Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
The second observation is not quite so expected. Indeed, it may be mildly startling;
with the exception of Kaltenbrunner and perhaps one or two others, these
high ranking German officials did not understand the catastrophic conditions in
the camps that accompanied the German collapse, and which were the cause of
the scenes that were exploited by the Allied propaganda as “proof” of exterminations.
This may appear at first a peculiar claim, but consultation of Gilbert’s book
shows it to be unquestionably a valid one (the only other possibility is that some
merely pretended to misunderstand the situation). The administration of the camps
was far removed from the official domains of almost all of the defendants and
they had been subjected to the familiar propaganda since the German surrender.
To the extent that they accepted, or pretended to accept, that there had been mass
murders, for which Hitler and Himmler were responsible, they were basing their
view precisely on the scenes found in the German camps at the end of the war,
which they evidently misunderstood or pretended to misunderstand. This is well
illustrated by Gilbert’s account of an exchange he had with Göring: 313
“‘Those atrocity films!’ Göring continued. ‘Anybody can make an atrocity
film if they take corpses out of their graves and then show a tractor shoving
them back in again.’
‘You can’t brush it off that easily,’ I replied. ‘We did find your concentration
camps fairly littered with corpses and mass graves – I saw them myself in
Dachau! – and Hadamar!’
‘Oh, but not piled up by the thousands like that –’
‘Don’t tell me what I didn’t see! I saw corpses literally by the carload –’
‘Oh, that one train – ‘
‘ – And piled up like cordwood in the crematorium – and half starved and
mutilated prisoners, who told me how the butchery had been going on for
years – and Dachau was not the worst by far! You can’t shrug off 6,000,000
murders!’
‘Well, I doubt if it was 6,000,000,’ he said despondently, apparently sorry
he had started the argument, ‘– but as I’ve always said, it is sufficient if only 5
per cent of it is true – .’ A glum silence followed.”
This is only one example; it is clear from Gilbert’s book that, when the subject
of concentration camp atrocities came up, the defendants were thinking of the
scenes found in the German camps at the end of the war. It is probably not possible
to decide which defendants genuinely misunderstood the situation (as Göring
did) and which merely pretended to misunderstand, on the calculation that, if one
was not involved with concentration camps anyway, it was a far safer course to
accept the Allied claims than to automatically involve oneself by contesting the
Allied claims.
Our third observation is in regard to a calculation that must have figured in the
minds of most of the defendants during the trial. It seemed probable, or at least
quite possible, to them that the Allies were not completely serious about carrying
out executions and long prison sentences. The trial was certainly a novelty, and
313
G.M. Gilbert’s book should be read in its entirety, but pp. 15, 39, 46, 47, 64, 78, 152, 175, 242,
273-275, 291 are of particular interest.
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