Where are the Goalposts?

[HansHill]

…why I would I be here to blow smoke? It doesn't make sense. …Do you think I'm consciously lying about all of this?

…you are very much a "choose-your-own-Holocaust" kinda guy. This matches perfectly with what I said earlier about "localized consistency" and makes it very difficult to ascertain exactly what your "doubts about the veracity of the narrative" actually are, or even if you genuinely hold them.

WS calls this "blowing smoke" but I don't quite agree, i think its closer to performative point-scoring.

T’was not I, but Archie.
Here:
https://codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=20546#p20546

… I would definitely like to recruit some better talent on the anti-revisionist side, but the "high-end" Holocaust defenders do not seem eager to test the waters here even though nothing is stopping them and they've been complaining for years about "censorship" on CODOH.
…They also might have some concern about giving CODOH a lot of traffic and activity as that would ultimately help us...
Perhaps the logic is that having bombsaway blow some smoke is thought to be sufficient.

Oh sorry WS, my mistake! My eyes are starting to give in my old age

[Archie]

It says the Jewish people are being exterminated in Europe, with Poland being described as a slaughterhouse where a few highly skilled workers are kept alive w plans to be gradually worked to death.

It is a formal endorsement of the Holocaust story in it's most basic form. Systematic murder of European Jewry. That you don't seems to get the significance of this is a sure sign of your delusions and why I'm not inclined to take you guys seriously when you talk about the science, which I'm less equipped to assess to due to my lack of domain knowledge.

"If you don't agree with me you are delusional" is not an argument.

The use of "extermination" in that statement at a time when we know most people, including highly placed State Department officials and newspaper editors, were skeptical of these stories if anything calls into question your interpretation of "extermination." And that the "final solution" was known to the Western Allies in December 1942 contradicts countless other points.

I did NOT say the declaration is not significant. That the World Jewish Congress was able to lobby for such a thing on the basis of anonymous rumors about corpse factories and the like and that they got Britain and the US to acquiesce to this nonsense is highly revealing. Again, if you look at what people at the State Department were saying behind the scenes a very different picture emerges.

There's no mention of corpse factories in the WW1 report, just killing of civilians, which indeed is thought to have occurred, though I haven't read about it.

Wikipedia:

German troops, afraid of Belgian guerrilla fighters, or francs-tireurs ("free shooters"), burned homes and murdered civilians throughout eastern and central Belgium, including Aarschot (156 murdered), Andenne (211 murdered), Seilles, Tamines (383 murdered), and Dinant (674 murdered).[9] German soldiers murdered Belgian civilians indiscriminately and with impunity, with victims including men, women, and children.[10] In the Province of Brabant, nuns were forcibly stripped naked under the pretext that they were spies or men in disguise.[11] In and around Aarschot, between 19 August and the recapture of the town by 9 September, German soldiers repeatedly raped Belgian women. Rape was nearly as ubiquitous as murder, arson and looting, if never as visible.[12]

The British report I linked (which is filled with lurid, anonymous testimonies) was published in 1915. The corpse factory stories did not arise (or become prominent) until relatively late in the war in 1917. So obviously they could not have included those stories in that report.

The British press was 100% behind the corpse factory story and spent a good deal of effort defending the story against skeptics. The British government did not "officially" endorse all the stories, but that's merely because they often preferred the plausible deniability of suggesting the stories were true while leaving the ultimate responsibility with the media. Ponsonby in his classic book refers to this as "the usual evasion." But it is incorrect to say the government never endorsed the stories, as already demonstrated.

[Trebb]

To take a step back, the original question was about the historical establishment and their view of Holocaust as best evidenced genocide. I'm sure if they would viewed the bombings as genocide they would see they were more evidenced. If you're talking about Dresden in particular, there's probably not as much there in terms of quantity as the entire body of Holocaust evidence.

Again, I am more of a reader trying to make up my mind about various things here. Posts from those more established (owners, moderator, regular posters) along with others, like yourself, I will also read and take measure of. There is a lot of baggage accreted to the whole question over the years which, annoyingly perhaps, I don't have to carry when reading, evaluating or participating in the relevant questions. And since Holocaust/WWII Atrocity Propaganda/Something Else (take your pick) awareness is now bubbling up thanks to the Gaza Holocaust/Plucky Israel's Stout Resolve/ Something Else that is occurring on the back of whatever license the Brazen IDF/ Heroic IDF are operating on, Revisionists and Orthocausts alike are going to be faced with people, like me, who will give opinions without feeling obliged to carry this weighty baggage.

So we can be shown the evidence for, e.g., the Dresden event, and we can be shown the evidence for the mass gassings at Auschwitz. And we can make up our minds without having to say so without first clearing our throats by reciting some outward manifestation of "the Jews suffered terribly during the war = Holocaust". Instead, we are free to say something like, "If there was a Holocaust during World War II it doesn't seem to have happened in Auschwitz".

I mean no disrespect to anyone with this, least of all anyone who suffered in the World Wars and also not to Revisionists who have lived under the threat of violence, lawfare and imprisonment, or with these actual outcomes, owing to their investigations. For someone for which the scales have recently fallen from my eyes (even following the developments just from what the Orthodox sources publish, this is possible), I think the foisting of the Holocaust term itself on all who discuss WWII has resulted in the constant acting out of a parlour game. If it turns out that I can no longer believe that there were mass gassings of Jews in the Reich then I will refuse to use the term Holocaust (at the moment it remains only a hypothetical to me). The Orthodoxy have drastically revised down, for example, the number of gas chambers at Majdanek. I'm not sure what else to conclude by this but it seems awfully like they are comforting themselves in a I expect there are just a few little men in there fallacy.

We were not sold Israel, nor German Guilt, on this sort of Holocaust, I am taking my Holocaust back to the shop and refuse to consider buying another Holocaust until I know exactly what it is I am being sold.

To the point,

If you're talking about Dresden in particular, there's probably not as much there in terms of quantity as the entire body of Holocaust evidence.

Is that the criterion you are asking me to evaluate claims on? The physical weight of evidence that correlates to an allegation? Which correlate do you favour? Allied governmental documentation for an Allied bombing spree versus all the government documentation of the Nationalist Socialists during their 12 years in office for the Jewish Holocaust? We just just compare Kg values or reams used? How about column inches of coverage in the press? I had no idea law could be so easy. Or do we just compare the magnitudes of the crimes being alleged, and decide that the evidence the prosecutions will present will be greater for crimes of greater magnitude and therefore only the larger crime occurred? We just ignore the quality of the evidence and the way the evidence was gathered and other facts, e.g., the evolving history of this process?

Wow! Colin Pitchfork was convicted and jailed for only two rape-murders in 1988. I wonder if he could secure his release by establishing the non-existence of his crimes by comparison to the Holocaust? He has been languishing in jail for decades for a crime that could not have occurred, especially when it is considered that the evidence that they convicted him on is so small that it cannot even be seen using a microscope. Weigh that against all photocopies of the Wannsee Protocols!

If I point out how "miserable, mendacious and nasty" the victors were, in WW1, in WW2 etc this is a prerequisite for Hoax, not something that would necessitate a hoax or make it even vaguely likely if nothing had happened. You're talking about not only fabricating documents and witness testimonies, but mass coverup and destruction/suppression of resettlement, millions of people, countless administrative documents - silencing their own side even, that would have seen all these Jews being resettled. In addition to being "miserable, mendacious and nasty" the victors would have to have incredible competence in terms of deceit. This has been far from demonstrated, in fact the opposite has been demonstrated. My main point here would be that you can't draw much of a causal line here.

This is the widest possible summary of why we are all here, from the Orthodox point of view. I am here to make up my mind.

...The Holocaust could have happened and the allies still would have been "nasty" just like they were in WW1.

The universe of things that cannot be ruled out by the nastiness of the Allies at the end of WWI is not the largest infinity amongst all imponderable infinities, but it is pretty humungous. The nature of the National Socialist treatment of Jews (in particular) being partly fabricated and grossly exaggerated by allies being "nasty", just like they were in WW1, can certainly not be ruled out by it.

[Hektor]

They claim that the Holocaust is the best-documented event in history, yet they don't relinquish their rebuttals to revisionists' questioning of gaps that they consider mere circumstantial chance, as if evidence about Aktion 1005 were unimportant—after all, an alcoholic with little experience in cremation confessed everything—or where did they get the necessary material to cremate almost 2 million people in isolated camps in rural Poland? Suffice it to say that women's fat was used as fuel, or that we have no proof of how much wood would have been needed, therefore we cannot prove it didn't happen.

We shouldn't allow exterminationists to impose their conditions here, accepting the issue of having to prove that the Holocaust didn't happen instead of simply refuting the so-called overwhelming evidence they claim to have, which is the natural course of any debate.

If that were true, they wouldn't quickly jump to insist that the 'Nazis destroyed the concise evidence", when they are seriously challenged. What they do is to pass on e.g. deportation notices and other papers as 'evidence' for 'extermination, which is intellectually dishonest.

[Stubble]

If that were true, they wouldn't quickly jump to insist that the 'Nazis destroyed the concise evidence", when they are seriously challenged. What they do is to pass on e.g. deportation notices and other papers as 'evidence' for 'extermination, which is intellectually dishonest.

Intellectually dishonest?

Personally, I consider it intellectually bankrupt to continue to try to sell Schrodinger's Evidence for the Holy H. It is both complete and damning and also non existent because it was destroyed, depending on whether or not you want to see it.

[TlsMS93]

If that were true, they wouldn't quickly jump to insist that the 'Nazis destroyed the concise evidence", when they are seriously challenged. What they do is to pass on e.g. deportation notices and other papers as 'evidence' for 'extermination, which is intellectually dishonest.

In December 1942, the Allies were content with reports from the Polish resistance, the government in exile, accounts from an anti-Nazi, and spies from concentration camps. The Holocaust was sown there, and at the end of the war they had to substantiate this declaration with something, even though they found no bodies or autopsies of those who did die from poison gas.

[bombsaway]

It says the Jewish people are being exterminated in Europe, with Poland being described as a slaughterhouse where a few highly skilled workers are kept alive w plans to be gradually worked to death.

It is a formal endorsement of the Holocaust story in it's most basic form. Systematic murder of European Jewry. That you don't seems to get the significance of this is a sure sign of your delusions and why I'm not inclined to take you guys seriously when you talk about the science, which I'm less equipped to assess to due to my lack of domain knowledge.

"If you don't agree with me you are delusional" is not an argument.

The use of "extermination" in that statement at a time when we know most people, including highly placed State Department officials and newspaper editors, were skeptical of these stories if anything calls into question your interpretation of "extermination." And that the "final solution" was known to the Western Allies in December 1942 contradicts countless other points.

I did NOT say the declaration is not significant. That the World Jewish Congress was able to lobby for such a thing on the basis of anonymous rumors about corpse factories and the like and that they got Britain and the US to acquiesce to this nonsense is highly revealing.

You think that the implication behind extermination was not killing? You know it was a response to this right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_ ... ied_Poland

No evidence about the World Jewish Congress getting the UN to "acquiesce", that's a completely speculative point, and you jumping to it immediately is a sure sign for me of conspiracy brain. It's all conspiracy brain w you guys, which is a big reason why I'm not swayed at all by the scientific arguments. You all have a high level motivated reasoning, and it's on display for me right here in this thread.

The notion that the Allies were hypocritical and biased is as much an argument for revisionism's correctness as the Nazis being anti semitic is an argument that the Holocaust happened. But you don't see people like me making that argument, because orthodoxy has much better evidence than this. You don't, I guess.

[bombsaway]

Again, I am more of a reader trying to make up my mind about various things here. Posts from those more established (owners, moderator, regular posters) along with others, like yourself, I will also read and take measure of. There is a lot of baggage accreted to the whole question over the years which, annoyingly perhaps, I don't have to carry when reading, evaluating or participating in the relevant questions. And since Holocaust/WWII Atrocity Propaganda/Something Else (take your pick) awareness is now bubbling up thanks to the Gaza Holocaust/Plucky Israel's Stout Resolve/ Something Else that is occurring on the back of whatever license the Brazen IDF/ Heroic IDF are operating on, Revisionists and Orthocausts alike are going to be faced with people, like me, who will give opinions without feeling obliged to carry this weighty baggage.

If you're truly in the process of making up your mind, you should investigate the orthodox account and the revisionist account an in even handed manner. I think if you do this, you will see that the revisionist account has glaring flaws - much greater than what orthodoxy does, principally the lack of evidence for claims. To take one example, revisionists typically believe millions of Jews were maintained inside the USSR in dedicated camps following the closure of most ghettos, something that has absolutely no direct evidence for it, in contrast to any recorded event in recent history, even events involving a tiny fraction of the population we see here. The retort to this is "mendacious allies --> mass cover up" or some such, which is a total deus ex machina, given the again lack of evidence for any such cover up. Katyn is usually the go to for proving propensity for conspiracy, but even with that you see a marked difference. No perpetrators gave false testimony about Katyn, no one was imprisoned/executed, no documents were produced, and the cover up failed (Soviet documents exist implicating them directly. Any issue in revisionism is resolved by pointing to the possibility of conspiracy, but this isn't how traditional history operates. We take an evidence, rather than possibility based approach.

[Archie]

It says the Jewish people are being exterminated in Europe, with Poland being described as a slaughterhouse where a few highly skilled workers are kept alive w plans to be gradually worked to death.

It is a formal endorsement of the Holocaust story in it's most basic form. Systematic murder of European Jewry. That you don't seems to get the significance of this is a sure sign of your delusions and why I'm not inclined to take you guys seriously when you talk about the science, which I'm less equipped to assess to due to my lack of domain knowledge.

"If you don't agree with me you are delusional" is not an argument.

The use of "extermination" in that statement at a time when we know most people, including highly placed State Department officials and newspaper editors, were skeptical of these stories if anything calls into question your interpretation of "extermination." And that the "final solution" was known to the Western Allies in December 1942 contradicts countless other points.

I did NOT say the declaration is not significant. That the World Jewish Congress was able to lobby for such a thing on the basis of anonymous rumors about corpse factories and the like and that they got Britain and the US to acquiesce to this nonsense is highly revealing.

You think that the implication behind extermination was not killing? You know it was a response to this right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_ ... ied_Poland

No evidence about the World Jewish Congress getting the UN to "acquiesce", that's a completely speculative point, and you jumping to it immediately is a sure sign for me of conspiracy brain. It's all conspiracy brain w you guys, which is a big reason why I'm not swayed at all by the scientific arguments. You all have a high level motivated reasoning, and it's on display for me right here in this thread.

The notion that the Allies were hypocritical and biased is as much an argument for revisionism's correctness as the Nazis being anti semitic is an argument that the Holocaust happened. But you don't see people like me making that argument, because orthodoxy has much better evidence than this. You don't, I guess.

So you read a single Wikipedia article and you've concluded from this that there is "no evidence" of the WJC's involvement? There are multiple books that cover this in detail. For example Bernard Wasserstein's Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945. See pages 170-171, in particular.

The Government now came under increasing pressure from Jewish organizations, from the Polish Government, and from sections of public opinion, to take up a more explicit stance on the matter, and to consider whether any means of affording succour to the victims of Nazi persecution was available.

In addition to various other forms of action it was therefore agreed to intensify pressure on the Government to issue a declaration 'covering specifically the extermination and persecution of the Jews'. On 2 December, the Soviet Ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky, told Eden that he had been approached by a Jewish deputation who had asked that the U.S.S.R associate itself with such a declaration. Maisky said that although he had received no instructions on the subject from his government he considered no instructions on the subject from his government he considered personally that a three-power declaration on the massacres of the Jews was desirable and 'might give the unhappy Jews some comfort'. On 7 December, the American Ambassador in London, J. G. Winant, cabled to the State Department:

Two or three times I have been approached by committees of British Jews asking for intercession in their behalf because of informations which have been received from their representative in Geneva [nb: Riegner] in regard to a plan by Hitler to totally exterminate all Jews under military control.

Opinion in the Foreign Office and in the State Department, both still somewhat sceptical as to the accuracy of the reports, acquiesced only reluctantly to the proposal for a declaration.

See also Martin Gilbert, Auschwitz and the Allies, pages 95-96.

The declaration was first proposed by Jewish MP and Zionist Sydney Silverman in a meeting with Richard Law, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. When the declaration was read in the House of Commons, Eden read it in response to a comment by Silverman.

Another source here is the WJC's 1948 publication Unity in Dispersion, page 172.

From the outset of the extermination process, the World Jewish Congress emphasized repeatedly the importance of solemn, specific and reiterated warnings. On July 21, 1942, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill, in their messages to the Madison Square Garden meeting, promised to place retribution among the major purposes of the war. It was felt, however, that the warning would be more impressive if all the Allies joined in the pledge. Consequently, the British Section, in a series of negotiations, requested the United Nations to issue a collective warning dealing specifically with the magnitude of the Jewish tragedy. Such a declaration was published on December 17, 1942, simultaneously in London, Washington, and Moscow, with the assent and support of all the Allied Governments and of the British Dominions. In the House of Commons, the pledge was read by Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in reply to a Private Notice Question by S. S. Silverman, M. P., at that time Acting Chairman of the British Section.

Oh, but I guess I'm an idiot "conspiracy brain" because I read several relevant books and am merely restating exactly what Jews themselves say about this in their own literature.

"that's a completely speculative point, and you jumping to it immediately is a sure sign for me of conspiracy brain"

[bombsaway]

I don't think you're an idiot, but I think your reasoning ability has been compromised severely, something very common today which I think is mostly due to echo chambers and motivated reasoning, the need to confirm pre existing beliefs, which is a psychological thing everyone is vulnerable to, including myself. In general I try to check things where I can. I'm not part of an echo chamber of anti revisionists, though you could argue if most people in a society believe the same thing, that is just a giant echo chamber. The point is, I don't talk about the Holocaust outside of this forum

To say that the Jewish lobby "got" the reps to acquiesce is not corroborated. This strong casual link is not established, that's where the reasoning deficiencies come in.

Eg clearly S. S. Silverman did not prompt the declaration, he asked the question and the previously written declaration was given

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... eclaration

Yet you interpret this as causal.

[Archie]

I will reply with one quote at a time since bombsaway is apparently too much of a retard to read longer posts.

To say that the Jewish lobby "got" the reps to acquiesce is not corroborated. This strong casual link is not established, that's where the reasoning deficiencies come in.

Did you consult the sources I cited? Did you even read my post?

Wasserstein (already quoted): "Opinion in the Foreign Office and in the State Department, both still somewhat sceptical as to the accuracy of the reports, acquiesced only reluctantly to the proposal for a declaration."

[Archie]

Eg clearly S. S. Silverman did not prompt the declaration, he asked the question and the previously written declaration was given

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... eclaration

Yet you interpret this as causal.

You are deliberately conflating the Dec 17 statement with Silverman's proposal of the declaration on Nov 26th. You just don't know what you're talking about.

I will quote AGAIN what the WJC themselves say: "Consequently, the British Section, in a series of negotiations, requested the United Nations to issue a collective warning dealing specifically with the magnitude of the Jewish tragedy."

It was requested by the WJC.

[Archie]

Eg clearly S. S. Silverman did not prompt the declaration, he asked the question and the previously written declaration was given

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... eclaration

Yet you interpret this as causal.

Here are some direct quotes from Gilbert which I already summarized where he specifies that it was Silverman specifically.

"Such was the information which two British Jews, A. L. Easterman and Sydney Silverman, put before the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Richard Law, on November 26. "

"Silverman made two suggestions. The first was a Great-Power Declaration to the effect that the United Nations had been informed of the extermination plan, and that 'if it was carried out', those responsible for it 'would receive their due punishment', while at the same time the German people themselves ' could not escape responsibility for the acts of their government'. "

Silverman made the proposal on Nov 26 AND the statement was read in the House of Commons on Dec 17 in response to his question.

[bombsaway]

You have to separate out your primary sources. My inkling is you are just quoting from this book because you like the opinions expressed therein, but these are just opinions. You gotta show me the primary source documents.

Eg this seems like the big one

"Opinion in the Foreign Office and in the State Department, both still somewhat skeptical as to the accuracy of the reports, acquiesced only reluctantly to the proposal for a declaration."

Is this the state department? Or the guy who wrote the book? I took it as the latter, and just assumed you hadn't considered the strength or weakness of this "evidence". But feel free to show me otherwise, I'll admit my mistake in this case.

[bombsaway]

I think pretty much all serious revisionists, like the ones on this forum, are going to fall victim to this in order to persist with their views

FROM AN AI

Humans have a powerful “pattern + agency” engine: we’re built to detect structure, infer causes, and assume intent, because historically false negatives (missing danger) were costlier than false positives (a mistaken alarm). When this system runs hot, people start treating coincidence, ambiguity, or weak correlations as evidence of a hidden design.

Common ingredients:

Pattern detection under uncertainty: When information is noisy or incomplete, the brain fills gaps.

Agency detection: Vague events get attributed to “someone” doing it on purpose.

Narrative drive: A single story feels better than “it’s complicated / random / multiple causes.”

Confirmation loops: Once a narrative forms, attention shifts to supporting details and away from disconfirming ones.

Self-sealing explanations: Counter-evidence gets reinterpreted as part of the conspiracy (“that’s what they want you to think”).

Social reinforcement: Communities, algorithms, and repeated exposure make the pattern feel more obvious and “common sense.”

A useful mental model: overfitting. In statistics/ML, a model that overfits doesn’t just learn the true signal—it learns the noise. It performs well inside its own story but generalizes poorly to reality. Conspiracy-style thinking often looks like a human version of overfitting: maximal explanatory power, minimal falsifiability.

I asked the AI what to call this instead of 'conspiracy brained' which is a pejorative and I want to avoid that. Could we say "dot connecting"?