Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
Logic of Defense Testimonies
Before passing to consideration of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in Russia,
it is convenient to review various statements made or allegedly made by various
Nazis, mostly after the war, which explicitly or implicitly claim exterminations.
An important category consist of statements made by German witnesses and
defendants at the war crimes trials. In evaluating such statements, one must bear
in mind the simple fact that the powers which conducted these trials were committed,
as an immovable political fact, to the legend of Jewish extermination, especially
in regard to Auschwitz. Their leaders had made the relevant charges long
before they possessed a scrap of what is today called “evidence.” Thus, the courts
were committed a priori to the extermination legend. A finding that exterminations
had not occurred was simply not in the realm of political possibility at these
trials, in any practical sense. This is an undeniable fact.
On the other hand, with only a tiny handful of exceptions, the courts were not
a priori committed on questions of personal responsibility of individuals. With respect
to individuals the courts were not as greatly constrained, politically speaking.
In most cases judgments of absence of personal responsibility were well
within the realm of political possibility (as distinct from probability). All defense
cases were organized in relation to these undeniably valid observations, and even
with those individuals whose cases were hopeless, the lawyers had no choice but
to proceed on the assumption that a favorable verdict was within the realm of the
possible. In considering the trials from this point of view, it is very helpful to consider
them chronologically.
Josef Kramer, ‘Beast of Belsen’
The first relevant trial was not the IMT but the “Belsen trial,” conducted by a
British military court, of Germans who had been on the staff of the Belsen camp
when it was captured. The commandant, SS Captain Josef Kramer (the “Beast of
Belsen”), was naturally the principal defendant. The importance of the Belsen trial
derives, however, from the fact that Kramer has previously been (during 1944) the
Birkenau camp commander. Kramer’s trial was conducted in the autumn of 1945
and was concluded in November, just as the IMT trial was beginning. Kramer was
hanged in December 1945.
We are fortunate in having the lengthy first statement that Kramer made in reply
to British interrogation. The importance of this statement lies in the fact that it
was made before any general realization developed among Germans that the Allied
courts were completely serious, and immovable, on the question of the reality
of the exterminations (it might have been made within about a month after the
capture of Belsen, but this is not certain). There is little courtroom logic playing a
role in Kramer’s first statement, and for this reason it is reproduced here in Ap-
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