Review
Professor A. R. Butz was the first (and so far the only) writer to treat the entire Holocaust complex from the Revisionist perspective, in a precise scientific manner. This book exhibits the overwhelming force of historical and logical arguments which Revisionism had accumulated by the middle of the 70s. This new edition comes with several supplements adding new information.
The first book to treat the central questions of the Holocaust allegation -- the evidence for a German extermination program, for mass killings by poison gas, and for the deaths of some six million Jews -- with academic rigor, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century created Holocaust revisionism as a discipline with its appearance in 1976. Few professional historians could have devised the brilliant investigative strategy that is central to The Hoax: author Arthur Butz's focus on the information long available to the Allies on the operations of Auschwitz, a strategically important petrochemical center (Butz correctly surmised the existence of U.S. aerial photos of the camp years before it was admitted). The Hoax's several chapters on the question of Allied knowledge of Auschwitz have busied orthodox experts for nearly three decades with trying to explain how mass operations seem to have gone unnoticed for several years -- to no avail. The Hoax remains at the center of the revisionist inquiry, valuable even in those few areas in which it has been superseded by subsequent revisionist research: a book that, especially in this handsome new design and printing, needs to be read, and re-read, then read again, by every serious revisionist.
This new edition comes with several supplements adding new information gathered by the author over the last 25 years. --David Irving
"We have known about it ["The Hoax of the Twentieth Century"] for some time. But we didn't want to give it any publicity and help the sales. Now it's too late; it's out in the open and we have to face it squarely." --Abbot A. Rosen, Chicago Executive Director, ADL, "Pittsburgh Press", Jan. 26, 1977 ---Abbot A. Rosen,
The Hoax Of The Twentieth Century was one of the earliest revisionist works and probably the hardest to refute ever since it was first published; indeed mainstream authors (cough) have always been wary of engaging Butz in any kind of controversy. The book is a sweeping examination of some of the finer details, in which we know the devil himself resides, of the "Jewish holocaust", covering so many different topics that it can rightly be considered a sort of miniature "holocaust" encyclopaedia; from Jewish population statistics to "war-crimes" trials to the industrial and economic role of prison camps to the reliability of the eyewitnesses to the history of the magic "6 million" number to the evolution of the propaganda stories to the aerial photography, and so on. My only criticism is a very general one, the fact that it is so all- (or nearly all-)encompassing the treatment of many of the individual subjects is, whilst still impossible to refute and at the time of publication groundbreaking, sometimes relatively superficial. These have of course all been expanded upon in other works in the Holocaust Handbook series. The truth is that this should be the first book in the series; for anyone who generally reads series of books in order the knowledge gained after reading 6 heavyweight volumes preceding this one slightly dilutes its impact. Therefore the criticism probably should more rightly be aimed at the publishers of the series. Still highly recommended for anyone new to the subject - indeed, read this first! - and for any serious students who have not read it, it is certainly worth reading for completeness and to see the evolution of the revisionist case. It should also be pointed out that anyone negatively reviewing such a technical work must of course give valid technical reasons why any part of the thesis is invalid. Without exception so far, negative reviewers have given the sum total of zero valid technical reasons for their negative reviews, going instead with emotion, preconception and ignorance of technical realities. It should also be stated that, again without exception, anyone in the future who negatively reviews this work quite categorically has not read it. I say this with total confidence - indeed, I challenge any naysayer to convincingly refute a single word Butz wrote - and for a very good reason: it is impossible to refute the truth. --SmokeNMirrors (London) -
About the Author
Arthur R. Butz was born and raised in New York City. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. and his Ph.D. in Control Sciences from the University of Minnesota in 1965. In 1966 he joined the faculty of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, where he is now Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Dr. Butz is the author of numerous technical papers.