No Orders Part One

Part 2

The fact there is no explicit extermination order from Hitler or any other Nazi is a thorn in the side of the orthodox Holocaust historians. Holocaust Denial on Trial, or HDoT, tries to minimize this lack of evidence by reducing the problem of there being no signed order from Hitler himself. The facts are there that there are no written orders for an extermination of the Jewish people, period. Secondly, they state that this lack of an order does not prove the Holocaust didn’t happen—which is correct. However, HDoT wants to put the burden of proof where it doesn’t belong: on the shoulders of the revisionists. The burden of proof lies on the accuser, and this lack of evidence is a point against proving the Holocaust happened, not a point against disproving it.

Of course, the Holocaust narrative has copes for this lack of evidence. As I will show in the next two articles, these copes do not hold up to scrutiny.

For this topic HDoT chooses to present (and misrepresent) the work of David Irving and John Weir to represent the revisionists.

David Irving is only a Holocaust denier because he does not agree with the official Holocaust narrative. When it comes to the Holocaust, you have to believe all of it to be safe from being labeled as a denier. The following is the full page from which HDoT references. In the first paragraph, you can see that Irving actually agrees with HDoT’s interpretation of Himmler’s 1943 speech (which we will cover next). I am guessing that HDoT doesn’t want its audience seeing Irving as someone that might have an unbiased and balanced view of the Holocaust and subsequently checking out his work. After all, Deborah Lipstadt, the founder of HDoT, was involved in a lawsuit against Irving. But that’s a whole other story.

Now let’s look at Weir’s whole argument and not just bits and pieces of it. As you can see, Weir is not simply saying that because there was no order the Holocaust didn’t happen. He actually brings up a very good argument. One that HDoT cannot answer.

Just a quick derail to point out how petty HDoT is. It is in their style guide to not make the hyperlinks to revisionist sites clickable. You have to copy and paste manually. No little trick is too underhanded for HDoT. Plus when you do click a link it doesn’t even open in a new tab. How annoying!

HDoT asserts that the Nazi regime was secretive about the murder of Jews and that Hitler didn’t want to leave a paper trail. How does HDoT know this? The answer goes back to John Weir’s argument: “…one has to start with the conclusion that there was a Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews before determining that a Hitler order must exist: There was an extermination program therefore there was an order to initiate it. Since no order has been found, an explanation for why the order is missing was created as a substitute to support the conclusion of an extermination program which was really assumed in the first place.” The examples HDoT provides in this section are not actually evidence of the assertion that Hitler was covering his tracks, but we’ll go through them anyway.

In 1943, Himmler gave a speech to major SS Generals, of which the transcript with Himmler’s notes exists. HDoT provides a bits and pieces version that looks incriminating, but what would we find if we had the whole picture?

The following is a translation by Carlos Porter of the section HDoT is referencing. Here is what HDoT presented of the speech:  “We will never speak of it publicly . . . I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. The Jewish race is being exterminated—that is clear, it’s in our program–elimination of the Jews and we’re doing it, exterminating them . . . This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written . . .” As you can see, a lot of context is missing. In fact, “never speak of it publicly” is in a completely different paragraph from the rest of it.

The most egregious omission is “says every Party comrade.” When he says the parts about the elimination of the Jews, he is speaking in first person from the point of view of the Party comrade.

However, this still leaves questions about the first sentence of the second paragraph. Why does he say evacuation and then extirpation? It’s all a matter of translation and interpretation. The original sentence in German is “Ich meine jetzt die Judenevakuierung, die Ausrottung des jüdischen Volkes.” The word in question is “Ausrottung.” If we read the notes from the translator, Carlos Porter, we are reminded that words can be used figuratively. With this in mind, it makes more sense that Himmler is talking about opposition to the evacuation, deportation, of the Jewish people.

So Himmler’s speech is neither evidence of a policy to exterminate Jews nor evidence for the assertion that Hitler covered his tracks.

As for the Rudolf Höss’s claim, “…were the only ones who had the necessary information to calculate the total number of Jews annihilated. According to the orders given by Himmler, all information concerning the number of victims involved was to be burned after each action at Auschwitz . . . I personally destroyed every bit of evidence which could be found in my office. The other department heads did the same.” This was a statement made after the war by a man that had previously been tortured and broken. It is proof of nothing.

Read part 2 for more!