<\/span>By\u00a0Jonas E. Alexis, VT Editor<\/a><\/p>\n Holocaust revisionism has been around for quite some time, and it is quite in line with any historical inquiry or historical revisionism. It is not some kind of side issue that has no historical merit at all. If historical revisionism is a serious intellectual pursuit,[1]<\/a>\u00a0then why should we exclude historical events such as Nazi Germany? For example, Jewish professor Tim Cole of the University of Bristol wrote in his book\u00a0Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler: How History is Bought, Packaged, and Sold<\/em>:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cAt the end of the twentieth century, the \u2018Holocaust\u2019 is being bought and sold\u2026In short, \u2018Shoah [Hebrew word for Holocaust] business\u2019 is big business.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n Is Cole right? If the Holocaust is big business, is it then possible that people are profiting from it? More importantly, what is Holocaust revisionism? Are Holocaust revisionists saying that not a single Jew ever suffered in Nazi Germany? Are they perpetuating that there were no Nazi camps? Do they acknowledge that Jews in general did suffer in Nazi Germany?<\/p>\n Holocaust revisionists acknowledge terrible things happened to Jews in Nazi Germany. What they are saying is that the Holocaust establishment has deliberately made a political football game out of what happened in Nazi Germany. In fact, some of the claims that the establishment has perpetuated for years were demonstrably false. Moreover, the six-million figure has been shown to be incorrect. (I have addressed some of these questions in\u00a0Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism<\/em>,Vol. II.)<\/p>\n Going back to historical revisionism. Almost every serious historian or thinker is involved in it. When Norman Finkelstein wrote\u00a0The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering<\/em>\u00a0in 2000, he argues that Holocaust \u201choaxers\u201d and \u201chucksters\u201d\u2014namely Jewish organizations\u2014have exploited what happened in Nazi Germany in order to get millions of dollars from Swiss banks.[3]<\/a>\u00a0Finkelstein calls those Jewish leaders a \u201crepellent gang of plutocrats, hoodlums, and hucksters.\u201d[4]<\/a><\/p>\n Indeed, there is a Holocaust culture that needs to be dealt with. But the fundamental question again is simply this: is revisionism itself a historical inquiry?<\/p>\n For example, only recently was it revealed that popular historian Stephen Ambrose\u2019s work on Dwight D. Eisenhower was built on fabrications and fake interviews.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n On October 7, 1965, when Ambrose claimed that he was interviewing Eisenhower at Gettysburg, Ike was travelling from Abilene to Kansas City. On December 7, 1965, another of the purported interview dates, Eisenhower was at Walter Reed Medical Center, in Washington, D.C., and saw only General Arthur Nevins, his neighbor and farm manager; George Allen, a golf and bridge pal; and Gordon Moore, his brother-in-law\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n On October 5, 1967, rather than hobnobbing with his young biographer, Eisenhower met with General Lucius D. Clay, the former military governor of occupied Germany and a close friend, and, after Clay left, he talked politics over the phone with Walter Cronkite and called his attorney to discuss a trust fund for his grandchildren\u2026John Eisenhower, [son of President Eisenhower] who is now eighty-seven, liked Ambrose, and he recalled, too, Ambrose\u2019s fondness for embellishment and his tendency to sacrifice fact to narrative panache.[6]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Ambrose said that he had conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with the former president, but Tim Rives, \u201cthe deputy director of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum, in Abilene, Kansas,\u201d said that Ambrose\u2019s entire interviews with the president lasted less than five hours. \u201cRives, who still considers himself an Ambrose fan in spite of these discoveries and the various brushes with plagiarism that Ambrose had later in his career, said, \u2018The discussion of so many diverse subjects in less than three hours strains credulity.\u2019\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n Ambrose struggled with this issue even during his early years, when he was accused of plagiarism for his book\u00a0The Wild Blue<\/em>. Ambrose responded, \u201cI tell stories. I don\u2019t discuss my documents. I discuss the story. It almost gets to the point where, how much is the reader going to take? I am not writing a Ph.D. dissertation.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n If Ambrose only wants to tell stories, he should write novels. But he has no business applying his opinions to historical events if he does not have evidence. Ambrose cannot be trusted as a reliable historian. The sad part is that Michael Shermer heavily relies on Ambrose\u2019s and Albert Cowdrey\u2019s expertise in denouncing James Bacque\u2019s book\u00a0The Other Losses<\/em>.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n Just to show how dishonest Ambrose can be, Ambrose read the final manuscript of\u00a0Other Losses<\/em>\u00a0in 1988 and declared to its author, \u201cYou have a sensational if appalling story and it can no longer be suppressed, and I suppose (in truth, I know) it must be published.\u201d Yet three years later he attacked the book in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, contradicting his previous statements. Clearly Ambrose was trying to protect his reputation. He told Colonel Ernest F. Fisher, a senior historian at the US Army Center for Military History, \u201cThis book [Other Losses<\/em>] destroys my life\u2019s work.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n In order to protect his standing as a historian, he does not discount Bacque\u2019s findings with counter evidence, but made blanket statements like \u201cMr. Bacque is wrong on every major charge and nearly all his minor ones\u201d and accused Bacque of misusing data\u2014\u201che misreads documents; he ignores contrary evidence; his statistical methodology is hopelessly compromised; he makes no attempt to look at comparative contexts; he puts words into the mouth of his principal source; he ignores a readily available and absolutely critical source that decisively deals with his central accusation; and, as a consequence of these and other shortcomings, he reaches conclusions and makes charges that are demonstrably absurd.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p>\n Those accusations could be justified if Ambrose provided evidence for them. And the only way to do that would be to double check the sources Bacque used throughout the book. But Ambrose did not want to do that, since the evidence may have led him to disturbing conclusions, nor did he provide any evidence of his own to justify denouncing Bacque\u2019s book. The closest he came was when he stated that he and a number of historians like himself had a conference to talk about Bacque\u2019s book and came to the conclusion that the book had to be denounced.<\/p>\n But gathering experts to denounce a book is a far-cry from presenting evidence, no matter who the experts are. Even then, Ambrose stated plainly that he did not have any evidence at the moment. Listen to this: \u201cOur second conclusion [at the conference which was held at the University of New Orleans] was that when scholars do the necessary research, they will find Mr. Bacque\u2019s work to be worse than worthless. It is seriously\u2014nay, spectacularly\u2014flawed in its most fundamental aspects.\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0Yet when the \u201cnecessary research\u201d was done, it was Ambrose, not Bacque, who was uncovered as a fraud.<\/p>\n Though Ambrose quotes Eisenhower, that is not reliable enough evidence. Ambrose also cites Albert Cowdrey as saying that \u201coverall death rate among German prisoners was 1 percent.\u201d[13]<\/a>\u00a0At the end of World War II, about eight million German soldiers were captured, excluding those soldiers who were captured before May 1945. \u201cWestern Allies captured some 7.6 million, while the rest fell into the hands of the Red Army. About five of the eleven million were released within a year. A million and a half, however, never came home.\u201d[14]<\/a><\/p>\n This figure is not controversial among reputable historians, and it is ridiculous to assert that death rate was just one percent. Most of those prisoners of war who returned were trained in the anti-fascist and communist school camps. The consensus was that those who made some improvements in committing themselves to anti-fascists and pro-communist propaganda were sent \u201cback to the zone to work in the administration.\u201d[15]<\/a><\/p>\n British historian Giles MacDonogh writes that in the American zone, \u201cany attempt to feed the prisoners by the German civilian population was punishable by death.\u201d[16]<\/a>\u00a0Bacque recounted the same thing, making the point that the order was given by General Eisenhower; that order was discovered in the 1990s, reading in part, \u201cUnder no circumstances may food supplies be assembled among the local inhabitants in order to deliver them to the prisoners of war. Those who violate this command and nevertheless try to circumvent this blockade to allow something to come to the prisoners place themselves in danger of being shot.\u201d[17]<\/a><\/p>\n The best way for Ambrose to refute the Eisenhower letter is to go to the archives and check for himself whether Bacque was telling the truth. Instead, he relies on peer consensus. By doing so, Ambrose and others like him are rewriting history based on what they wished had happened, not on what one will find in the archives.<\/p>\n We see the same pattern in the work of former Harvard professor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. His book,\u00a0The Age of Jackson<\/em>, made him a celebrity. The book \u201cwas awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1946 because reviewers found Schlesinger\u2019s explanation of Jackson\u2019s huge appeal to the \u2018common man\u2019 so convincing.\u201d[18]<\/a>\u00a0Yet historian Richard P. McCormick proved that Schlesinger\u2019s book was grossly erroneous even before it came out. Rodney Stark states that \u201cSchlesinger never recanted,\u201d[19]<\/a>\u00a0and his blatant errors continued to be used in textbooks for decades.[20]<\/a><\/p>\n The serious question is this: if we all took Ambrose\u2019s works as final \u201ctruth\u201d and never bothered to check his facts, how would we ever discover what really happened? How, then, can people honestly think that those who question the exploitation of the Holocaust be Holocaust deniers or anti-Semites? How, in good conscience, could we put those people to prison because they voice their opinions? And how can we know the nature of anything if people aren\u2019t allowed to voice their views, if only one view is being presented when in fact there are many others that need to be discussed\u2014and refuted\u2014using rational historical scholarship?<\/p>\n The only way to examine history fully is to examine it within the historical backdrop, presenting all sides, and people of the truth will ally themselves with the truth. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, arguably one of the rarest minds of the twentieth century, points out that embracing the truth and rejecting lies may bring bad consequences\u2014including lost jobs or even threats on one\u2019s life.[21]<\/a>\u00a0Yet this is the path that valiant and courageous men and women ought to take.<\/p>\n A statement or theory or hypothesis must be judged against rational historical evidence. If a historian claims that a certain event happened in history, then he should not be upset if he is asked to provide evidence for the claim. If he cannot, or if the historical data fail to corroborate his claim, then people are justified in rejecting the claim. This is plain and simple, and does not require any academic expertise. In fact, this has been one of the pillars of the western intellectual and historical tradition. From Plato to Kant and beyond, we see ideas discussed freely and examined within context.<\/p>\n I have briefly interacted with people like Deborah Lipstadt, Richard Evans, and Michael Shermer on similar issues. Now we come to Kevin MacDonald. When the question was asked, \u201cWhat are your thoughts about holocaust revisionism?\u201d, MacDonald responded:<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, um, I guess I\u2019m not, uh, I\u2019ve never had any sympathy really, before \u2013 I, I haven\u2019t seen, I haven\u2019t seen anything that I would really, you know, convince me. And I have \u2013 frankly, I haven\u2019t dealt into it very much. My view is that it\u2019s not important for what I\u2019m doing and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s really important \u2013 I, I think what\u2019s really important is the culture of the holocaust, you know how it\u2019s taught in school, how it\u2019s used to defend Israel, and it\u2019s used as a weapon against people who oppose immigration, and all those things \u2013 ah I think those are very important things to discuss. So whether it actually happened, exactly (\u2026 slurs some words] and all that is something that I don\u2019t think uh is possible to even go there anymore, is just \u2026 just uh \u2026 third rail.\u201d[22]<\/a><\/p>\n