Holocaust: Hoax or History?
Abstract: Holocaust denial is on the rise, and demands a careful, articulate response. I review the evidence for and against the occurrence of the Holocaust, demonstrating the historical validity of the three major facets of the Holocaust: (1) gas chambers used for murder, (2) the death of 6,000,000 Jews, and (3) the intentionality of (1) and (2) on the part of Nazi Germany.
Written: May 5th, 2014.
From time to time, a group will arise denying some element of common knowledge, claiming the public has been duped by some powerful and influential group into believing a lie. For example, some people claim the Earth is flat, and NASA has been hiding this fact from people for years. Or again, some say Jesus had a wife and even kids, but that His bloodline has been protected and hidden in France by the Catholic Church for the last two thousand years. Today, a new extremist group has arisen, claiming that the Holocaust is a hoax. They claim that only about a few hundred thousand Jews died, not six million. Further, the few thousand that did die did not do so as a result of being put in gas chambers, but by starvation and disease in temporary camps for prisoners of war. But as fervently as Holocaust deniers may present their case, such ideas are ludicrous, and the Holocaust rests firmly on historical bedrock.
When historians speak about the Holocaust, they mean “that about six million Jews were killed in an intentional and systematic fashion by the Nazis using a number of different means, including gas chambers.” Therefore, in order to show that the Holocaust occurred, evidence will be presented that (1) gas chambers existed in Jewish concentration camps and were used for the purpose of murder, (2) about 6,000,000 Jews died as a result of the action of the Nazis against them, and (3) the premeditated intention of the Nazis to exterminate all Jewish people.
One of the hallmark claims of the Holocaust deniers is that gas chambers were never used to kill people, but only to kill lice infecting prisoners’ clothing. Interesting as this idea may be, it is completely false. Two lines of evidence support this. First, eyewitness testimony confirms that the Nazis used gas chambers for murder. Describing the process of gassing, German Sergeant Perry Broad reports, “[T]he box [was] opened and the contents [were] shaken out….After about two minutes the shrieks die[d] down and change[d] to a low moaning….After a further two minutes…it [was] all over. Deadly quiet reign[ed].” Rudolf Hoss, overseer of Auschwitz, the most famous of the death camps, relays, “This lead to the immediate release of the gas. Through the peephole one could see that those who were near the air duct died immediately….The others began to struggle, to scream, to choke. But very quickly the cries became death rattles, and, after a few minutes, all were on the ground. After a maximum of twenty minutes, nobody moved.” The fact that Broad reports the gassings took four minutes while Hoss says they took twenty minutes shows that their reports are independent of one another and therefore cannot be dismissed as deliberate fabrications. Second, multiple aerial photographs confirm the existence of gas chambers and of masses of people being marched into them. The multiplicity of these photos suggests that they are not fakes but genuine recordings of events. Now, if groups of people are being marched into gas chambers, what other explanation is there than mass extermination? For these two reasons, it may be concluded that gas chambers, throughout concentration camps, were used for the express purpose of killing human beings, not lice.
But Holocaust deniers have presented a case of their own. They argue that because the evidence indicates the original purpose of the concentration camps was not mass extermination, therefore they were never used for mass extermination. We may grant that Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Mauthausen were not originally built for the purpose of mass murder, but that doesn’t imply that they never became places of mass murder. History is radically contingent; rarely do historical events unfold as expected. Historical intentions almost always differ from historical outcomes. The concentration camps may not have been intended to house the genocide of the Jews, but given the developments of war, they were the best place for such actions to occur.
A second major facet of Holocaust denial is the claim that only a few hundred thousand Jews died in concentration camps, not nearly as many as 6,000,000. As much as we may want this to be the case, it does not stand up to historical scrutiny. First, four different Holocaust historians calculate the total number of Jews killed in concentration camps to be between 4.5 and 6.2 million. The fact that each scholar used different methods of calculation and still arrived at fairly identical results suggests that these numbers do represent the actual number of those killed under Nazi regime. Of course, our estimates could change over the years as we discover more evidence, but the pattern of the last half century is that as more evidence accumulates, our estimates increase, not decrease. Second, eyewitness reports confirm the murder of many millions of Jews. Hans Frank, head of the government administration over Poland during World War II, writes, “[W]e now have 3 ½ million Jews. We cannot shoot these 3 ½ million Jews, nor can we poison them, yet we will have to take measures which will somehow lead to the goal of annihilation.” Even if 3 ½ million were an exaggeration, it’s still well beyond the bounds of a few hundred thousand. Joseph Goebbels, the regional leader of Berlin, writes in his diary that, “the Jews are now being deported eastward… [and] the procedure is pretty barbaric….Broadly speaking, one can probably say that sixty percent of them will have to be liquidated [i.e., exterminated].” Goebbels goes on to report that at least 11,000,000 Jews would have to be deported, so implicitly he is saying that about 6,000,000 Jews would have to be eradicated. In sum, estimates by trained Holocaust historians confirm that as many as 6,000,000 Jews died as a result of the actions of the Nazis, and eyewitness reports from German government leaders confirm this.
A final aspect of Holocaust denial is the claim that the murder of the Jews was not a purposeful act of the German government, but an inevitable by-product of war. They thus deny the intentionality of the Holocaust. Before this claim can be evaluated, clarifications are in order. There are currently two major views about the origin of the Final Solution, the planned mass extermination of the Jews. Intentionalists argue that Hitler intended the mass extermination of the Jews from very early in his career; the Final Solution was part of the very foundation upon which Hitler rose to power. Functionalists argue that Hitler’s original intent was to expel the Jews from Germany, but due to the developments of war, mass extermination became the only option. And, moreover, Hitler never ordered that mass extermination; government leaders below him brought it about. What needs to be said is that these two positions are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it seems the most plausible view is a middle ground between the two positions, namely, intentional functionalism. This is the view that Hitler did order the genocide of the Jewish people, but that such action was not his original intent. Nevertheless, due to the unpredictable events of war, such action was deemed necessary.
Three lines of evidence support this view. First, Hitler, as the very head of the German government, would not have allowed the extermination of the Jewish people unless he himself gave the command. Historian Leni Yahil explains, “Hitler was absolute master of Germany. He held both legislative and executive power…he also assumed the mantle of supreme judge, with the authority to pass the death sentence. Time and again in the course of the years, his absolute authority was reaffirmed by his party.” There is no way that something as monumental as the execution of the Jewish people could have been undertaken without Hitler’s explicit orders. Second, testimony of Hitler’s right-hand men confirm the intention of Nazi Germany to commit genocide against the Jews. Dieter Wisliceny, the deputy to the lieutenant colonel of the German army, testified in court to the causes of the Holocaust. He explained that “Eichmann continued to explain to me what this meant. He said that the planned biological destruction of the Jewish race in the eastern territories was camouflaged under the concept and the expression of ‘final solution.’ It was clear fully clear to me that this order meant the death of many millions of human beings.” Adolf Galland, Germany’s greatest fighter pilot, remarks how “[t]he first indication I had, which made me think seriously of genocide was while flying over Russia…with Himmler….Himmler pointed down to where we could see a lot of people moving about, and he said, ‘Last year we decided to kill them all – [but] this year we need them for armament production.’” In this statement, Galland gives implicit support to the intention of Nazi Germany to eliminate the Jews. The testimony of these two men, who were in a position to know about the intentions of their government, is powerful evidence that there was an intention within the Nazi regime to eliminate the Jewish people.
Third, documents presented at the Wannsee Conference offers further evidence that the Hitler’s “final solution” was the genocide of the Jews. Adolf Eichmann, speaking about the remnant of Jews who survived the harsh labor of the concentration camps, explains that “ [they] will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release, become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival.” What Eichmann is saying is that those Jews who survive will represent the strongest of the Jewish people, and so they will require suitable treatment. What is this “suitable treatment”? It can only mean death, for if it were anything else, then those Jews might become the seed of a new Jewish revival. To prevent such a revival, they must be out to death. In sum, the evidence indicates that the death of millions of Jews was not just an accident of war, but came as a result of the direct command of Hitler, as evidenced by Wisliceny, Galland, and documents from the Wannsee conference.
All things considered, historical evidence establishes that during World War II, Nazi Germany instituted gas chambers with the express purpose of committing the genocide of the Jewish people, that they were successful in this endeavor on the order of 6,000,000, and that this mass murder was an intentional, planned act on the part of Nazi Germany. Therefore, one may say that the Holocaust, by definition, occurred. One cannot help but reflect on the moral implications of denying the Holocaust. Hitler and all of Nazi Germany may have destroyed the lives of over 6,000,000 Jews, but Holocaust deniers do something even worse. They destroy even their memory, and that is far, far worse. Those who deny the occurrence of the Holocaust do not do so on the basis of evidence or reason, but on the basis of racial hatred and discrimination. No one is glad the Holocaust occurred, but to deny that it did is the worst possible response, for then we may one day find ourselves in the aftermath of a second Holocaust, brought about because we failed to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Written: May 5th, 2014.
From time to time, a group will arise denying some element of common knowledge, claiming the public has been duped by some powerful and influential group into believing a lie. For example, some people claim the Earth is flat, and NASA has been hiding this fact from people for years. Or again, some say Jesus had a wife and even kids, but that His bloodline has been protected and hidden in France by the Catholic Church for the last two thousand years. Today, a new extremist group has arisen, claiming that the Holocaust is a hoax. They claim that only about a few hundred thousand Jews died, not six million. Further, the few thousand that did die did not do so as a result of being put in gas chambers, but by starvation and disease in temporary camps for prisoners of war. But as fervently as Holocaust deniers may present their case, such ideas are ludicrous, and the Holocaust rests firmly on historical bedrock.
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When historians speak about the Holocaust, they mean “that about six million Jews were killed in an intentional and systematic fashion by the Nazis using a number of different means, including gas chambers.” Therefore, in order to show that the Holocaust occurred, evidence will be presented that (1) gas chambers existed in Jewish concentration camps and were used for the purpose of murder, (2) about 6,000,000 Jews died as a result of the action of the Nazis against them, and (3) the premeditated intention of the Nazis to exterminate all Jewish people.
One of the hallmark claims of the Holocaust deniers is that gas chambers were never used to kill people, but only to kill lice infecting prisoners’ clothing. Interesting as this idea may be, it is completely false. Two lines of evidence support this. First, eyewitness testimony confirms that the Nazis used gas chambers for murder. Describing the process of gassing, German Sergeant Perry Broad reports, “[T]he box [was] opened and the contents [were] shaken out….After about two minutes the shrieks die[d] down and change[d] to a low moaning….After a further two minutes…it [was] all over. Deadly quiet reign[ed].” Rudolf Hoss, overseer of Auschwitz, the most famous of the death camps, relays, “This lead to the immediate release of the gas. Through the peephole one could see that those who were near the air duct died immediately….The others began to struggle, to scream, to choke. But very quickly the cries became death rattles, and, after a few minutes, all were on the ground. After a maximum of twenty minutes, nobody moved.” The fact that Broad reports the gassings took four minutes while Hoss says they took twenty minutes shows that their reports are independent of one another and therefore cannot be dismissed as deliberate fabrications. Second, multiple aerial photographs confirm the existence of gas chambers and of masses of people being marched into them. The multiplicity of these photos suggests that they are not fakes but genuine recordings of events. Now, if groups of people are being marched into gas chambers, what other explanation is there than mass extermination? For these two reasons, it may be concluded that gas chambers, throughout concentration camps, were used for the express purpose of killing human beings, not lice.
But Holocaust deniers have presented a case of their own. They argue that because the evidence indicates the original purpose of the concentration camps was not mass extermination, therefore they were never used for mass extermination. We may grant that Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Mauthausen were not originally built for the purpose of mass murder, but that doesn’t imply that they never became places of mass murder. History is radically contingent; rarely do historical events unfold as expected. Historical intentions almost always differ from historical outcomes. The concentration camps may not have been intended to house the genocide of the Jews, but given the developments of war, they were the best place for such actions to occur.
A second major facet of Holocaust denial is the claim that only a few hundred thousand Jews died in concentration camps, not nearly as many as 6,000,000. As much as we may want this to be the case, it does not stand up to historical scrutiny. First, four different Holocaust historians calculate the total number of Jews killed in concentration camps to be between 4.5 and 6.2 million. The fact that each scholar used different methods of calculation and still arrived at fairly identical results suggests that these numbers do represent the actual number of those killed under Nazi regime. Of course, our estimates could change over the years as we discover more evidence, but the pattern of the last half century is that as more evidence accumulates, our estimates increase, not decrease. Second, eyewitness reports confirm the murder of many millions of Jews. Hans Frank, head of the government administration over Poland during World War II, writes, “[W]e now have 3 ½ million Jews. We cannot shoot these 3 ½ million Jews, nor can we poison them, yet we will have to take measures which will somehow lead to the goal of annihilation.” Even if 3 ½ million were an exaggeration, it’s still well beyond the bounds of a few hundred thousand. Joseph Goebbels, the regional leader of Berlin, writes in his diary that, “the Jews are now being deported eastward… [and] the procedure is pretty barbaric….Broadly speaking, one can probably say that sixty percent of them will have to be liquidated [i.e., exterminated].” Goebbels goes on to report that at least 11,000,000 Jews would have to be deported, so implicitly he is saying that about 6,000,000 Jews would have to be eradicated. In sum, estimates by trained Holocaust historians confirm that as many as 6,000,000 Jews died as a result of the actions of the Nazis, and eyewitness reports from German government leaders confirm this.
A final aspect of Holocaust denial is the claim that the murder of the Jews was not a purposeful act of the German government, but an inevitable by-product of war. They thus deny the intentionality of the Holocaust. Before this claim can be evaluated, clarifications are in order. There are currently two major views about the origin of the Final Solution, the planned mass extermination of the Jews. Intentionalists argue that Hitler intended the mass extermination of the Jews from very early in his career; the Final Solution was part of the very foundation upon which Hitler rose to power. Functionalists argue that Hitler’s original intent was to expel the Jews from Germany, but due to the developments of war, mass extermination became the only option. And, moreover, Hitler never ordered that mass extermination; government leaders below him brought it about. What needs to be said is that these two positions are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, it seems the most plausible view is a middle ground between the two positions, namely, intentional functionalism. This is the view that Hitler did order the genocide of the Jewish people, but that such action was not his original intent. Nevertheless, due to the unpredictable events of war, such action was deemed necessary.
Three lines of evidence support this view. First, Hitler, as the very head of the German government, would not have allowed the extermination of the Jewish people unless he himself gave the command. Historian Leni Yahil explains, “Hitler was absolute master of Germany. He held both legislative and executive power…he also assumed the mantle of supreme judge, with the authority to pass the death sentence. Time and again in the course of the years, his absolute authority was reaffirmed by his party.” There is no way that something as monumental as the execution of the Jewish people could have been undertaken without Hitler’s explicit orders. Second, testimony of Hitler’s right-hand men confirm the intention of Nazi Germany to commit genocide against the Jews. Dieter Wisliceny, the deputy to the lieutenant colonel of the German army, testified in court to the causes of the Holocaust. He explained that “Eichmann continued to explain to me what this meant. He said that the planned biological destruction of the Jewish race in the eastern territories was camouflaged under the concept and the expression of ‘final solution.’ It was clear fully clear to me that this order meant the death of many millions of human beings.” Adolf Galland, Germany’s greatest fighter pilot, remarks how “[t]he first indication I had, which made me think seriously of genocide was while flying over Russia…with Himmler….Himmler pointed down to where we could see a lot of people moving about, and he said, ‘Last year we decided to kill them all – [but] this year we need them for armament production.’” In this statement, Galland gives implicit support to the intention of Nazi Germany to eliminate the Jews. The testimony of these two men, who were in a position to know about the intentions of their government, is powerful evidence that there was an intention within the Nazi regime to eliminate the Jewish people.
Third, documents presented at the Wannsee Conference offers further evidence that the Hitler’s “final solution” was the genocide of the Jews. Adolf Eichmann, speaking about the remnant of Jews who survived the harsh labor of the concentration camps, explains that “ [they] will require suitable treatment; because it will without doubt represent the most resistant part, it consists of a natural selection that could, on its release, become the germ-cell of a new Jewish revival.” What Eichmann is saying is that those Jews who survive will represent the strongest of the Jewish people, and so they will require suitable treatment. What is this “suitable treatment”? It can only mean death, for if it were anything else, then those Jews might become the seed of a new Jewish revival. To prevent such a revival, they must be out to death. In sum, the evidence indicates that the death of millions of Jews was not just an accident of war, but came as a result of the direct command of Hitler, as evidenced by Wisliceny, Galland, and documents from the Wannsee conference.
All things considered, historical evidence establishes that during World War II, Nazi Germany instituted gas chambers with the express purpose of committing the genocide of the Jewish people, that they were successful in this endeavor on the order of 6,000,000, and that this mass murder was an intentional, planned act on the part of Nazi Germany. Therefore, one may say that the Holocaust, by definition, occurred. One cannot help but reflect on the moral implications of denying the Holocaust. Hitler and all of Nazi Germany may have destroyed the lives of over 6,000,000 Jews, but Holocaust deniers do something even worse. They destroy even their memory, and that is far, far worse. Those who deny the occurrence of the Holocaust do not do so on the basis of evidence or reason, but on the basis of racial hatred and discrimination. No one is glad the Holocaust occurred, but to deny that it did is the worst possible response, for then we may one day find ourselves in the aftermath of a second Holocaust, brought about because we failed to learn from the mistakes of the past.
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