FYS: Denying the Holocaust Exam

What role has Willis Carto played in the phenomenon of Holocaust denial?

• Willis Allison Carto was…

  • A leading proponent of Holocaust denial

  • The owner of the Legion for the Survival of Freedom Inc., which owns Noontide Press, a.k.a., the founder and owner of the Institute of Historical Review.

• IHR was heavily dependent on Carto financially and had to admit to the public their financial difficulties when Carto withdrew his financial backing. \

(pgs. 141 - 142)

What work (published in 1976) is described by Evans as the “first attempt to present Holocaust denial in pseudo-academic form?” What are its specific claims about the bombing of Dresden, life at Auschwitz, and the use of Zyklon?

• The Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur R. Butz was published in 1976

  • The first attempt to present Holocaust denial in a pseudo-academic form

• The book argues that…

  • The Allied bombing of Dresden produced more corpses than had ever been found in the camps

  • Zyklon-B gas was used strictly as an insecticide

  • Auschwitz was an industrial plant, where the deaths there were mainly caused by typhus, and no gassings took place

(pgs. 106 - 107)

Who was Kurt Daleuge? What role does he play in Evans’ attack on Irving as a fabricator and manipulator of the historical record?

• Kurt Daleuge was a committed Nazi who had joined the NSDAP in 1926 and entered the SS in 1930

• Daleuge’s conference was a propaganda exercise about Jews in criminal activities, designed to justify the brutal Nazi persecution of the German Jews

  • Claimed that Germany did not pose a danger on the Jews, but that the Jews threatened Germany

  • antisemitic propaganda by a Nazi is useless as a statistical source

• Irving presented Daleuge’s propaganda as an objective source and even failed to cite Daleuge’s figures correctly

  • Daleuge claimed that 31,000 fraud cases in 1933 related to Jews

  • Irving claimed that 31,000 fraud cases, mainly insurance swindles, in 1932 related to Jews

    • there were 74 insurance swindle crimes, Jewish and non-Jewish, in all of Germany in 1932

(pgs. 50 - 52)

Why does Evans use the example of David Abraham’s work, The Collapse of the Weimar Republic, in his chapter “Judgement Day?” How do the errors in Abraham’s research differ from those of Irving’s?

• Abraham had been accused of falsifying and inventing documents

• The Collapse of the Weimar Republic contained numerous errors

  • Abraham did the research and confessed that it was hasty, sloppy, and undermined by his lack of German knowledge, admitting his mistakes

• Irving claimed his research was meticulous and that his knowledge of German was excellent, never admitting his mistakes

• Evans uses this example in “Judgement Day” to explain the difference between a true historian and a falsifier, and why Irving did not win the trial

(pgs. 247 - 248)

What “serious charges” did Deborah Lipstadt make against David Irving in Denying the Holocaust?

Lipstadt referred to Irving in her book as:

• “discredited”

• “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial”

• “he bends [historical evidence] until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda”

• “neofacist”

• “denial connections”

• “misstate, misquote, falsify statistics, and falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources”

• “an ardent admirer of the Nazi leader who declared that Hitler repeatedly reached out to help the Jews”

• “conceives himself as carrying on Hitler’s legacy”

(pg. 6)

What is the significance of the date 30 November 1941 for Evans’ argument that Irving is a Holocaust denier?

• Irving used entries of a phone log kept by SS leader and German Police Chief Heinrich Himmler to show that Hitler was not responsible for the mass killings of German Jews, specifically an entry made on 30 November 1941

  • Irving claimed that Hitler had ordered that there was to be no liquidation of the Jews in this phone entry

  • The real subject of the conversation in the phone log was between Heydrich and Himmler and concerned one transport of Jews from Berlin

  • The phone log didn’t contain any general order from anyone to stop killing the Jews, and did not include Hitler in any way

(pgs. 78 - 80)

What is the “Schlegelberger memorandum,” and why does Evans conclude that this memorandum is one more document in Irving’s “chain of contradictions?”

• The “Schlegelberger memorandum” was State Secretary Franz Schlegelberger’s record of a meeting with Hans Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, after the Wannsee Conference concerning half-Jews and mixed marriages

• Irving implied that the Final Solution was the total extermination of all Jews in Europe, meaning that Hitler would’ve known about the Final Solution’s existence, supporting the opposite of his own claim

  • Evans claimed that Irving’s chain of documents was more of a chain of contradictions

(pgs. 84 - 86)

What place is described by Evans as “the deadliest of all concentration camps?”

• Evans declares Mauthausen concentration camp to be the deadliest

  • Mauthausen was the only grade III concentration camp, intended to deal with the worst category of prisoner

  • Deportation to Mauthausen was a death sentence, often by forced labor

• Hitler ordered Roman Jews to be sent there and held hostage

(pgs. 96, 101)

Who was Herschel Grynszpan? What role did he play in one of the key events that Irving falsifies?

• Herschel Grynszpan was a 17-year-old Polish Jew who shot a German diplomat in a German Embassy in Paris on 7 November

• A few days later, the Reichskristallnacht occurred, which Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi politician, claimed was a spontaneous public outburst from the shooting, when it was really a coordinated attack by the Nazis

  • Irving agrees that the pogrom was spontaneous and claimed that Hitler did not approve of it and only found out about the pogrom while it was underway, trying to end it

(pgs. 52 - 53)

What is TB 47? Why is it of critical importance for understanding how Irving manipulates and distorts evidence?

• TB 47, short for Order of the Day no. 47, was dated 22 March 1945 and introduced itself as a brief extract from the concluding statement of the Police President of Dresden

• Irving’s copy of TB 47 put the final death toll of the bombing at Dresden at 202,040 and that it would rise to 250,000

  • Irving went to the press with this document before even confirming if the source was legit

• The document from which TB 47 claimed to be an extract was found with an identifiable signature and was stamped secret

  • This claimed 18,375 had fallen, 2,212 badly wounded, and 13,718 slightly wounded; much lower numbers than Irving’s data

(pgs. 152, 155, 167)

Who supplied the only surviving copy of minutes of the Wannsee Conference, and who is selectively quoted by Irving to support his position that Hitler was not aware of the Final Solution?

• Adolf Eichmann wrote the minutes for the Wannsee Conference

• Irving claimed that Eichmann got confused about what he really recalled and what he had been told

• Irving stated that he didn’t believe you can describe anything as “extermination machinery” other than the ad hoc efforts of the criminals and murderers among the SS who were carrying out liquidations

  • A familiar part of the litany of Holocaust denial

(pg. 128)

Who is Richard Rampton? What role did he play in the Irving v. Lipstadt trial?

• Richard Rampton is the defense counsel QC representing Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in the Irving v. Lipstadt libel trial

• He was responsible for conducting the courtroom case against Irving, cross-examining Irving directly, and presenting expert historical evidence demonstrating Irving’s distortions of the Holocaust

(pgs. 192, 198)

What were the “Hitler diaries?” Did Irving believe they were authentic or forgeries?

• German weekly Stern had extracts of diaries written by Hitler and declared them to be authentic

• Irving came in contact with the diaries through August Priesack, an old Nazi

• Irving appeared at a Stern press conference and denounced them as fakes

• Was proven right through tests done by the German Federal Archives

• Diaries were forged by Konrad Kujau, who was sent to prison

• A couple of days after the press conference, Irving changed his mind and declared that they weren’t forgeries, mainly because “the diaries did not contain any evidence to suggest that Hitler was aware of the Holocaust”

  • He also claimed that there were too many pages of the diary to forge, and that they looked a lot more convincing up close than he had expected

(pgs. 19 - 20)

Which California-based organization was seen by Evans as justifying Lipstadt’s claim that Irving “maintained ties to Holocaust deniers?”

• The Institute for Historical Review, the leading Holocaust denial organization in the US, is stationed in California

• Irving spoke at many conferences at the IHR and was a frequent visitor

  • In kahoots with Holocaust deniers

(pg. 218)

Who are Donald Cameron Watt and John Keegan? What role did each play in the Irving v. Lipstadt trial?

• Donald Cameron Watt was a retired professor of international history at the London School of Economics

• John Keegan was a former teacher at a military academy and is now the defense editor of The Daily Telegraph

• Watt and Keegan testified on behalf of Irving

  • Keegan believed Irving was a sound historian who stuck to the facts and who only had perverse opinions on the issue of whether or not Hitler knew about the extermination of the Jews

  • Watt proclaimed that most professional historians considered Irving to be a reputable historian and that Irving’s use of sources—though sometimes controversial—still fell within the bounds of legitimate historical practice

• Watt and Keegan’s testimonies, however, were not strong enough to challenge the overwhelming evidence of Irving’s manipulation of sources.

(pgs. 240 - 244)

Extra Credit: Who is James Roth, and what role did he play in the trial of Ernst Zundel?

• James Roth is a chemist and the laboratory manager at Alpha Analytical Laboratories in Massachusetts

• Zündel commissioned Leuchter to collect samples from structures at Auschwitz, who then sent the samples to Roth’s lab for chemical analysis

• At the 1988 trial, Roth testified that his tests showed “either no detection or only trace levels of cyanide” in the samples from the alleged gas chambers