Were German Documents Destroyed?

[Hannover]

Justasking, you said:

That quotation from Hilberg is of course out of context. It isn't the final word he had to say on the matter. He expanded greatly on the idea, and it is absolutely clear that he did not mean it was all winks and nods.

So please tell us what else Hilberg "had to say on the matter" that you feel is convincing regarding the alleged 'destruction of European Jews'.

- Hannover

[Otium]

Justasking, you said:

That quotation from Hilberg is of course out of context. It isn't the final word he had to say on the matter. He expanded greatly on the idea, and it is absolutely clear that he did not mean it was all winks and nods.

So please tell us what else Hilberg "had to say on the matter" that you feel is convincing regarding the alleged 'destruction of European Jews'.

- Hannover

I agree. I find it hard to believe that Hilberg's 'final words' cannot be taken as the summation of his view. It cannot be claimed to have been "taken out of context", which sounds like an excuse. Final words are important, they summarize the position and should be quotable in order to get an essence for the idea being put forward. Just because Hilberg's idea is patently ridiculous doesn't mean his words were "taken out of context", as they were clearly a summary of what he believed went on to produce the Holocaust. Obviously he didn't literally believe in mind reading, but he did believe in the unfalsifiable idea that these 'Nazis' were so 'evil' that they were effectively able to understand each others sinister thoughts and intentions because they were in lock step with each other's malicious anti-semitism which could only lead to the physical destruction of the Jews!

Remember, if an indictment in a court of law was to be drawn up against Adolf Hitler, there would be no suitable evidence to pin him to anything that's alleged.

Hilberg was quoting a official at an archive in Bavaria he went to. But Hilberg did, in his preceding remark admit that he went into print with something about Adolf Hitler's role in the Holocaust, that was untrue. See the audio recording here:
Video: https://archive.org/details/raul_hilbergs_stunning_admission_censored_from_pbs

[Archie]

The thing about them not writing anything down isn't believable.

-You can't keep an extermination program on that scale a secret anyway. Not writing stuff down isn't going to make that much difference in terms of secrecy.

-In terms of military security an extermination program would be far less of a security concern than something of direct military importance. Something like the V-2 rocket program would be much more sensitive for example. Yet even with the most secretive projects you still write things down since it's not possible to conduct such technical projects without lots of written documents. The Manhattan Project was top secret but they still wrote stuff down. The British decryption effort ULTRA was extremely secret ("ultra" secret) but they still wrote stuff down. There's no real reason to insist on stricter secrecy for an extermination program. Especially since there will be atrocity propaganda in the newspapers regardless.

-The idea that they wanting to avoid war crimes prosecution seems bogus. If you win the war then it doesn't matter because only losers can be war criminals. If you lose, it also doesn't matter because you'll get strung up with or without documents. Leaving a huge paper trail just makes it a little easier for them.

-Some of the things such as digging up and burning the Einsatzgruppen mass graves would have required extensive documentation. How would they have kept track of where all these graves were without detailed maps, etc?

The idea of a loose, informal extermination program is also not realistic.

-It's possible for some orders to be given unofficially by dropping hints. Maybe a one-off assassination or something. But not the slaughter of six million people. That's a large, ongoing commitment of resources that would have to be actively managed and prioritized along with other projects and objectives.

-Hierarchical bureaucracies require clear orders to function. Euphemisms can be used in military contexts (e.g., "collateral damage") but they are always terms with known meanings, not ambiguous terms like "resettlement." A program operating on such a principle would grind to a halt because lower level people would be confused and be wondering what they are supposed to do, if this is all legit, approved, etc.

-You might get some uncoordinated/spontaneous massacres here and there as happens in every war but you won't have a spontaneous large scale extermination program without having a formal, well-coordinated program. Especially since the claim here is that not only did six million die, but that a majority of them were executed.

If this genocide program had been real it would be an elephant in the room. Impossible to miss. Except there's no elephant. So they have to get creative to explain why the elephant isn't there. They're trying to save a story that isn't working.

[Otium]

-The idea that they wanting to avoid war crimes prosecution seems bogus. If you win the war then it doesn't matter because only losers can be war criminals. If you lose, it also doesn't matter because you'll get strung up with or without documents. Leaving a huge paper trail just makes it a little easier for them.

You're absolutely right. According to mainstream historians Hitler was convinced that he would win the war, and thus "got reckless" (which isn't true) but nonetheless, if you believe what they say, that Hitler was increasingly under the impression even in 1944-45 that Germany would win in the end then the argument that the lack of documents and disposal of evidence was to avoid a war crime prosecution is even more untenable. That is if you ignore the fact that suicide was still an option.

I won't bother quoting anything in a post as short as this, but this view of some mainstream historians can be read in the introduction to Hitler's military conferences with his generals, edited by David Glantz and Helmut Heiber with an introduction by that hack Weinberg.

[Nastar]

Hello All,
I am also new. Given that most of the camp personnel experienced a high turnover rate and that a large number would have only had rudimentary German, there must have been organised training involved. That training would have been highly technical (you wouldn’t want a newbie getting it wrong), as well as being documented in several languages. It is implausible that all of these documents have been destroyed. Without a paper trail, there is no evidence that mass gassings took place, despite the cacophony to the contrary.

[Justasking]

http://www.easy39th.com/files/Special_Series,_No._3_German_Military_Training_1942.pdf

This is a good find, with some relevance to the subject under discussion. It would be better to have something in German of course, e.g. Staff College training manuals. There is a problem of scope though, as it seems to refer most naturally to Wehrmacht units and to near-combat situations. And the content indicates that there would be a large number of printed, typewritten and handwritten copies, difficult to control and subject to capture by the enemy.[/quote]

The scope problem is even worse than that - not only is this not SS training or command protocol, it is protocol for ordinary orders in the army - not top secret (reich secret) operations carried out by a private nazi party elite force.

Given the known ethos of the SS as a band of brotherly knights, superior to others etc, and the testimony of numerous SS that they were given orders in person stating that they came from the highest echelons, and that the chain of command was both short and narrow, (only a few camp commanders in direct contact with Himmler in person) there is no reason at all to think that there would a large number of copies in circulation out of control. Indeed there is no reason at all to think there would be any. this sort of operation is not difficult to organise with a small number of people in the know and the rest just following orders.

[Lamprecht]

http://www.easy39th.com/files/Special_Series,_No._3_German_Military_Training_1942.pdf

This is a good find, with some relevance to the subject under discussion. It would be better to have something in German of course, e.g. Staff College training manuals. There is a problem of scope though, as it seems to refer most naturally to Wehrmacht units and to near-combat situations. And the content indicates that there would be a large number of printed, typewritten and handwritten copies, difficult to control and subject to capture by the enemy.

The scope problem is even worse than that - not only is this not SS training or command protocol, it is protocol for ordinary orders in the army - not top secret (reich secret) operations carried out by a private nazi party elite force.

Given the known ethos of the SS as a band of brotherly knights, superior to others etc, and the testimony of numerous SS that they were given orders in person stating that they came from the highest echelons, and that the chain of command was both short and narrow, (only a few camp commanders in direct contact with Himmler in person) there is no reason at all to think that there would a large number of copies in circulation out of control. Indeed there is no reason at all to think there would be any. this sort of operation is not difficult to organise with a small number of people in the know and the rest just following orders.

But what about the massive code-word conspiracy? You know, the conspiracy of using the terms "resettle" and "evacuate" and "deport" to mean killing, mass murder by gassing, extermination, etc?
Was the order to do this deceptive code-word conspiracy also entirely oral?

This "testimony" that they were "given orders in person" is rather weak as they would have testified to whatever they were told to say. If there were no orders, then they would be told to testify that the orders were made orally.

But that doesn't explain all of the documents that state the exact opposite. Were there also oral orders that told them to continue this conspiracy of deception even in their personal diary entries?

[Lamprecht]

Most troops of any decent country are asked to use their initiative on the battleground and wouldn't expect written orders as to which way to approach a village etc. But when planning to exterminate millions of jews in the holocaust to not have written orders and plans as to the processes and methods to be used is plainly just ludicrous. What's more they claim that every camp seemed to have its own way of doing it and could make any decision about how to commit mass murder from shootings, to poison gas showers, to diesel engine exhaust to Zyklon B crystals is beyond stupid.

This is an important distinction. Nobody would expect every military operation to be written down. Troops are briefed on what to do and sent off to do it. It's not something that is planned weeks in advance and implemented for months, with orders for materials and construction. Soldiers would exist in units/formations and there would be someone in charge to make split-second decisions that obviously would not be written down. If you planned to kill millions of people at one site over the course of years, you would have to plan it.

In addition, there is no discussion here of writing plans that are deliberately deceptive in the hopes that the enemy will come across them, which appears to be the argument. Otherwise, why would the Germans make documents that were inaccurate? If you have a document that you know will be destroyed before anyone else can read it, you would not use "code words" or make up some nonsense about how you used a homicidal gas chamber as a mortuary cellar.

"Eyewitness testimony" and "confessions" are the lowest form of evidence on the hierarchy of evidence. Documents are more definitive but even documents can be forged or wrong in other ways. That is why physical/material evidence trumps both forms. One cannot simply conjure up a mass grave where it does not exist, or wave a wand and make millions of pounds of physical evidence magically disappear. Anything can be typed on paper and anyone can "confess" to something that did not happen.

And there is also the question of why the Germans, who apparently spent all of this effort making deceptive documents with "code words" (resettlement, deportation, evacuation, etc) and digging up hundreds of thousands of rotting corpses to burn in giant pyres to "hide the evidence" would not have given one guy a typewriter and spent a day typing up fake outbound resettlement records. Why would they be so sloppy?

Relevant threads:

Auschwitz morgues being used as morgues
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13740

War-time German documents & writings mentioning the "Final Solution"
viewtopic.php?t=12296

Inbound train records, but no outbound records. Why?
viewtopic.php?t=2355

[Lamprecht]

Justasking, you said:

That quotation from Hilberg is of course out of context. It isn't the final word he had to say on the matter. He expanded greatly on the idea, and it is absolutely clear that he did not mean it was all winks and nods.

So please tell us what else Hilberg "had to say on the matter" that you feel is convincing regarding the alleged 'destruction of European Jews'.

- Hannover

I agree. I find it hard to believe that Hilberg's 'final words' cannot be taken as the summation of his view. It cannot be claimed to have been "taken out of context", which sounds like an excuse. Final words are important, they summarize the position and should be quotable in order to get an essence for the idea being put forward. Just because Hilberg's idea is patently ridiculous doesn't mean his words were "taken out of context", as they were clearly a summary of what he believed went on to produce the Holocaust. Obviously he didn't literally believe in mind reading, but he did believe in the unfalsifiable idea that these 'Nazis' were so 'evil' that they were effectively able to understand each others sinister thoughts and intentions because they were in lock step with each other's malicious anti-semitism which could only lead to the physical destruction of the Jews!

Remember, if an indictment in a court of law was to be drawn up against Adolf Hitler, there would be no suitable evidence to pin him to anything that's alleged.


Hilberg Quote.png Hilberg was quoting a official at an archive in Bavaria he went to. But Hilberg did, in his preceding remark admit that he went into print with something about Adolf Hitler's role in the Holocaust, that was untrue. See the audio recording here:
Video: https://archive.org/details/raul_hilbergs_stunning_admission_censored_from_pbs

Well it is actually quite easy to charge Hitler with implementing a "Final Solution" because there was such a policy and the documents are very clear about it. Unfortunately for the exterminationists, these documents unanimously agree that this policy was not one of mass murder. If they were instructed to use "code words" then they must have been told to do so even in their personal diary entries.

[Justasking]

Hilberg summarized his new thesis....

https://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n1p15_Faurisson.html[/quote]

Would it not have been better to actually quote Hilberg in context than to rely on out of context quotes?

Read the book, and don’t rely on Faurisson’s bias to inform you

[borjastick]

Many people think combat army regiments are run by the senior officers. They are not. Most combat units are run by the NCOs the corporals and sergeants. These guys know every little trick, level of experience and way to take a village, engage the enemy etc. They are worth their weight in gold.

But in mass murder as claimed in the holocaust we're not talking of combat situations but sophisticated, industrial processing of hundreds of thousands of people arriving daily by train and then requiring being deceived, moved through the buildings, gassed in one way or another. The fuel, removal of bodies, disposal of bodies in their thousands every week and then the cover up.

As I said earlier those who say this was all achieved by osmosis and thought projection are quite likely liable to madness and somewhat distracted by silly things.

[Justasking]

But what about the massive code-word conspiracy? You know, the conspiracy of using the terms "resettle" and "evacuate" and "deport" to mean killing, mass murder by gassing, extermination, etc?
Was the order to do this deceptive code-word conspiracy also entirely oral?

Good question. But was it that massive a conspiracy? How many were involved? a few dozen SS admin people writing a few reports. I do not have the info to hand but I vaguely remember that there were draft copies of reports that were sent back to have their wording changed from "special handling" to some even more euphemistic term as that euphemism was already too well known to mean something sinister. I presume that if you were part of a small group of people carrying out a highly morally and legally questionable operation that you did not want your victims or the wider public to know about you would soon start using euphemistic language. That seems natural.

This "testimony" that they were "given orders in person" is rather weak as they would have testified to whatever they were told to say. If there were no orders, then they would be told to testify that the orders were made orally.

Well possibly yes. But that requires someone to have already thought out that line of evidence to be faked, and to have it ready. Given that the Hilberg argument for a gradual slip into mass murder, (not pre planned by the Nazis from before 1933, which is what other historians had been saying for years), didn't come out until the 1950s, that would mean that some clever soviet/allied thinker had come up with this idea, promulgated it to hundreds of allied interrogators, co-ordinated a huge scheme to make the idea widespread without leaving any traces of how they did that, and then waited a decade for some historian to finally cotton on to the idea... seems implausible to me. Also, there are plenty of examples of people who wrote letters reports and diaries during the war that mention these things happening, and no evidence that was all forged. And no evidence that the majority of testimony was forced or manipulated. Even Hoess memoirs show little sign of being written to order. That SS accountant, Oskar Groening, who was recently tried for his part in Auschwitz on the evidence he had provided by saying what he saw and did , for years in the face of people that told him to shut up - he got hpoist on his own petard, but he took the rap, without anyone forcing him to say it happened. he had every motive to say it was a hoax, but he didn't.

the thing is that to organise a hoax like that really would take a huge organisation, perfectly co-ordinated, and that really would need a mastermind, a central planning office, a huge apparatus to control it. If you cannot accept the idea that the SS (run by a few dozen officers in a well organised pre existing organisation which had its own funding streams and a leadership that had well known motives and desires) could not possibly run a half dozen camps without needing huge amounts of paperwork, then how can you accept the idea that an enormous multinational multidecadal conspiracy to hoax the holocaust can be run without any organisation? or any paperwork?

But that doesn't explain all of the documents that state the exact opposite. Were there also oral orders that told them to continue this conspiracy of deception even in their personal diary entries?

I do not know what you are talking about here, but would be delighted to learn. I know that pre 42 the term "final solution" was used in various ways, mostly associated with a territorial expulsion of jews, to pipedream destinations, but the usual story from the believers is that given that those ideas became impossible to implement, and that the pressure to get rid of the jews mounted as it became expensive to keep them, guard them, feed them, look after them mounted (and why would any dyed in the wool nazi want to do any of those things?) then the turn to extermination of the unfit to work and working the others to death was natural.

Now maybe not everyone was in on the secret. It was after all an SS run operation, top top secret. Maybe some underling in the labour ministry still thought that "resettlement" actually meant sending the jews somewhere to live, and didn't know they never set up new jewish communities after they closed the old ones down and put the people on trains to the camps. So some people would still be using the term to mean expulsion. But those in the know would know different.

I used to work for a big corporation, offices all over the place. They had bought up several small firms in the same sort of business, and some were quite old factories. Top brass decided to close a factory in one place because it was old, inefficient and they had room for a new production line in another state in a new factory they were building, which would be using similar raw materials and processes, and which would make distribution easier. They went down to the old factory and surveyed the whole factory, took notes of the whole production process, under the cover of doing an energy efficiency audit. Then they built a new production line, with robots and automated controls, and then they fired the whole team at the old factory. They never saw it coming. No one knew about it in the organisation apart from a few at the top. I knew about the new production line, but I didn't know what it was for, or that it was to put fifty guys out of work. It was talked about in code. Hundreds of people worked to design it, build it, get it running, and recruit new staff for it, and train them. None knew that fifty others were going to be dumped. We felt like shit, and the company made a big profit jump, with its shiny knew lower cost high productive factory. But we all helped those guys get canned. We all worked to do it, without knowing that was what we did. We solved problems at a local level, in accord to the business ethos, serving the good of the company by doing what we were told. We just obeyed orders. We made decisions that helped to put those guys out of work - because we had a shared mindset, and didn't ask questions. And most of my colleagues didn't give a shit anyway. It was just business. those guys weren't human beings, just guys in another state who got canned because they were not fit for purpose, not earning their keep. I think the term "useless eaters" was not used, but it could have been.

[Justasking]

I agree. I find it hard to believe that Hilberg's 'final words' cannot be taken as the summation of his view. It cannot be claimed to have been "taken out of context", which sounds like an excuse. Final words are important, they summarize the position and should be quotable in order to get an essence for the idea being put forward.

I think you have make a mistake in reading what I said. I said that these quotations were NOT Hilberg's final words on the matter.

If they were, then yes you would have a point, but they are NOT; and so your point is entirely reversed. They are quoted out of context, they do not summarise his view adequately or accurately, they are being used to convey a false account of what he actually says.

Obviously he didn't literally believe in mind reading, but he did believe in the unfalsifiable idea that these 'Nazis' were so 'evil' that they were effectively able to understand each others sinister thoughts and intentions because they were in lock step with each other's malicious anti-semitism which could only lead to the physical destruction of the Jews!

Did he? I think I would need you to supply adequate quotations from his work to support that. The two little out of context quotes given do not suggest that, without a massive amount of extrapolation on your part, which is not warranted if you read his work. He thought that for the most part it was a banal matter of corporate culture and the undesirability of asking questions or refusing orders. They were not evil, they just looked the other way and did what was in front of them, and kept their heads down.

A Hungarian Policeman rounding up jews was probably not doing it knowingly to have them murdered. He was just ordered to round up jews for evacuation. He did his job. He didn't ask questions that might get him shot, or demoted, or just given a good bollocking. He wasn't evil. He was a banal cog in a machine. Of course he may himself have been anti jewish and pleased to do the work. He might even have heard rumours about their fate - many of the jews had heard those rumours but still got on the train. That does not require him to be instructed with winks or nods, or for him to be an enthusiastic evil collaborator. And Hilberg does not make either of those claims.

[Lamprecht]

Good question. But was it that massive a conspiracy? How many were involved? a few dozen SS admin people writing a few reports.

Yes it would have been a massive conspiracy, but a very sloppy one. Or they used the correct words and the ridiculous conspiracy theory is the "code word" nonsense.

I do not have the info to hand but I vaguely remember that there were draft copies of reports that were sent back to have their wording changed from "special handling" to some even more euphemistic term as that euphemism was already too well known to mean something sinister.

You're referring to Korherr's report and "special treatment" or "special action" - it is a vague term, and on purpose. It can mean to kill but does not always mean that, much like "Special operation" by the US military.

I presume that if you were part of a small group of people carrying out a highly morally and legally questionable operation that you did not want your victims or the wider public to know about you would soon start using euphemistic language. That seems natural.

That doesn't explain the use of confusing terms that already have meanings - rather than terms that are vague on purpose - in top-secret documents as well as diary entries.

Well possibly yes. But that requires someone to have already thought out that line of evidence to be faked, and to have it ready.

The accusation of a conspiracy of using already-defined words as 'code words' to mean something entirely different does imply that there is already a desire to fake documents. The assumption here is that there was a conspiracy for many years of using the wrong word[s] in documents, and for what purpose other than to trick someone that reads them if they were not 'in the know' then?

And fake outbound records wouldn't take much time, they can be made in less than a day. Some camps were dismantled long before the war was over so they had plenty of time. There were reports in the English-language press that "resettlement" actually meant mass murder.

Given that the Hilberg argument for a gradual slip into mass murder, (not pre planned by the Nazis from before 1933, which is what other historians had been saying for years), didn't come out until the 1950s, that would mean that some clever soviet/allied thinker had come up with this idea, promulgated it to hundreds of allied interrogators, co-ordinated a huge scheme to make the idea widespread without leaving any traces of how they did that, and then waited a decade for some historian to finally cotton on to the idea... seems implausible to me.

That is implausible but the claim is that the Germans had a conspiracy over many years to use deceptive words that already had clearly defined meanings in their documents to refer to mass murder or killing.

[Also, there are plenty of examples of people who wrote letters reports and diaries during the war that mention these things happening, and no evidence that was all forged.

Please create threads for these alleged diary entries and/or reports.

And no evidence that the majority of testimony was forced or manipulated. Even Hoess memoirs show little sign of being written to order. That SS accountant, Oskar Groening, who was recently tried for his part in Auschwitz on the evidence he had provided by saying what he saw and did , for years in the face of people that told him to shut up - he got hpoist on his own petard, but he took the rap, without anyone forcing him to say it happened. he had every motive to say it was a hoax, but he didn't.

He had every motive to lie and say that there were gassings. For how many years did Groening serve his sentence in prison?

the thing is that to organise a hoax like that really would take a huge organisation, perfectly co-ordinated, and that really would need a mastermind, a central planning office, a huge apparatus to control it. If you cannot accept the idea that the SS (run by a few dozen officers in a well organised pre existing organisation which had its own funding streams and a leadership that had well known motives and desires) could not possibly run a half dozen camps without needing huge amounts of paperwork, then how can you accept the idea that an enormous multinational multidecadal conspiracy to hoax the holocaust can be run without any organisation? or any paperwork?

You are the one insisting that there was some massive conspiracy of using words like "deport" or "resettle" in a genocidal context, without evidence. Naturally, there is no physical/material evidence that can be shown to substantiate this ridiculous conspiracy theory even though it would exist in huge quantities in exactly known locations if your conspiracy theory was true.

Paperwork can be so easily destroyed and "confessions" fabricated. That is why these forms of evidence are much lower on the hierarchy of evidence than physical or material evidence.

I do not know what you are talking about here, but would be delighted to learn. I know that pre 42 the term "final solution" was used in various ways, mostly associated with a territorial expulsion of jews, to pipedream destinations, but the usual story from the believers is that given that those ideas became impossible to implement, and that the pressure to get rid of the jews mounted as it became expensive to keep them, guard them, feed them, look after them mounted (and why would any dyed in the wool nazi want to do any of those things?) then the turn to extermination of the unfit to work and working the others to death was natural.

Even after 1942, the "Final Solution" was referenced as a non-genocidal policy. It never meant "kill all the Jews" and the documents are clear about that.

Now maybe not everyone was in on the secret. It was after all an SS run operation, top top secret. Maybe some underling in the labour ministry still thought that "resettlement" actually meant sending the jews somewhere to live, and didn't know they never set up new jewish communities after they closed the old ones down and put the people on trains to the camps. So some people would still be using the term to mean expulsion. But those in the know would know different.

Such terms were used by people who supposedly would have known, but it is very convenient to just dismiss anyone that would have said otherwise as "they just didn't know!" or "they were lying!" when there is not actually physical or material evidence that can be shown to substantiate your conspiracy theory.

I used to work for a big corporation, offices all over the place. They had bought up several small firms in the same sort of business, and some were quite old factories. Top brass decided to close a factory in one place because it was old, inefficient and they had room for a new production line in another state in a new factory they were building, which would be using similar raw materials and processes, and which would make distribution easier. They went down to the old factory and surveyed the whole factory, took notes of the whole production process, under the cover of doing an energy efficiency audit. Then they built a new production line, with robots and automated controls, and then they fired the whole team at the old factory. They never saw it coming. No one knew about it in the organisation apart from a few at the top. I knew about the new production line, but I didn't know what it was for, or that it was to put fifty guys out of work. It was talked about in code. Hundreds of people worked to design it, build it, get it running, and recruit new staff for it, and train them. None knew that fifty others were going to be dumped. We felt like shit, and the company made a big profit jump, with its shiny knew lower cost high productive factory. But we all helped those guys get canned. We all worked to do it, without knowing that was what we did. We solved problems at a local level, in accord to the business ethos, serving the good of the company by doing what we were told. We just obeyed orders. We made decisions that helped to put those guys out of work - because we had a shared mindset, and didn't ask questions. And most of my colleagues didn't give a shit anyway. It was just business. those guys weren't human beings, just guys in another state who got canned because they were not fit for purpose, not earning their keep. I think the term "useless eaters" was not used, but it could have been.

Excellent, but what we know is that documents can be easily destroyed and testimony can be easily manufactured. But physical evidence cannot magically disappear, nor can enormous mass graves magically be created in specific places with the wave of a wand. That is why physical/material evidence is considered more definitive than documents, which are more definitive than party testimony (the weakest form of evidence).

Falsifiability is important, anyone can invent some story about an event and end it with "...and then all the evidence was destroyed so nobody could prove that it happened, the end!"
But that doesn't fly here. If there is a conspiracy theory that the Germans exterminated millions of people - roughly the population of Sweden - and buried large numbers of them in huge mass graves at specific sites, then that could be proven or disproven by attempting to uncover the physical evidence.
Relying only on a bunch of "eyewitness testimony" instead of going for this hard evidence is just a mere repetition of evidence of the same kind. It's not very convincing, which is probably why certain governments have adopted laws to imprison people that question the established conspiracy theory.

[Hannover]

Justasking, you said:

That quotation from Hilberg is of course out of context. It isn't the final word he had to say on the matter. He expanded greatly on the idea, and it is absolutely clear that he did not mean it was all winks and nods.

So please tell us what else Hilberg "had to say on the matter" that you feel is convincing regarding the alleged 'destruction of European Jews'.

- Hannover

I repeat my challenge to you, Justsaying:

Please tell us what else Hilberg "had to say on the matter" that you feel is convincing regarding the alleged 'destruction of European Jews'.

You said it, you have been challenged to back it up.

Free speech does wonders.

- Hannover