"But, but, No Nazi ever Denied"- oogah boogah

[Halo]

I often get to hear in discussions, that allegedly the Nazis themselves confessed all the stuff they were accused of.
I then hint to the list of th (very) conveniently diseased Nazi personell, here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5226&p=33872&hilit=brief+list#p33872

Maybe some more experienced revisionists can point me to Nazi figures that denied mass exterminations.
Thx in advance!

[Mendoza]

Here's something that might be of interest from CODOH's Inconvenient History Reference Resource.
http://www.codoh.com/incon/inconnt.html

[Pappy Yokum]

Here are a few quotes not in the previous link.

Dr. Jur. Hans Heinrich Lammers (27 May 1879 – 4 January 1962) was a prominent Nazi and head of the Reich Chancellery.
Here is part of his testimony at IMT.

DR. THOMA: I have only one more question. Did you know anything
regarding the fact that Hitler had decided to solve the Jewish question
by the final solution, that is, by the annihilation of the Jews?

LAMMERS: Yes, I know a great deal about that. The final solution of the
Jewish question became known to me for the first time in 1942. That is
when I heard that the Fuehrer supposedly, through ring, had given an
order to the SS Obergruppenfuehrer Heydrich to achieve a solution of
the Jewish question. I did not know the exact contents of that order
and consequently, since this did not come within my jurisdiction, at
the beginning I took a negative attitude, but then as I wanted to know
something I, of course, had to contact Himmler. I asked him what was
really meant by the idea of the final solution of the Jewish question.
Himmler replied that he had received the order from the Fuehrer to
bring about the final solution of the Jewish problem-or rather Heydrich
and his successor had that order-and that the main point of the order
was that the Jews were to be evacuated from Germany.
...
Finally, however, in 1943, rumors cropped up that Jews were being
killed. I had no jurisdiction in this field; it was merely that I
occasionally received complaints and on the basis of these complaints I
investigated the rumors. But, as far as I could tell, at any rate,
these rumors always proved to be only rumors. Every one said he had
heard it from somebody else and nobody wanted to make a definite
statement. I am, in fact, of the opinion that these rumors were based
mostly on foreign broadcasts and that the people Just did not want to
say from where they had the information.

That caused me once more to undertake an investigation of this matter.
First of all, since I, for my part, could not initiate investigations
of matters under Himmler's jurisdiction, I addressed myself to Himmler
once again. Himmler denied any legal killings and told me, with
reference to the order from the Fuehrer, that it was his duty to
evacuate the Jews and that during such evacuations which also involved
old and sick people, of course there were cases of death, there were
accidents, there were attacks by enemy aircraft. He added too, that
there were revolts, which of course he had to suppress severely and
with bloodshed, as a warning. For the rest, he said that these people
were being accommodated in camps in the East. He brought out a lot of
pictures and albums and showed me the work that was being done in these
camps by the Jews and how they worked for the war needs, the shoemakers
shops, tailors shops, and so forth.

...
DR. THOMA: Mr. President, I myself should like to ask the witness to
speak more briefly. But I ask that this particular question be
admitted. In my opinion the witness is trying to describe how this
entire final solution of the Jewish problem was carried out in secret
and with deception being practiced on Hitler's entire entourage, and
that is why I ask that the witness be allowed to finish his statement
since this is a very decisive point in the discussion.

[Turning to the witness.] But, Witness, please be quite brief. I am now
putting this question to you: Did Himmler ever tell you that the final
solution of the Jewish problem would take place through the
extermination of the Jews?

LAMMERS: That was never mentioned. He talked only about evacuation.

DR. THOMA: He talked only about evacuation?

LAMMERS: Yes, only about evacuation.


----------------------

Alfred Rosenberg:
"As far as Document 1104-PS which deals with the terrible incidents in
the city of Sluzk is concerned, that is a report from 10/1941, and I
must say that this report was submitted to me. This report aroused
indignation in the Eastern Ministry, and as is seen here, my permanent
representative, Gauleiter Meyer, sent a copy of this complaint of the
civil administration, together with all the criticism of the civil
administration, to the Police, to the Chief of the Security Police, at
that time Heydrich, with the request for investigation. I must say that
the Police had their own jurisdiction in which the Ministry for the
Occupied Eastern Territories could not interfere. But I am unable to
say here what measures Heydrich took. Yet, as may be seen from this, I
could not assume that an order- which was attested to by the witness
here yesterday-was given to Heydrich or Himmler by the Fuehrer. This
report, and many other communications which came to my ears, regarding
shootings of saboteurs and also shootings of Jews, pogroms by the local
population in the Baltic States and in the Ukraine, I took as
occurrences of this war. I heard that in Kiev a larger number of Jews
had been shot, but that the greater part of the Jews had left Kiev; and
the sum of these reports showed me, it is true, terrible harshness
especially some reports from the prison camps. But that there was an
order for the individual annihilation of the entire Jewry, I could not
assume and if, in our polemics, the extermination of Jewry was also
talked about, I must say that this word, of course, must make a
frightful impression in view of the testimonies we think are available
now, but under conditions prevail in then, it was not interpreted as an
individual extermination, an individual annihilation of millions of
Jews. I must also say that even the British Prime Minister, in an
official speech in the House of Commons on 9/23-26/1943, spoke of the
extermination in root and branch of Prussianism and of National
Socialism. I happened to read these words from this speech. However, I
did not assume that in saying this he meant the shooting of all
Prussian officers and National Socialists. "
==============================
Here is testimony from Julius Streicher

LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Well now, the Tribunal will see by looking at
this bundle, from the first pagewhich I think is 3-Ato Page 25-A,
that there are various extracts which have been written either by
yourself or by members of your staff between 1/1939-1/1941.

Do I understand you to say now, to have said in your evidence, that you
never knew that Jews were being exterminated in thousands and millions
in the Eastern territories? Did you never know that?

STREICHER: No.

...
LT. COL. GRIFFITH-JONES: Now we had just dealt with the Israelitisches
Wochenblatt issue for 27 August, the copy that you quoted from. I just
refer you to one more copy of that newspaper. Would you look at Page
37-B, which is an issue of 9/10/1943:

"Statistics presented by the Convening Committee showed that 5 millions
out of the 8.5 million Jews of Europe had died or been deported...
About 3 million Jews had lost their lives through forced labor and
deportation."

Did you read that one?

STREICHER: I do not know, and again I would not have believed
it. To this day I do not believe that 5 million were killed. I consider
it technically impossible that that could have happened. I do not
believe it. I have not received proof of that up until now.
======================
Birkenau Commander Josef Kramer
Captured by British forces on April 17 and interned on the following day. Sometime between April 18 and May 21 Kramer made a first statement on his role as camp commandant. In it, we read: "I have heard of the allegations of former prisoners in Auschwitz referring to a gas chamber there, the mass executions and whippings, the cruelty of the guards employed and that all this took place either in my presence or with my knowledge. All I can say to all this is that it is untrue from beginning to end."
=======================
Auschwitz Commander Richard Baer
The only defendant who did not appear at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1963 was Richard Baer, the successor of Rudolf Höss as commandant of Auschwitz. Though in perfect health, he died suddenly in prison before the trial had begun, "in a highly mysterious way" according to the newspaper; Deutsche Wochenzeitung (July 27th, 1973). Baer's sudden demise before giving evidence is especially strange, since the Paris newspaper Rivarol recorded his insistence that "during the whole time in which he governed Auschwitz, he never saw any gas chambers nor believed that such things existed," and from this statement nothing would dissuade him.

[SevenUp]

Weber addresses this issue at length at http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Webera.html

The only person charged at Nuremberg with direct involvement in the holocaust was Ernst Kaltenbrunner, he testified ...

Q. Witness after witness, by testimony and affidavit, has said that the gas chamber killings were done on general or specific orders of Kaltenbrunner.

A. Show me one of those men or any of those orders. It is utterly impossible.

Q. Practically all of the orders came through Kaltenbrunner.

A. Entirely impossible.

Also, Hans Frank testified that he investigated rumors of killings in the camps and took the question right to Hitler ...


Frank: .......... On 7 February 1944 I succeeded in being received by Adolf Hitler personally--I might add that throughout the war he received me three times only. In the presence of Bormann I put the question to him: "My Fáhrer, rumors about the extermination of the Jews will not be silenced. They are heard everywhere. No one is allowed in anywhere. Once I paid a surprise visit to Auschwitz in order to see the camp, but I was told that there was an epidemic in the camp and my car was diverted before I got there. Tell me, My Fuhrer, is there anything in it?" The Fuhrer said, "You can very well imagine that there are executions going on?of insurgents. Apart from that I do not know anything. Why don't you speak to Heinrich Himmler about it?" And I said, "Well, Himmler made a speech to us in Krakow and declared in front of all the people whom I had officially called to the meeting that these rumors about the systematic extermination of the Jews were false; the Jews were merely being brought to the East." Thereupon the Fuhrer said, '"Then you must believe that."

[Halo]

Thank you folks so much! What an awful lot of breathtaking information you compiled here. Thank you so much!

[Lamprecht]

Might be relevant:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5595

[chammer]

I think that one (Alois Brunner) wasn't mentionned neither:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v10/v10p123_Weber.html

[nathan]

Perhaps in all these links I have missed a mention of Hans Aumeier, who in his first scribbled statement, 29 June 45, said:

“In the main camp was one crematorium with two ovens.. .... During my time tie two or three crematoria were built at Berkenau. I know nothing about gas chambers, and no prisoner was gassed in my time.”

Aumier was one of Hoess’s deputies. On his own account he was in Auschwitz from June 42 to the end of May 43. Given this status, the statement amounts to a flat denial of the existence of the crime – not merely a denial of personal involvement. Aumeier later changed his story, as did Josef Kramer – a fact which should not have gone unmentioned.

A denial has very limited value as evidence – they would say that wouldn’t they? However, an initial denial may add to other suspicions surrounding a later confession, especially when there is no plausible motive for a willing change of heart. Kramer explained that he had initially denied being a monster only because he was also too scrupulous to break a personal promise given to someone who, now, could no longer hold him to it. That’s the sort of chap he was.

Aumeier seems to have turned again, denouncing his confession when on trial in Poland.. If we can believe “Commanders of Auschwitz” by Jeremy Dixon:

“On 11th June 1945, Aumeier was arrested ... he was still in full SS uniform without forged papers and admitted almost immediately his name and rank in fact he hid nothing. He was interrogated by U.S. intelligence officers at Akershus [Oslo] Prison in August 1945. In 1946 he was extradited to Poland to face trial as a war criminal along with thirty-nine other members of the SS staff of Auschwitz-Birkenau, before the Supreme National Tribunal in Cracow. The trial lasted from 25th November to 16th December 1947, and Aumeier stated that if he was found guilty and sentenced to death he would “die as a “Sundenbock” (scapegoat) for Germany”. He told the court that he had never killed anyone at Auschwitz and neither had any of his men and denied knowledge of the gas chambers.”

The quotation from Aumeier is from Irving’s site

http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Aumeier/index.html

I have to confess that the quotation from Dixon comes from Wikipedia. Dixon does not mention the june/july interviews. It was from Britain that Aumeier was deported to Poland in 1946.

[Jazz]

I scanned these pages out of a book called Loyalty Is My Honor by Gordon Williamson

[Halo]

Awesome info there folks! An a special "thanx" for the scans!

[Christof]

I scanned these pages out of a book called Loyalty Is My Honor by Gordon Williamson

That's great for the Waffen-SS but it's kind of deflating when they make statements like:

"I do very much regret that I had become a part of a regime that was able to establish concentration camps and to order mass slaughter."

"I fully admit that Nazi Germany had to go,as the atrocities committed with the knowledge and approval of its government are unforgivable."

Generaloberst Paul Hausser at Nuremberg also repeatedly denied atrocities attributed to the Waffen-SS.His whole testimony is worth a read,but here's a few excerpts:

IMT,vol.XX pgs.356-414

HERR PELCKMANN: The Prosecution is particularly accusing
the Verfiigungstruppe for inciting racial hatred and for the persecu-
tion of the Jews as one of its special tasks. Was the troop trained
for these purposes?

HAUSER: The political and ideological training could only be
achieved by schooling. I, personally, as director of the school and
as an inspector, have closely watched this training, for I was a new
man myself and had first to acquaint myself with these ways of
thinking. I can testify that race hatred and the extermination of
Jewry or of the Eastern peoples was never taught and was never
demanded.
pg.359


HERR PELCKMANN: The Prosecution states that the Waffen-SS
used special means of combat and that they deliberately fought
cruelly, used terror methods, and carried out mass exterminations.
HAUSER: I must deny this emphatically. The troop was young,
it had no tradition, and it had no name. It had to prove its worth
first. The commanders had one ambition only, which was to win
fame and prestige for this troop through courageous but fair
methods of combat....
pg.362


HERR PELCKMANN: Is it correct that Heinrich Himmler in his
speeches broke out into exorbitant invective against the Jews and
the Slavs?
HAUSER: I know only about the speech at Kharkov in 1943, in
which he mentioned three points which called forth our criticism
and opposition. I have already expressed myself on the one point,
namely, the terror which was to precede us. His distasteful state-
ments about the Jews referred to Germany only and did not indi-
cate extermination in any way.
pgs.368-369

Then there's this:

The Waffen-SS is taking this quite bitterly for it believes that in
its majority it fought decently and fairly.It is far removed from
these crimes and from the man who is responsible for them.
pg.370

Is it possible they fell for the atrocity stories first presented to them at Nuremberg or were they just playing along?

[Jazz]

That's great for the Waffen-SS but it's kind of deflating when they make statements like:

"I do very much regret that I had become a part of a regime that was able to establish concentration camps and to order mass slaughter."

"I fully admit that Nazi Germany had to go,as the atrocities committed with the knowledge and approval of its government are unforgivable."

Waffen SS veterans would be obligated to say that I think. I don't know whether he genuinely believes it or not but he said that his comrades and the Germans that he's talked to knew nothing about it. And that he never saw anything out of the ordinary with his own eyes.

[SevenUp]

Is it possible they fell for the atrocity stories first presented to them at Nuremberg or were they just playing along?

I think it's quite possible that they believed the stories. The best example is Hans Frank who 'accepted full responsibility' for the horror even though he had not witnessed it and had in fact investigated rumors during the war, had even confronted Hitler with them, and determined that they were false.

Why did they believe the lies? The same reason that people in the US do today, because the whole authority of the US government was behind the lies. These were not crazy rumors of unknown origin, these were documented claims by serious people in high position. Given that the full weigh of the US government and society is behind the lies, it's not too surprising that people believe them

The question is, how did that happen? How did obvious and degenerate phantasmagoria become the basis of official US government policy. Butz describes it in 'Hoax of the Twentieth Century', briefly, during the war FDR's secretary of the Treasury (what else?) was Zionist Henry Morgenthau, and he persuaded FDR to establish the War Refugee Board, a department of the government, that oversaw US policy toward the refugees and Europe after the war. The WRB published hoax propaganda straight from the World Jewish Congress as official position papers of the US government. Thus the hoax acquired, by dint of a small group of Zionists, the full authority of the US government.

[Christof]

It seems to me that they could have denied taking part in or witnessing any crimes without having to affirm any greater atrocity,unless it was part of their legal defense strategy.
On second thought I'm not sure how much I'm buying that they were hearing these accusations for the first time at Nuremberg.I guess it's impossible to know what they did or didn't believe,only what they said.
I must admit that I only first heard of Paul Hausser a day before my previous post when I stumbled across his Wikipedia page.Seems he's pretty famous and was quite active after the war with the HIAG and even publishing several books.Surely he expressed some opinion after the war on the holocaust accusations,but being a German citizen maybe not.

[Pappy Yokum]

It seems to me that they could have denied taking part in or witnessing any crimes without having to affirm any greater atrocity,unless it was part of their legal defense strategy.
On second thought I'm not sure how much I'm buying that they were hearing these accusations for the first time at Nuremberg.I guess it's impossible to know what they did or didn't believe,only what they said.

The thread is about the invalid argument that the Nazis admitted the extermination. As demonstrated here, high members of the Nazi Party had heard the accusations during the war and had investigated them. They were told the Jews were being deported and resettled. Members of the Party in a position to know, like Alfred Rosenberg, stated the Jews were not being physically exterminated, but rather their extermination was political. That is how their rhetoric was to be properly interpreted.
Any accusation that is false, but slightly plausible, would have gotten the same reaction: The accusation is either false, or the accused would profess no knowledge.
Whether they are telling the truth or not is beside the point. The point is plenty of Nazis denied the Jews were exterminated. It isn't the case that being skeptical of the gas chamber story is something that developed in the 1970's or 1980's. It was there before Nuremberg. Even in 1944 the RAF called the idea of bombing gas chambers at Auschwitz "fantastic". The British had very good intelligence from there. They were intercepting coded wireless transmissions from there to Berlin often enough to know there was nothing to the story.