Germar Rudolf, Resistance Is Obligatory (2012; PDF-Datei

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORY
as well as for structure of arguments in each single chapter or contribution.
Rudolf is strictly concerned not to make allegations in both reviewed
publications which cannot be either proven or refuted. That which is
verifiable or repeatable in an experimental setup for claims of the material,
technical and natural sciences, is the exact reference to the sources
used in the field of historical science; both works have to be called exemplary
in this regard. Rudolf’s advantage as a natural scientist is
moreover that he strives to also translate, as far as possible, to scholarly
historical research and present certain features that are prerequisites in
his original field of science: freedom of internal contradiction as well as
consistency with generally recognized paradigms, which cannot be
challenged (here for example technical and logical laws as well as laws
of the natural sciences would have to be listed).
To this complex it has to be added that no circular reasonings caught
my eye in either work, that is to say that no claims characterized as true
have been posited which are propping up each other as evidence. 3
Downright conspicuous is the excellent command of the source material
and the source criticism elucidating all possibilities of text exegesis
and interpretation. This source criticism encompasses almost every
kind of “oral history,” witness statements, accounts, statements of third
persons, etc. as well as their comprehensive problematic nature, all
types of documents concerning the Holocaust, for instance the files of
the International Military Tribunal of the Major War Criminals, 4 here in
particular the problematic nature of statements by perpetrators and victims
(Vorlesungen pp. 407, 455, 458); if subsuming the memories and
memoir literature written in the years and decades after war’s end, then
these are analyzed there as well (pp. 438 ff.). In downright exemplary
fashion Rudolf dissects and demonstrates in a comparison of two statistical
works, in how many ways demographic data have to be interpreted
and scrutinized in order to arrive at the true diagnostic value of the
seemingly erratic statistics (Grundlagen, pp. 141–168, Vorlesungen, pp.
34–43).
At least since the closure of the exhibition “Crimes of the Wehrmacht”
even lay persons know the problematic nature of pictorial and
photographic evidence as historical documents. Two contributions of
the book Grundlagen deal with the probative value of pictorial documents.
Summarizing a publication published some ten years earlier,
Udo Walendy (pp. 219–233) discusses the techniques and motives of
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