Arthur R. Butz – The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century

Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century
wartime propaganda in its public aspect. First, however, we should point out that
some otherwise keen observers misinterpret the role of Auschwitz in the extermination
legend. The distinguished American journalist and historian Harry Elmer
Barnes wrote in 1967 that the extermination 138
“[…] camps were first presented as those in Germany, such as Dachau,
Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and Dora, but it was demonstrated that
there had been no systematic extermination in those camps. Attention was then
moved on to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belzec, Chelmno, Jonowska, Tarnow,
Ravensbruck, Mauthausen, Brezeznia, and Birkenau, which does not exhaust
the list that appears to have been extended as needed.”
The basis for Barnes’ misunderstanding, of course, is that at the end of the war
the mass media, for the sake of sensation mongering, did indeed seize on the
scenes found in the German camps as proof of exterminations, and it is also true,
as we indicated in the previous chapter, that these scenes have served as the mass
propaganda “proof” of exterminations. However, our analysis shows that Auschwitz
had been carefully chosen in 1944 as the core for the extermination hoax.
This point will be supported by material to be reviewed below and also in Chapters
4 and 5. By publishing the WRB report in November 1944, Washington
committed itself to a specific form of the hoax. That form was maintained in the
trials in Nuremberg, and even today, the form of the hoax does not differ in any
significant respect from the WRB report.
After his WRB victory, Morgenthau busied himself with other things, particularly
with the policies to be followed in occupied Germany. He found that existing
plans actually paid regard to the Hague and Geneva Conventions, to which the
United States was signatory, and which prohibited such things as the seizure of
private personal property of no military significance, the detaining of POWs long
after the end of hostilities, and the needless imposition of starvation rations. He
therefore campaigned for the harsher policies, which later became known as the
Morgenthau Plan and of which many were actually adopted and put into practice.
David Marcus in the CAD sponsored Morgenthau’s objectives there and kept him
informed about his opponents. Colonel Bernard Bernstein, long associated with
Morgenthau, performed a similar function for him at Supreme Headquarters Allied
Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) in London. Baruch also helped out. 139
The First ‘Extermination’ Claims and New York
The thesis of this book is that the story of Jewish extermination in World War
II is a propaganda hoax. Obviously, therefore, we must examine the origins of the
hoax in wartime propaganda. We have already discussed many of the “inside” aspects,
and the public aspects remain to be examined.
The enormity of the task plus the “controversial” nature of the subject seem to
138
139
90
Barnes, quoted in Anonymous, 3.
Blum, 343, 383.