I have a pen-pal who falls into the “other” category of Holocaust Denier (or minimizer.) His reasoning is cultural. The German People are civilized, advanced, educated, industrious, and good. He’ll point to pictures of ordinary German citizens at work, or school. He just can’t see such good people doing something awful.
It’s a clinically fascinating form of blind spot. He just says, “It couldn’t have happened. The German people are too nice!”
Its more trying to turn it into an ‘honest war’ ie yes people died but not from planned genocide. Eg enemies had to be rounded up and died but thats just war, they werent really put in ovens, that was just propaganda, etc etc.
Its not inherently nutty in the way some conspiracy theories are, its just that its well, lies.
Otara
Whatever their personal feelings are about Jews or Nazis, I don’t get how these people ignore the films of the heaps of bodies, the people who were there as victims,and the people who were tried for war crimes.
Even "Flat Earthers"make more sense.
There is an entire country, Turkey, that denies that the Armenian holocaust ever happened. They do themselves enormous harm by this denial I think, but they do it invariably. Let a newspaper print a story about the holocaust and the Turkish ambassador will write a letter to the editor, and the paper will pint it, denying that such a thing ever happened. I never read them, but I assume they just reuse the same letter every time. This is a whole effing country. At least Germany has never denied the holocaust as a matter of policy, although there are doubtless some individual Germans who do.
I put climate change deniers in the same box. Just don’t try to confuse them with facts. For that matter, large swaths of the South deny that they fought the civil war over slavery.
Hari Seldon:
I don’t see Turkey suffering much due to Armenian-genocide denial. In the world’s eye, they’re generally seen as upstanding world citizens, a hope for moderation of Islam, and economically, an emerging power.
reading just the OP, i’ll answer this way: first, the main evidence of mass murder committed in detention camps were those in germany, with estimated deaths well below the 7 figures. subsequent finds in the area of ouswicium and other areas point to wholesale killings there but the 5-million estimate is based mainly on reports of people missing (records of before and after.)
beyond that, one has to remember that those national socialists were of different degrees of extremism and given support. those who were moderate would not want the issue overblown and used as a constant reminder (and of course they want the straight dope on the actual figures.)
you would think that those who truly believed in what they were doing wish to exaggerate the level of killings even more. not always. not if it keeps working to their disadvantage.
HD claims I’ve heard~
The heaps of bodies were victims of disease & starvation (camp food & medicine being in short supply, the admission is the Germans got theirs first), victims of the Russian ‘liberators’ who killed the inmates & then claimed were found dead in heaps, and those heaps also included many Germans as well as camp inmates, especially in cases of the dead being victims of the Russians.
Inmates exaggerated what went on & were in fact encouraged by Allied authorities to do so.
War criminal prosecutions were kangaroo courts & confessions were gained either through “enhanced interrogation techniques” or plea-bargaining.
Thanks for the replies fellas and fellasses, I’ve always been able to put myself inthe heads of others, no matter how opposed to my own views they are. For some reason, wrapping my brain around where these guys are coming from proves infuriating and frustrating.
It’s easy to. Remember the massacres in Romania in 1989. Then when they investigated deeper they found a huge number of those killed were dug up from graves and were dead years before this happened.
Nazi Germany also did this to incite public favor.
Also it’s easy to say Allied bombers and Russians killed them. Remember the Russians and a lot of other people didn’t much care for Jews either. A lot of people who would never think of killing anyone, were happy to look the other way when someone else was killing.
Also a point brought up among deniers is the way it was done.
Other massacres of people such in Rwanda were encouraged but they weren’t done with systematic efficiency. In Rwanda, the government used radio to incite, but they just let the populations run amok with weapons. It wasn’t like anyone had a defined plan, like the Nazis did
And of course some people say the Nazis had no such plan, it was just soldiers running amok. And we have seen that a lot in wars
This 2009 interview with David Irving clarifies a lot about his mindset. His revolting bigotry is on full, unapologetic display (check out Part IV - The Enemy).
These holocaust deniers have their heads in their asses :mad: that explains a lot