Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 6: Et Cetera
charges. As far as we can see, the first claims of gasmobile exterminations on
Russian territory (as distinct from claims of gasmobiles at Chelmno in Poland)
came in July 1943 during a Soviet trial of 11 Russians accused of having collaborated
with the Germans at Krasnodar. This suggests that the Russian claims may
have been inspired by the gas chamber propaganda that had started in the West
late in 1942. In any case, the late appearance of the gasmobile charges, just as in
the case of the Auschwitz propaganda, is further proof that the charges are inventions.
360
There is also a certain amount of testimony that should be mentioned. At the
risk of belaboring a perfectly simple point, let us again observe what had been
pointed out here from many different angles: that a witness testifies in court to the
truth of X, under conditions where the court is already committed to the truth of X,
is historical evidence of absolutely nothing.
The most frequently referred to testimony is that of Ohlendorf, an SS Lieutenant
General and an economist who had had some differences with Himmler and
consequently found himself assigned to command group D for one year – summer
1941 to summer 1942 – in southern Russia. Ohlendorf was the most literate of the
people involved in this matter.
At the IMT, when other people were on trial, Ohlendorf had appeared as a
prosecution witness and had testified in agreement with the extermination
claims. 361 He testified that he had received oral orders to add extermination of
Jews to his activities, that gasmobiles were used to exterminate women and children,
that document 501-PS was authentic (Becker’s letter), and that the Wehrmacht
was implicated in these things. Thus, this charge regarding the Einsatzgruppen
was part of the IMT judgment, which even stated that Ohlendorf exterminated
Jews with group D. 362 As we have seen, these statements in the judgment
constituted “proof of the facts stated” when Ohlendorf, no doubt contrary to his
expectations, was put on trial as the principal defendant in Case 9. In view of the
legal constraints involved here, nobody’s position could have been more hopeless
than Ohlendorf’s at his own trial.
Ohlendorf’s NMT testimony was simply contradictory; he was stuck with his
IMT testimony, which the prosecution was mindful of holding him to, but he tried
to squirm out anyway, and the result was a story having no coherency whatever.
363 He retracted his earlier statement that there had been specific extermination
orders, but under cross examination he said that he was killing all Jews and
gypsies anyway, but that this was just an anti-partisan operation, not part of a program
to exterminate all Jews and gypsies on racial or religious grounds. However,
the total number of persons of all categories executed by group D during his year
in Russia was only 40,000, and not the 90,000 that he had testified to at the IMT
and which the NMT prosecutor attempted to hold him to. Either figure, of course,
especially the former, makes some sense, if the executions were only in connec-
360
361
362
363
New York Times (Jul. 16, 1943), 7.
IMT, vol. 4, 311-355.
IMT, vol. 22, 478-480, 491-494, 509-510, 538.
NMT, vol. 4, 223-312.
247