Source:
https://codoh.com/library/document/the-early-history-of-revisionism/
by
David Skrbina
19
May 2025
Readers
knowledgeable about the Holocaust will recall that the central elements of the
present-day story existed not only in the immediate aftermath of the war – when
such things were at least theoretically knowable – but also during the war, and
even before the war, when they were not. Hitler’s plan for the “extermination”
of the Jews, the gas chambers and the potential 6 million victims – all these
were prominent features of major newspapers during and prior to the war. These
were unprecedented and extreme claims, and they drew skeptical commentary even
amidst the war. But this early history of revisionism is largely unknown today,
even by specialists.
When the
question arises of the earliest revisionist writings, most experts will point to
the work of Paul Rassinier (1906-1967). A French communist at the outbreak of
the war, Rassinier fought with the French Resistance against the Germans until
his arrest in October 1943, after which he was deported to Buchenwald and Dora
camps. He escaped a German transport train in April 1945, survived the war, and
went on to write 11 books, most about the war.
Rassinier’s first book to challenge the Holocaust story was The Lie of
Ulysses, initially published in 1950 and then in expanded form in 1955.
There, he first questions the gassing claims and challenges the existence of
homicidal gas chambers, leading to a grave skepticism about the entire alleged
extermination program. The capture, trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann in
1961 led to a second important work, The Real Eichmann Trial (1962),
and eventually to a third critical book, The Drama of the European Jews
(1964).
As
important as these works are, they were preceded by, or contemporaneous with,
other important critical thinkers who objected to various aspects of the
Holocaust story. Here I will highlight two overlooked individuals, in order to
give credit where credit is due: Douglas Reed and John O. Beaty.
But
first, let us recall some basic aspects of the conventional story. Assertions
that Hitler wanted to “exterminate” the Jews were promoted in major newspapers
from almost the day he became known to the world. In a remarkable early
anticipation, the New York Times reported already in February of 1923 –
a full decade before he took power – that “a part of the program of Herr Hitler
[…] is the extermination of the Jews” (8 Feb). Upon his ascension in 1933, the
NYT was ready to promote the soon-infamous figure of 6 million Jewish
victims. The very month that Hitler took power, the NYT reported on a
“Hitler protest” in New York; Rabbi Stephen Wise issued an appeal for “the
preservation of German Jewry,” adding that his group “is now active in relief
and reconstruction work in Eastern Europe where 6,000,000 Jews are involved” (29
Mar, p. 9).
Stories
about “extermination” and “6 million” threatened or endangered Jews made several
appearances in subsequent years, and accelerated as soon as war became imminent.
In early 1938, the NYT reported on “a depressing picture of 6,000,000
Jews in Central Europe, deprived of protection or economic opportunities, slowly
dying of starvation, all hope gone” (23 Feb, p. 23). War began in September
1939, and naturally yet more such stories appeared; in mid-1940, the NYT
quoted Nahum Goldmann: “Six million Jews are doomed to destruction if the
victory of the Nazis should be final” (25 Jun, p. 4). This incredible prediction
came one full year before Hitler allegedly decided to begin his program of
Jewish mass murder, according to traditionalist experts.
As the
war progressed, death tolls mounted on all sides – but especially on the side of
the Jews, if we are to believe our major papers. By December 1942, the Jewish
death toll was reported as 2 million, representing one third of the 6,000,000
“in Hitler’s domain.” It was, said the NYT, “a holocaust without
parallel” (13 Dec, p. 21). Thus, “holocaust,” “extermination,” and a looming “6
million victims” were firmly established in the public media already by the end
of 1942.
Now, it
is certainly a fact that, as they say, truth is the first victim in any war; but
even so, one could expect that intelligent and critically thinking observers of
that time would have begun asking themselves some pertinent questions. How, for
example, do we know that 6 million are at risk? How does anyone know that 2
million Jews had been killed? How was Hitler physically able to round up and
kill that many people, in only some 18 months? (Reports of mass civilian killing
did not emerge until mid-1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union.) If true,
Hitler was killing more than 110,000 Jews per month, on average – or some 3,700
per day, every day. Surely skeptical thinkers asked themselves: is this even
possible, amidst a major war?
And in
fact, at least one thinker did ask such questions: Douglas Reed (1895-1976), a
British writer, journalist and political commentator. A pilot in World War One,
Reed went on to become lead European correspondent for the Times of London.
He resigned in 1938 in order to become an independent journalist and author,
publishing roughly one book per year for the next 15 years. Of special interest
here is his 1943 book Lest We Regret. Primarily a study of the British
political climate at the time, one lengthy chapter – “The Children of Israel” –
examines the Jewish Question. The primary focus of the chapter is his worry
about importing more Eastern European Jews into Britain, but along the way, he
voices concerns about Hitler’s alleged Jewish policy and the large reported
death toll.
Lest
We Regret was apparently written from mid-1942
through about April 1943 (the latest cited date) – precisely the period of time
in which the alleged extermination program was peaking, and death tolls were
skyrocketing. The following is an extended excerpt from the subject chapter (pp.
249-254):[1]
“In
November 1942, a great campaign began about the ‘extermination’ of the Jews. At
that very moment, the prospect of our victory first loomed distinct. The Eighth
Army conquered in Libya; Italy showed signs of distress; the Germans failed to
take Stalingrad; that Germany would be beaten, possibly even in 1943, became
clear (and I wrote a play foretelling Hitler’s disappearance).
Victory, then, approached. If it came, and found those Jews still in Europe,
they would remain there. If they were to leave Europe (if ‘the problem’ was to
be solved by transferring it to us) they would need to come away before Victory
arrived. Also, the British government had suspended immigration to Palestine.
The ‘extermination’ campaign began. The power which this particular interest
wields over our public spokesmen and Press stands revealed as gigantic. Some
newspapers gave more space to this matter than would be devoted to any other in
any circumstances which I can imagine. The word ‘extermination’ was printed
billions of times. It was used habitually, without flinching, by Ministers,
politicians, and the BBC. Any who care to keep note of the things which were
said, and to compare them in a few years’ time with the facts and figures, will
possess proof of the greatest example of mass-misinformation in history. All
sound of the suffering of the non-Jews who are Germany’s captives was drowned.
[…]
Before November 1942, none ever suggested that the Germans practiced racial
discrimination in cruelty. Jews and non-Jews suffered alike; but as the non-Jews
were 20 times as numerous, their suffering was as much more, as the whole is
greater than the part. Indeed, the New Statesman remarked that ‘Hitler subjected
the Jews of Germany to every imaginable form of insult, robbery and oppression’
(he subjected many more non-Jews, all over Europe, to the same things) ‘but he
did not slaughter them.’
Now,
when the war was over three years old, like a bolt from the brown came this news
that he was slaughtering them, and they must therefore be brought to England!
How, if they were exterminated? That point was ignored; the word ‘extermination’
was deliberately chosen. It means ‘to root out, destroy utterly’.[2]
(If that is not clear enough, the New Statesman said: ‘Hitler is engaged in
exterminating the Jews of Europe, not metaphorically, not more or less, but with
a literal, totalitarian completeness, as farmers try to exterminate the
Californian beetle’!)
We
were told, then, that the Jews were being ‘exterminated,’ and we must therefore
receive them. We are entitled to examine the truth of this, since it is the
basis of the claim made on us, mainly on behalf of those Jews in Poland who most
tenaciously hold to the teaching (expressed by the Chief Rabbi in London) that
‘the mission of the Jew is first of all to be a Jew.’ (Hitler has used those
very words about Germans.)
The
claim was, that something different was being done to the Jews, something more
than the non-Jews suffered: ‘Nothing else in Hitler’s record is comparable to
his treatment of the Jews,’ the News-Chronicle; ‘For Hitler, the Jews were and
are the first and principal victims of a frenzied malice manifest in his earlier
outpourings as an irresponsible political agitator,’ The Times; ‘Upon this
people, the Jews, the fury of the Nazi evil has concentrated its destructive
energy’, the Archbishop of Canterbury; ‘The worst cruelties are reserved for the
Jews’, the Bishop of Chelmsford; ‘The persecution of the Jews is, however,
unique in its horror; it is deliberate extermination directed against, not a
nation, but a whole race; this is a horror unprecedented in the history of the
world’, the Archbishop of York.
These
statements are untrue. I saw Hitler’s work with my own eyes, from the day he
came to power until the eve of this war. Nineteen-twentieths of the inmates of
his concentration camps were non-Jewish Germans; nineteen-twentieths of his
victims outside the German frontiers are non-Jewish non-Germans. This distortion
of the picture has gone on since 1933. I felt misgivings about it then, when his
first cruelties were practiced, and I noticed that the Jewish share of the whole
was being put out of all proportion in the foreign press.
But
now the suggestion has been crystallized into a definite statement which I would
not dare challenge if it could be upheld: the Jews in Europe are being
‘exterminated.’ You must not use this big word unless you mean physical
extinction. What was the evidence, first that ‘extermination’ was ordered, and
second, that it was carried out?
(1)
The Times of 4 December 1942, spoke of ‘a memorandum compiled by underground
labour groups in Poland’ which stated, ‘one of the war aims of Hitler’s regime,
and one which has been publicly proclaimed by its highest authorities, is a
complete extermination of the Jews.’ The Archbishop of York said on December 9th,
‘The extermination of all the Jews in Poland has been decided on and will be
carried out’. The Manchester Guardian, on December 11th, spoke of
some
‘evidence available in London [that] a plan was proposed to Hitler last
June that the Jews [in Poland] should be exterminated by Christmas.
[…] He hesitated for a time but soon relapsed and decided to gratify his
lust for cruelty by adopting the original proposal. […] One need not
suppose that Hitler has signed an actual order for the destruction of the Jews,
which is strongly reported but at present unconfirmed.’
The
Times, on December 12th, said ‘Hitler has boasted of his intention to
eliminate every Jew in Germany under his yoke.’ Mr. Eden, on December 17th,
spoke of ‘Hitler’s oft-repeated intention of exterminating the Jewish people in
Europe.’ The Times, on December 21st, quoting ‘a statement issued by
the Allied Information Committee’, said ‘Himmler, after a stay in Warsaw, issued
an order that half the Polish Jews were to be killed in the course of a year.’
The Arch-bishops of Canterbury, York, and Wales, in the name of all the British
Bishops, in January 1943, stated, ‘The extermination already carried out is part
of the carrying into effect of Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate
the Jewish people in Europe, which means in effect the extermination of some
6,000,000 people’.[3] The Roman Catholic Cardinal of
Westminster and the head of the Salvation Army associated themselves with such
statements, which were repeated innumerable times in the radio and Press. On
January 9th, the New Statesman said, ‘In July of 1942, Himmler gave
the necessary orders for extermination on a continental scale.’
(2)
On December 4th, Mr. Vernon Bartlett wrote, ‘According to cables from
Dr. Stephen Wise, President of the World Jewish Congress, and Dr. Chaim Weizmann,
President of the World Zionist Organization, confirmation has now been received
of an order issued by Hitler for the extermination of all Jews in Nazi-occupied
countries before the end of the present month’ (then how could they be
rescued?). ‘The number of Jews who have already died cannot, of course, be
estimated with great accuracy. In the opinion of the World Jewish Congress,
roughly two million out of the three-and-a-half million Jews in Poland have been
murdered by the Nazis since the outbreak of the war.’
Almost on the same day, the World Congress, according to The Times, ‘issued a
statement on Nazi massacres of Jews in Europe showing that of the 7,000,000 Jews
who normally live in the territories now under Nazi occupation, 1,000,000 have
been cruelly done to death.’ Mr. Harold Nicolson wrote in the Spectator of
December 25th, ‘In order to assuage his insane hatred of the Jewish
people Hitler, with Himmler as his main agent, has carried out the murder of
some 250,000 men, women and children in cold blood.’ And again, ‘In October
1940, the Germans interned 433,000 Warsaw Jews in a special area or ghetto which
they surrounded with a high wall. […] For the month of October 1942,
only 40,000 ration cards were printed.’ (His clear inference, and he says ‘there
can be no doubt whatever of the facts,’ was that the number of Jews in the
Warsaw Ghetto was reduced from 433,000 to 40,000 by ‘extermination.’) The Jewish
Labour representative on the Polish National Council in London reported, in
March 1943, that ‘only 200,000 Jews remain in the Warsaw Ghetto.’
Readers may compare these quotations for themselves. ‘Extermination’ was
ordered; it was not ordered, but strongly suspected; it was ordered for half the
Jews in Poland; for all the Jews in Poland; for all the Jews in Europe by the
end of 1942. Two out of three-and-a-half million were already dead, on December
4th; one million out of seven million were already dead, on the same
day; 250,000 were already dead, three weeks later. Thus spake our leading public
men.
This
was the factual basis of the most stupendous political and press campaign in my
experience. I suspect that I am better informed about German affairs than many
of the people who spoke thus, and I know of no ‘oft-proclaimed intentions’ or
‘orders’ to exterminate the Jews.[4] Hitler is
noticeably reticent on that theme. Any threats he has uttered cannot compare, in
ferocity and iteration, with his threats to exterminate England, the British
Empire, Bolshevism and other things. The only threats I know, which promised
‘extermination’ were clearly aimed, not at the Jews, but at the Czechs, Poles,
and Serbs, who are the foremost objects of German detestation. Such was Hitler’s
statement, on 24 February 1943, that he would ‘not spare alien lives’, and its
meaning was pointed two days later by Frank, the Czech ‘Protector’, when he
said, ‘Stalin could only enter Germany as a victor over the body of every single
German and over the body of every single Czech’. The only authentic instance
that I know (the Germans themselves announced it) of local extermination in this
war, was the extermination of every Czech man, woman, and child in the village
of Lidice, where I once received most friendly hospitality. Similar, though
smaller massacres have been committed on Frenchmen, Serbs, Norwegians, and
Greeks: the Germans published them.”
This is
a remarkable passage, especially as it was written at the height of the war.
This seems to constitute the earliest extended revisionist analysis.
Eight
years later, when the “fog of war” had cleared a bit, Reed wrote another book
titled Far and Wide (1951). Here the focus is on communism and Zionism
and their role in striving for a World State or World Government, but Reed makes
an interesting side remark on the by-then-iconic figure of “6 million”.
Astonishingly, this figure, given as a definitive Jewish death toll, appeared in
the NYT just six days after Germany capitulated on 7 May 1945:
“It has been calculated that in all about six million Jews were deliberately
slaughtered [in gas chambers] and other ways” (13 May, p. SM4). Calculated by
whom? How? And with what evidence? The NYT does not say.
But the
figure was certainly getting around. On 17 July 1945, Jewish activist Abba
Kovner gave a speech in Italy lamenting “the loss of six millions”; “we saw how
the six million faced the great test […] before their deaths,” he exclaimed.[5]
In August, the NYT stated that “six million [Jews] have perished at the
hands of the Nazis” (5 Aug), and in September, they reported: “Loss of six
million Jews during the war has made extremists of all Zionists […]” (2 Sep) –
as if it were common knowledge at that point.
To
further solidify the number as literal fact, it had to appear during the
Nuremberg Trials – which it did. The first occurrence came at the very start of
the trial, read in the record from an affidavit by Wilhelm Höttl (or Hoettl).
Recalling the words of Eichmann, Höttl stated that around 4 million Jews died in
the concentration camps, and another 2 million in other ways.[6]
A second appearance came in March 1946, when British prosecutor Maxwell Fyfe was
interrogating Hermann Göring; Maxwell Fyfe cited Höttl’s earlier testimony of 4
million plus another two.[7] A third occurrence came with
a prosecutor’s statement of 30 September 1946:[8]
“Adolf Eichmann […] has estimated that the policy pursued resulted in
the killing of 6,000,000 Jews, of which 4,000,000 were killed in the
extermination institutions.”
Thus the
figure became codified at Nuremberg and has never relinquished its grip.
Reed was
rightly concerned that this figure had, by 1950, become something like a
religious icon – unquestioned and unquestionable. In Far and Wide, he
wrote:
“[T]he
words ‘six million Jewish dead’ seemed to atrophy the power to think. […]
During the Second War, I noticed that the figures of Jewish losses, in places
where war made verification impossible, were being irresponsibly inflated.
[…] The process continued until the war’s end when the figure of six
millions was produced. A transparently worthless estimate was not only used for
mass-delusion through newspapers, but even given official status! If by any turn
of chance, the American and British representatives who bandied it about at
Nuremberg were ever called to answer for it, they might be hard pressed for a
defense, for any impartial tribunal might tear it to pieces. […]
No
proof can be given that six million Jews “perished”; proof can be adduced that
so many could not have perished. […] Yet this massive assertion about
the six millions was used by politicians in the highest places, by prosecutors
at Nuremberg, and habitually by mass-newspapers which in lesser matters would
print no statement unverified! […] In my judgment, the figure of six
millions was a grotesque exaggeration which an unintimidated press would never
have published, save to expose [as a hoax…].
If
ever freedom of debate returns to the world, a board of impartial accountants
might be set to study this matter of the six millions, stated by leading
politicians of the West, and their representatives at Nuremberg, to have
perished. Until then, all the student of the times can do is to try and trace
their fate in such figures as are available to him.” (pp. 307-309)
“Freedom
of debate” has, of course, yet to return to this world, now 75 years later; but
intrepid revisionists have pressed ahead and “traced the fate” of the 6 million
with remarkable accuracy. The story is telling.
At about
the same time that Reed was composing his 1951 book, another man, John Owen
Beaty, was busy at work on his magnum opus, The Iron Curtain over America
(1951). Beaty (1890-1961) was an American professor, writer, and anti-communist
who earned his PhD in philosophy in 1921 and taught at Southern Methodist
University in Texas. He also served active duty during World War Two, working
for the Military Intelligence Service.
In his
long academic career, Beaty wrote over a dozen books, the most famous being
Iron Curtain, where he argues for the ‘Khazar hypothesis’: that modern-day
Ashkenazi Jews are descended from, or related to, the Khazar people of the
central Caucasus region. The bulk of his book is dedicated to arguing that
Khazar/Ashkenazi Jews are infiltrating American government and academia, thus
bringing down an ‘iron curtain’ in our own homeland; subsequent analysis bears
out many of his claims.
Of note,
though, is a short comment in chapter 6, where Beaty presses on the absurdity of
the claimed ‘6 million’ Jewish deaths in WW2.
“An
official ‘Israeli’ view of Germany was expressed in Dallas, Texas, on March 18,
1951, when Abba S. Eban, ambassador of the state of ‘Israel’ to the United
States and ‘Israel’s’ representative at the United Nations, stated that ‘Israel
resents the rehabilitation of Germany.’ […] The same day that
Ambassador Eban was talking in Dallas about ‘Israel’s’ resentment at the
rehabilitation of Germany, a Reuters dispatch of March 13, 1951 from Tel Aviv
(Washington Times-Herald) stated that ‘notes delivered yesterday [March 12]
in Washington, London, and Paris and to the Soviet Minister at Tel Aviv urge the
occupying powers of Germany not to ‘hand over full powers to any German
government’ without express reservations for the payment of reparations to
‘Israel’ in the sum of $1,500,000,000.’[9]
This
compensation was said to be for 6,000,000 Jews killed by Hitler. This figure has
been used repeatedly, but one who consults statistics and ponders the known
facts of recent history cannot do other than wonder how it is arrived at.
According to Appendix VII, ‘Statistics on Religious Affiliation,’ of The
Immigration and Naturalization Systems of the United States (A Report of the
Committee on the Judiciary of the United States Senate, 1950), the number of
Jews in the world is 15,713,638. The World Almanac, 1949, p. 289, is cited as
the source of the statistical table reproduced on p. 842 of the government
document. The article in the World Almanac is headed ‘Religious Population of
the World.’ A corresponding item, with the title, ‘Population, Worldwide, by
Religious Beliefs’ is found in the World Almanac for 1940 (p. 129), and in it
the world Jewish population is given as 15,315,359.[10]
If the World Almanac figures are correct, the world’s Jewish population did not
decrease in the war decade, but showed a small increase.
Assuming, however, that the figures of the US document and the World Almanac are
in error, let us make an examination of the known facts. In the first place, the
number of Jews in Germany in 1939 was about 600,000 – by some estimates
considerably fewer [11] – and of these, as shown
elsewhere in this book, many came to the United States, some went to Palestine,
and some are still in Germany. As to the Jews in Eastern European lands
temporarily overrun by Hitler’s troops, the great majority retreated ahead of
the German armies into Soviet Russia. Of these, many came later to the US, some
moved to Palestine, some unquestionably remained in Soviet Russia and may be a
part of the Jewish force on the Iranian frontier, and enough remained in Eastern
Europe or have returned from Soviet Russia to form the hard core of the new
ruling bureaucracy in satellite countries. It is hard to see how all these
migrations and all these power accomplishments can have come about with a Jewish
population much less than that which existed in Eastern Europe before World War
II. Thus the known facts on Jewish migration and Jewish power in Eastern Europe
tend, like the World Almanac figures accepted by the Senate Judiciary Committee,
to raise a question as to where Hitler got the 6,000,000 Jews he is said to have
killed.” (pp. 133-135)
As such,
this brief statement constitutes perhaps the first attempt at a numerical
critique of the Jewish death toll. World Almanac figures on Jewish
demographics came from Jewish sources, and hence were ‘self-reported,’ to some
extent, and lacking in independent verification. And by the 1950 edition, the
Almanac had adjusted its postwar population figures to 11,373,000 (p.
473), thus indicating something close to the mandatory 6-million loss. But the
validity of this lower figure is as uncertain as those of previous years. Hence
it is difficult to come to firm conclusions about the Jewish death toll from
such reports alone. More useful are the approaches of current revisionists who
make arguments based on the technical inability to kill so many people via the
claimed methods, the inability to dispose of so many bodies in the allotted
timeframes, and the striking lack of material evidence today.
In any
case, the two above authors certainly deserve credit for their early critiques.
Reed’s work seems to have been completely overlooked by later revisionists, but
Rassinier, in his 1955 edition of Lie, cites Beaty’s Iron Curtain
as a source of early criticism. And Rassinier, in turn, was cited by subsequent
revisionists, such as in David Hoggan’s 1969 work, The Myth of the Six
Million.
Thus we
can see that Holocaust revisionism has had a long and distinguished evolution,
from early doubts and questioning to recent analysis that is scientifically and
logically rigorous and has a substantial evidential basis. But we all owe a debt
of gratitude to the likes of Reed and Beaty who, working in complete void,
established the framework for skeptical and rational doubt.
Endnotes
[1] The
full chapter is scheduled to appear in the forthcoming book Classic Essays on
the Jewish Question, volume 2 (Clemens & Blair; T. Dalton, ed.)
[2]
Reed does not say, but the German word most likely used was Ausrottung, from
aus+rotten, lit. ‘to root out.’ Notably, people (like animals, plants, etc.) can
be “rooted out” without killing them; they are simply picked up and displaced.
[3]
This is the only reference to “6 million” in Reed’s book. Clearly it was too
early for this figure to become the icon that it is today.
[4] No
such order has appeared in the intervening 80 years, nor even any reference to
such an order.
[5] See
Kovner, “The mission of the survivors,” in The Catastrophe of European Jewry
(1976, Gutman and Rothkirchen, eds.), pp. 673, 680.
[6] IMT
(vol. 31: 86). Himmler was reportedly disappointed, believing that the number
“must be more than 6 million.”
[7] IMT
(vol. 9: 611).
[8] IMT
(vol. 22: 496).
[9]
$1.5 billion in 1951 is equivalent to about $18 billion today.
[10]
These figures are confirmed as correctly cited.
[11]
Most current estimates put the figure at around 220,000.
