How and why was the Holocaust story created?

[Berxwedan jiyane]

Here's my theory:

Initially the inmates were well fed and looked after. However the Allied powers bombed Germany's food supplies which meant food had to be rationed and was mostly redirected to soldiers fighting on the frontline. Britain, too, had to ration it's food resources, although Germany took a harder blow. So the people of Germany starved. So too did the camps inmates, leading them to believe that they were being purposely exterminated. Starvation and disease would of course lead to a high death rate in the camps, but that was the fault of the Allies who had destroyed much of Germany's food supplies.

When the Allies eventually freed the campmates they learned of this irrational speculation, and decided they will continue to pedal this lie to cover for their own war crimes. What did this lie serve for the Allied powers? Remember the outrage caused by the war in Iraq to overthrow the tyrant dictator Saddam Hussein? Now imagine how angry people would have remained over the Allies' pointless war against Hitler and the lives lost, both at home and abroad! The leaders had believed the people would support the war through blind patriotism but given the cost, it needed justification.

That's my theory. What's yours?

[Hektor]

There were motive, means and opportunity to create atrocity stories indeed. And its exactly pretty self-evident how that happened. The participants did however have particular motives for this. Indeed for Allies it was demonizing the enemy and justifying the war effort. For leftists and political opponents of NS, it was to disparage their most virulent enemy at the time. It also served to distract from their own atrocious behavior, which became more palatable once they had established that Hitler was some 'incarnation of evil'. The Jews had their secularized national Myth they urgently needed for a number of purposes like group cohesion, motivation to Zionism and shielding them from harsh critique of their behavior.

Now the counterargument is going to be that "This is a conspiracy theory", but its really a lame argument once one demythologizes the whole loaded term of "Conspiracy Theorist"... Which is just another mode of dishonest communication... Any Prosecutor solving a murder case is sort of a 'conspiracy theorist'... Does that mean there are no murders happening?

[Berxwedan jiyane]

It was a narrative that suited all parties concerned; Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin to portray themselves as liberators rather than warmongers, the Zionists to garner sympathy for their cause, etc,. It is a narrative that, to this day, is an imprisonable offence to deny in Germany. I'm sure this policy was imposed on Germany by the Allies when they partitioned it amongst themselves after the war.

[Eduardo]

It was a narrative that suited all parties concerned; Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin to portray themselves as liberators rather than warmongers, the Zionists to garner sympathy for their cause, etc,. It is a narrative that, to this day, is an imprisonable offence to deny in Germany. I'm sure this policy was imposed on Germany by the Allies when they partitioned it amongst themselves after the war.

This narrative is not only an imprisonable offence in Germany but also in a growing number of countries. The holocaust is the new XXIst century religion to which even the traditional religions consider in their praying.

[Berxwedan jiyane]

It was a narrative that suited all parties concerned; Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin to portray themselves as liberators rather than warmongers, the Zionists to garner sympathy for their cause, etc,. It is a narrative that, to this day, is an imprisonable offence to deny in Germany. I'm sure this policy was imposed on Germany by the Allies when they partitioned it amongst themselves after the war.

This narrative is not only an imprisonable offence in Germany but also in a growing number of countries. The holocaust is the new XXIst century religion to which even the traditional religions consider in their praying.

Soon to be followed by Canada

[Hektor]

It was a narrative that suited all parties concerned; Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin to portray themselves as liberators rather than warmongers, the Zionists to garner sympathy for their cause, etc,. It is a narrative that, to this day, is an imprisonable offence to deny in Germany. I'm sure this policy was imposed on Germany by the Allies when they partitioned it amongst themselves after the war.

("Denying"?) This narrative is not only an imprisonable offence in Germany but also in a growing number of countries. The holocaust is the new XXIst century religion to which even the traditional religions consider in their praying.

Definitely more mythical power than anything else on the planet. And it's a transcendent type of belief, regardless of denomination, creed or whether one is theistic or not.


Creation was 'hard work', but mostly opportunistic... Simply collect all tales and connect them with fragments deemed to be useful and then construct a master narrative from it. Repetition, Innuendo and Association does do the rest there. Doable, if one got the financial backing, connection and willing collaborators in it. As they do have in the postwar German cultural and political establishment.

[Eduardo]

every relevant power in the present-day has some advantage thanks to the holocaust. The recourse to the holocaust has allowed even to have some saints in the catholic church. Protestants have Bonhöffer, despite that they always tell a part of his story. Some philosophers try to demonstrate their atheism on the basis of the Holocaust an so on.
In the past Christ, was the foundational myth of the western civilization. Today the Holocaust is the corner stone of the modern world. That’s why every 27th january even the chineese govt remembers the holocaust. This is also why they defend with such energy and wrath the oficial history.

[Da tester]

New here but I heard a story from a vet that the Allie’s dropped leaflets over the ghettos saying that the Germans were gassing people based of the t-4 program. I guess the objective was to create chaos in the ghettos and give the Germans more to deal with.
Apparently that rumor spread (shower room gassing etc) that the Germans planned to kill off the rest of the Jews that way. Many Jews admit that they saw no such abuses committed but had heard rumors.
My honest opinion is the whole thing was allies started the rumor but didn’t think much of it. Towards the end of the war the soviets ran with that piece of info and pushed it as fact.

[Lamprecht]

My honest opinion is the whole thing was allies started the rumor but didn’t think much of it. Towards the end of the war the soviets ran with that piece of info and pushed it as fact.

Gassing was something kind of new, at least to public knowledge. Chemical warfare via gassing had been used prior to World War I, but that was when it got really bad with many soldiers ending up with long-term health problems due to gas attacks, including Hitler himself. After WWI ended, the Geneva Protocol was signed, completely banning the use of poison gas. Most of the people alive during WWII would have remembered the use of poison gas in WWI and how controversial it is. Even though it was banned, certain countries were accused of using poison gas against people in the inter-war period.
If you're going to fabricate testimony about mass executions at the concentration camps, you're going to have to explain how it was done. Bullets wouldn't have made much sense: why send Jews across Europe to camps just to shoot them?
So all of these other stories were invented. Sometimes it wasn't gas chambers, but steam or electric chambers. There were all sorts of conflicting stories, but they stuck with the gas chambers.
At the time, gas chambers had been used to execute convicted prisoners, so it's not like these "eyewitnesses" invented the idea.
There were also propaganda reports being made during the war by communist, Jewish, and Polish resistance groups, supposedly based on testimony of prisoners in the camps. Some of these featured stories about gas chambers and other ridiculous execution methods. The Allied press reported this atrocity propaganda as fact.