Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
dents. Such trials, e.g. the trial of Mary, Queen of Scots, lack the hysterical atmosphere
of the war crimes trials. Another feature of the usual political trial is
that there is generally only one, or at any rate only a few, victims, and the proceedings
are not spread over more than two decades. Even the trial of Joan of Arc,
which had aspects of hysteria, is not really comparable to the war crimes trials,
because only a single person was on trial, but not an entire nation.
In determining precedents for the war crimes trials, only the witchcraft trials of
Europe’s younger days offer satisfactory comparisons. A most important similarity
lies in the fact that the accused in witchcraft trials frequently found it expedient
in the contexts, in which they found themselves, to go along with the charges
to some extent. In fact, in many cases a partial confession offered the only possible
trial strategy. One could not deny the very existence of the sorts of Sabbaths
that the popular imagination had decided must have existed. When the sentences
of the condemned were carried out, one had scenes like this: 333
“On one scaffold stood the condemned Sorceresses, a scanty band, and on
another the crowd of the reprieved. The repentant heroine, whose confession
was read out, stuck at nothing, however wild and improbable. At the Sabbaths
they ate children, hashed; and as a second course dead wizards dug up from
their graves. Toads dance, talk, complain amorously of their mistresses’ unkindness,
and get the Devil to scold them. This latter sees the witches home
with great politeness, lighting the way with the blazing arm of an unbaptized
infant, etc., etc.”
The situation was such that one had to feed the fantasies and passions of the
judges and the population, and there were even ways of getting ahead by claiming
to be a witch, and thus being informed on the activities of certain other witches,
knowledgeable on ways of exposing them, etc.
The comparison of the war crimes trials with the witchcraft trials is almost perfect.
Both involve large numbers of potential victims, and the possibilities for mutual
recrimination are boundless. Most important, both take place in an atmosphere
of unreality and hysteria. The person who will not disbelieve those who
claim that a modern state was exterminating masses of human beings at a center
of chemical industry, employing an insecticide, and that the pervasive stench at
that site was due to the associated cremations, is the complete twentieth century
equivalent of the person who, in earlier centuries, believe those who claimed that
misfortunes were caused by people who conversed with toads, had intercourse
with the Devil, etc.
Torture
Another important relationship between witchcraft trials and the war crimes
trials is that torture of witnesses and defendants played roles in both. Invented testimony
at witchcraft trials is usually explained in terms of torture (although our
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Michelet, 151-157, 313-314.
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