Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
reference employed above points out that mass hysteria also provides a completely
effective motivation). We know that some people were tortured in connection
with the war crimes trials, and we should therefore consider the problem of
the extent to which torture might have accounted for testimony, especially defendant
testimony, in support of exterminations.
Available evidence indicates that torture was frequently employed in the war
crimes trials. We have noted at length, on p. 40, the tortures inflicted on German
defendants in the Dachau trials. Very similar scenes took place, under British
sponsorship, in connection with the Belsen trial, and Josef Kramer and other defendants
were tortured, sometimes to the point where they pleaded to be put to
death. 334
On the other hand, it appears that defendants at the IMT were too prominent to
torture, although Julius Streicher was an exception, and it is even said that he was
forced to eat excrement. Streicher complained at the IMT that he had been beaten
up by Negro soldiers after his arrest. On the motion of prosecutor Jackson, this
testimony was stricken from the record because otherwise “the court would have
had to conduct an investigation.” Streicher was the editor and publisher of a disreputable
and quasi-pornographic magazine Der Stürmer, which attacked not only
Jews, Freemasons, and clerics but on occasion even top Nazis. Streicher once
claimed in Der Stürmer that Göring’s daughter had not been fathered by Göring
but by artificial insemination. Der Stürmer was considered offensive by nearly all
political leaders in Germany, but Streicher had the protection of Hitler out of
gratitude for Streicher’s having delivered Nuremberg to the Nazi Party. In 1940,
Göring arranged for Streicher to be put partially out of action; although Der Stürmer
was not suppressed, Streicher was deprived of his Party position of Gauleiter
of Nuremberg. Streicher never held a position in the German Government, before
or during the war, and his inclusion in the first row of “defendants” at the IMT
was ludicrous. 335
There was never any general or massive exposé of torture of witnesses and defendants
at the NMT trials, but we believe that the fact, noted in the previous
chapter (p. 204), that the Nuremberg prosecution did not hesitate to torture witnesses
even in connection with a regular U.S. legal proceeding, is strong support
for our assumption that torture was employed rather commonly at Nuremberg or,
more precisely, employed on witnesses and defendants who played roles in the
trials at Nuremberg.
We are inclined to believe that Adolf Eichmann was not tortured by his Israeli
captors, at least not for the purpose of forcing him to give specific trial testimony.
This view is based on the simple fact that he did not complain, in his trial testimony,
that he had been tortured thus, although he did complain, early in his trial
testimony, that he had suffered rather rough treatment during the few days immediately
after his capture, particularly when his captors forced him to sign a declaration
that he had come to Israel voluntarily (and which the prosecution had the
audacity to put into evidence at the trial). However, the extreme secrecy that sur-
334
335
234
Belgion, 80-81.
Bardèche, 12, 73; Davidson, 44-47, 51.