Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
only known instance of Kaltenbrunner’s involvement with the internal operation
of the camps was in his order of March 1945, concerning permission for the Red
Cross to establish itself in the camps (how he assumed authority for giving this
order we do not know). He made a great deal of this matter in his defense and,
rather than setting the record straight in regard to the catastrophic conditions in
the camps at the end of the war, he inflated his action in connection with the Red
Cross to make it appear to be an act against concentration camps as such, which,
of course, he had always deplored anyway, he said.
Kaltenbrunner’s second point was that, as everybody would agree, it was his
predecessor Heydrich, and not he, who had organized the details of the Jewish
policy, whatever that policy was. He took over the RSHA in 1943 with a directive
from Himmler to build up the intelligence service of the SD, a fact which he distorted
in claiming that, under the new arrangement, in which Himmler was not going
to allow anybody to grow to the stature that Heydrich had attained, Kaltenbrunner
was to concern himself only with intelligence and not to have any control
over the police and security functions of the RSHA, in particular the Gestapo,
which sent political prisoners to the camps and also, through Eichmann’s office,
administered the Jewish deportations. Thus, according to Kaltenbrunner, there
was no respect in which he could be held responsible for exterminations of Jews
that, he conceded, had taken place just as the Allies charged (except that they had
started, according to Kaltenbrunner, in 1940). Indeed, according to him, it was not
until the summer of 1943 that he learned of the extermination program that
Eichmann of his department was conducting. He learned from the foreign press
and the enemy radio. He got Himmler to admit it early in 1944 and then protested,
first to Hitler, then to Himmler. The extermination program was stopped in October
1944, “chiefly due to (his) intervention.” 320 The manner in which Kaltenbrunner
claimed to have learned of the exterminations, while nonsense, is nevertheless
consistent with the extreme secrecy that is always said to have been maintained in
connection with the extermination program.
Kaltenbrunner’s story was complete rubbish, but this fact should not blind us
to the serious character of this testimony as defense strategy. Suppose that Kaltenbrunner
had testified that no extermination program had existed. In such a
case, any leniency shown by the court in the judgment would have been tantamount
to that court’s conceding the untruth, or possible untruth, of the extermination
claim, a political impossibility. By claiming that, while the extermination
program had existed, Kaltenbrunner had had no responsibility and had even opposed
it, the defense was making it politically possible for the court to be lenient
in some sense or was at least making a serious attempt along this line. A few seconds’
reflection reveals that this was the only possible strategy for Kaltenbrunner
on the extermination charge. The trial was obviously going to end with some
death sentences, some acquittals, and some in between dispositions of cases; this
was necessary in order to give it the semblance of a real trial. Thus, on analysis,
we see that there was perfectly sound lawyer’s logic operating in Kaltenbrunner’s
320
224
IMT, vol. 11, 273-276, 335.