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98 of 118 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally, some clear thinking., April 6, 2009
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.
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".
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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65 of 82 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
BOOK BANNED IN 15 COUNTRIES.., March 31, 2009
[...]
This book is a must read for anyone wanting to know 'the other side' of the story. Keeping clear of racial polemics, this book is written in a calm and most factual manner and presents clear and objective evidence that at least forces one to reconsider the classic historical arguments about a policy of deliberate extermination on the part of the Third Reich. There is no hate here. No so-called anti-semitism. No pro-Nazi rhetoric. Anyone claiming so is either lying blatantly or simply hasn't read the book.
Some holocaust authors will not argue with revisionists, because they simply cannot explain away or refute many of the arguments presented by the so-called 'other side'. Raul Hilberg is a classic example of a holocaust 'scholar' unable to successfully defend his case when skillfully probed by revisionists. His cross-examination at the Toronto trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel was, in fact, a complete farce. He could not explain away many of the ambiguities in his book 'Destruction of the European Jews' and ended up making a very sorry spectacle of himself. Rudolf Vrba (I Cannot Forgive) was another who, when confronted on the witness stand, hemmed and hawed and finally cited, incredibly enough, 'poetic license' as the reason for many of the questionable claims recorded in his book.
To the average person, I say, do your own research. Don't be afraid to consider other facts and points of view especially when they can be substantiated enough to claim some degree of credibility. This book by Prof. Dalton is a big and important step in that direction. There are many footnotes and sources cited and the work is written in a very scholarly manner.
One word of caution.
Possession of works like this in some countries is considered a crime. For this reason alone, this book is a must read!!
UPDATE:
Prof. Faurisson responds to book reviewer Prof. Mathis of June 5, 2009 who gives this book a one star rating:
Hilberg summarized his new thesis before an audience of nearly 2,700 at Avery Fischer Hall in New York City: the entire German policy for the physical destruction of the Jews was to be explained by mind reading! No document attesting to this criminal policy could be found, because no such document existed. For several years, the entire German bureaucratic machinery operated through a kind of telepathy. As Hilberg put it:
"But what began in 1941 was a process of destruction not planned in advance, not organized centrally by any agency. There was no blueprint and there was no budget for destructive measures. They [these measures] were taken step by step, one step at a time. Thus came about not so much a plan being carried out, but an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy."
Let us note again those final words: "an incredible meeting of minds, a consensus -- mind reading by a far-flung bureaucracy."
Two years later, Hilberg confirmed those words and this explanation during the first "Holocaust trial" of Ernst Zündel in Toronto. He did this under oath during his cross-examination by Zündel's lawyer, Douglas Christie, whom I was assisting.
That same year (1985) the "revised and definitive" edition of his book appeared. In it, the University of Vermont professor did not use the expression "consensus" or "mind reading." And yet he wrote:
"In the final analysis, the destruction of the Jews was not so much a product of laws and commands as it was a matter of spirit, of shared comprehension, of consonance and synchronization."
He also wrote of "countless decision makers in a far-flung bureaucratic machine" without "a basic plan." He mentioned "written directives not published," "oral directives and authorizations," and "basic understandings of officials resulting in decisions not requiring orders or explanations." There had been "no one agency," he wrote, and "no single organization directed or coordinated the entire process." The destruction of the Jews, he concluded, was "the work of a far-flung administrative machine," and "no special agency was created and no special budget was devised to destroy the Jews of Europe. Each organization was to play a specific role in the process, and each was to find the means to carry out its task."
For me, this is like explaining what would have been a huge criminal undertaking of industrial proportions based, in particular, on a weapon (a chemical slaughterhouse using an insecticide), operating through the intervention of the Holy Ghost, all of which had been conceived and created through a kind of spontaneous generation.
I refuse to believe that which is not believable. I refuse to believe in the incredible. I refuse to believe in what Hilberg himself calls "an incredible meeting of minds." I refuse to believe in mind reading or telepathy, just as I refuse to believe in the intervention of the Holy Ghost or in spontaneous generation. I take exception to any historical thesis, any system of historical explanation, based on such hare-brained notions.
On November 23, 1978, the French historian René Rémond declared to me: "As for the [Nazi] gas chambers, I am ready to follow you; as for the genocide, I have the deep conviction that Nazism in itself was sufficiently perverse so that this genocide was part of its motivations and its actions, but I recognize that I have no scientific evidence for this genocide."
This is indeed the least one might say when one is concerned about historical truth.
Prof. Dalton replies:
The Hilberg quote was never claimed by anyone to come from "the book by Hilberg", meaning, presumably, "Destruction of the European Jews". If Mathis had bothered to read my book, he would find the quote in Chapter 5, referring to the source: New York Newsday, 2/23/83, Part II, p. 3. Any capable researcher with a PhD would have checked this in advance.
TD.
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58 of 73 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good for those wondering why the debate continues, March 28, 2009
For those of you who have wanted to read Arthur Butz's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry (Holocaust Handbooks) but found it too technical to follow will be pleased with Debating the Holocaust by Thomas Dalton. He takes that information, along with newer works from Walt & Mearsheimer's The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, onethirdoftheholocaust dot com, et al, and the traditionalists and presents it an easy to understand and quite logical format.
Highly recommended to anyone wanting to understand what it is that revisionists are trying to do--simply correct the many half-truths, lies and deceptions of that time in history so that we can understand what is truly going on in our world today.
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