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Lamprecht wrote:Why didn't the Nazis deny the existence of gas chambers if there weren't any? They often claim they were just "Following orders" from Hitler/Himmler - instead of asking for proof in the trials.
PatrickSMcNally wrote:Lamprecht wrote:Why didn't the Nazis deny the existence of gas chambers if there weren't any? They often claim they were just "Following orders" from Hitler/Himmler - instead of asking for proof in the trials.
You may do better if you start by asking why didn't the accused witches deny the existence of witchcraft if there wasn't any? Butz discusses some of the analogies between the witchcraft trials and the warcrimes trials. You might want to reread what he has to say on that. In the context of the postwar trials as they were done, there was no chance of acquital based upon a plea of "It didn't happen your honor!" The only practical defense strategy which any lawyer could advise in that type of context was to simply plead that "My client was only following orders" without disputing the general claims made. If you disputed the general claims, you went to the gallows without a doubt. If you accepted the general claims and agreed to testify in support of them, then you might have a chance of receiving a reduced sentence as a low-level accessory. As a defense strategy this made the most sense, although in retrospect it's easy to argue that we'd be better off if more people had disputed the main claims at an early stage.
KostasL wrote:If you read all of Lamprecht's post,
That must be German because I don't understand it. I thought they were electrocuted and steamed to death with a paddle whacking machine at Nuremberg.
Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-ruled Poland, testified that during the war he had heard only rumors and foreign reports of mass killings of Jews. He asked other officials, including Hitler, about these stories and was repeatedly assured that they were false.98
Frank's testimony is particularly noteworthy because if millions of Jews had actually been exterminated in Germanoccupied Poland, as alleged, hardly anyone would have been in a better position to know about it. During the course of the trial, Frank was overcome by a deep sense of Christian repentance. His psychological state was such that if he had known about an extermination program, he would have said so.
At one point during the proceedings, Frank was asked by his attorney, "Did you ever take part in any way in the annihilation of Jews?" His reply reflects his emotional state at the time:99I say yes, and the reason why I say yes is because, under the impression of these five months of the proceedings, and especially under the impression of the testimony of the witness [former Auschwitz commandant] Höss, I cannot answer to my conscience to shift the responsibility for this solely on these low-level people. I never built a Jewish extermination camp or helped to bring one into existence. But if Adolf Hitler personally shifted this terrible responsibility onto his people, than it also applies to me. After all, we carried on this struggle against Jewry for years ... And therefore I have the duty to answer your question in this sense and in this context with yes. A thousand years will pass and this guilt of Germany will not be erased.
These words, and especially the final sentence, have often been quoted to give the impression that the defendants themselves admitted their guilt and acknowledged the existence of a wartime German policy to exterminate the Jews.100 Less well-known are Frank's words during his final address to the Tribunal:101
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Weberb.html
Letters To The 'New Statesman'
(which were never published)
MESSRS. BUTZ, FAURISSON, VERRALL
The following letters were mailed to the editor of the New Statesman, 10 Great Turnstile, London WC1V 7HJ, Great Britain, following the publication of an article attacking Revisionism on 2 November 1979, by Gitta Sereny.
18 November 1979
Dear Sir:
In general Gitta Sereny's few substantive arguments (NS, 2 November) are answered in my book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Here I wish to focus on one point that, in view of her remarks, can be profitably developed: supposed "confessions" of German officials, either at trials or in imprisonment after trials.
The key point is that the objective served by such statements should be presumed to be personal interest rather than historical truth. At a "trial" some specific thing is to be tried, i.e. the court is supposed to start by treating that thing as an open question.
The "extermination" allegation has never been at question in any practical sense in any of the relevant trials, and in some it has not been open to question in a formal legal sense. The question was always only personal responsibility in a context in which the extermination allegation was unquestionable. Thus the "confessions" of Germans, which in all cases sought to deny or mitigate personal responsibility, were merely the only defenses they could present in their circumstances.
This is not exactly "plea-bargaining", where there is negotiation between prosecution and defense, but it is related. All it amounts to is presenting a story that it was possible for the court to accept. The logical dilemma is inescapable once the defendant resolves to take the "trial" seriously. To deny the legend was not the way to stay out of jail.
Moreover it is not true, as Sereny implicitly asserts, that this logical dilemma no longer holds when the defendant is serving a life sentence. If he is seeking pardon or parole, he would not try to overturn what has already been decided in court; that is not the way pardon or parole works. For example, at the Frankfurt "Auschwitz trial" of 1963-1965, so monstrous were the supposed deeds of Robert Mulka that many thought his sentence to 14 years at hard labor unduly light. Then, in a denouement that would amaze all who have not studied this subject closely, Mulka was quietly released less than four months later. However, if Mulka had claimed in any plea (as he could have truthfully), either at his trial or afterwards, that there were no exterminations at Auschwitz and that he was in a position to know, then he would have served a full life sentence in the former case and the full fourteen years in the latter, if he lived that long.
It is not widely known, but there have been many such instances - the subject is hard to investigate[1]. In no instance would it have made any sense, in terms of immediate self interest, to deny the exterminations. That was not the way to get out of jail.
A related point is that it can be quite perilous, to put it mildly, for any German to question the Extermination legend. For example Dr. Wilhelm Stäglich, who was stationed near Auschwitz in 1944 in an anti-aircraft unit, has published such opinion, and has been subjected to legally formulated persecution ever since.[2] Even I, an American, have been the victim of the official repression in Germany.[3] There is also the considerable extra-legal repression that e.g. caused Axel Springer, West German "press czar" and supposedly a powerful man, to withdraw the first edition of Hellmut Diwald's Geschichte der Deutschen, as Sereny mentioned.
We do not need "confessions" or "trials" to determine that the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, or the reprisals at Lidice following Heydrich's assassination, really took place.
Now, the extermination legend does not claim a few instances of homicide, but alleges events continental in geographical scope, of three years in temporal scope, and of several million in scope of victims. How ludicrous, then, is the position of the bearers of the legend, who in the last analysis will attempt to "prove" such events on the basis of "confessions" delivered under the fabric of hysteria, censorship, intimidation, persecution and blatant illegality that has been shrouding this subject for 35 years.
I have enclosed photocopies of the referenced documentation for your examination.
Sincerely
Dr. Arthur R. Butz
[1] Los Angeles Herald Examiner, 2 September 1979, p. E2.
[2] Die Zeit, 25 May 1979, p. 5.
[3] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 16 June 1979, p. 23.
The sham courts established 'judicial notice' on the gas chambers, which meant they were accepted as fact by the court without ever providing proof, simple as that. This sham 'judicial notice' made any defense against the gas chambers claim impossible. And to hedge their bets, the Alllies had various means at their disposal.
American judge, van Roden:"Statements admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four and five months..The investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head, punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him and beat him with rubber hoses"
Judge van Roden's allegation of torture to gain "confessions" is confirmed by Texas Supreme Court Judge, Gordon Simpson. He confirmed that savage beatings, smashing of testicles, and months of solitary confinement occurred.
- Congressional Record, appendix. v. 95,sec.12, 3/10/49The prisoner was torn from the top bunk, the pyjamas ripped from his body. He was then dragged naked to one of the slaughter tables, where it seemed to [Bernard] Clarke the blows and screams were endless. Eventually, the Medical Officer urged the Captain: 'Call them off, unless you want to take back a corpse.'"(12)
- 12.R. Butler, Legions of Death, Hamlyn, (London, 1983), p.237
Ernst Kaltenbrunner, wartime head of the powerful Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), was certain that he would soon be put to death regardless of the evidence presented to the Tribunal: "The colonel in charge of the London prison that I was in has told me that I would be hanged in any case, no matter what the outcome would be. Since I am fully aware of that, all I want to do is to clear up on the fundamental things that are wrong here." In a question-and-answer exchange, Kaltenbrunner rejected the charge that he had ordered gassings:102
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.Until his death in 1981, Speer steadfastly insisted that he did not know of any extermination program or gassings during the war. His position was remarkable because, if a wartime policy to exterminate the Jews had actually existed, almost no one would have been in a better position to have known about it. As Reich Armaments Minister, Speer was responsible for the continental mobilization of all available resources, including critically needed Jewish workers. That millions of Jews could have been transported across Europe and killed at a wartime industrial center as important as Auschwitz, and elsewhere, without Speer's knowledge simply defies belief.103
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p167_Weberb.html
Lt. Col. Ellis and Lt Perl of the Prosectution pleaded that it was difficult to obtain competant evidence. Perl told the court, "We had a tough case to crack and we had to use persuasive methods."
He admitted to the court that the persuasive methods included various "expedients, including some violence and mock trials." He further told the court that the cases rested on statements obtained by such methods.
The statements which were admitted as evidence were obtained from men who had first been kept in solitary confinement for three, four, and, five months. They were confined between four walls, with no windows, and no opportunity of exercise. Two meals a day were shoved in to them through a slot in the door. They were not allowed to talk to anyone. They had no communication with their families or any minister or priest during that time.
This solitary confinement proved sufficient in itself in some cases to persuade the Germans to sign prepared statements. These statements not only involved the signer, but often would involve other defendants.
Our investigators would put a black hood over the accused's head and then punch him in the face with brass knuckles, kick him, and beat him with rubber hose. Many of the German defendants had teeth knocked out. Some had their jaws broken. All but two of the Germans, in the 139 cases we investigated, had been kicked in the testicles beyond repair. This was Standard Operating Procedure with American investigators. Perl admitted use of mock trials and persuasive methods including violence and said the court was free to decide the weight to be attached to evidence thus received.
One 18 year old defendant, after a series of beatings. was writing a statement being dictated to him. When they reached the 16th page, the boy was locked up for the night. In the early morning, Germans in nearby cells heard him muttering. "I will not utter another lie." When the jailer came in later to get him to finish his false statement, he found the German hanging from a cell bar, dead. However the statement that the German had hanged himself to escape signing was offered and received in evidence in the trial of the others.
Sometimes a prisoner who refused to sign was led into a dimly lit room, where a group of civilian investigators, wearing U. S. Army uniforms. were seated around a black table with a crucifix in the center and two candles burning, one on each aide. "You will now have your American trial," the defendant was told. The sham court passed a sham sentence of death. Then the accused was told, "You will hang in a few days, as soon as the general approves this sentence: but in the meantime sign this confession and we can get you acquitted." Some still wouldn't sign. We were shocked by the crucifix being used so mockingly.
In another case, a bogus Catholic priest (actually an investigator) entered the cell of one of the defendants, heard his confession, gave him absolution, and then gave him a little friendly tip: "Sign whatever the investigators ask you to sign. It will get you your freedom. Even though it's false, I can give you absolution now in advance for the lie you'd tell."
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