Friedlander:"20-25 million Germans knew about the holocaust"

[friedrichjansson]

In this May 2012 lecture Trends in the Historiography of the Holocaust, Saul Friedlander states the following (fast forward to 46:00):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3R9CZuCiNiA

Quite naturally one of the most elusive issues of all, that of knowledge, resurfaces again and again. Who knew what, and when - mainly in Germany? Over the last decade or so a spate of very detailed studies reversed Walter Lacqueur's hypothesis [...] that information was widely available but not understood. It appears now [...] that about 20-25 million Germans knew about the holocaust when it took place and clearly understood what it meant.

This exact question of knowledge has long been the basis of revisionist arguments, for instance Arthur Butz' formulation of the "invisible elephant" (see also this paper). The revisionist argument is that the alleged extermination camps had entirely inadequate provisions for secrecy, and widespread knowledge of the extermination would have filtered out, but that the actions of various governments and institutions (the allies, the Red Cross, the Catholic Church, the German opposition to Hitler, the Jews themselves) as well as the behaviour of the press are inconsistent with such widespread knowledge.

This admission of widespread German knowledge (20-25 million!) makes the revisionist argument on knowledge absolutely unanswerable. How do you keep a secret that 20-25 million people know about? Given the number of people in the German government working for the allies, it is absolutely impossible that the allies would not have known exactly what was going on if 20-25 million Germans knew. We have come to another reductio ad absurdum of holocaust orthodox historiography: believing in the holocaust requires believing in the possibility of a secret conspiracy to which 20-25 million people are party. Jewish groups like to reply to all accusations of collusive activity by refuting the strawman of a great centralized Jewish conspiracy known about by Jews. Yet there are fewer than 20-25 million Jews, so it is more plausible that there is a great conspiracy that all Jews know about than that the holocaust took place.

The revisionist argument certainly doesn't need to stop at examining the behavior of institutions. Consider the lack of any serious record of the holocaust contemporaneous with its occurrence. If 20-25 million Germans knew all about the holocaust, and one in a thousand of those Germans kept a diary, and 10% of those who kept a diary mentioned the extermination of the Jews, and 10% of those diaries survived, we would have 200-250 German diaries mentioning Jewish extermination! Or consider all the letters these 20-25 million Germans would have written. Or the impossibility of enforcing the use of a euphemistic coded language by 20-25 million people.

[borjastick]

I would guess the argument could be the term 'holocaust' given that the term wasn't in common parlance, or even invented, it leads me to think that it is a case of 20/20 hindsight. Plus one could argue that most German citizens knew of the jewish persecution and deportation so in effect they did 'know' of the retrospectively termed holocaust.

[Dresden]

borjastick said:

"one could argue that most German citizens knew of the jewish persecution and deportation so in effect they did 'know' of the retrospectively termed holocaust"

My friend said: "Hey, I'm gonna go to the store"
And I said: "Cool!.....see ya' later"

It turns out, someone had planted a bomb in my friend's car, and his car blew up on the way to the store.

So.....

"one could argue that Steve knew his friend was going to drive to the store, so, in effect, Steve did 'know' of the premeditated plan to murder his friend"

Yyyyuppppp!.....makes sense to me!

Elementary, my dear Watson!

[Hektor]

Typical standard answer (more then 99%) of contemporary Germans, when ask about the "Holocaust" meaning industrial style extermination of Jews by gassing:
"Davon haben wir nichts gewusst!"

We did not know about this!

[friedrichjansson]

I would guess the argument could be the term 'holocaust' given that the term wasn't in common parlance, or even invented, it leads me to think that it is a case of 20/20 hindsight. Plus one could argue that most German citizens knew of the jewish persecution and deportation so in effect they did 'know' of the retrospectively termed holocaust.

"about 20-25 million Germans knew about the holocaust when it took place and clearly understood what it meant." There is no doubt (particularly given the reference to Lacqueur's book The Terrible Secret) that Friedlander means that they knew about extermination.

[Mkk]

Over the last decade or so a spate of very detailed studies

Which? How detailed? Good sources or not? So many questions.

I suspect the studies, if at all relevant, merely prove knowledge of camps and deaths in camps - there is no indication anywhere that Germans knew of "death camps". Hell, the British intercepts didn't mention death camps, how did the average Tom, Dick or Harry in Germany learn about them?

[EtienneSC]

There's a lot of good material in Friedlander's talk. It's interesting that he says that holocaust history hardly existed in the first ten years after 1945. He also acknowledges that "official attitudes" during the war "remain a subject of historical controversy". Theodor Schieder whom he mentions did research into the geniuneness of Hermann Rauschning's Hitler Speaks (1940), now widely considered a fraud. He states that major Jewish historians backed away from the subject, fearing it would impact on Jewish studies, though he doesn't understand their attitude. The early Zionists preferred to dwell on active Jewry, whilst the Orthodox Jews found it fitted a pattern of suffering. Israeli attitudes changed after the Eichmann Trial (1961) and there was in interesting debate in Israel in the 1990s, with some arguing that the early Yeshuv were "oblivious" to what was happening. Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews (1961) is still unrivalled as a description of the "murder machinery". He mentions Ernst Nolte - which I think is interesting though not relevant to revisionism.

He mentions the Bletchley Park decodes as important, which may please some here. He cites a diary entry of Himmler from 17 December 1941 saying "Meeting with Fuhrer. Judenfrage. Ausrotten als Partisanen." He also states that the main growth in studies is after the 1980s, which he later attributes to the NBC mini-series Holocaust shown in 1978 and mentions "erasure" of the holocaust as one of the trends.

He also says that "negationism" which he glosses as the Irving trial, though it's a French term, plays an important role in keeping the subject current. The first questioner in the Q&A session brings up Irving, described as a "holocaust denier". Friedlander says in reply that he debated with a French negationist ("not Faurisson, but someone like him") who said the Gerstein report was unreliable, but this was not so, for it was confirmed by Pfannenstiel, who also "looked through the gas chamber window". There seem to be versions of Pfannenstiel's testimony and depositions here:
http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/p/ ... fannen.001
http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org ... stiel.html
This is interesting, as Friedlander is author of The Mystery of Kurt Gerstein and on the same subject Counterfeit Nazi (1969). The internal problems of the Gerstein report were demonstrated by Henri Roques and are described by Robert Faurisson, but I have not seen a reason for rejecting the testimony of Professor Pfannenstiel which according to Friedlander confirms Gerstein despite his 'schizoid character'. Carlo Mattogno says it should be rejected as "vague and contradictory":
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p115_Hall.html
but I'm not sure how he comes to this conclusion. It seems to be part of the problem of interpreting the testimony of the post Nuremberg German trials, which is addressed here from an exterminationist perspective:
http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot. ... ec_27.html
It is in general interesting that Friedlander draws attention to Pfannenstiel as presumably one of his strongest cards.

[Hannover]

Friedlandaer believes in Pfannenstiel? That's quite a laugh.
Search Pfannenstiel at this forum, 43 results, and read what a joke Pfannenstiel is.

As for his wishful thinking about Himmler, I assume Friedlander is referring to this:
'fake Einsatzgruppen document"
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=68


Saul Friedlander, not the sharpest guy you'll ever meet.

- Hannover

[hermod]

25 million German knew about the Holocaust...but the Nazis allegedly used euphemisms and code words in their own documents (admission of the fact that there exists no Nazi document explicitly talking about the alleged extermination of the jews - contrarily to a popular belief) in order to try to hide their crimes. Ridiculous...

[truth]

My parents knew nothing about the Holocaust. When the Shoah movie was shown they had hot discussions about it and came to the conclusion that the actual times were different than later shown on TV.

At this point, why not trust the parents more. They have been honest people. The word HC came later into the picture.

[Hektor]

My parents knew nothing about the Holocaust. When the Shoah movie was shown they had hot discussions about it and came to the conclusion that the actual times were different than later shown on TV.

At this point, why not trust the parents more. They have been honest people. The word HC came later into the picture.

Indeed, why believe an on face value preposterous atrocity propaganda story more than what actual genuine contemporary people can tell you they did not know about (Because the peddled narrative is simply false). I still find it hard to believe that millions of intelligent, educated, mature people did simply swallow the Holocaust narrative without critical examination, since it is in-your-face-ridiculous (and hence unbelievable) in many ways.

There's a lot of good material in Friedlander's talk. It's interesting that he says that holocaust history hardly existed in the first ten years after 1945. He also acknowledges that "official attitudes" during the war "remain a subject of historical controversy". Theodor Schieder whom he mentions did research into the geniuneness of Hermann Rauschning's Hitler Speaks (1940), now widely considered a fraud. He states that major Jewish historians backed away from the subject, fearing it would impact on Jewish studies, though he doesn't understand their attitude. The early Zionists preferred to dwell on active Jewry, whilst the Orthodox Jews found it fitted a pattern of suffering. Israeli attitudes changed after the Eichmann Trial (1961) and there was in interesting debate in Israel in the 1990s, with some arguing that the early Yeshuv were "oblivious" to what was happening. Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews (1961) is still unrivalled as a description of the "murder machinery". He mentions Ernst Nolte - which I think is interesting though not relevant to revisionism. ......

Theodor Schieder is interesting for another reason as well. He was one of the first historians to write a summary about the expulsions (and mass murder) of Germans in Eastern Germany and Eastern Europe.

Schieder, Theodor (ed.) Dokumentation der Vertreibung der Deutschen aus Ost-Mitteleuropa, Bonn 1953 (Documents on the Expulsion of the Germans from Eastern & Central Europe), Bonn: Federal Ministry for Expellees, Refugees, & War Victims, (following dates may indicate year of English translations rather than original publication):
vol. 1: Die vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus den Gebieten östlich der Oder-Neisse (The Expulsion of the German Population from the Territories East of the Oder-Neisse Line, 1959)
vol. 2 and 3: Bd. 2. Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Ungarn, Bd. 3. Das Schicksal der Deutschen in Rumanien (The Expulsion of the German Population from Hungary and Rumania, 1961)
vol. 4: Die Vertreibung der deutschen Bevölkerung aus der Tschechoslowakei (The Expulsion of the German Population from Czechoslovakia, 1960)

Needless to say that his reputation came under fire in recent decades trying to bash him with his "Nazi past".

[Lamprecht]

Saul Friedlander:

about 20-25 million Germans knew about the holocaust when it took place

Yet at the Nuremberg show trials it was claimed fewer than 100 knew about it. From: viewtopic.php?t=12276

At the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMT) it was alleged that the Holocaust had been perpetrated with the greatest level of secrecy, and very few know it was even happening. According to US Judge Leon Powers "not over 100 people in all were informed" about the attempted extermination. As with many other conspiracy theories, the lack of physical evidence and the scarcity of alleged eyewitness testimonies were seen as convincing proof that the Nazis had something to hide and that they had successfully managed to do it.

Not to mention all of the high ranking Germans and people close to Hitler that said they knew nothing about an extermination of Jews. Examples here:
"Why Didn't Any Nazi Deny" and the scope of the "conspiracy"
viewtopic.php?t=12287

[borjastick]

Depends entirely what they mean by 'the holocaust'. If that refers to the persecution and removal of jews from Germany than yes many would of course have known. If they mean mass murder then how is it possible that 25 million civilian people could have known about something that wasn't made public until the war's end?

[Lamprecht]

Depends entirely what they mean by 'the holocaust'.

Yep, it's the equivocation fallacy at work. First they say "Holocaust" was the alleged extermination of Jews. Then they include everything bad that supposedly happened to Jews in Europe during WWII as "The Holocaust" - the labor and internment camps, the ghettos, the Nuremberg laws, the crematoria, the deportations, etc - things which are undeniably real and conclusively documented. But when used in that sense, 90-95% of what can be understood as "The Holocaust" is accepted as true by "Holocaust Deniers." And that's a trick they always use. They group real and legitimate things in with the fake nonsense so they can point to the real things as "proof" that the other things happened. Show a person some mass graves/emaciated bodies at Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald or Dachau and he will be more likely to accept that 870,000 people were gassed and buried at Treblinka II.
I've heard the excuse a lot: "I don't need to show you mass graves at Treblinka II, we have mass graves from other sites so it's reasonable to think that they exist there as well"

[Otium]

I've heard the excuse a lot: "I don't need to show you mass graves at Treblinka II, we have mass graves from other sites so it's reasonable to think that they exist there as well"

So there is mass graves now?