Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
him as a major war criminal, and then declared, with no other witnesses present, that
four million Jews had been killed in extermination camps and that two million had
met death in various other ways, mainly through executions carried out by the Einsatzgruppen
in Russia.
Here we offer a different theory regarding the origin of the six million figure.
Its very first appearance seems to be Rabbi Goldstein’s statement of December
13, 1942, followed by the story of December 20 to the same effect, except that it
specified a potential seven million in danger of being exterminated, rather than the
six million implied by Goldstein’s statement. However, it could correctly be argued
that one must not infer the origin of the six million figure purely on the basis
of these stories.
However, the appearances of the two million killed – four (or five) million to
be killed – extermination claim at the public affairs reported on March 2 and 10,
1943, must be taken much more seriously. More information about the latter affair
can be extracted from an advertisement that also appeared on March 10 (page 10),
reporting that the show had been organized by the “Committee for a Jewish Army
of Stateless and Palestinian Jews,” headed by Senator Johnson of Colorado. The
advertisement makes the same extermination claim (two million killed, four million
to be killed) and also lists the sponsors of the organization, which included
many members of Congress and other notables. The same organization had also
run a full page advertisement on February 16 (page 11), specifying two million
killed and four million to go (and also claiming that the only Arabs who objected
to massive Jewish immigration into Palestine were Nazi agents). The two stories
of April 20 suggest rather widespread usage of the two million killed – four (or
five) million to be killed – form of the extermination claim in early 1943. We
therefore have very general usage of the six (or seven) million figure, long before
the end of the war, by the political establishment that wrote the charges at Nuremberg:
Thus, I believe that we can take late 1942/early 1943 propaganda as the origin
of the six million figure. The complete independence of that figure of any real
facts whatever is reflected in Reitlinger’s elaborate apologies for his belief that he
can claim only 4.2 to 4.6 million Jews, almost all East European, who perished in
Europe during World War II, one third of them dying from “overwork, disease,
hunger and neglect.” 149 However, Reitlinger’s figures are also mostly independent
of any real facts, but that matter will be discussed in Chapter 7.
It is not at all remarkable that after the war somebody could be found to declare
at Nuremberg that the propaganda figure was correct. Höttl, indeed, was a
completely appropriate choice, because he was one of those stereotype “operators,”
with which the world of intelligence work is plagued. Born in 1915, he entered
the SD in 1938 and soon acquired a reputation for mixing official business
with personal business deals. His teaming up with a Polish countess friend in a
Polish land deal led to an SS investigation of his activities in 1942. The report of
the investigation characterized him as “dishonest, scheming, fawning […] a real
hoaxer,” and concluded that he was not even suitable for membership in the SS,
149
106
Reitlinger, 533, 545, 546.