Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Chapter 1: Trials, Jews and Nazis
used are Communist and Jewish and thus, by the nature of the problem we are examining,
must be considered essentially useless. In addition, the post-war figures
for the United States are demonstrably too low by a significant amount.
One should not form the impression that it is essential to my argument that any
demographic conclusions seemed to be reached above be accepted by the reader.
It has only been shown what sorts of problems arise if one attempts a too direct
demographic approach; it is not possible to settle anything in such a manner. In
the final analysis, the difficulty is that the figures available amount to nothing
more than statements, from Jewish and Communist sources, that millions of Jews
were killed. Such claims are to be expected, but they must certainly not deter us
from looking deeper. We will take up the demographic problem later in the book,
however, because the nature of the situation is such that reasonably useful demographic
conclusions are possible once it is understood what, in general, happened
to the Jews.
Rassinier’s demographic study, in fact, does not really even attempt to settle
the problem, strictly speaking. His basic approach is to analyze the inferences that
have been drawn from two different sets of data, that of the Centre de Documentation
juive contemporaine and that of Hilberg, both of whom infer from their
data five to six million Jewish victims of the Nazis. Rassinier’s conclusion is that
the former can only claim 1,485,292 victims form its data and the latter 896,892. 29
Rassinier accepts the reality of about a million Jewish victims of Nazi policies,
while rejecting the claims of extermination. For example, it is known that some
East European peoples took advantage of general political-military conditions to
persecute Jews. Also, many Jews who were deported from their homes no doubt
perished as a result of generally chaotic conditions, which accompanied the latter
part of the war.
Believing that the task is not possible, I will offer here no definite estimate of
Jewish losses. However, I have no strong reason to quarrel with Rassinier’s estimate.
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Our Method, Argument, and Conclusion
As stated, the “material” approach will be extended here and, in addition, a
“historical-political” approach will be “introduced.” This is just a fancy way of
saying that we will grasp that there are two political powers involved in the problem,
not just one. That is to say, we have a tale of extermination, and we should
inquire into the circumstance of its generation. Clearly, there are two states involved
in the problem. Germany had an anti-Jewish policy involving, in many
cases, deportations of Jews from their homes and countries of citizenship. That is
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30
Rassinier (1964), 220.
Editor’s note: compare in this regard Walter N. Sanning, The Dissolution of the Eastern European
Jewry, and Germar Rudolf, “Holocaust victims: A Statistical Analysis”, in Rudolf (ed.),
Dissecting the Holocaust, pp. 181-213.
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