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Evidence for the German Euthanasia Program Compared to the Holocaust

NS Euthanasia Propaganda Poster, around 1938. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By John Wear | Inconvenient History | August 31, 2017

Abstract

I have been asked the question: Why do you think the German euthanasia program happened during World War II, but not the Holocaust? This article will show that the evidence for the German euthanasia program is overwhelming, while the evidence to support the Holocaust story is severely lacking.

Written Order

In August 1939, Hitler let it be known to his close associates that he approved any measure which could be seen as delivering handicapped patients from pain and suffering. Probably in the late autumn or winter of 1939, Hitler backdated a document to Sept. 1, 1939, that authorized the euthanasia program. The authorization states:[1]

“Reich Leader Bouhler and Dr. Med Brandt are charged with the responsibility of enlarging the powers of specific physicians, designated by name, so that patients who, on the basis of human judgment, are considered incurable, can be granted mercy death after the most careful assessment of their condition.”

Historians have acknowledged that no similar document of a plan by Germany to exterminate European Jewry has ever been found. In his well-known book on the Holocaust, French-Jewish historian Leon Poliakov states that “…the campaign to exterminate the Jews, as regards its conception as well as many other essential aspects, remains shrouded in darkness.” Poliakov adds that no documents of a plan for exterminating the Jews have ever been found because “perhaps none ever existed.”[2] British historian Ian Kershaw states that when the Soviet archives were opened in the early 1990s:[3]

“Predictably, a written order by Hitler for the ‘Final Solution’ was not found. The presumption that a single, explicit written order had ever been given had long been dismissed by most historians.”

The lack of a written order for the extermination of European Jewry led to Raul Hilberg’s famous explanation of how the Holocaust happened:[4]

“What began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy.”

On Jan. 16, 1985, under cross-examination at the first Ernst Zündel trial in Toronto, Raul Hilberg confirmed that he said these words.[5] Thus, Hilberg states that the so-called Holocaust was not carried out by a written order or plan, but rather by an incredible mind reading among far-flung German bureaucrats.

Defenders of the Holocaust story sometimes explain the absence of a written order to exterminate European Jewry by saying that the Nazis destroyed the evidence. However, an operation as big as the so-called Holocaust would have required written orders that would have been referred to in countless different ministerial bodies. It would have been impossible for all of these documents to have been completely destroyed at the end of the war. There would always have been carbon copies of the extermination order somewhere.[6]

Confessions of Defendants

The Doctors’ Trial at Nuremberg, which opened on Dec. 9, 1946 and ended on July 19, 1947, tried German doctors for their participation in the euthanasia program. Dr. Karl Brandt readily admitted his involvement in the euthanasia program, since too many records and affidavits directly linked him to the killing operation. Brandt argued that the only rationale for the euthanasia program had been to free handicapped and incurably ill patients from suffering. Brandt considered his involvement in the euthanasia program authorized by Hitler to be absolutely legal.[7]

By contrast, none of the defendants at the Nuremberg trials stated that they knew anything about a program to exterminate Jews during the war. Hermann Göring, Hans Frank, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Albert Speer, Gen. Alfred Jodl, and the other Nuremberg defendants all denied knowing anything of an extermination program of European Jewry. While such testimony is often dismissed as lying, the categorical and consistent nature of their testimony, sometimes by men who assumed they would be hanged, suggests that they are telling the truth.[8]

Hermann Göring in particular had no reason to lie about his lack of knowledge of a plan by Germany to exterminate European Jewry. As the highest ranking surviving Nazi, Göring’s execution was certain. Göring told his wife Emmy to give up all hope that he would not be executed at Nuremberg.[9] Yet Göring repeatedly and emphatically denied any knowledge of the so-called Holocaust. Göring confided to American psychologist Dr. Gustave Gilbert in his jail cell at Nuremberg:[10]

“I wish I could have Himmler here – just for 10 minutes – to ask him what on earth he was up to out there.”

It is most unfortunate that Heinrich Himmler was a “suicide” while in British captivity. However, since Himmler was in a position to know the true story of the alleged Holocaust, it was not within the bounds of political possibility that Himmler live to testify at the Nuremberg trials.[11]

Discussion of Killing Methods

German doctors determined that carbon monoxide gas was the most painless and humane way to euthanize people. The use of carbon monoxide gas therefore became the standard technique to kill people in the adult euthanasia program, with the first killings probably beginning in January 1940. Dr. Karl Brandt, Albert Widmann, Dr. Leonardo Conti and others all stated that they determined carbon monoxide gas to be the most humane method of euthanizing adults.[12]

Dr. Karl Brandt wrote in his personal notebook:[13]

“Adolf Hitler asked me which method, based on current considerations and experiences, was the mildest, that is to say the safest, quickest and the most effective and painless one. I had to concede that this was death through the inhalation of carbon monoxide gas. He then said that this was also the most humane. I myself then took on board this position and put to one side my medical concerns for external reasons… I am convinced that the procedure with carbon monoxide was right.”

No such planning has been found regarding the use of homicidal gas chambers in German concentration camps. The Holocaust story claims that the first gassings occurred at Auschwitz using Zyklon B in September 1941. These gassings were allegedly done without any prior engineering considerations.[14] According to the officially accepted version of the Holocaust story, the SS at Auschwitz quickly built homicidal gas chambers that were capable of killing thousands of people out of ordinary buildings .[15]

This official version of the so-called Holocaust is pure nonsense. Homicidal gas chambers using Zyklon B cannot be built “on the fly” by SS men with no engineering background. This is shown by a comparison to the delousing chambers used in the German concentration camps. The German delousing chambers were patented by the German firm Degesch, involved extremely advanced engineering, and were carefully constructed to be gastight and safe for the operators.[16]

Feasibility of Killing Methods

Carbon-monoxide gas can be used to efficiently kill people in homicidal gas chambers. The dead bodies from the gassings can also be safely removed by personnel wearing only a gas mask. Richard von Hegener observed that patients in the euthanasia program would lose consciousness within two to three minutes of the gas entering the room. Within five minutes all of the patients had fallen into a “kind of sleep.” The gas was left running for half an hour before a physician, protected by a gas mask, entered the room, examined the bodies, and pronounced that all of the patients were dead.[17]

By contrast, Zyklon B cannot be safely used to kill large numbers of people in homicidal gas chambers. Dr. Robert Faurisson states in regard to Zyklon-B poisoning: “The corpse of a man who has just been killed by this powerful poison is itself a dangerous source of poisoning, and cannot be touched with bare hands. In order to enter the HCN-saturated chamber to remove the corpse, special gear is needed, as well as a gas mask with a special filter.”[18] The danger of touching someone killed with Zyklon-B gas is confirmed in the scientific literature.[19]

The alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek could not have been used as homicidal gas chambers. The first scholar to make that observation was Dr. Robert Faurisson in the late 1970s.[20] He induced the American expert for execution technologies Fred Leuchter to come to similar conclusions in a 1988 study.[21] Leuchter’s research has since been revised, deepened and broadened by a number of subsequent technical studies coming to similar conclusions.[22]

The Diesel engines allegedly used at the Aktion Reinhardt camps of Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor also could not have been used to mass murder people as claimed either. The first to point this out was U.S. engineer Friedrich Paul Berg in a 1984 paper.[23] In a revised paper of 2000, Berg stated that for any Diesel arrangement to have been even marginally effective for mass murder, it would have required an exceptionally well-informed team of experts to know and do all that was necessary. Berg mentions that, even if someone had tried for a time to commit murder with Diesel exhaust, after a few tries it would have become apparent that something better was needed. Berg concludes that the evidence for Diesel gassings in the German concentration camps fails to meet the most basic standards that credible evidence must pass to satisfy reasonable people.[24]

After reading Berg’s 1984 paper, Walter Lüftl, a prominent Austrian engineer and at that time the president of Austria’s Association of Civil Engineers, confirmed in his own research paper that mass murder with Diesel-exhaust gasses is a sheer impossibility for reasons of time alone. Lüftl states in his report:[25]

“The laws of nature apply both to Nazis and anti-fascists. Nobody can be killed with diesel exhaust gas in the manner described [in the Holocaust literature].”

Public Knowledge

Public knowledge of the German euthanasia program was widespread in Germany. This public knowledge led to growing criticism from churches, the judiciary, and the state bureaucracy. Church leaders, and especially Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, made it internationally known that National-Socialist Germany was killing handicapped children and adults on an unprecedented scale. In a sermon on Aug. 3, 1941, Galen openly attacked the hypocrisy and the economic rationale for killing handicapped people. Instead of punishing Galen, Hitler ordered a stop to the euthanasia program on Aug. 24, 1941.[26]

By contrast, the German public was not aware of a program of extermination of European Jewry during the war. Nowhere in the archives, which contain mountains of intercepted cipher messages and the reports on bags of mail captured from enemy ships and from overrun enemy positions, is there the slightest evidence that a program of genocide against Jews was known by the German public.[27]

The German public became aware of the alleged genocide of European Jewry only when U.S. and British troops entered German concentration camps at the end of World War II. The horrific scenes of huge piles of dead bodies and emaciated and diseased surviving inmates were filmed and photographed for posterity by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Films of the horrific scenes at the camps were made mandatory viewing for the vanquished populace of Germany, so that their national pride would be destroyed and replaced with feelings of collective guilt.

The tour of liberated concentration camps became a ritual in the occupied Germany of late April and early May. American officers forced local citizens and German POWs to view the camps. German civilians were paraded against their will in front of the sickening piles of dead bodies found in the German camps.[28]

What the general public was not told is that most of the inmates in these camps had died of typhus, typhoid, and other natural causes. None of the Allied autopsy reports shows that anyone died of poison gas. Also, contrary to publicized claims, no researcher has been able to document a German policy of extermination through starvation in the German camps. The virtual collapse of Germany’s food, transport, and public-health systems and the extreme overcrowding in the German camps at the end of the war led to the catastrophe the Allied troops encountered when they entered the camps.

Other Considerations

Defenders of the Holocaust story inevitably raise eyewitness testimony as proof that the genocide of European Jewry happened. However, as I discussed elsewhere, eyewitness testimony to the so-called Holocaust is notoriously unreliable.[29]

The large number of Jewish survivors at the end of World War II also makes impossible a program of genocide against European Jewry. Dr. Arthur Robert Butz states in regard to the large number of Jewish survivors: “The simplest valid reason for being skeptical about the extermination claim is also the simplest conceivable reason; at the end of the war they were still there.”[30] Norman Finkelstein, the author of The Holocaust Industry, quotes his mother as asking:[31]

“If everyone who claims to be a Holocaust survivor actually is one, who did Hitler kill?”

Defenders of the Holocaust story also inevitably quote speeches from Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler or writings from Hitler, Goebbels, and Hans Frank to prove that Germany had an extermination program of Jews during the war. In fact, Himmler’s Posen speech of Oct. 4, 1943 has been called “the best evidence” to prove the Holocaust happened.[32] Himmler states in this speech:[33]

“I am referring here to the evacuation of the Jews, to the extermination of the Jewish people… it’s in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination.”

Most translations of Himmler’s Posen speech assume that the German word “ausrotten” means murder or extermination. David Irving, who is very fluent in the German language, testified at the second Ernst Zündel trial that this is an incorrect translation of the word “ausrotten”:[34]

“There is no doubt that in modern Germany the word ausrotten now means murder. But we have to look at the meaning of the word ausrotten in the 1930s and 1940s, as used by those who wrote or spoke these documents. In the mouth of Adolf Hitler, the word ausrotten is never once used to mean murder, and I’ve made a study of that particular semantic problem. You can find document after document which Hitler himself spoke or wrote where the word ausrotten cannot possibly mean murder.”

Since Hitler never used the word “ausrotten” to mean murder, and since Hitler and Himmler spoke the same language, there is no reason to believe that Himmler was speaking about the murder of the Jews in his Posen speech.

Other defenders of the Holocaust story assume that the Nazis used code words such as “special treatment” to hide their genocide of European Jewry.[35] This theory does not explain why the Nazis used explicit written orders for all of their other crimes. For example, Heinrich Himmler authorized in writing many illegal human medical experiments and executions in the German concentration camps. Adolf Hitler’s other crimes including the euthanasia program were all made in writing. It is absurd to think that only the genocide of European Jewry was hidden behind code words, while all other German war crimes were clearly stated in writing.

Conclusion

The German euthanasia program is a well-documented reality. Hitler authorized the euthanasia program in writing, the defendants at the Doctors’ Trial admitted their involvement in the program, the best method for killing victims was discussed among the participants in the program, the carbon-monoxide gas used in the German euthanasia program can safely and effectively kill people, and the euthanasia program was widely known by the German public. In fact, public opposition to the program was so strong in Germany that Hitler ordered the end of the first phase of the euthanasia program in August 1941.

By contrast, the genocide of European Jewry is not well documented. No order has ever been found authorizing the mass murder of Europe’s Jews. The German defendants at the main Nuremberg trial all stated they knew nothing about the so-called Holocaust. The Holocaust story absurdly states that the first gas chambers were built at Auschwitz using Zyklon B by SS personnel with no engineering experience. None of the alleged homicidal gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek or the claimed diesel gas chambers at the Aktion Reinhardt camps of Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor could possibly have been used for mass murder. The alleged genocide of Jews was also not known by the German public during the war. The eyewitness testimony to the so-called Holocaust has consistently proven to be extremely unreliable. Finally, the large number of Jewish survivors at the end of the war makes impossible a program of genocide against European Jewry.

In conclusion, while the German euthanasia program is a well-documented reality, the Holocaust story is a fraud. Dr. Arthur Robert Butz has aptly stated:[36]

“The ‘Holocaust’ is such a gigantic fraud that it is a cornucopia of absurdities.”

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Notes

[1] Schmidt, Ulf, Karl Brandt: The Nazi Doctor, New York: Continuum Books, 2007, pp. 125, 132-133.

[2] Poliakov, Leon, Harvest of Hate, New York: Holocaust Library, 1979, p. 108.

[3] Kershaw, Ian, Hitler, the Germans, and the Final Solution, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008, p. 96.

[4] De Wan, George, “The Holocaust in Perspective,” Newsday: Long Island, N.Y., Feb. 23, 1983, Part II, p. 3.

[5] See trial transcript, pp. 846-848. Also Kulaszka, Barbara (ed.), Did Six Million Really Die: Report of Evidence in the Canadian “False News” Trial of Ernst Zündel, Toronto: Samisdat Publishers Ltd., 1992, p. 24.

[6] Kulaszka, Barbara (ed.), op. cit. (note 5), p. 370.

[7] Schmidt, Ulf, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 354, 370f.

[8] Weber, Mark, “The Nuremburg Trials and the Holocaust,” The Journal of Historical Review, 12(2) (1992), pp. 197-199.

[9] Irving, David, Nuremberg: The Last Battle, London: Focal Point, 1996, p. 276.

[10] Irving, David, Göring: A Biography, London: GraftonBooks, 1991, p. 493.

[11] Butz, Arthur R., The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, 9th ed., Newport Beach, Cal.: Institute for Historical Review, 1993, p. 240.

[12] Schmidt, Ulf, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 138f.

[13] Ibid., p. 138.

[14] Longerich, Peter, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 281. See also Wachsmann, Nikolaus, Kl: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, pp. 267-269. In extreme detail: Mattogno, Carlo, Auschwitz: The First Gassing. Rumor and Reality, 2nd ed., Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2016.

[15] See Mattogno, Carlo, Debunking the Bunkers of Auschwitz: Black Propaganda versus History, 2nd ed., Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2016. Also idem, Auschwitz: Crematorium I and the Alleged Homicidal Gassings, 2nd ed., ibid., 2016;

[16] Berg, Friedrich P., “The German Delousing Chambers,” The Journal of Historical Review, 7(1) (1986), pp. 73-94; http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p-73_Berg.html .

[17] Schmidt, Ulf, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 138f.

[18] Faurisson, Robert, “The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: A Challenge,” The Journal of Historical Review, 13(4) (1993), pp. 14-17; http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v13/v13n4p14_Faurisson.html.

[19] Padmakumar, K., “Postmortem Examination Cases of Cyanide Poisoning: A Biological Hazard,” Journal of Indian Academy of Forensic Medicine, 32(1) (2010), pp. 80f.; http://medind.nic.in/jal/t10/i1/jalt10i1p80.pdf .

[20] In English: Faurisson, Robert, “The Gas Chambers of Auschwitz Appear to be Physically Inconceivable,” The Journal of Historical Review, 2(4) (1981), pp. 312-317; https://codoh.com/library/document/1995 .

[21] Leuchter, Fred A., and Robert Faurisson, Germar Rudolf, The Leuchter Reports: Critical Edition, 4th ed., Uckfield: Castle Hill Publishers, 2015.

[22] See in addition to the works by Mattogno mentioned in notes 14f. also: Mattogno, Carlo, The Real Case for Auschwitz: Robert van Pelt’s Evidence from the Irving Trial Critically Reviewed, Uckfield, Castle Hill Publishers, 2015; idem, and Franco Deana, The Cremation Furnaces of Auschwitz: A Technical and Historical Study, ibid.¸ 2015; Rudolf, Germar, The Chemistry of Auschwitz: The Technology and Toxicology of Zyklon B and the Gas Chambers, ibid., 2017; Graf, Jürgen, and Carlo Mattogno, Concentration Camp Majdanek: A Historical and Technical Study, 3rd ed., ibid., 2016.

[23] Berg, Friedrich Paul, “The Diesel Gas Chambers: Myth within a Myth,” The Journal of Historical Review, 5(1) (1984), pp. 15-46; https://codoh.com/library/document/982 .

[24] Berg, Friedrich Paul, “The Diesel Gas Chamber: Ideal for Torture—Absurd For Murder,” in Gauss, Ernst (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of Truth and Memory, Capshaw, AL: Theses and Dissertations Press, 2000, pp. 454f.

[25] Lüftl, Walter, “The Lüftl Report,” The Journal of Historical Review, 12(4) (1992), pp. 403-406, 419; https://codoh.com/library/document/2383 .

[26] Schmidt, Ulf, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 162f., 166f. See also Evans, Richard J., The Third Reich at War, 1939-1945, London: Penguin Books, 2008, pp. 99f.

[27] Irving, David, Nuremberg, op. cit. (note 9), p. 168.

[28] Abzug, Robert H., Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 128-132.

[29] Wear, John, “Holocaust Eyewitnesses: Is the Testimony Reliable?,” The Barnes Review, 19(4) (2013), pp. 26-29; https://katana17.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/holocaust-eyewitnesses-is-the-testimony-reliable/ .

[30] Butz, Arthur R., op. cit. (note 11), p. 10.

[31] Interview with Norman Finkelstein, by Viktor Frölke, in Salon.com, “Shoah business,” Aug. 30, 2000. See also Finkelstein, Norman, The Holocaust Industry, New York: Verso, 2000, p. 81.

[32] https://codoh.com/library/document/891/ .

[33] http://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%204029.pdf .

[34] Kulaszka, Barbara (ed.), op. cit. (note 5), pp. 370f.

[35] For example, see http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2006/06/gauleiter-arthur-greiser.html .

[36] Butz, Arthur R., “Some Thoughts on Pressac’s Opus,” The Journal of Historical Review, 13(3) (1993), pp. 23-37, here p. 23; https://codoh.com/library/document/2425/ .

October 16, 2019 - Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular