Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
smell) this. 235 The only significant difference Auschwitz presented, in terms of a
stench, is that the coal the Germans started from is by any relevant measure a
“dirtier” source than crude oil. If we are told that 30 to 46 bodies being reduced in
modern crematories could even compete with, much less overwhelm, this stench
of industrial origin then we know that what is involved here is not a fact for dual
interpretation but an obvious lie. Actually, on account of the furor of phony objections
raised by various fanatics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
cremation had been developed so that it was a rather “clean” process. 236 Höss
cannot be believed.
The analysis has revealed a previously unsuspected but nearly inevitable attribute
of the great hoax: the excess fact. Following the principle that his story
should involve mostly or almost entirely valid fact, the author of the hoax easily
slips into the error of including as much fact as possible and commits the major
blunder we have just seen; the story would obviously have been much better off
without that “fact.” Of course, it is only on account of the passage of time that it
has become a major blunder. At the time it was completely effective on account of
an hysterical emotional atmosphere that it is impossible to recapture. DuBois
wrote in 1952: 237
“On the stand Schneider had said that he never heard of any exterminations,
although he recalled going along the main road one day, past a ‘dormant
crematorium.’ At that time this ‘dormant’ crematorium was burning
corpses at the rate of a thousand a day. The flames shot fifteen meters into the
air; the stink pervaded the countryside to the north for forty miles until it
joined the stink of the Warsaw crematorium; the fumes would pucker the nose
of anyone within half a mile, and Schneider – a scientist with a specially acute
sense of smell – had passed within a hundred yards of the place.”
It does not seem possible that, toward the end of a book, which gives (outside
of technical literature) the best available description of the chemical industry at
Auschwitz, DuBois could write thus, but there it is. It is not explicable in terms of
normal errors of judgment; it is explicable only in terms of hysteria.
It would seem that somebody at the trial would have challenged Höss on this
point. There was a challenge, but it was weak and ambiguous. The following exchange
occurred near the end of Höss‘ testimony (Kaufman was counsel for Kaltenbrunner):
238
“THE PRESIDENT: The last sentence of Paragraph 7 is with reference to
the foul and nauseating stench. What is your question about that
DR. KAUFMAN: Whether the population could gather from these things
that an extermination of Jews was taking place.
THE PRESIDENT: That really is too obvious a question, isn’t it They
could not possibly know who it was being exterminated.
235
236
237
238
152
Editor’s note: equipped with modern ecological technology, today’s refineries do no longer produce
such an intensive smell.
Polson, 138-139.
DuBois, 340-341.
IMT, vol. 11, 421.