Did six million die?

[DavidS]

David Irving, a British historian, has been sent to prison for 3 years in Austria for saying 17 years ago that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz. This sentence seems totally disproportionate to the offence and it is highly questionable whether it should be an offence.
There is no doubt that between 1941 and 1945 an attempt was made in those countries which were under German control, to exterminate the Jewish population. The policy, which is known as 'the final solution to the Jewish question in Europe', was planned at a conference in Wannsee chaired by Heydrich, and was carried out by the SS. Early attempts to murder Jews by shooting and gas vans were stopped because they were inefficient and shooting had an adverse psychological effect on those carrying out the killings. Gas chambers were introduced at a number of extermination centres in Poland. The ones at Auschwitz used Zyklon B, others, including Treblinka, used carbon monoxide. It is nonsense to suggest, as Irving does, that gas chambers did not exist at Auschwitz, particularly when the camp commandant Rudolf Hoess admitted to their exisistence and gave great detail about them after the war. He was in fact quite proud of the number of people the Auschwitz chambers and crematoriums could process at anyone time. Nevertheless the Irving conviction is worrying. Are historians now restricted on commenting on the accurancy of the 6 million figure which is highly questionable? Can they no longer point out that other groups, particularly gypsys and homosexuals, were also exterminated by the Hitler regime? Can they no longer point out that far more people were killed by the NKVD in the USSR in the late 1930's in Stalin's purges than were delibrately murdered by the Nazis? It seems that in Austria at least you can now go to prison for talking crap!

[Officer Dibble]

I agree. It's monstrous that a western democracy can throw a man in jail simply for speaking his mind. His views maybe eccentric, but ironically, sending him to prison for airing them is something the Nazis would have whole-heartedly applauded. Jeez, all the man said was that he didn't believe the holocaust story as it had been told. It's not like he was shouting in the street, demanding that disrespectful infidels be killed, is it?

We should all be a little worried about this, as it is becoming increasingly likely in western Europe, in these politically correct times, that the state and friends of the state will lean on you if you dare to venture 'off-message'.


Officer Dibble

[chatterji]

David Irving is not an historian if by that we mean someone who's attempting to build a balanced picture of the past, extrapolated from the material they've unearthed. Credible contemporary historians tend not to distort, wilfully, source material simply to fit into their world view. I think Irving is more of an historical novelist than anything else. Basically he utilises his expertise with source material to manipulate facts to serve his political agenda: he's a fascist, racist and anti-semite.

The context of the Austrian case is everything. For obvious reasons Austria has some fairly heavyweight laws against holocaust-deniers , although ironically it also offers strong support for people like Joerg Haider, a Nazi in everything but name...although as his parents were fervent Nazis perhaps in name too. To me Kurt Waldheim also had a dubious right-wing past. Anyway, the point is that that is the law of the land.

Irving knew the laws in Austria. He went back, despite being banned due to his repeated provocation of that country's laws. Consequently he was punished according to the law of that country. He wanted to be a martyr. He got his wish. Fair enough.

Make no mistake, this is not an issue about freedom of speech, much as Irving has desperately tried to style it as as such. This is an issue about a particularly subtle and malevolent atttempt to rehabilitate a regime and individuals guilty of mass murder. To me that's an extremely slippery slope to go down.

By the way, you're wrong in your assertion that historians don't point the finger at other groups who have been the victims of genocide. They do. Repeatedly. Holocaust studies incorporate the scrutiny of all groups who were murdered by the Nazi regime, not just Jews. There is also constant rational debate over degrees of culpability within the Nazi power-infrastructure, for what happened, which is as it should be. Most importantly, though, there is continuous comparitive analysis between other, similar state-sponsored holocausts, such as the one you cite in the former USSR. No Western government restricts this debate.

I'll sign off from this rant with a little ditty composed by Irving for his young daughter, in 1994:

I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian.


Enjoy the food Mr Irving. It couldn't happen to a nicer chap.

[DanG]

I find it a bit worrying to be honest. I have no reason to question the veracity of the Holocaust or the figures involved, but I think it's quite scary that I couldn't do so if I wanted to. It's quite possible that the history could be wrong either way, for example...what if 10 million died as opposed to 6? Could you be locked up for suggesting that?

It's like banging Oliver Stone up for a 10 year stretch because he dares to dispute the official line that Lee Harvey Oswald was the JFK shooter and was working alone.

Imagine if it was a crime to deny the existence of God or Allah, for example? The mind boggles!

I can't really comment on David Irving, as I've not read any of his works and only know of him what I've read in the papers, but I find the principle involved here to be shocking.

[Pervert]

Chatterji has put the case perfectly. Central and eastern Europe still have stong anti-semitic elements, not to mention a rather disturbing racist strain. There are a number of former card-carrying Nazis who have happily passed their feelings and beliefs on to the succeeding generations, putting their own rosy glow on the events of the 30s and 40s. It wouldn't take much for that sort of poison to re-emerge, which is why Austria and a few other countries have this seemingly draconian law.

Irving has spent decades trying to clear Hitler and his cronies of genocide charges, including suggesting that influenza was responsible for many of the deaths.

What Stalin's troops did was obscene in the extreme, but Churchill, Attlee and other western leaders ignored that because he was an ally. Was he a worse monster than Hitler? Almost certainly.

[Fred]

Good post, chatterji, but Dibble has a point. Irving is a jerk, but even several of his opponents have said this just risks making him a martyr. Like the BNP's other favourite Ernst Zuendel (author of The Hitler We Loved and Why) it's better to tackle BS of this sort with rational argument rather than giving these sad little men even more of the media attention they desperately crave by locking them up for their opinions.

Still, can't help but admit to a feeling of Schadenfreude to read about Irving's snivelling to the judge that he'd supposedly "changed his views" about the Holocaust in recent years. Sure thing, yer Honour! !wink!

[DavidS]

The figure of six million was the number cited in the trial of Oberstrumbahnfuerher Karl Adolf Eichmann when he was tried in Jerusalem in 1960. There is no evidence that it is an accurate figure and the actual figure may be higher or lower. It is thought that in excess of a million people died at Auschwitz alone. Auschwitz was efficiently run as a death centre by Rudolf Hoess some other camps were not. It is worth noting that many people who were involved in the killings were not German but acting under German supervision, most coming from the Ukraine and the Baltic states.

[DavidS]

You are of course correct that Irving is not an historian in the accepted sense of the word, I described him as such because that is how he is usually described.
Many of the worst Nazis were Austrian, including Hitler, Seyss-Inquart, Kaltenbrunner and Eichmann, so it is easy to understand that nations sensibilities. Nevertheless this IS a freedom of speech issue. As you rightly say it is not an offence to deny other cases of mass extermination . Why should the one carried out by the Third Reich be different?

[strictlybroadband]

The laws against holocaust denial in Austria and elsewhere are strange, it's true, but not surprising given the post-war situation when they were passed... but our "free" parliament just passed a law against "glorifying terrorism", whatever that's supposed to mean. I'm more concerned about the ramifications of a 2006 British law against freedom of speech than a 1940s Austrian law.