- Softcover book, 280 pages
- ISBN: 1591480051 / 978-1591480051
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- In this remarkable, balanced book, the author skillfully
reviews and compares "traditional" and "revisionist"
views on the "The Holocaust."
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- On one side is the traditional, orthodox view -- six
million Jewish casualties, gas chambers, cremation ovens, mass graves,
and thousands of witnesses. On the other is the view of a small band of
skeptical writers and researchers, often unfairly labeled "deniers,"
who contend that the public has been gravely misled about this emotion-laden
chapter of history.
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- The author establishes that the arguments and findings
of revisionist scholars are substantive, and deserve serious consideration.
He points out, for example, that even the eminent Jewish Holocaust scholar
Raul Hilberg acknowledged that there was no budget, plan or order by Hitler
for a World War II program to exterminate Europe's Jews.
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- This book is especially relevant right now, as "Holocaust
deniers" are routinely and harshly punished for their "blasphemy,"
and as growing numbers of people regard the standard, Hollywoodized "Holocaust"
narrative with mounting suspicion and distrust.
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- The author of this book, who writes under the pen name
of "Thomas Dalton," is an American scholar who holds a doctoral
degree from a major US university.
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- This is no peripheral debate between arcane views of
some obscure aspect of twentieth century history. Instead, this is a clash
with profound social-political implications regarding freedom of speech
and press, the manipulation of public opinion, how our cultural life is
shaped, and how power is wielded in our society.
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- http://www.amazon.com/Debating-Holocaust-Look-Both-Sides/dp/1591480051/
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- 5.0 out of 5 stars Truth needs no laws to support
it.
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- By SmokeNMirrors (London)
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- Any truth - or should that be "truth" - which
needs to be enforced by law is by its very nature not truth at all - for
if it was truth there would be no need for enforcement. Never has been,
never will be.
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- Truth simply is. It's what happened. And what actually
happened is always believable, even if sometimes worthy of further thought.
This particular story - and let us be absolutely clear about this, it IS
a story - is quite simply not believable. This is exactly why it needs
laws to support it. And thus we have our confirmation: the story is not
true.
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- A superb and easy to read overview of the main points
of the "Great Debate" ("Great Refusal To Debate"?)
Sterling job Mr. Dalton.
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- And let's also be very clear about this. Those who refuse
to debate, especially in a supposedly open society, even more especially
when they insist they have truth on their side, refuse only when they know
they cannot win - because they know they do NOT have truth on their side.
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- 5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, some clear thinking
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- By Kenneth A. Morgan "Playwright" (Milwaukee,
WI USA) -
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- As a skeptic of both sides of the Holocaust debate -
was there or wasn't there, and if there wasn't, then what? - I've long
hoped for a book that would shed light where there was only heat. DEBATING
THE HOLOCAUST comes as close as I can hope for, and it is a remarkable
accomplishment.
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- Rather than writing a review longer than the book itself,
I'll just first note that with Thomas Dalton's book, the biggest single
problem has finally been addressed, That It Has Been Impossible To Grasp
The Big Picture Of The Holocaust Because Of The Incoherence Of The Story.
The goals of Nazi policy, the means by which it was ordered and carried
out, major events and where they happened (nobody really knows where the
burial and cremation grounds of Chelmno are), the technical challenges
that would come with a mass extermination effort, even something as basic
as the death totals; nothing about the Holocaust story is consistent from
one source to another. Over the decades figures, testimonies and documents
have been exaggerated, reduced, misrepresented, changed or even disappeared,
and in many cases with the obvious goal of keeping certain details a mystery
so that awkward questions don't come up (Saul Friedländer - I'm talking
to you!). When Dalton writes that he found "...a Holocaust story in
tatters..." he simply states the truth, and it is easy to see why
two important historians, Michel De Bouard and Jean-Claude Pressac, remarked
that the historical record of the Holocaust is "rotten".
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- To deal with this, Dalton introduces a remarkable (and
easy!) analytic tool which he calls the death matrix, a technique that
combines various tables into a single analytic field that clearly demonstrates
the properties of any account of the six alleged extermination camps. It
can be done by anybody who has a spreadsheet option on their computer.
Not unique to Dalton, it's a common tool in several technical fields, and
you have to wonder why anti-revisionist John Zimmerman, who is a professor
of accounting and has to use similar tools in transaction analysis, never
used it in his various refutations.
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- For the reader, this means a book where you have to take
pen to paper and do some homework of your own, but that is a refreshing
change to Holocaust books which don't just ask but demand that you swallow
whatever they say without question. Dalton's results when he applies his
death matrix are clear, transparent and easily understood, but Dalton clearly
states that certain data rests on questionable assumptions and that his
use of the tool is preliminary and needs refinement (I could already suggest
a revision where Dalton credits Krema II at Auschwitz with cremating 11,000
bodies at a time when it was out of service, the six weeks from the beginning
of May through June 12 of 1943). It's a terrific tool, something that becomes
clear when the tables reveal that the combined work of exhumations and
cremations at Belzec had no choice but to run at a rate of 92,000 per month.
That's better than 3,000 per day, 125 per hour, a corpse dug out of the
ground and thawed and burned to fragments and ground to powder every 30
seconds; and on wooden pyres in the dead of a Polish winter when weather
conditions would have frozen the ground rock-solid and rendered many days
impossible for work. That account is ridiculous; whatever the truth is,
it's something else. Why didn't somebody think of this technique before?
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- Avoiding the dreary name-calling, Dalton divides the
two camps into "traditionalists" and "revisionists",
and then divides the revisionists into the "agitators" and "academics".
Another good idea where ideas are sorely needed; when it comes to the revisionists
Dalton intelligently ignores the "agitators" and concentrates
on the solid arguments of the academics. Revisionists who have made it
some sort of holy crusade to challenge the Holocaust will not be happy
with this book. Dalton clearly states that the Holocaust cannot be dismissed
as a hoax, a fraud or a conspiracy (the financial exploitation of it and
the loathsome criminalization of challenging it are another matter). Something
awful happened, but exactly what it was, and how it fits into the even
bigger picture of the Second World War is impossible to determine with
the history that we have.
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- As accessible as a book that addresses technical issues
can be, DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST would make an excellent high school textbook,
teaching young people about the story while challenging them to accept
nothing until they've applied their own brains to it. Certainly a better
choice than THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK, a book which has nothing in it about
the Holocaust but nevertheless is required (forced?) reading on the subject.
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- While my review lists five stars, I'm actually giving
it four and a half, with half a star taken off for listing a large percentage
of the deaths at Majdanek as "natural causes" in one of the tables.
This is insensitive to say the least. In their 2003 book on the camp (one
of only two studies ever made!) revisionists Carlo Mattogno and Jurgen
Graf, no defenders of the Holocaust, are themselves aghast at the way some
40,000 people died slow deaths of exposure standing in the open, sewage
soaked fields. These are not "natural causes". As a police worker
I know that "Official Indifference" is a crime that American
police, fire and rescue workers can be charged with, so even if the Nazi's
didn't intend to kill these people they are responsible, at the very least,
for mass manslaughter.
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- With that unfortunate beauty mark addressed, I can finish
with a preview of Dalton's epilogue, which is depressing. Dalton points
out that there is an appreciable amount of common ground between traditionalists
and revisionists; no academic revisionist has ever denied that tragic atrocities
happened, and the best (and bravest) traditionalists have themselves noted
that there is something terribly wrong with the history, which suggests
that a combined effort between the two camps holds an excellent possibility
of finally bringing to light a clear and coherent picture of what the events
of the 1940's really were.
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- But it ain't gonna happen. As B'nai Brith director Ian
Kadegan ominously crows, "The memory of the Holocaust is central to
The New World Order" , and goes on to obscenely call it "...Western
Civilization's greatest failure" (that would actually be the Congo
Corvée, something that only die-hard Mark Twain fans have heard
about). The traditional story of the Holocaust is a multi-billion dollar
cash cow that enriches some of the most corrupt institutions on Earth,
and has truly become an idolatrous religion that too many people are staked
in. If the traditional story falls, not only reputations and livelihoods
but power will be lost, for the traditional Holocaust story is used as
a club to dictate what morality is by people who have no authority to do
so, and to intimidate them not to question that authority.
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- Which means reading this book is may actually qualify
as a revolutionary act. The enemies of free speech can exact a price, but
they can't stop you. That's why the right is called unalienable. Not even
God can take it away. Thanks for the book Thomas.
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