the chambers. The floors of the chambers are slippery. The victims slip and fall, and they cannot get up for new numbers of forcibly driven victims fall upon them. The chief throws small children into the chambers over the heads of the women. When the execution chambers are filled the doors are hermetically closed and the slow suffocation of living people begins, brought about by the steam issuing from the numerous vents in the pipes. At the beginning, stifled cries penetrate to the outside; gradually they quiet down and 15 minutes later the execution is complete.

Now comes the turn of the grave diggers. Shouting and cursing, the German overseers drive the diggers to their work, which consists of getting the bodies out of the execution chambers. The grave-diggers stand at the scoop, near the valves. The valves open but not a body falls out. Due to the steam all the bodies have become a homogenous mass stuck together with the perspiration of the victims. In their death agonies, arms, legs, trunks are intertwined into a gigantic macabre entanglement. To make it possible for the grave-diggers to get out single bodies, cold water from the near-by well is poured over the mass. Then the bodies separate and may be taken out.

It also says that 2M Jews were buried in Treblinka and that the Germans had constructed a new, bigger death house to gas the Poles.

That description is the same as descriptions of gassings. Steam is a gas. Substitute the word "steam" for "gas" and it would still work. Both describe mass murder inside a chamber and the clearing of the chambers for mass burials. There is no wild contradiction there, and those early reports of steam (and use of chlorine and even electricity) converge, as eyewitnesses state it was engine exhaust used to kill people inside the chambers. From the beginning, the reports were about deaths inside chambers, the actual means took time to establish.

If you had any training or even basic knowledge of witnesses, you would know that getting a detail wrong, is to be expected. The detail the earliest reports got wrong, was what actually killed people inside the chambers. If you knew how to assess witnesses, you would see that witness reports of steam chlorine and electricity, are hearsay. They come from witnesses who did not see the gassing operations. The eyewitnesses who worked at the chambers, all agree they used exhaust fumes.

By 1944, there was also the circumstantial evidence of the millions of Jews arrested all over occupied Europe, who were primarily being transported to the General Government area, the location of the death camps. With the exception of Denmark and Finland, every country occupied by, or aligned to Nazi Germany, was experiencing significant drops in its Jewish population. The last ghetto at Lodz closed in August. That is evidence of opportunity.

By 1944, evidence of motive and opportunity were established and the initial rumours were being replaced with eyewitness evidence. The evidence from different sources is converging. The first camp trial, was for Majdanek, in Poland, in 1944. Revisionists only concentrate on the senior war crimes trials, in Nuremberg, where the Holocaust was hardly featured. The camp staff trials were separate and from the start, the staff did not deny mass murders had taken place and offer any evidence to explain where all the missing Jews were located.

Majdanek is so fake even the mainstream has had to retract it (more or less).

Exactly, "more or less". The genuine revision has been that the Soviets tampered with the evidence of the delousing chambers, but they were used for gassings and they also over-estimated the death toll, which has been reduced. Majdanek is still an AR camp, where gassings took place.

When the Allies, East and West, poured into Germany in 1945, it was now proven that millions of Jews who had been arrested, had disappeared. The Soviets found mostly empty camps and ghettos, the Western Allies found packed camps, but not packed with millions of Jews. Displaced Persons Agencies, dealing with millions of displaced people, reported only a few hundred thousand were Jewish.

As more camp staff were traced, arrested and interviewed, and, there are many occasions where there is no evidence of torture or coercion, the Nazis themselves provided eyewitness evidence that mass murders had taken place. That took place from 1944 and has continued to the present day, no matter where the Nazis has been arrested, or put on trial, they have all presented no evidence of the whereabouts of millions of Jews supposedly not murdered, and evidence of their murder.

In 1945, the first physical examinations of the death camp sites took place. At the AR camp sites, it was found the majority of the camp had been razed to the ground and there were large areas of disturbed ground containing cremated remains. That is exactly as described by surviving prisoners, who related the Nazis attempts to hide their crimes. The only buildings at Birkenau that were destroyed by the Nazis, were the four Kremas and two farmhouses, where gas chambers had been located. The Krema gas chamber at Auschwitz main camp was now an air raid shelter. That is evidence of guilty conduct, consistent with criminal acts being covered up.

That is how the evidence converged from 1941 to 1945, to corroborate and prove mass murders. Since then, as historians have combed through archives and more witnesses have been traced and interviewed, there has been nothing to evidence millions of Jews were not killed. Every country that was occupied by or aligned to the Nazis, except Denmark and Finland, has admitted to losing Jewish citizens, arrested by the Nazis, often with their assistance, who never returned. Denmark and Finland resisted and they are able to account for their Jewish citizens up to 1945. That is because alive people leave evidence they are living.

Revisionists do not like the convergence of evidence as a process, as they cannot make it work to support their beliefs. Instead, they try to pass off illogical arguments and misrepresentation, as if that is a reliable way to investigate history.

This is a mess of confusion.

You cannot counter the history and points I have rasied.

-The concentration camps were not in pretty shape at the end of the war and these scenes were played up for general propaganda purposes and were subsequently played up as evidence of the "the Holocaust." This is outrageously misleading. Even according to the mainstream, only some tens of the thousands died in camps like Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau, and the deaths spiked in 1945 as the German supply lines collapsed due to Allied bombing. Not only is this not proof for the Holocaust, it is suggestive of a propaganda hoax.

The dreadful conditions inside the concentration camps was because the Nazis packed them out, as they had fled west. The highest death rates was amongst the Jewish prisoners, who the first to not get any food or water as supplies dwindled. That is on the Nazis.

It is strong circumstantial evidence that the Nazis had been mass murdering Jews, that the Allies only liberated a few hundred thousand of them. Their condition, and Nazi contempt for them, evidenced motive and opportunity. If that was how the Nazis treated Jews, of course they would be capable of mass murdering them.

-The most relevant territory like Auschwitz was in Communist territory and the reports are characteristically unreliable and propagandistic.

You have a chronological gap. 1944. Where were the millions of Jews supposedly not killed, in 1944? Don't jump forward to 1945 and liberation, fill in the gap of 1944. By then, there were enough reports of mass murder in death camps for the Allies to take seriously that the Nazis were mass murderers. The Nazis knew they were being accused of mass murder, hence the controlled IRC camp visits that found nothing. They were countering with their own propaganda. Why did they not counter with evidence of millions of Jews in camps and ghettos?

The wartime Polish Government in Exile reports about the AR camps and Chelmno, had been evidenced by Polish lead Judicial investigations in 1945, before the Polish Communist government had taken over control. Dozens of witnesses had been trace and interviewed and the sites found to contain large areas of disturbed ground containing cremated remains.

-All of the war crimes trials essentially assumed at the outset that the "extermination" of the Jews was true. The most important evidence produced for the Holocaust were things like the Hoess confession, the Gerstein confession, etc., which have been absolutely ripped to shreds.

Those confessions have only been ripped to shreds, in the minds of revisionists, who do not want to believe them. They are corroborated and even in 1945, there was sufficient evidence to prove mass murders in death camps. Revisonists do not get that in 1945, the Allies had established that the millions of Jews the Nazis had been arresting since 1939, had disappeared. From France to Norway to Italy to Greece, very few Jewish people were returning home. The British and Americans were not being faced with millions of Jews applying to live there, or in British controlled Palestine.

Meanwhile, not one single Nazi came froward to evidence millions of Jews still alive and what really happened. Not one.

[Nessie]

The Jews were imprisoned and made slave labourers and murdered. Hitler and senior Nazis repeatedly declared the Jews to be an enemy of the Reich. A newspaper headline no more evidences a declaration of war, than a newspaper headline that declares the Nazis ran death camps.

Chaim Weizmann, chairman of the WZO and future first president of Israel, declared war on Germany, in 29 august 1939, placing at Chamberlain's disposal any assistance that the world Jewish community could offer.

That is no more a declaration of war, than a Cardinal from the Vatican, can declare war on behalf of all Roman Catholics.

[Nessie]

Note that Nessie failed to counter any of the points raised in the critiques I quoted.

...

By “convergence of evidence” Shermer means a situation in which data from a variety of different fields all point to a specific factual conclusion.

Correct, also known as corroboration.

Shermer argues that there are eighteen kinds of data that converge on the fact of the Holocaust: five testimonies, four Nazi speeches, blueprints of the crematoria, photos of dead inmates, more testimonies, Zyklon B orders, Eichmann’s confession, postwar statements of the German government, and many missing Jews (p. 118). No, the list does not add up to eighteen, and no, we are not making fun of Shermer’s argument: this is exactly what he says, except that by the end of his litany the eighteen kinds of data have become eighteen proofs “all converging on one conclusion.”

I do not know exactly what Shemer said, but that reads like a childish micky taking, by someone who does not understand corroboration and convergence. Each testimony, speech, blueprint, photo etc is an individual piece of evidence. When multiple pieces of evidence all point towards one conclusion, that is corroborated proof. It is how history and criminal acts are reliably proven. Ironically, revisionists will resort to that form or evidencing and proof, for other historical events and crimes. They cannot when it comes to the Holocaust.

There are at least three things wrong with Shermer’s argument. The first problem is that if we accept the word “Holocaust” as a rubric to describe everything that happened to Jewish people in the Second World War we immediately run into a problem of relating the disparate parts to each other. For example, it is well known that thousands of dead persons were photographed by the Americans and the British in such camps as Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, and Dachau: these photographs prove that there were many dead, Jews and others, in these camps when they were captured, nothing more. Sophisticated exponents of the Holocaust are in agreement with revisionists that such evidence has no bearing on what did or did not happen in alleged “extermination” camps such as Auschwitz or Treblinka.

The condition of the Jewish prisoners at Bergen-Belsen, compared to other prisoners, is evidence of motive and opportunity. It proves that the Nazis regarded the Jews as the lowest of the low, that they were hated and regarded as disposable. It proves that given the opportunity, the Nazis would inflict great cruelty on Jews and that they had been arresting them and using them as disposable slave labourers. Compare the Jews to Western Allied POWs and the difference was night and day. The Jewish prisoners looked like Allied POWs from the Japanese camp system.

That evidence of motive and opportunity converges with the evidence of even more horrific treatment of Jews arriving at TII or A-B.

The second problem is that the evidence does not necessarily converge on the stated conclusions. For example, when discussing the mass gassing claim, Shermer argues that we know mass gassings took place because of (1) testimonies, (2) blueprints of crematoria, (3) Zyklon B traces, (4) photographs, ground level and (5) aerial, and (6) existing ruins. But these categories of evidence provide distinctly different levels of evidentiary value. The testimonies, as is well known, are frequently implausible, were generated at a time when gassing stories had been widely disseminated, and were given before courts committed to upholding the gassing claim. The blueprints, on the other hand, only show that crematoria were planned. The existence of Zyklon B traces, in camps where the product was widely used for disinfection, is automatically moot. The ground level photos show piles of dead bodies. The aerial photos prove that crematoria were built. The ruins provide evidence that delousing stations, as well as crematoria, were built. None of the non-testimonial classes of evidence would necessarily lead to a conclusion that mass gassings took place, while the testimony itself remains unreliable.

That is a poor attempt at separating the evidence and it fails to show fault in the convergence Shermer, and historians argue. Witnesses who worked inside the Kremas report that mass transports arrived and a selection process took place. That is corroborated by photographic and documentary evidence. The people not needed for work were sent to the Kremas, which is also corroborated by photographic evidence. At the Kremas, they were ordered to undress in undressing rooms as they were to be showered, but the showers were gas chambers. The corpses were mass cremated and the property stolen taken for sorting and selling. That process is corroborated by documents recording the construction of heated undressing rooms, gas chambers with shower fittings, mass corpse cremation ovens and barracks for all the property, in a secretive "special" action involving infirm prisoners, Jews and Hungarians. The presence of Zyklon B in the ruins and vents found at Krema II, along with physical evidence such as parts of a gas mask and a shower head also recovered from Krema II, also corroborate. That the Nazis only destroyed the Kremas and two farm houses at Birkenau, leaving the rest of the camp intact, is evidence of an attempt cover up what had happened, from which criminal activity can be inferred.

Shermer’s “convergence of evidence” argument appears to be rather that, if various classes of evidence do not contradict the central assertion, these other classes of evidence corroborate, or converge, on that central conclusion. In the same way, an old woman in the seventeenth century could have been shown to have gamboled in a midnight glade with Satan — and then been burned at the stake, so long as a broom and a cat were produced.

That is a false analogy, as witchcraft is an impossibility, the Nazis building gas chambers is not.

The third problem with Shermer’s “convergence” model is that by returning again and again to rather weak categories of evidence — such as eyewitness stories, aerial photos, cans of Zyklon, the use of the word “Ausrottung” (extirpation) in public speeches — he passes over the enormous gap in the documentary record. It is precisely this documentary gap — the absence of any reliable documentation at any level that points to homicidal gassing, and the absence of documentation to indicate that the Third Reich was pursuing a policy of exterminating all Jews — that leads people to the revisionist perspective.

There is no documentary gap. They prove mass arrivals, selections, that those not selected to work then disappear from any further records and that gas chambers were built inside the Kremas.

[Nessie]

Two pieces of false or irrelevant evidence do not “corroborate” each other. It doesn’t matter if they are two pieces of the same type, or different types. There could be a million witnesses and a million photographs: if each piece of evidence is false or irrelevant, then the whole mass of them is no better than any individual piece. This applies equally to ESP, UFOs, and gas chambers.

This is the heart of the matter.

Correct, if the evidence is false, bogus, it is of no use and is certainly not corroboration. It is a false analogy to compare impossible ESP and UFOs to possible gas chambers.

Michael Shermer presents eyewitness reports, each of which is questionable.

Questionable in what way? Revisionists, with no experience of taking witness statements, or having hown no interest in learning about memory and recall, are not able to reliably assess the witness evidence.

This is the only evidence for the gas chambers.

That is a lie. How is a document recording the construction of a gas chamber, not evidence of a gas chamber?

To “corroborate” this testimony, Dr. Shermer presents many other pieces of evidence which prove conclusively that Hitler and the other Nazis hated the Jews enough to kill them, that concentration camps existed, and that many Jews died in the camps and were cremated. But none of this evidence corroborates what the witnesses said about the gas chambers. Dr. Shermer gives us photographs which do not show gas chambers, documents which do not mention gas chambers, reports of brutal treatment of prisoners, and so forth: the “18 bits of evidence.” This whole mass of evidence taken together is supposed to prove that there were gas chambers. No, it doesn’t.

Yes it does. When every single person who worked inside a Krema states people would arrive in their thousands, undress, be gassed and cremated and there are documents recording each part of that process, the "whole mass of evidence" for the Kremas, is that they were used for homicidal gassings.

According to Dr. Shermer, this is how “convergence” works: First you construct a picture of the whole thing, the Holocaust — the menacing speeches, the trains, the unloading platforms, the gas chambers, the ovens, the burning pits, the mass graves, the starving prisoners in the camps at the end of the war. Then you say that any evidence for any part of this picture is a “proof” of the whole thing; and if you have 18 “proofs,” they “converge” to the conclusion that the whole picture is true, even if you don’t have a proof of every part.

First, you gather evidence. That evidence then points towards a conclusion by corroborating what happened, chronologically. That is how the evidence converges. I would like to see a revisionist prove what happened, without using convergence of evidence!