Gl0spana and his Holocaust Antics - The last eulogy

[Otium]

If one searches this forum for debates with exterminationists one will find many colourful people. Most recently the user "Gl0spana" who had been a member on this forum since 2020.

I will post the discussions had with this user in this thread, as I think we will learn something about this character who had once claimed that it was "proven" that 12 Olympic sized swimming pools had been found containing the remains of Jews, only to walk back on this statement claiming it "didn't matter" that the remains he had alleged cannot he proven. He was, obviously, relentlessly refuted as a reading of the thread unambiguously shows.

You can see the rest of these threads at the end of this post.

Now. I had happened to be doing some online sleuthing when I came across a Holocaust debate thread on a website called 'Kiwi Farms' entitled "The Holocaust Thread - The Great Debate Between Affirmers, Revisionists and Deniers"

It is, as per usual, utterly trite full of meaningless, confused, ignorant (in the most civil meaning of the word) and nonsensical posts spanning 85 pages. Hence why such people who come to CODOH don't last long when forced to stick to one topic and respond with evidence, and discuss evidence when questioned. Conclusions in this strict way can be made, and the threads kept short.

Anyway. Out of curiosity I searched to see if anyone had posted a link to CODOH. Sure enough they had. On page 60 someone had posted a link to the thread posted by Gl0spana about why mass graves "don't matter". This was in reply to a user called "Chugger". Whom responded with glee "I posted that lol. I'm gl0spana." (Link | Archive)

This was quite the find, I was shocked, and it seemed like Gl0spana was a prolific poster, pretending (as per usual) to be particularly knowledgeable. Of course this isn't hard when debating on a forum with no rules, intended for "shit posting". Real bottom of the barrel stuff. Which has its place for sure, but isn't what you'd think exterminationists would spend their time on.

Obviously curious, I clicked on "Chugger's" profile, and I see on page 84 of the aforementioned "Holocaust Thread" a post by "Chugger" (Gl0spana) in which he links to a YouTube channel with a debate video related to "discrediting Holocaust denial". This was Gl0spana's post:

Chugger (aka: Gl0spana):We're going to do the podcast TOMORROW at 8 PM EST. Explained here. I'm sorry for the delay. [...] If any other memorable exchanges come to mind, I'll add to this. Otherwise I look forward to chatting with some of you TOMORROW at 8 PM EST on Youtube or Odysee (whichever is easier to stream to)

Link | Archive

In the rest of this post Gl0spana boasts about arguing with a "denier" who "ghosted the forum", rather ironic considering the fact Gl0spana ghosted this forum every time he was challenged. The most interesting part was the mention of him doing a podcast. A few posts later another user responds "Can't wait to report you for hate speech" because Gl0spana was going to attempt to stream on Youtube. However in response Gl0spana assures this other user that it's okay because he's making fun of "Holocaust Deniers":

Chugger (aka: Gl0spana): hate speech making fun of the conspiracy brained is currently allowed on youtube


Video Archive
(Notice the title: "Me methodically discrediting Holocaust denial". Clearly he is not adverse to boasting about who he is.)

nevertheless I'm putting it up there only so people have an accessible platform where they can directly interact with me thru chat, if they're reticent to talk.

Link | Archive

And thus Gl0spana uploads a video, as he admits, in an attempt to "make fun" of "conspiracy brained Holocaust deniers".

It should be noted that on this forum (CODOH) Gl0spana initially pretended to be a revisionist, and later unmasked himself. He also played the conspiracy card and lost.

In this video in which he unleashes his "debate skills" (where he rattles off the same old disjointed arguments void of context, eg. the well known entries from the Goebbels diaries which do not prove the Holocaust) we discover that Gl0spana is none other than a man named "Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill", which he doesn't attempt to hide. Now, I don't think I'd be mistaken in thinking that Gl0spana is indeed Jewish (I could be wrong), and thus has a Jewish stake in his defence of Holocaust orthodoxy. This was already suspected the first time he arrived on the forum.

What's funnier about this, is that Cockerill (aka Gl0spana) is actually an author for "The American Conservative" and holds an M.A. in history from the University of Chicago! He has posted articles in which he attempts (poorly) to discredit Sean McMeekin. In this article he shows particularly how poor his historical knowledge is, and how useless degrees are when you're not even aware of the basic facts and expanse of the literature. For example this is evident from his claim in the article that "there is exactly zero evidence in the Soviet or German archives indicating that the Germans regarded Barbarossa as a pre-emptive strike." When in-fact the same month Cockerill had his article attempting to thrash McMeekin published by the "American Conservative", the German historian Bernd Schwipper authored a two volume 1120 page tome on the basis of over 500 German archival documents entitled 'Die Aufklärung der Bedrohung aus dem Osten' which proved that the Germans had indeed anticipated a pre-emptive strike. This fact, which had been asserted in particular by Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus while in Allied captivity is confirmed:

In order to confirm the Allied version, witnesses such as the German Field Marshal Paulus, who had been captured at Stalingrad, were summoned before the Nuremberg Tribunal. Paulus testified there, as requested, that Operation Barbarossa had been an unprovoked invasion of the Soviet Union. In the debates Paulus had with other officers during his Russian captivity, however, this sounded quite different. "When they planned the Barbarossa enterprise, they were planning a preventive war," he was reproached. Paul's reply: "Yes, of course." Unlike his testimony before the Nuremberg Tribunal, we are dealing here with intercepted conversations from Russian camp detention, which were not about big politics, but about the actual military assessment of 1941.

Stefan Scheil, Präventivkrieg Barbarossa: Fragen, Fakten, Antworten (Schnellroda: Antaios-Verlag, 2011), p. 8. cf. Stefan Scheil, Die Eskalation des Zweiten Weltkriegs von 1940 bis zum Unternehmen Barbarossa 1941 (Berlin: Duncker & Humbolt, 2011), p. 13.

Evidently Cockerill is also ignorant of the works of Stefan Scheil whose book 'Präventivkrieg Barbarossa' is an intentionally small 100 page book which illustrates 4 key prerequisites for the pre-emptive strike "thesis" to be true, they are he states:

The Barbarossa enterprise was a preventive war if - and this applies to any other preventive war as well - there were essentially four elements:

1. long-term attack plans of the attacked, in this case the USSR, in this case in the direction of Germany.

2. knowledge of such long-term plans of attack by the later aggressor, in this case the German Reich.

3. military preparations by the attacked, in this case the USSR, indicating an imminent attack by it.

4. knowledge of these military preparations by the aggressor, in this case the German Reich.

Scheil, Präventivkrieg Barbarossa, p. 13.

And this, in his 2011 book (published 10 years before Cockerill's article!) is what he proves. Yet for someone with a degree in German history for Gl0spana to be unware of these works which refute his institutionalised and distorted Allied view of history is perhaps not surprising. Nor is he aware of Hitler's inquisitive remarks to Wilhelm Scheidt in which the former asked "What can a war historian tell us about the problems of fighting preventive wars?" to which Scheidt responded by pointing out the obvious odour of "aggressor" would be placed upon anyone who made such a decision, but for the sake of surprise it was worth the advantage. To this Hitler mused out loud that "Britain will just have to climb down, once we have defeated her last ally on the continent" (D. Irving, Hitler's War, Viking, 1977, p. 252) referring to Russia. Years later on April 25 1945, in a conversation with Joseph Goebbels which was preserved as a stenographic record and subsequently ordered to be destroyed, but thankfully preserved, Hitler had stated "I know how it was in the winter of 1940. I didn't go to war against Moscow out of carelessness, but because on the basis of certain information. . . The question was whether we should begin to strike ourselves or whether we should wait and be crushed to death sometime." (Glantz & Heiber, Hitler and His Generals, Enigma, 2002, p. 724) So to state in utter ignorance, that there is "no proof" to substantiate that the Germans effectively knew of a Russian attack is untrue.

What all this shows is that University degrees are practically useless (which is evidenced also by Cockerill's dismal display at this forum on every topic he commented on) when you're either not taught about viewpoints which contradict your own, which you're not willing to take seriously. Which he doesn't by the use of language like "conspiracy brained".

This is funny because in the video Cockerill uploaded to his youtube channel in which he supposedly "methodically discredits Holocaust Denial" he describes himself as a "Liberal". Yet what could be more illiberal than the actions of a man who derides and dismisses his opponents by saying (to quote his Kiwifarms post) that he wants to "make fun of the conspiracy brained" whom you'd think he would be willing to take seriously and not label without having done his due diligence. This is one of many examples that show so-called "Liberals" don't actually exist. They're wannabe social tyrants just like everyone else; they just don't want to admit it. In this way they're worse than those whom they deride because they're dishonest about their beliefs, or at least how they go about conducting themselves in line with those alleged beliefs.

This article by Cockerill on Barbarossa displays his typical authoritative and confident attitude on topics which he truly has no knowledge beyond the surface level. The information he does possess is clearly limited and based on the works of those similarly incredulous "scholars" who convince by authority and not by proof. Otherwise Cockerill might be aware of those historians who don't believe in the preventative strike "thesis" (who are wrong on that count) but nonetheless admit that Hitler's decision to strike Russia was due in no small part to Stalin's creeping influence in European affairs which he had otherwise allegedly been content to keep out of. This was not the case, and Germany was being forced into a position of economic subservience which would've meant increased dependence on Russia's goodwill that would've led to further territorial conquest on behalf of the Communist monolith. Not to mention that Stalin was altering and actually breaking the treaty and border agreement signed with Germany, which the latter observed with pensive quiet in hopes good relations could be preserved. This fact is quite contrary to Cockerill's claim that "Molotov gave no indication that these territorial demands would be pursued without Hitler’s permission" which in-fact had already been done in the case of the Balkans, the Baltic states, Bessarabia, and part of Lithuania:

He [Ribbentrop] did not hide his anger about Russia's Balkan policy, pointing out that the year before Russia had expressed merely her interest in Bessarabia. Although Germany had declared her lack of political interest, her economic interests were of vital importance in view of the connexion with oil and grain supplies. Apart from that Germany had not been consulted over the annexation of the Baltic states, nor the occupation of the strip of Lithuania which should have fallen to Germany. Molotov accepted the note, promising a written reply, but cryptically assuring the German ambassador that nothing had changed the Russian attitude. Molotov gave his written reply on 21 September 1940. In it he rejected the German arguments point for point and thus put an end to common Russo-German policy as it had been inaugurated on 23 August 1939. Germany did not realize this immediately, though Hitler was more sceptical than Ribbentrop. Whilst the latter still worked for a joint Russo-German policy, Hitler doubted that it could be realized, through he did not exclude a political arrangement between the two countries until two months later.

H.W. Koch, "Hitler's ‘Programme’ and the Genesis of Operation ‘Barbarossa’", The Historical Journal, Vol. 26 (Dec. 1983), No. 4, pp. 891-920, here, p. 908.

In-fact, in Hitler's discussion with Molotov in November 1940 the former "emphasized that on the question of respective spheres of interest Germany had strictly adhered to the Russo-German agreements, something which Russia in some cases had not done, especially in Lithuania and the Bukovina." (Koch, p. 918) Similarly:

Hitler also referred to the exchange of territory Lithuania for the Lublin Voivodeship, which had been economically disadvantageous to Germany. The Reich had also yielded to Soviet wishes on the question of Bukovina, although it had not been added to the Soviet sphere of influence according to the Secret Additional Protocol of August 23, 1939. Molotov pointed out that the German-Russian agreement had had a significant influence on the great German victories. A discussion now developed between the People's Commissar and Hitler and Ribbentrop about the exact interpretation of the German-Soviet agreements. With great obstinacy Molotov insisted on a literal fulfillment of the treaties: Finland, according to the Secret Additional Protocol, belonged to the Soviet sphere of interest, and if Moscow had gone beyond the original arrangements in the case of the Lithuania-Wolivodeship of Lublin territorial exchange, as well as in the case of Bukovina, it had done so with the full consent of the German government. Molotov rejected Hitler's objection that Germany had accommodated the Soviet Union in these cases, and that now Moscow, conversely, must show accommodation. Hitler again emphasized that he recognized that Finland belonged to the Soviet sphere of interest, but for the duration of the war Germany had economic interests there, for which reason a literal interpretation of the agreements was not possible; also, the German-Italian guarantee for Romania was not directed against the Soviet Union and was not a violation of the treaties.

Walter Post, Unternehmen Barbarossa: Deutsche und sowjetische Angriffspläne 1940/41 (Hamburg: Herford & Bonn: Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn, 1996), p. 180 ff.

That the Russian's pushed their luck to the point of destroying their relations with Germany is emphasised in many other works of which Cockerill is evidently ignorant. It would take a long time to digest, dissect and refute every little distortion and lie, and this thread isn't the place for it.

---

Threads by and about Gl0spana

Is Generalplan OST real? Or is it an Allied hoax? (Most Recent)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=14418

Why it doesn't matter that existence of mass graves at Belzec cannot be proven (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13757

The Jewish Children that 'Survived' (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13314

Challenge to exterminationist gl0spana on alleged mass graves // $100,000+ reward
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13321

I hereby agree to debate on Belzec mass graves provided: (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13367

Challenge to Believer & Forum registrant Gl0spana on Alleged 'Gas Chambers'
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13751

Eulogy for Gl0spana (thread by yours truly in which I recapped some of Gl0spana's most ridiculous claims)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13474

'text of Himmler's speeches support claims of extermination' (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13861

The question of the abundant "evidence" for genocide by bullets / Babi Yar etc. (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13870

When he failed to make headway on any Holocaust related topic, he resorted to other areas of history to which he was also woefully ignorant:

Count Ciano's diary entries in August 1939 (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=14027

Goebbels diary on the invasion of Poland (Thread by Gl0spana)
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=14016

---

[borjastick]

Good work from you and a well deserved pat on the back for exposing the lunacy of this man and the identity of him.

In my experience believers who come here to 'teach us a lesson' are ill equipped and don't understand the task they are embarking on. They usually (perhaps always) think they are more clever and better read. They also come with a massive dollop of conceit and pre conceived ideas. Like all Liberals and Progressives they are more than overloaded with dislike for anyone who doesn't agree with them.

I do always laugh when they also think that holocaust revision is somehow a conspiracy. Please show me the conspiracy because I ain't seen any in over twenty years in this field.

I would ask one question of you though please. What is the difference between a revisionist and a denier in his mind do you think?

It could be argued that the gap between the two is at the same time minuscule and cavernous.

[Archie]

This is my favorite gl0spana thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13317
It's one of his early ones.

He was doing the whole, "I'm a revisionist -- but there's just one thing that confuses me ..." type of thing. I remember when I first read it just thinking this poor fellow was very confused. Then I read it a second time through and it became apparent to me that he was trying to present what he thought was a clever logic trap.

MA in history from Chicago kind of surprises me. Maybe he washed out of the PhD program and he's now reduced to shilling for the holocaust. In that case he may or may not be Jewish. He may just be beholden to Jewish patrons which is quite common in Conservative, Inc.

[Lamprecht]

Gl0spana is a very ridiculous individual. He initially claimed to be a revisionist that had some questions, but it was readily apparent that he was a firm believer in the Holocaust narrative. That is because when there is a hole in the story or something he doesn't know, he quickly defaults to some "mainstream" explanation or just simply pretends that it doesn't matter. He would not make a very good lawyer at all. It's just wrong to act as though the "Holocaust" happening exactly as claimed in post-war show trials is some default and there must be a massive amount of evidence (primarily in the form of appeals to authority) for anyone to disagree. It actually was never proven to be true with physical evidence.

Also, Gl0splana proves that he is an amoral figure. Originally, he asked why the Germans would resettle the Jews. He simply could not understand why they wouldn't just kill all of them. I explained that you can dislike someone and not want to be around them, and just send them elsewhere without killing them. There is a long historical precedent for this regarding Jews (viewtopic.php?t=12596) where they were expelled over and over again. He refused to accept deportation as a solution and insisted that the only solution to dealing with people you don't like is to kill them all. I provided him multiple examples of documents explaining a resettlement program and he just kept saying he didn't have time to respond to them, but would change the topic and bring up other things.

Possibly Gl0spana very much hates Jews. I don't know any other reason why someone would be obsessed with believing that 6 million of them were killed when all available evidence flies in the face of it. Most people would be happy to hear that 6 million Jews weren't exterminated.

[Otium]

I would ask one question of you though please. What is the difference between a revisionist and a denier in his mind do you think?

I wish I had a good answer to that. I think that Cockerill is morally skewed in a ubiquitous fashion which prevents him from even seeing other view points because he isn't confronted with them in an honest way. His 'nose' for sensing nuance is clearly not great, as his first accusation on this forum against what he considered the motives of revisionists was to claim that we're all "white nationalists, Nazi sympathizers and anti-semites" (See this thread). He clearly can't detach himself from moral judgements to at least try and view the facts in an objective way. Which is rather illiberal.

Of course there's an element of hypocrisy here too. Cockerill is suggesting that if you are a "white nationalist, Nazi sympathizer or anti-semite" then your views can be dismissed out of hand on the basis of moral and political indictments; that you're unfit to grasp an objective view of history due to being skewed in a particular direction. Of course he totally ignores that people of his own political and moral stripe are routinely incapable of following through objective demands on history by taking revisionists seriously, because their own morals and political inclinations make them bound to concepts like, Multiculturalism, anti-fascism, Allied sympathy, philo-semitism and Soviet apologism, which are not exempt from being capable of distorting ones motives. Cockerill and his ilk all share an allegiance to one or more, even all of these biases which by his own logic should render him incapable of rendering history accurately. Yet because these things aren't considered to be "wrong" or worse "evil", no such criticism and accusation of bias is made despite being just as possible.

Typically Cockerill is a Soviet apologist. In the article I previously referenced he tries his best to argue that the evil of the Soviets was not "equivalent to that of Nazism" because of his own moral predispositions (utterly arbitrary) to view anti-semitism as an absolute evil. This is an example of his own biases forming a moral judgement which invalidates his claim to objectivity; he fails to recognize this because in his mind the only people with biases that should be dismissed out of hand are people seen to be "anti-semitic" or "Nazi sympathizers". He describes everything the National Socialists did in terms of an attempt at extermination or lust for depravity itself, while obscuring and omitting that the same comments could be made against the Soviets, and would in-fact fit them more than it does the Nazis.

For example, under the guise of describing what the "peoples of the Russian Federation" view as the history of the "Great Patriotic War" against the Germans, Cockerill describes the Soviet victory as a "moral achievement" in which the "soldiers of the Red Army overpowered an uncommonly depraved enemy" in which they "withstood historic sufferings to do so". To any such criticism of this more than idealised and frankly insultingly romantic view of the Soviet troops and their motives, to whom all depravity (and ideology on their part) is ignored for the sake of the "greater good" (i.e. the ends justifying the means) which was the vanquishing of "Nazism" (which Cockerill typically doesn't distinguish in any way from the Nazis other than simply not being them; which is to say that which makes the Soviets morally superior to the Nazis is not that they committed less atrocities, but that the nature of Nazi atrocities being "anti-semitic" is inherently worse due to Cockerill's own moral bias, because there is no objective scale with which to judge the loss of human life). Cockerill replies that this is not mere "nationalistic myth" but regarded by historians as "substantially true." And it is this "substantial truth", including it's moral dimensions which are not objective in the slightest, that Cockerill defends in his article.

[Mortimer]

This person "Matthew Ghobrial Cockerill" - if that is his real name - fits the definition of an internet troll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

His writing on Operation Barbarossa looks like an attempt to keep the official Soviet version of events in place eg. "the peace loving and neutral USSR was suddenly and treacherously attacked by the fascist Hitlerites blah blah blah". There is ample evidence to show that Stalin was going to attack Germany in 1941.
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7999

Has this poster made any comments about the holodomor ? I asked one woman who was a communist her opinion on the man made famine in Ukraine and other areas of the Soviet Union in the early 1930s and her response was "fascist propaganda".
viewtopic.php?f=20&t=13302

[Hektor]

Gl0spana is a very ridiculous individual. He initially claimed to be a revisionist that had some questions, but it was readily apparent that he was a firm believer in the Holocaust narrative. That is because when there is a hole in the story or something he doesn't know, he quickly defaults to some "mainstream" explanation or just simply pretends that it doesn't matter. He would not make a very good lawyer at all. It's just wrong to act as though the "Holocaust" happening exactly as claimed in post-war show trials is some default and there must be a massive amount of evidence (primarily in the form of appeals to authority) for anyone to disagree. It actually was never proven to be true with physical evidence......

Can't judge his/her case. But I recall cases where people appeared on forums claiming to doubt/deny/dispute the Holocaust (or specific claims)... It turned out that this wasn't really true, but that those individuals were actually staunch supporters/believers of this narrative. There seems to be some sort of Shoah Islam here, one that has some form Taqiyya integrated into it. One just has to wonder about the motives of those people, given that they have to spend considerable time trying to emulate "Holocaust Deniers", then sign up onto forums, befriend other users just to simulate a conversion back to true Holocaust believer, after that. Kind of a psy-op option for basement hackers. St. George that fights the mighty dragon Holocaust Denial, if you want.

[ServantOfAhuraMazda]

People like him think they can "infiltrate" revisionists and prove them wrong from within.

In reality they are just parrots that repeat the same "arguments" ad infinitum. Notice that their strategy today is to endlessly scream about operation Reinhardt, einsatzgruppen etc.

They have long abandoned Auschwitz because even they know that Auschwitz testimonies are horror tales at best.

[greatmystery]

Michael Peinovich of therightstuff.biz and chairperson of the National Justice Party, is supposed to have a debate with this guy. Cockerill is going to lose so bad. Mike talks about him on his show. I could make the effort to find those shows if anyone is interested.

[mpeinovich]

Hi. This is Mike Peinovich.

I am indeed scheduled to have a debate with Cockerill. When he first proposed the debate in March of 2020 I made the demand that he furnish me with all documents he planned to use so he could not spring any surprises on me. He then stalled for 18 months before sending me a google drive folder with a few documents and some general questions in September 2021. I told him that since he had taken 18 months to prep, I would take at least as much time to prepare my documents. I am very busy, but I expect sometime in the next 11 months we will have the debate.

One thing I noticed while going back and forth with him over email, is that he could not resist trying to rope me into some kind of debate over something that didn't matter relative to the topic at hand. One example is that he tried to bait me into a debate on Hitler's purported desire to genocide Slavs, which I have not seen any documentary proof for. Presumably he thought to use my Slavic background to shame me for my political views and my refutation of the holocaust narrative. There is something fundamentally slimy about the way he argues, but also stupid. I do not think he is Jewish, which may be why his attempts to argue as if he were fail so badly.

The general consensus I have seen in this thread is that he is puffed up with overconfidence in the mainstream narrative, probably from going to college for so long, and he simply does not take seriously things that refute it. This matches my experience with him. But considering his inability to actually deal with any arguments, his arrogance is completely unwarranted and in fact it is he who is difficult to take seriously.

You all will probably like this. I saw in one other thread that on the topic of Kayn, he made arguments where he managed to flip the moral question of the massacre around on the Germans and make it as if they did something wrong by extensively documenting the massacre. "They only did this to sow discord between the Poles and Soviets." Frankly, that argument is so brazen it leaves me a bit thunderstruck.

This is one of the questions he posed in the debate documents, presumably he thinks this is a trap that will own me.

Two main points:

Until Gorbachev declassified the Soviet archives in 1990--thereby releasing a document showing NKVD head Beria’s order to kill the Polish officers--there was no documentary evidence implicating the Soviets for Katyn, excluding spergy (and lie-filled) stuff that came from Goebbels and the Nazis.

At Nuremberg, the Nazis were not convicted for having done Katyn. It is true that, against the protestations of the British and Americans prosecutors, the Soviet prosecutors formally accused the Nazis of doing, the Allied judges found that the allegations against the Nazis were unproven.

(Questions for revisionists/deniers: Why wouldn’t all the Allied judges have found the Nazis responsible for Katyn if Nuremberg was a show trial? Similarly: Why did the Anglo-American judges protest against the inclusion of Katyn in the charges against the Nazis?)

--Matt

Where to even begin? First of all the use of the word "spergy" to describe the German documentation shows that he spends way too much time on internet message boards. Secondly, he says "lie-filled" but does not specify any lies.

As for the answer to his trick question, it is obvious. Clearly the Americans did not think the German investigation was spergy and lie-filled. And in fact it would have been discrediting for entire enterprise of Nuremberg to try to accuse the Germans of this crime.

But the question itself is emblematic of his entire method. Which is to use poorly constructed logic traps and his own self-perceived authority to dismiss all the basic factual problems with his narrative.

[Otium]

One thing I noticed while going back and forth with him over email, is that he could not resist trying to rope me into some kind of debate over something that didn't matter relative to the topic at hand. One example is that he tried to bait me into a debate on Hitler's purported desire to genocide Slavs, which I have not seen any documentary proof for. Presumably he thought to use my Slavic background to shame me for my political views and my refutation of the holocaust narrative.

Hello Mike.

It's unsurprising that he would attempt something like this. But it's a poor effort doomed to failure. Cockerill is a revisionist in his own right, but his brand is clearly Soviet apologism and dramatic anti-Germanism to an extent not even mainstream scholars would defend. There is no proof of any sort of attempt to "Genocide" any Slavs. The fact that the eastern populations were Slavic and thus at the wrong end of the German occupation policy due to their association with Bolshevism, and the obvious need to rid the world of this tremendous evil meant being caught up in harsh circumstances that had nothing to do with Slavism and everything to do with tactical victories in war. The plans to utilize Hunger to maintain the German army and feed the Reich is the most obvious example of this. In no plans is there any proof that the anticipated losses to the Soviet zone of occupation which was indeed high, intended to be carried out on some "racial" basis. Obviously Stalin's own criminality which was intentional and caused such circumstances is ignored by the likes of Cockerill.

Regarding the reorganisation of the Eastern Territories, the so-called "Generalplan Ost" doesn't support any case for "extermination" or "mass murder", quite the opposite. In-fact nothing in the documents suggests any attempt to "exterminate" the Slavs. One of the oft-quoted architects of "Generalplan-Ost", Erhard Wetzel, explicitly refutes any such interpretation. See for example an excerpt from the "Statement and thoughts of Dr. Erhard Wetzel on the General Plan East of the Reichsführer SS" dated April 27, 1942:

"c. There are many ways that lead to the destruction of the biological strength of a people. In cultural countries, poor economic conditions often cause serious declines in birth rates. Let us recall the declining birth rates in the Reich before 1933. Sometimes, however, very great prosperity seems to lead to the same result (cf. Sweden, USA, the better-off strata of the Empire). In the primitive population of the Soviet Union, the years of hardship under the Bolshevik regime obviously did not bring about a reduction in the birth rate. At most, industrialization in the last years and the associated urbanization led to some reduction. Nevertheless, Russian birth rates were still far higher than German ones. The goal of a German population policy in the Russian area will have to be to bring the birth rates to a level below the German birth rate. Incidentally, the same should also apply to the extremely high-birth-rate Caucasus region, and to some extent later also to Ukraine. First of all, there is an interest in increasing the number of Ukrainians as a counterweight against the Russians. However, this must not lead to the Ukrainians later taking the place of the Russians. In order to [not] come to an increase of the population in the Eastern territories which is unbearable for us, it is urgently necessary to refrain from all the means in the East which we have used in the Reich to increase the birth rates. We must pursue a deliberately negative population policy in the areas concerned. Through propaganda measures, especially through the press, radio, cinema, handbills, short brochures, educational lectures, and the like, the population must be persuaded again and again how harmful it is to have many children. It must be pointed out once to the costs, which make children, then to what one could have acquired for it. The great dangers to women's health that can result from having children can be pointed out, and so on. Along with this propaganda, a generous propaganda for contraceptives must go into the country. An industry for such means must be specially created. Neither the promotion and distribution of contraceptives nor abortion should be punishable. The establishment of abortion institutes should be encouraged. For example, midwives or nurses can be trained as abortionists. The more properly abortions are performed, the more the population will gain confidence in them. The physician, too, must of course be authorized to perform these acts, without there being any question here of a violation of the medical code of ethics. Voluntary sterilization is also to be propagated. Infant mortality must not be combated. Education of the mother about infant care and childhood diseases must also not take place. Attempts must be made to minimize the training of Russian physicians in these areas. Children's homes and the like must not be supported. In addition to these negative measures in the field of health, divorce should not be made particularly difficult. No special measures should be taken for illegitimate children. Tax breaks for large families, child allowances, and all measures that favor large families must be avoided. If the new agricultural regulations stipulate that the number of family members or able-bodied family members may be taken into account in the division of land where business reasons require it, this is of course justified at the present time, when it is important to make agriculture in the East as intensive as possible. However, whether such provisions should be adhered to later seems doubtful in view of the fact that they encourage child wealth. It is obvious that the systematic application of the above-mentioned means will lead to considerable success in weakening the Russian body politic. At the same time, we are quite capable of intervening at any time in the event of too radical a decline in the birth rate, which would put the very existence of Russianness on the line, by cancelling this or that measure. In any case, we can have no interest in a complete biological annihilation of Russianness as long as we ourselves are not able to fill the space with our people. For otherwise other peoples would occupy this space, which would likewise not be in our interest. Our aim in carrying out these measures is only to weaken Russianness to such an extent that it can no longer overgrow us with the mass of its people. If we have converted the mass of the Russian people to the idea of the one-child or two-child system, we should have achieved the goal we set. How far we thereby weaken the White Race in view of the dangers from Asia is another question. Perhaps a positive population policy in the Siberian area, which is not dangerous for us here, is the right balance. For us Germans, the only thing that matters is to weaken Russianness to such an extent that it is no longer in a position to endanger Germany's claim to leadership in the European area. The paths outlined above bring us closer to this goal. However, it must also be remembered that a concentration of the masses in industrial cities is undoubtedly a more suitable means of limiting population increase than if the bulk of the population were to sit in the flat countryside. For the propaganda and enlightenment mentioned above can be carried out much more easily in cities than in the countryside, especially when one thinks of the vast spaces of the East."

Czeslaw Madajczyk (ed.), Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan (München: K.G. Saur Verlag, 1994), Doc. 16, pp. 73-75.

The harshness of his propositions cannot be denied. But this plan outright refutes any claims that "Generalplan Ost" was a plan to "exterminate Slavs", in-fact the document (as you will notice) that the Germans would intervene to prevent a too "rapid decline in the birth-rate" and it was not their intent to wipe out "Russianness". In context, this was a plan proposed at the height of Operation Barbarossa, a time of intense hostility, to which end the future was still uncertain. What was proposed was a method of population control which would span decades and served the goal of cementing German power in the newly acquired eastern territories, not the killing of its inhabitants. Contrast this to the undoubtedly genocidal plans of American Jews towards the Germans. This is tame in comparison, particularly because the German territorial solution was not based on the goal of mass murder.

But essentially Wetzel's solution was the promotion of birth-control, something lauded in today's society. Except the Germans unlike the deracinated multitude of genocidal maniacs hell-bent on the destruction of Europeans, were far-less extensive, something which Cockerill must admit makes the Nazis less evil. To throw this argument back in his face, I quote from his article on McMeekin's book, but slightly tweaked: "Recognizing that [Nazi] Imperialism was susceptible to such limitations does not constitute apologia therefor, but is essential to understanding. . . that [Nationalsocialism is] the lesser evil compared to [Modern Liberalism.]" This is to say that if limitations determines greater or lesser evil, then by Cockerill's own logic the Nazis are far less a evil than today's Liberals and Conservatives, as it is the desire of the latter to completely uproot and destroy any semblance of primordial civilisation and its values; their greater crime is the annihilation of Europeans and our identities.

Perhaps Cockerill will feign sympathy for the Russians, but this is another trick of his to demonize the Germans. He doesn't care about "Russianness" anymore than the Germans did. He doesn't care about "Germanness" either. He's a cosmopolitan who would happily see all European identities destroyed. He's a liar and hypocrite. Nothing more.

Also it should be noted that Wetzel's proposition was the most extreme position you will find in any of the documents. According to Holocaust historian Gerald Reitlinger, the aforementioned document I quoted from was Wetzel's response to the proposition by Wolfgang Abel of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office to Germanize the Russians (The Final Solution, 1987, p. 36). This highlights that opinions differed among "Nazis", and still none proposed mass murder.

You all will probably like this. I saw in one other thread that on the topic of Kayn, he made arguments where he managed to flip the moral question of the massacre around on the Germans and make it as if they did something wrong by extensively documenting the massacre. "They only did this to sow discord between the Poles and Soviets." Frankly, that argument is so brazen it leaves me a bit thunderstruck.

This is one of the questions he posed in the debate documents, presumably he thinks this is a trap that will own me.

Two main points:

Until Gorbachev declassified the Soviet archives in 1990--thereby releasing a document showing NKVD head Beria’s order to kill the Polish officers--there was no documentary evidence implicating the Soviets for Katyn, excluding spergy (and lie-filled) stuff that came from Goebbels and the Nazis.

At Nuremberg, the Nazis were not convicted for having done Katyn. It is true that, against the protestations of the British and Americans prosecutors, the Soviet prosecutors formally accused the Nazis of doing, the Allied judges found that the allegations against the Nazis were unproven.

(Questions for revisionists/deniers: Why wouldn’t all the Allied judges have found the Nazis responsible for Katyn if Nuremberg was a show trial? Similarly: Why did the Anglo-American judges protest against the inclusion of Katyn in the charges against the Nazis?)

--Matt

Where to even begin? First of all the use of the word "spergy" to describe the German documentation shows that he spends way too much time on internet message boards. Secondly, he says "lie-filled" but does not specify any lies.

As for the answer to his trick question, it is obvious. Clearly the Americans did not think the German investigation was spergy and lie-filled. And in fact it would have been discrediting for entire enterprise of Nuremberg to try to accuse the Germans of this crime.

But the question itself is emblematic of his entire method. Which is to use poorly constructed logic traps and his own self-perceived authority to dismiss all the basic factual problems with his narrative.

Cockerill's view of Katyn is a spectacular distortion. To answer his question, the Allies knew well that the Soviets were lying and any indictment of the Germans for Katyn would've made it easier to discredit the tribunal.

The fact remains that the Soviets were just as much apart of the tribunal as the Western Allies, and they did attempt to saddle Germany with the guilt, but this was thwarted by the Americans. Werner Maser in his book on Nuremberg describes this and the unsuccessful attempts by the Soviet prosecution to carry out their misdeeds, which in itself disputes the credibility of Nuremberg despite them not getting away with it; because they were nonetheless a key part of that trial and their evidence was used to convict the Germans of crimes. So it is in other cases that the Russians were allowed to perpetuate their lies on the basis of their more than questionable documentation. In-fact, one of the neutral professors who agreed with the 1943 German report, Hungarian professor Mark Antonov Markov was cocerced by the Russians to claim the Germans intimidated him into lying, but nonetheless admitted to the Americans that the Germans were entirely correct in their report:

As their witnesses the Soviet prosecution nominated Dr Prosorovsky, Professor Basilevsky and Dr Markov. Prosorovsky was a member of the Soviet Commission established to shift responsibility for this crime on to the Germans. Basilevsky’s knowledge was hearsay only and he could prove nothing. The Bulgarian Professor Marko Antonov Markov had signed the German report incriminating the Russians, but he was an opportunist and recanted on everything that he had held scientifically proved in 1943 and - according to statements by the US Congress Investigating Committee — had voluntarily confirmed on several occasions that this crime must have been committed by the Russians.

Markov was thoroughly intimidated; after the Soviet move into Bulgaria he had been arrested and taken to court as an ‘enemy of the people’ because of his participation in the International Commission of Inquiry on Katyn arranged by the Germans. In Nuremberg, however, the Soviet prosecution made it easy for him to revoke his previous statements and present them as having been made under duress. Nevertheless neither the prosecutors nor the witnesses were very comfortable.

Werner Maser, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1979), p. 111.

So much for the "lying Germans". Seeing as Cockerill is a Soviet apologist, I don't expect we'll see him lambasting them the same way he did the Germans. But the Soviets aren't only to blame. Roosevelt himself forbidding anyone to expose the Soviet responsibility of the Katyn massacre (Maser, pp. 112-113). Churchill was also silent on the matter despite knowing the truth; and an American investigation as early as 1951 proved the exact same thing as the earlier German report, thus proving the validity of the German investigation (Maser, p. 307, n. 61). The Allies may had silently dropped the indictment of German "responsibility" for Katyn, but they still protected the Russians from embarrassment, and sought no justice in the matter. This itself exposes the Western Allies as hypocrites who couldn't have cared less for "justice". These were nothing more than words of propaganda to justify their own actions and vilify their enemies.

Another historian writes:

In some instances of foreign reluctance to believe German allegations, the evidence is still incomplete. When mass graves containing thousands of Polish dead were found at Katyn in 1943 (see Chapter 21), the German and Soviet authorities issued mutual accusations, but the German white book on the matter was generally dismissed as mere Goebbels-style propaganda, and Katyn was incorporated into the Nazi indictment at Nuremberg: “In September 1941, 11,000 Polish officers who were prisoners of war were killed in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk.” The German defense was so strong against this point, however, that eventually the accusation was quietly dropped.

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau 1939-1945 (Maine: Picton Press, 2000), p. XVI.

Rather than the initial German expose of Russian responsibility for Katyn being "lie filled", de Zayas writes that "subsequent non-German inquiries have largely confirmed the results of the German investigations of 1943" (Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, p. 228) and another historian writes that "Most historians of Katyn accept as true the depositions made by local Russians to the German and other investigative commissions at Katyn in spring 1943" (Katyn: A Crime Without Punishment, p. 130) And as de Zaya's chapter on Katyn shows, those neutral parties involved testified at the end of the war that the German investigation was professional, thorough and legitimate.

de Zayas also openly discusses the question of German credibility and finds that all the secret documents from an array of German ministries yields no evidence whatsoever of any "lies" regarding the German claims of Russian responsibility for Katyn:

"Seldom have historians enjoyed the luxury of being able to study official government papers right across the board, as is the case with captured German records from World War II. Although a number of documents were lost in air bombardments or deliberately destroyed in the last days of the war, the historian can nevertheless compare records from the German Foreign Office, Propaganda Ministry, Chancellery Office, Ministry of the Interior, High Command of the Wehrmacht, the legal offices of the armed forces, and so on. Had the Germans “fabricated” the Katyn case and, after murdering the Poles, attempted to pin the blame on the Russians, there would surely have been traces of the hoax. Yet a conscientious examination of many record groups in the German Federal Archives revealed again and again that all German officials in the various ministries and departments were convinced that the nkvd had perpetrated the massacres."

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau 1939-1945 (Maine: Picton Press, 2000), pp. 238-239.

And in no other books have I ever read anyone impugn the credibility of the German investigation.

[Hektor]

Hi Mike,

Just a few points...

Hi. This is Mike Peinovich.

I am indeed scheduled to have a debate with Cockerill. When he first proposed the debate in March of 2020 I made the demand that he furnish me with all documents he planned to use so he could not spring any surprises on me. He then stalled for 18 months before sending me a google drive folder with a few documents and some general questions in September 2021. I told him that since he had taken 18 months to prep, I would take at least as much time to prepare my documents. I am very busy, but I expect sometime in the next 11 months we will have the debate.

One thing I noticed while going back and forth with him over email, is that he could not resist trying to rope me into some kind of debate over something that didn't matter relative to the topic at hand. One example is that he tried to bait me into a debate on Hitler's purported desire to genocide Slavs, which I have not seen any documentary proof for. Presumably he thought to use my Slavic background to shame me for my political views and my refutation of the holocaust narrative. There is something fundamentally slimy about the way he argues, but also stupid. I do not think he is Jewish, which may be why his attempts to argue as if he were fail so badly.

The general consensus I have seen in this thread is that he is puffed up with overconfidence in the mainstream narrative, probably from going to college for so long, and he simply does not take seriously things that refute it. This matches my experience with him. But considering his inability to actually deal with any arguments, his arrogance is completely unwarranted and in fact it is he who is difficult to take seriously.

You all will probably like this. I saw in one other thread that on the topic of KaTyn, he made arguments where he managed to flip the moral question of the massacre around on the Germans and make it as if they did something wrong by extensively documenting the massacre. "They only did this to sow discord between the Poles and Soviets." Frankly, that argument is so brazen it leaves me a bit thunderstruck.

* Limiting debate to topic, specific issues or documents is vital, when debating Holocaust Industry Salesmen. Once cornered to prove a crucial claim, they will try to jump to other issues as to avoid being pinned down on a issue, where they don't have any good answer and of course conflate and extend the debate to make sure any broader audience will lose interest before any conclusion is made.
* Several of the Axis powers were Slavic. In fact Germanies first ally in the Polish-German conflict was Slovakia. Bulgaria is another example and Yugoslavia was close to the Axis as well, with Croatia essentially becoming a client state. That said prior to the events in 1939, Germany also pursuit an alliance with Poland, with whom they actually would have had a number of interest and also economic complementary advantages. This all needs to be omitted and put into the memory whole otherwise the "Hitler-wanted-to-exterminate-anyone-except-blonde-blue-eyed-Aryan-babies".
* Appeal to prejudice and poisoning the well, is the tactic you got to resort to, when someone doesn't want to adhere to a Lie (or unproven story) that got cultural hegemony.
* Yes, their "confidence", rather arrogance stems from the awareness that "virtually anyone, including experts" do profess or at least not dispute believing in the Holocaust and the rest of the narrative. Having had some academic career adds to the Kruger-Dunning effect. Then their hybris doesn't allow them to admit that they have been tricked into believing something without ever having had any sound proof for the allegations. Additionally a lot of the rest of their world view is based on the Holocaust Myth especially for moral justification. The awareness that they'd be ostracized, bullied, doxxed, canceled, persecuted, perhaps even killed, if they "denied the Holocaust" in public for sure makes their decision not to consider to do so a bit easier to them.
* Alleging ulterior motives on the German side for documenting the massacre and also inviting neutral to come for verification is quite rich. Sure, they had a field day with this. But what does he think the motives of them Allies were, when documenting starvation/disease death in concentration camps the 'liberated' since the end of 1944? What was their motive in spreading rumors in this regard in the years before... And well, what their motive in overplaying their hand, by insisting that those expectable death/conditions were evidence for an extermination program against Jews an others?

This is one of the questions he posed in the debate documents, presumably he thinks this is a trap that will own me.

Two main points:

Until Gorbachev declassified the Soviet archives in 1990--thereby releasing a document showing NKVD head Beria’s order to kill the Polish officers--there was no documentary evidence implicating the Soviets for Katyn, excluding spergy (and lie-filled) stuff that came from Goebbels and the Nazis.

At Nuremberg, the Nazis were not convicted for having done Katyn. It is true that, against the protestations of the British and Americans prosecutors, the Soviet prosecutors formally accused the Nazis of doing, the Allied judges found that the allegations against the Nazis were unproven.

(Questions for revisionists/deniers: Why wouldn’t all the Allied judges have found the Nazis responsible for Katyn if Nuremberg was a show trial? Similarly: Why did the Anglo-American judges protest against the inclusion of Katyn in the charges against the Nazis?)

--Matt

Where to even begin? First of all the use of the word "spergy" to describe the German documentation shows that he spends way too much time on internet message boards. Secondly, he says "lie-filled" but does not specify any lies.

That's the biggest problem, when debating Holocaustians, where do you begin when explaining to them that it is propaganda lies and why. It seems telling lots of little lies, garnishing it with some facts and then insert an egg of a big lie into that basked is a feasible strategy.... If you have enough social, media and political power that is.

While the fact that NS-Germany officially accused the USSR for Katyn was an issue, I think for the Americans and Brits, the biggest issue was that they had ears on the ground that affirmed to them the veracity of the claims (Soviets killing thousands of polish POWs). There were also more people in the know and it mattered to them... So pinning Katyn onto the German had the realistic potential of making the accusations in Nuremberg far less credible than they were anyway. Remember, this was a show trial and the primary goal was that the Axis, Nazis, Germans were to be demonized in the maximum way. As to shut up anyone in Allied countries that questioned the merits of the war and hence would possibly create a breeding ground for a power struggle within the elites for hegemony. Of course the Jews wanted to assume the role of "Greates victims of the universe of all times"... And the stipulated goal of "documented Nazi atrocities" was to "Re-educate the Germans on the long run".
This was quite openly admitted in academic journal articles dealing with the matter:
https://archive.org/details/MorrisJanow ... Atrocities

As for the answer to his trick question, it is obvious. Clearly the Americans did not think the German investigation was spergy and lie-filled. And in fact it would have been discrediting for entire enterprise of Nuremberg to try to accuse the Germans of this crime.

But the question itself is emblematic of his entire method. Which is to use poorly constructed logic traps and his own self-perceived authority to dismiss all the basic factual problems with his narrative.

As said, I don't think the American/Brits relied only on German findings. Both would have a spy network on the ground already affirming to them the true matter of events there. Notably that spy network doesn't seem to have confirmed to them industrial scale homicidal gassings. So at least key players in their bureaucracy and highly connected people would have been in the know, which perhaps is the reason that the memoirs of many don't mention this neither.

"Consensus" and "authority" are the key factors in Holocaust Belief... And both of them are logical fallacies. What counts is "Here are all the relevant facts" and "this is what follows logically from them".... There is a reason why Holocaust promoters aim first and foremost for people capacity to think rationally. Which should have any intellectual worth its salt alarm bell's ringing... And perhaps it does.. But most will be rather silent on the issue, since they know what the repercussions for them will be. More convenient to continue to admire the Fuehrer's New Cloths.

[hermod]

The general consensus I have seen in this thread is that he is puffed up with overconfidence in the mainstream narrative, probably from going to college for so long, and he simply does not take seriously things that refute it. This matches my experience with him. But considering his inability to actually deal with any arguments, his arrogance is completely unwarranted and in fact it is he who is difficult to take seriously.

You all will probably like this. I saw in one other thread that on the topic of Kayn, he made arguments where he managed to flip the moral question of the massacre around on the Germans and make it as if they did something wrong by extensively documenting the massacre. "They only did this to sow discord between the Poles and Soviets." Frankly, that argument is so brazen it leaves me a bit thunderstruck.

When they aren't thwarting reason through manipulative emotional intimidation, most antirevisionist/exterminationist propagandists never stop posturing as master astronomers facing flat-earthers. In public debates, they know that their calculated bluff (manufactured moral high ground + undue arrogance & contempt) is enough to fool most uninformed onlookers...

[borjastick]

Don't run the plow too deep this isn't rocket science. Just keep asking the idiot the same simple questions and then ask him again and again for he won't answer or cannot answer them.

Simple questions like these:
Where are the bodies? Repeat, rinse and wash again.
Why were no rooms claimed as gas chambers capable of being so? Rinse and repeat.
Where were the means and technical support systems to cremate over 1 million bodies in warp speed with absolutely no remains to be found, ever?
Would you agree that as three of the six claimed 'death camps' had nothing left when 'liberated' they should be thoroughly excavated to ascertain what exactly lies beneath?

You are clever enough to focus in on these and a few other very simple basic questions. getting involved in irrelevant minutiae is just inviting massive obfuscation and turns the academic debate into a clown show.

Or alternatively take the Borjastick approach and tell him that if he is that fucking stupid to believe the holohoax your time is way too valuable to waste on pond life like him. Personally debating these monkeys gets you nowhere.

[Otium]

Cockerill has discussed this thread in some interview on April 14th alleging he isn't Gl0spana.

Make of this what you will.

I would also recommend this episode of TRS in which this thread is also discussed: https://therightstuff.biz/2022/04/13/tds880/ (Starts at: 01:39:37) Cockerill alleges that the TRS guys and even Ryan Faulk are afraid of him. He mentions that he "speaks German" and that this makes him smart; and that he's actually a "really nice guy". Why this is important who knows. Apparently they "refused" to talk with him, which as far as I know is a straight up lie.

He alleges his arguments are compelling (which they're not) which is why we have to respond to him, as if merely by responding we somehow "prove" his arguments are as he says they are, convincing and compelling. Obviously this is nonsense.

He claims that his "evidence" isn't just diaries. He claims the Einsatzgruppen reports prove the Holocaust, the Stroop Report, and of course "contemporaneous diaries from high level officials talking about the extermination of the Jews". He alleges there's "demographic data" and cites the "huge gap in deportees to the camps and those who were liberated at the end of the war which cannot be explained" (i.e. he assumes everyone who died in a camp, went missing, was moved was murdered, which is nonsense for obvious reasons). And on and on and on it goes.

He also alleges that Sean McMeekin is a "propagandist", which is beyond absurd. Nothing McMeekin wrote is new to research, and all of his sources are completely legitimate and known to research albeit hotly debated in some cases. For anyone aware of the primary source evidence that McMeekin discusses to allege he is peddling "propaganda" is itself a propagandistic smear to try and poison the well on what McMeekin wrote, much of which is common sense.

Fundamentally, McMeekin's argument is essentially the same one which is (wrongly) attributed to Hitler. That he had a long term plan to conquer the world for Communist revolution, which is evidenced by decades of utterances which are well known and documented. Although in Stalin's case much more and certainly more explicitly than the evidence used to prove any "program" Hitler was allegedly following. This "program" is now not believed to be a thoroughly worked out plan but an intuitive scheme based on the desire to reach an end result which Hitler already had in mind. Which was allegedly the conquering of "Lebensraum" at the expense of Russia. This argument is easily replicated in terms of Soviet Foreign policy, and supported more so by the evidence which exists. Anyone who seriously believes Hitler was following a "program" by the same logic must conclude the same thing about the Soviet Union, to whom 'world revolution' was the most fundamental of ideological pillars. Of course Communist apologists oppose the same logic being applied to their sacred cows because it destroys them.

Even if this is disputed, the reality of the Russian co-responsibility for the second world war is an unimpugnable fact; for it was the Soviet support Hitler relied on (willingly given, and eagerly sought by the Soviets) to pull the trigger on Poland in the first place and which he used to try and hopefully limit the extent of the war at least in the West.⋆ However this ignores the irresponsibility of the declaration of war given by the Western Powers who were, by their own admission, incapable of helping Poland and unable to win the war without expanding it into a world war. Hitler, as is evidenced from many of his "secret" speeches relies on this fact to his advantage in order to avoid a world war, not start one.⋆⋆ This was not something Hitler wanted, even if Cockerill and his ilk pretend that he "started" it. Which he didn't. The guilt lies with the West who resolved to fight an unwinnable local war, which could only be won by plunging the world into a bloodbath.

He also alleges that McMeekin "grossly exaggerates the number of people's killed by the Soviet Union in occupied Eastern Europe during the war". This is again, without any proof, and of course displays gross ignorance as to the state of the literature which would actually agree with McMeekin.⋆⋆⋆ And then he states that the "great Soviet crimes were committed against Soviet citizens", which totally ignores the fact that, as the historian Frank Ellis recognized, "land, assets, installations, and, above all, people do not suddenly become “Soviet” merely because a totalitarian regime in Moscow invades and annexes territory" (Frank Ellis, Barbarossa 1941: Reframing Hitler's Invasion of Stalin's Soviet Empire (University Press of Kansas, 2015), pp. 301-302). Thus it seems to hide the Soviet crimes against eastern Europeans Cockerill distinguishes those millions murdered by Stalin as not the result of territorial aggression but "domestic" mass murder, an absurd argument indeed. He then asserts that "this is why Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe was the lesser evil than German conquest, since the aim of the German war was ethnic cleansing". This is an unfalsifiable claim with no basis in fact. In none of the evidence preceding any German expansion either into Poland or the rest of Eastern Europe is "ethnic cleansing" or even "Lebensraum" given as a reason by Hitler. Territorial reorganization did involve some degree of deportation/assimilation, but this was not the aim, it was very much the result of the decision to incorporate certain areas into the Greater German Reich. The aim of this reorganization and deportation was to settle Germans for occupation of that space, which even to literally every mainstream historian is Hitler's alleged primary motivation (lebensraum), not "ethnic cleansing". Even though the evidence actually shows this decision for increased "lebensraum" only came as a result of these conquests because of the war Hitler was forced to wage, and then continue fighting long after he wished it to be over. In order to distinguish this so-called "aim" of "ethnic cleansing" to try and justify what the Soviets did and make it appear as the "lesser evil", Cockerill asserts that the "aim of the Soviet Union was to impose Marxist-Leninism on these societies and reconstitute the Russian empire", which is supposed to be less horrific a motivation, even though it ignores that the inherent by-product of imposing Marxist-Leninism would involve mass murder and ethnic cleansing; which is exactly what occurred (as Cockerill admits) in Russia, and other countries over the years. It happened in countries like Poland and Germany, where millions of the latter for example, were displaced at the end of the war, and about 3 million died as a result. So in reality the "aim" of "imposing Marxist-Leninism" involved state violence, terror and mass murder, which was fundamental to achieving the Communist "utopia".

The allegation that the Soviets were trying merely to re-establish the old Russian borders, as if the Germans couldn't say the same thing is absurd. The Germans then, had the right not only to conquer Czechoslovakia, but also Poland. Yet he still complains about this as a unique "evil". And even if, as Cockerill would claim, that the Germans planned to extend their Eastern empire beyond those borders which were originally the German Reich, he would be ignoring the fact that Germans have historically seen themselves as destined to partake in a Drang Nach Osten, which is just as historically justified as the initial Russian colonial expansion which was not conducted on the basis of any former line of conquest, as most conquest is initially the expansion into the unknown. The Germans may well have sought to conquer until the farthest reaches of that achieved by the Holy Roman Empire, or even beyond, it wouldn't matter since the matter under discussion is whether conquest is right or not. If conquest is wrong because it means people lose their own national autonomy, then you cannot possibly justify Soviet conquest along the lines of the former Russian empire as being any more or less reprehensible than new conquests conducted by the Germans (or even the Russians) which achieve the same fundamental result of subjugation. Does Cockerill really intend to pretend that it makes one iota of a difference to those being conquered by Russians whether they had previously been conquered by Russia in the past? I doubt they would feel very consoled by that argument, seeing as they were losing their own autonomy anyway. This of course doesn't even consider the fact that Russian Communism is hardly the same regime as that which formerly governed the previous Russian Empire, and that it cannot be expected to have gone undistinguished by those unlucky souls who would fall under the Communist yoke.

I think the funniest thing he said is that McMeekin is "biased" and a "polemicist". When all you'd need to do is read Cockerill's own article to see his bias and read his own polemics. Ironically agaisnt McMeekin! Of course this is ubiquitous among writers on Hitler and World War Two as well. His double standards are astounding. To prove his own assertion, which is hypocritical to its core, he asserts his own bias by saying that McMeekin is "obviously trying to deflate what the Nazis did, and inflate what the Soviet Union did." Of course offering no such proof that this was his intent. Without proof this is itself the definition of polemical supposition and bias. If Cockerill didn't want to maintain that "the Nazis" were responsible then he wouldn't be insulting McMeekin the way he does. That he did do this in such a way as to make it clear that he believes McMeekin is reprehensible, he must also reveal his own biased beliefs.

⋆This is admitted by historians like Andreas Hillgruber for example, who wrote that "At the beginning [of the war], Hitler probably believed that he could impress Great Britain in two ways so strongly that it would be forced to give in. . . during the first two weeks of September, Ribbentrop tried to persuade the Soviet Union to intervene militarily against Poland. Hitler obviously thought that Great Britain would then either be forced to declare war on the Soviet Union as well, or else . . . would refrain from doing so and, under the impression of the then de facto existing arms alliance between Germany and the Soviet Union, would be prepared to come to an arrangement with him. . ." Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie: Politik und Kriegführung 1940-1941 (München: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1982), p. 41. McMeekin actually concurs with this in his so-called "propaganda book". For the record, Hillgruber is one of the masterminds behind the "war of extermination in the east" and "programmatic war plan" Hitler was supposed to be following. A view not taken particularly seriously anymore. Or at least, is shifted a bit and contextualised along with other factors which were mainly strategic.
⋆⋆ eg. on August 22 Hitler is to have said "No one is counting on a long war. . . It is nonsense to say that England wants to wage a long war." DGFP, D, VII, Doc. 192, p. 204. And on August 29th, according to Halder's diary "The impression received is that Britain is "soft" on the issue of a major war", War Journal of Franz Halder, Vol. 1, p. 37. This allowed him to draw the conclusion that Britain wouldn't seriously commit to war due to her inability to aid Poland. Of course Hitler wasn't to know as yet that the Allies would indeed aspire to a world war in order to defeat him.
⋆⋆⋆ For example the incredibly prominent and respected German historian Rolf-Dieter Müller, an establishment historian for the German government, who wrote for the Military History Research Office (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt) wrote that "[Soviet] Partisans killed more Soviet citizens than German soldiers did." Rolf-Dieter Müller, The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), p. XXVII. This is a fact which other historians also concur. Either Frank Ellis or John Mosier come to mind immediately.