Book Review of Carlo Mattogno, Thomas Kues, Jurgen Graf, 2013, 'The "Extermination Camps" of "Aktion Reinhardt": An Analysis and Refutation of Factitious "Evidence," Deceptions and Flawed Argumentation of the "Holocaust Controversies" Bloggers', 2 Vols, 1st Edition, Castle Hill: Uckfield
It is the sine qua non of revisionist historical research into the 'Holocaust' that in order to get to the truth of the matter - or at least the most plausible version of events - those who are studying the 'Holocaust' need to base their position purely on the documentary record as far as is possible. What that means simply put is: that you have you base your position on what the evidence says not what you would like it to say.
This is the premise behind the 2013 work of the three leading lights of Holocaust revisionism and by work I mean a true magnum opus in the sense of a complete and utter dismantling of the best 'evidence', excuses and counterarguments that orthodox holocaustians can produce. By orthodox holocaustians I mean here those individuals - with at least some background in historical research - who try to argue for the orthodox position using the tools of the academic and intellectual trade.
Thus we come to one of the points of departure in the work in question: the simple fact - as Graf expresses it - that orthodox holocaustians have given up debating revisionists not because - like the 'Flat Earthers' - they can debunk their arguments with ease, but more precisely: because they cannot do so. It is well known that just about every attempt to 'publicly debunk' holocaust revisionists has ended in near-disaster: the most hilarious being Professor Michael Shermer's very public demolition by a combination of Mark Weber and Paul Grubach.
More than that other orthodox scholars from a variety of disciplines - from accountants to chemists - have attempted to take revisionist arguments on the nose on their own terms, but these too have met with unexpected catastrophe with - in this case - Carlo Mattogno and Germar Rudolf mowing down the claims and objections of their interlocutors by simply pointing out in detail that they are misrepresenting or selectively citing sources, trying to make science 'fit' the holocaust (with hilarious results) and in some cases: just make stuff up. (1)
This unmitigated and complete destruction of academics by lay scholars has led what is in essence a moratorium of detailed counter-arguments to revisionist material. Instead revisionist arguments and work is derided as 'Holocaust denial' with the usual claims that the 'Holocaust is the best documented event in history', but as Mattogno rhetorically asks in this volume: this clearly isn't the case considering that out of thousands upon thousands of 'holocaust survivors' only the same few are ever used as 'witnesses' by the orthodox. As Mattogno and Graf further point out the orthodox holocaustians themselves make mincemeat of this claim of excellent documentation as they readily admit that there is little documentation so they are forced to rely on 'witnesses'.
The problem of using witness testimony alone is very well known to modern historians and it is worth noting that in no other historical event in the scope of modern European history (i.e., 1871 onwards as usually defined) do we see academics focus purely on 'witnesses' to prove a theory without accompanying documentation. With the Soviet mass murders we have plenty of documentary evidence, with Mao's great famine we also have plenty of documentary evidence and even for the crimes of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il in North Korea we have at least solid physical evidence of what they have been up to.
The problem with 'witnesses' is an important one for orthodox holocaustians precisely because the only time 'witnesses' are regarded as a useful primary source among modern historians is when they all agree with perhaps a tiny amount of variation on a theme. This is not true in terms of 'Holocaust survivors' used to prove the 'Holocaust' because they vary hugely, routinely describe improbable and even impossible events, often get their timelines wrong, frequently claim different killing methods (for example the use of diesel engines, electric floors, vacuum chambers and so on) than that held to have occurred by the orthodox and so on.
Orthodox holocaustians usually get round this in the best of all hack traditions: selectively citing bits of different 'witnesses' to create a superficially plausible tapestry. However the problem with that is that it comes back to why one piece of a testimony is reliable, but another is not. This necessarily requires an objective rubric for eliminating bad claims, but one has never been provided precisely because there is no ability to eliminate different claims dispassionately using evidence.
What merely happens is that when 'Holocaust survivor' A says something which supports the version of the holocaust decided upon in the 1950s/1960s (on the basis of Nuremberg and associated other trials) then that is held to be plausible and thus is 'evidence', but when 'Holocaust survivor' A says something which manifestly contradicts the established narrative then it is held to be implausible and is simply edited out of the history books.
The reason for this attitude is really very simple: the orthodox holocaustians tacitly - and some probably even explicitly - realise that they have trouble supporting their views with evidence so they go back to the tried and trust method of producing book after book based - as David Irving so admirably characterised it - on maybe twelve other books which are in turn based on seventeen other books which are in turn based on each other. However these books rarely link back to the actual source documentation and nor do they deal with it comprehensively and definitely: instead they tend to skirt it and take snippets from here, there and everywhere.
This has created a culture of ignorance and superstition among orthodox holocaustians where even the slightest questioning of the official narrative will get a budding - or even established - historian put into metaphorical thumbscrews while the would-be inquistors whisper: 'Repent and your sins will be forgiven' in their their ear.
This is nicely demonstrated in the first volume by both Graf and Mattogno when they point out the 'Holocaust Controveries' bloggers - who oft remind one of the sort of diseased leftists 1980s and 1990s who were inveterate character-assassins of their scientific opponents calling them 'Nazis' for conducting genetic research without predefined conclusions - have - what we might call - a respect problem in that the orthodox holocaustians want nothing to do with them and even have gone so far on some occasions to formally warn all and sundry against them for making things up, lying in general and just having vile self-righteous personalities in general.
That said these bloggers are nasty pieces of work - with at least one of them being borderline certifiable - is hardly a surprise to anyone who has dealt with them in the past.
They just aren't nice people.
Be that as it may: Graf and Mattogno's point is less about the character of those they are showing up, but rather that the divorce of the 'Holocaust Controversies' crowd from the orthodox holocaustians has come about, because the 'Holocaust Controveries' crowd try to fight Holocaust revisionists point-on-point. This entails their having wandered off the well-lit and trodden streets of Holocaust orthodoxy and into the dark, shady underworld of the documentation that sits as the basis for those streets.
Essentially the 'Holocaust Controversies' crowd in trying to fight revisionists point-on-point had to get creative with their arguments (hence why they are frequently cited by 'Holocaust' belivevers in online debates as the orthodox holocaustian literature simply doesn't even attempt to rebut revisionist arguments anymore) as they must have realized fairly early on that to simple reproduce the standard arguments would get them no-where (although it might get them on the speaker circuit with such obvious intellectual cripples as Deborah Lipstadt). By getting creative in their argumentation they quickly began to show up the holes in the orthodox holocaustian argument that revisionists have long highlighted. Promptly the thumbscrews come out and inquistors are whispering in their ears about repentence, while they declaim loudly about their 'anti-fascist' credentials.
That said the 'Holocaust Controversies' crowd are not completely exempt from blame for their ignominious and mutually-disagreeable divorce from orthodox holocaustians. Since as Mattogno in particular shows (by tracing back their sources): the 'Holocaust Controversies' crowd are - as Graf refers to it - serial 'cut and pasters' [from internet sources] as well as obviously desperate (hence their continual reference to revisionists as 'conspiracy theorists', 'conspiraloons' and so forth [sans arguments to prove irrational obsessions with alleged conspiracies]) so far as Mattogno documents both simple mistakes in referencing (for example claiming a five page document has forty-fifty pages) as well as some fairly extensive (and predictable) plagiarism on their part (documented as a separate appendix in the PDF version of the work).
The sense that one gets from reading Mattogno, Graf and Kues' work is one of pure schadenfreude in that what they have written is a complete and utter demolition of the edifice of 'evidence-based' holocaust orthodoxy as represented by the 'Holocaust Controversies' crowd. In essence this work by Mattogno, Graf and Kues is an admirable two volume summary of revisionist arguments on the historicity of the 'Holocaust' aside from Auschwitz and why they are right: that will - I am sure - grace many shelves in years to come as a definitive statement of the scientific nature of Holocaust revisionism.
However I would adduce one further point that Graf does not make in relation to the claim that he is an anti-Semite (which he isn't) in so far as relating to the infamous 'Protocols of Zion': the literature on this subject is sizeable (and I should know as I am writing a book on the subject) and the 'plagiarist bloggers' (as Graf calls them) seem to be blissfully unaware that the ‘forgery claim’ has been long doubted and that a death-knell for Cohn's 'Paris Okhrana hypothesis' was sounded in 2004 by jewish scholar Cesare de Michelis and confirmed in 2022 by German scholar Michael Hagemeister.
Claiming that someone believes the 'Protocols of Zion' to be in some way authentic does not ipso facto make them anti-Semitic and nor does it mean they argument is specious.
To do so - as the 'Holocaust Controversies' crowd have done - is absurd and the height of intellectual cretinism, but something that people like myself have long become accustomed to: precisely because the opposition have very little of intellectual substance to offer. This suggests - although it does not necessarily mean - that revisionist perspectives on the 'Holocaust' and on jews more broadly (which are not confreres per se, but are often positions held in tandem) has a bright future when the Augean stables of academia have been cleansed of ideologues and frauds (who are often, but not always or necessarily jewish).
It only remains to state that this is a work that is a must read for any individual who wants to debate the 'Holocaust' and indeed it deserves to become a best-seller (although it almost certainly won't in part due to the fact that it is a very technical - and at times dry - work). I would hope that the work is translated into many different languages other than English and distributed accordingly as it is like a beacon of intellectual truth in a world full of holocaustian superstition and darkness.
References
(1) See Carlo Mattogno, Germar Rudolf, 2005, 'Auschwitz Lies: Legends, Lies, and Prejudices on the Holocaust', 1st Edition, Theses & Dissertations Press: Chicago