Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORY“Rudolf Report,” whose argumentation is inexorably based in centrallocations on a chemical line of reasoning, thus a line of reasoning of thenatural sciences.By his education Germar Rudolf is a natural scientist. As such he istrained to work strictly oriented along facts and to always developchains of evidence which can be verified by others. Although for himworking hypotheses can in principle be posited, they can claim validityonly, if they can be substantiated and proved. This sober, “objectivistic”approach is also his guiding principle in the historiographic publicationsin front of me. With this kind of historiography he distinguishes himselfclearly from historians who develop indirect insights to “true stories”following the rules of probability, whereby in many cases they tend tofill in the gaps of the provable with “possible truth” resulting in a convincingaccount. 1Rudolf became a “historian against his wish”; after he had been unableto finish his PhD studies and had his social existence destroyed as areaction to his chemical expert report on the Holocaust, he dedicatedhimself to the historical research and representation of this – not just forhim – most serious criminal accusation of the 20th century. In the contextof Rudolf’s professional education as a natural scientist, the historianfaces the question whether the defendant is able to handle the toolsand methods typical for the social and historiographic sciences in a wayconducive to the problems. After reading his works it seems to me thatRudolf, as a double outsider – as a chemist and as a historiographic “revisionist”– has been aware of the central importance of the fact that theallegations proffered by him can be worth a discussion only, if his lineof reasoning is logical, formally correct and verifiable without restriction.Hence he concerned himself very thoroughly with the historicaland legal issues as to what defines evidence; he has assessed typesof evidence and evidentiary hierarchies (Vorlesungen, pp. 195–199) andhad his works analyzed several times by experts (Vorlesungen, pp. 137–147) plus encouraged examinations prior to printings (Grundlagen, pp.407–410). The latter has to be considered an extremely rare gesture, as Ido not know of any other case of such a preemptive offer for a debate.In the following I want to evaluate the scientific character of the twoworks mentioned above in purely formal respect without, in terms ofthe books’ content, assuming in any way as my own opinion that whichRudolf has concluded from it. As a talented natural scientist Rudolf had257