Question: The Bombing of Kassa

[Kretschmer]

Hello, everyone! Having just joined the Forums, there is one question about the Atlantic Theater that I have thought about for the past week or so, chiefly because it has never been discussed on this site before (at least to my knowledge.)

When arguing with anti-revisionists over so-called "false flag" incidents including the Gleiwitz Incident and the Reichstag Fire, some will simply ignore my evidence which contradicts their "false flag" claims and present the argument that the Bombing of Kassa somehow proves Germany's aptitude for false flag operations.

What was this alleged "false flag" operation? For those unaware, it was an air raid on the city of Kassa, Hungary (present-day Kosice, Slovakia) on June 26, 1941 that served as Hungary's prime justification to declare war on the USSR. It is worth noting before anything else that to this day, the aircraft which took part in the bombing remain unidentified.

According to establishment court historian (and Soviet) historiography, the bombing was perpetrated by German aircraft as a "false flag" operation executed in order to provoke Hungary's entry into the war. Unusually, their argument for this particular assertion does not rest in any false photographic evidence or "official" documentation, but that the USSR had previously pleaded with Hungary to not enter the war.

What's interesting, however, is that even Wikipedia (one of the least reliable sources for anything related to the war, as almost all here know) makes a rare statement that is far more reasonable in premise than the "false flag" explanation commonly used in "historical" texts. The following can be seen on its dedicated article on the incident [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Kassa]
[Another possibility is that the Soviet bombers mistook Kassa for a nearby city in the First Slovak Republic, which was already at war with the Soviet Union.]
Afterwards, the article provides this information as well that also contradicts the "false flag" story:
[Another problem with the German conspiracy theory was the fact that German planes did not have bomb-racks capable of holding Soviet bombs. According to Dreisziger, "it seems that the bombs dropped on Kassa were 100 kg bombs while the standard stock of the Luftwaffe were the 50 and 250 kg bombs."]
From all of this, my question is if there are any documents, reports, or photographs which exist that support either side of the argument, or if there is physical evidence that was reported in support of either side (namely the diameters of the bomb craters, if there were any at the site of the air raid.) All commentary and answers are appreciated.

[Otium]

Anyone who argues with you about the Reichstag fire being a Nazi false flag isn't even abreast of the conventional historiography of the mid 1960s. Fritz Tobias was publishing articles as early as 1959 in Der Spiegel refuting the anti-Nazi myth that the Reichstag fire was some kind of Nazi conspiracy. It is now an accepted historical fact, and has been ever since Tobias released his book on the subject in 1963 entitled 'The Reichstag fire: Legend and Truth' (See: https://archive.org/details/the-reichstag-fire-fritz-tobias). Everyone accepts this.

The convenience of the pretext which Goring found for attacking the Communists led many (including the present author) to believe that the burning of the Reichstag was, in fact, planned and carried out by the Nazis themselves. A circumstantial version described how a band of Berlin S.A. men led by Karl Ernst penetrated into the deserted building by an underground tunnel and set the place ablaze. Van der Lubbe, who had been picked up by the S.A. after attempting to set fire to other buildings as a protest against the way society had treated him, was used as a dupe and allowed to climb into the Reichstag and start a fire on his own in another part.

Whichever version is accepted, the part played by van der Lubbe remains a mystery, and it was this which led Herr Fritz Tobias to start an independent investigation of the evidence in 1955. Herr Tobias's conclusion (published in Der Spiegel w. 1959) rejects both the Nazi and the anti-Nazi account in favour of van der Lubbe's own declaration, from which he never wavered, that he alone was responsible for the fire and that he carried it out as a single-handed act of protest. Herr Tobias may well be right in arguing that this, the simplest explanation of all, is the true one.

Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1962), Pp. 262-263

Bullock (and no doubt many others) assumed it was the National Socialists who set fire to the Reichstag because he is utterly entrenched in the partisan belief in the inherent wickedness of the Nazis. He was prejudiced and decided that it must've been them who started the fire without any logical or factual reason to believe it. Thus the most fallacious fantasies become reality - it wouldn't be the first or last time this impetuous disregard for truth would have these "historians" lay claims at the feet of the Nazis.

Perhaps with some scepticism or simply holding objective reservations about events we do not know the facts about would be the best thing in service of the truth, rather than hastily drawing conclusions that would best fit the narrative of negligent partisans that only end up revealing their contempt for the truth. At least Bullock on this occasion mostly remedied his mis-deed.

The same cannot be said for William L. Shirer who published the erroneous claim that the Nazis were the culprits in his famous malevolent work 'The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'. This is the only work that you will find the mythical claim repeated, unchanged, since 1961. For reference, Bullock's revised edition of his Hitler biography came out in 1962, Shirer's book has been republished numerous times since then, and Shirer himself only died in 1993. He had no excuse not to change his book to accord with the current facts of the historiography; in fact Shirer had no excuse to publish the mythical anti-Nazi (perpetuated by Marxists) version of the story in the first place when the research of Tobias was freely available 2 years prior to the release of his own book. Nevertheless, Shirer didn't ever change his book because he didn't care about the lies he spread as long as the "right people" he disliked ended up facing the noose.

What's interesting is that Shirer himself admitted that Van Der Lubbe was intending to burn down the Reichstag anyway, but claims that for some reasons he was overheard discussing it in a bar where some Brownshirts heard him, instead of letting him go ahead with it himself as he planned, they apparently decided to burn down the Reichstag themselves! Such a ridiculous story boggles the mind.

Shirer claimed:

The whole truth about the Reichstag fire will probably never be known. Nearly all those who knew it are now dead, most of them slain by Hitler in the months that followed. Even at Nuremberg the mystery could not be entirely unraveled, though there is enough evidence to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that it was the Nazis who planned the arson and carried it out for their own political ends. From Goering’s Reichstag President’s Palace an underground passage, built to carry the central heating system, ran to the Reichstag building. Through this tunnel Karl Ernst, a former hotel bellhop who had become the Berlin S.A leader, led a small detachment of storm troopers on the night of February 27 to the Reichstag, where they scattered gasoline and self-igniting chemicals and then made their way quickly back to the palace the way they had come. At the same time a half-witted Dutch Communist with a passion for arson, Marinus van der Lubbe, had made his way into the huge, darkened and to him unfamiliar building and set some small fires of his own. This feeble-minded pyromaniac was a godsend to the Nazis, He had been picked up by the S.A. a few days before after having been overheard in a bar boasting that he had attempted to set fire to several public buildings and that he was going to try the Reichstag next. The coincidence that the Nazis had found a demented Communist arsonist who was out to do exactly what they themselves had determined to do seems incredible but is nevertheless supported by the evidence. The idea for the fire almost certainly originated with Goebbels and Goering.

William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), pp. 192

Indeed it does seem incredible, because it was incredibly untrue. Shirer cites no source for these claims, he simply asserts it, much like Bullock originally did. It's a very funny coincidence that these Nazis just so happened to be listening in to the conversations of this Dutch Communist who intended to burn down the Reichstag and it's a mystery why the Nazis wouldn't just let him do it, but would instead risk their own necks to do something the enemy was going to do anyway. I guess Shirer just presumed that the incompetence of Van der Lubbe was known to the Nazis so they must have wanted to ensure the job was done right by doing it themselves. It's a funny story, but nothing more. It's rubbish.

The Gleiwitz incident was also "established at Nuremberg" based on the signed avadavat of Alfred Naujocks who never appeared in court. This is the sole piece of "evidence" for a Nazi false flag, which has little credibility based on no supporting documents or testimony.
See: https://carolynyeager.net/gleiwitz-%E2%80%9Cfalse-flag%E2%80%9D-incident-pure-fiction Archive: https://archive.vn/035ui.

As for this bombing of Kassa, it seems to be more mystery than established fact. I would offer the same caution before jumping to conclusions about evidence and claims relating to this event as in the claims made about the Reichstag Fire.

If this event, largely mysterious is what passes for "proof" of a Nazi aptitude for false flags, then one can only laugh at how weak of an example it is. This is of course ignoring the fact that each claimed "false flag" needs to be evaluated based on its own merit, not whether the country perpetrating false flag operations had done so before, because the individual perpetrators in each case could very well be different people entirely. Even if they weren't, one instance doesn't provide proof for any others, nor does it qualify as an "aptitude". An "aptitude" is defined as the natural ability to do something, an inclination that is common, a single false flag event hardly qualifies as an aptitude.

[Kretschmer]

Thank you for the reply, HMS! Informative and insightful, as always. I plan on asking several other questions, and it seems already that this Forum is by far the most valuable for any revisionist.