Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Joseph Goebbels
Chapter 6: Et Cetera
Finally, there are a number of remarks in The Goebbels Diaries but, as the
“Publisher’s Note” explains, the “diaries were typed on fine water-marked paper”
and then “passed through several hands, and eventually came into the possession
of Mr. Frank E. Mason.” Thus, the authenticity of the complete manuscript is very
much open to question, even if the authenticity of much of the material can be
demonstrated somehow. Interpolation with a typewriter is simple. The original
clothbound edition of the “Diaries” even contains a U.S. government statement
that it “neither warrants nor disclaims the authenticity of the manuscript.”
Wilfred von Oven, who was an official in the Goebbels Ministry and became,
after the war, the editor of the right wing German language Buenos Aires journal
La Plata, had come forward with a curiously eager endorsement of the authenticity
of The Goebbels Diaries. However, the net effect of his comments is in the reverse
direction, for he tells us that (a) the diaries were dictated from handwritten
notes (which were subsequently destroyed) by Goebbels to Regierungsrat Otte,
who typed them using the special typewriter, having characters of almost 1 cm
height, that was used for typing the texts that Goebbels used when he gave
speeches (!) and (b) Oven “often observed” Otte, at Goebbels order, “carefully
and precisely as ever” burning these pages toward the end of the war after having
made microfilms of them. The point of the latter operation, as Goebbels is said to
have explained to Oven in the April 18, 1945, entry in the latter’s diary (which
was published in 1948/1949 in Buenos Aires), was that Goebbels “had for months
taken care that his treasure, his great secret, result and accumulation of a more
than twenty year political career, his diary, will remain preserved for posterity but
not fall into unauthorized hands.”
This strange story of Oven’s at least throws some light on the reference to an
unusual typewriter in Louis P. Lochner’s Introduction to the Diaries. If Oven’s
account is true, then it is possible that persons unknown obtained the special typewriter
or a facsimile and a set of the microfilms and manufactured an edited and
interpolated text. However, it is next to impossible to believe that Goebbels’ diaries
were indeed transcribed as Oven has described. 346
The Einsatzgruppen
The remaining part of the extermination legend is that the Einsatzgruppen exterminated
Russian Jews in gasmobiles and by mass shootings. This is the only
part of the legend, which contains a particle of truth.
At the time of the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, there was a Führer
order declaring, in anticipation of an identical Soviet policy, that the war with
Russia was not to be fought on the basis of the traditional “rules of warfare.” Necessary
measures were to be taken to counter partisan activity, and Himmler was
346
Lochner, 126, 138, 147f, 241, viii. Oven’s remarks are in Nation Europa (Apr. 75), 53-56.
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