Professor Lipstadt is the director of the Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. First published in 1993, this book takes a historical look at those who would deny that the Holocaust took place. It shows how Holocaust justification turned into Holocaust denial, and demonstrates the tactics that Holocaust deniers have used to gain both publicity and respectability. The book made news upon publication, and it later gained headlines in spring 2000 when a libel action against the author was tried in an English court. In this case, David Irving, an English writer of German history, attacked Lipstadt's claim that he was "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial" [p. 181]. Although England's libel laws are less favorable to authors than is the case in the United States, the court ruled emphatically that Lipstadt had not libeled Irving.
Chapter One: Canaries in the Mine: Holocaust Denial and the Limited Power of Reason.
Lipstadt begins this overview chapter by discussing some recent examples of Holocaust denial in the United States. She claims that the American ethos of fairness has been carried so far that we will allow any sort of nonsense to be given a full hearing, rather than take any risk that we might be considered intolerant. She then shows that Holocaust denial has spread throughout the world, giving a region by region survey of the literature. She then argues that Holocaust deniers have been abetted by those who have defended their "right" to distribute denial literature. In turn, she claims, these arguments on behalf of deniers are made more plausible by a social context that allows for a "relativistic approach to the truth" [p18].
Lipstadt then summarizes the deniers' principal claims: the Holocaust never happened; the Jews were the victimizers and the Germans the victims; Hitler, according to some deniers, was a man of peace, not war. They take these positions in large part to advance an antisemitic agenda. Their contentions are so mad, she suggests, that many sensible people just dismiss them as the ravings of lunatics. Lipstadt believes this to be a mistake, principally because deniers have learned over time to disguise their agendas and to take advantage of the relativistic social climate, in which the only absolute appears to be not to limit anyone's speech. She believes it "essential to expose the illusion of reasoned inquiry that conceals [the 'deniers'] extremist views" [p28].
Chapter Two: The Antecedents: History, Conspiracy, and Fantasy.
This chapter discusses the sources and background of Holocaust denial. One such source that the deniers have twisted beyond any recognizable shape was the school of historical revisionism that developed after World War I. Reacting to government propaganda justifying that conflict, these revisionists blamed the Allied powers more than Germany for this war. The deniers try to do the same in the case of World War II and the Holocaust, but the resemblance ends there. Lipstadt says that the earlier revisionists "used traditional historiographic methodology to [create an alternative history], whereas denial relies on pseudoscience" [p32]. Many of the World War I revisionists carried their pro-German sympathies into the 1930s, and the more conspiratorially minded among them tended to include the Jews among those threatening Germany. In this they either adopted Nazi ideology or responded to age-old stereotypes, or both. After World War II, isolationists and antisemites recapitulated the arguments in Germany's favor that the revisionists had made after the earlier war. They claimed that the United States and its allies had committed greater atrocities than had Germany, and that Germany had been a victim of Allied aggression. Although these defenders of Nazi Germany attempted to justify or excuse the Holocaust, they never denied that it had occurred.
Chapter Three: In the Shadow of World War II: Denials's Initial Steps.
After World War II, fascists and antisemites had the difficult task of defending their ideologies in light of the Final Solution. Their only hope lay in separating these ideologies from the Holocaust. The effort to do so took place in France, where, for the first time, antisemites claimed that not only was the Holocaust understandable or justifiable, but that "the death of six million Jews was not only exaggerated but a fabrication" [49]. The principal French denier from this period and later was Paul Rassinier. "His books are a mixture of blatant falsehoods, half-truths, quotations out of context, and attacks on the 'Zionist establishment'" [51]. Himself a former concentration camp inmate (he was a Socialist before the War), Rassinier discounts all testimony from his fellow survivors as either mistaken (a psychological reaction to the deprivations of wartime) or concocted. He claimed that Zionism, and especially Israel's interest in reparations, was behind the alleged inflation of the number of the dead As Lipstadt notes, however, Israel's reparations were based on the number of Jews whom the state had to absorb; those payments would have increased if there were fewer victims and more survivors. The only reason Rassinier could have made such an obvious mistake was his desire to connect Jews with financial greed, an old antisemitic accusation. Rassinier constantly uses statistics improperly, rejects logical inferences that run against him, and dismisses documents that unequivocally demonstrate that the Holocaust occurred.
Chapter Four: The First Stirrings of Denial in America.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Holocaust denial in America "was primarily the province of...fringe, extremist, and racist groups, though they found unexpected support in a number of seemingly respectable circles" [p65]. As a result, most of these early deniers could be and were easily dismissed. They are important, however, for devising arguments that "eventually worked their way into the mainstream of Holocaust denial" [p66]. Harry Elmer Barnes, a historian, was the principal link between the earlier American revisionists and the Holocaust deniers. Barnes would typically come close to, but not cross, the boundary into denial. Like Rassinier, Barnes helped set the tone for later Holocaust denial with his contempt for Israel and Jews in general.
Chapter Five: Austin App: The World of Immoral Equivalencies.
A professor of English at the University of Scranton and LaSalle College, Austin App played a central role in the development of Holocaust denial in the United States. He was an overt antisemite, who blamed the problems of the postwar world on a combination among "Talmudists, Bolshevists, and Zionists" [86]. Although he could be dismissed as not having great influence, he was important in that he formulated eight axioms that have served as the basic postulates of Holocaust denial. For a defender of Germany such as App, it became crucial to deny the Holocaust. App sought to set up what Lipstadt calls "immoral equivalencies": for each German atrocity, he argued, the Allies committed an equal or greater one. He had to take the Holocaust out of the equation, because nothing the Allies did compares to the number or the manner of killing that took place in the Holocaust.
App's eight axioms are:
The Nazis wanted to solve Germany's Jewish problem through emigration, not annihilation.
The gas chambers never existed. The installations at Auschwitz were actually crematoria for cremating corpses, not for killing people.
The majority of Jews who disappeared did so in areas under Soviet, not German, control.
The majority of Jews who died at the hands of the Germans were spies, saboteurs, and other undesirables.
Israel has engaged in a cover up by not opening its archives to historians.
There is no evidence to support the figure of six million killed.
The Talmudists and the Bolsheviks have so browbeaten the Germans that they pay millions even though they are not culpable.
Jewish scholars cannot even agree about their own figures.
Each of these assertions is easily contradicted by evidence and documentation, and many are based on such faulty reasoning that they fall apart as a matter of sheer logic. For example, App claims that Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust center, can only document 2.5 million dead, and that even this number was concocted. If there were a conspiracy, Lipstadt points out, Yad Vashem could certainly have forged the remaining millions. Finally, Lipstadt points out, each axiom plays on an antisemitic theme.
Chapter Six: Denial: A Tool of the Radical Right.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, neofascist groups in Western Europe, especially in England, grew in number and strength. These groups relied on Holocaust denial to cleanse fascism of its taint of mass murder. Their principal resource was a pamphlet by one Richard Harwood entitled, Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last. Harwood was a pseudonym for the editor of the publication of the neofascist British organization the National Front. Harwood's pamphlet has had an impact because it reads as if it were a serious scholarly work. "Readers are more susceptible to being influenced by an academic style than by poorly printed extremist and racist publications" [120]. Examination, however, reveals a consistent misuse of documentation. Deniers rely on the fact that most readers have neither the time nor the ability to examine these documents in order to uncover this abuse.
Chapter Seven: Entering the Mainstream: The Case of Arthur Butz.
Arthur Butz, a professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University, published The Hoax of the Twentieth Century in 1976, in which he made two principal contributions to Holocaust denial. First, he used the veneer of scholarship more effectively than had ever been done before; second, he gave ground on some points and confronted others that previous deniers had ignored, thus giving his book an aura of objectivity. Nevertheless, his book reveals the same attitudes and methodology that had characterized the works of previous deniers. For instance, he claims that Jews, with the assistance of Allied governments, forged massive numbers of documents. He fails, however, to explain why, in that case, no one forged an order from Hitler authorizing the destruction of the Jews, the lack of which deniers use to argue that there was no Final Solution.
Chapter Eight: The Institute for Historical Review.
The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was founded in 1978 with the same objective as Arthur Butz's writings: "to move denial from the lunatic fringe of racial and antisemitic extremism to the realm of academic respectability" [142]. Its founder and inspiration was Willis A. Carto, whom the Anti-Defamation League considers the most important professional antisemite in the country. The IHR first made news in 1979, with an offer to pay $50,000 to anyone who could prove that the Nazis operated gas chambers to exterminate the Jews. The offer was a publicity stunt, and it did garner a great deal of media attention. Although many Jewish defense organizations advised that accepting the offer would just give the IHR greater attention, one survivor, Mel Mermelstein, did claim the reward. In 1985, a court awarded him the prize and other damages. His story has been made into a television movie. The IHR has consistently posed as a respectable scholarly institution, interested in revision of all history, not just that of the Holocaust. In fact, though, it focuses almost exclusively on the Holocaust and World War II. Its Journal of Historical Review mimics traditional scholarly publications.
Chapter Nine: The Gas Chamber Controversy.
Ernest Zundel, a German citizen with immigrant status, was for years Canada's most prolific distributor of Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi publications. In 1984, the Canadian government charged him with stimulating antisemitism through publishing and distributing material that he knew was false. In the legal maneuvering that ensued, David Irving came to Canada to help in Zundel's defense. He helped enlist one David Leuchter of Boston to "prove" that it was chemically and physically impossible for the Germans to have conducted gassings. The trial and its aftermath revealed two principal flaws in Leuchter's contentions. First, he lacked the expertise to render a competent opinion; he had an undergraduate degree in history, not engineering, with no actual experience in building gas chambers. Leuchter inflated the number of states with whom he had consulted on their gas chamber technologies, and ultimately was required to sign a consent decree with Massachusetts to cease giving engineering opinions. Second, as might be expected from his lack of expertise, Leuchter's findings were shown by true experts to be wrong in a wide variety of ways. Yet, in what Lipstadt calls "an amazing display of incompetence and culpability," various respected mainstream media outlets have enhanced Leuchter's credibility by citing him as an "expert" on gas chamber technology, albeit in the context of the American death penalty debate.
Chapter Ten: The Battle for the Campus.
Starting in the early 1990s, American college campuses became a battleground for Holocaust denial. One denier, Bradley Smith, attempted to place full page advertisements in campus newspapers, claiming that the Holocaust was a hoax. Although many newspapers rejected these ads, many others accepted them. Those who ran the ads justified their actions in one of two principal ways: either that free speech required them to do so, or that exposing Holocaust denial to the light of day would hasten its demise. Lipstadt takes serious issue with both rationales, calling them examples of "a fuzzy kind of reasoning often evident in academic circles" [p183]. As to free speech, she points out (1) that free speech protections apply to actions taken by the government, not by private parties; (2) that these newspapers typically have policies that prevent them from running racist or sexist ads, yet seem to apply a double standard to Holocaust denial ads; and (3) that a newspaper's interest in publishing a wide variety of "opinions" does not require it to publish outright and demonstrable falsehoods. As to the "light of day" argument, Lipstadt says that one can, as she does, debunk denial claims by running an article fully analyzing the falsehoods of the ad without at the same time having to run the ad. Printing the ads, she argues, gives denial a certain validity, making it seem as if it is one "side" in an argument of opinion, rather than simply a lie.
Chapter Eleven: Watching on the Rhine: The Future Course of Holocaust Denial.
Lipstadt makes two principal points in this chapter. First, she notes that, in addition to the problems of denial in and of itself, it may also have the effect of changing the dynamics in other areas of inquiry. For example, she claims that a group of conservative German historians, while not themselves deniers, have "helped to create a gray area where their highly questionable interpretations of history became enmeshed with the pseudohistory of the deniers" [p209]. These historians have sought in some measure to rehabilitate Germany's reputation by reducing German feelings of guilt over the Nazi years. One of their number advised German Chancellor Helmut Kohl when he persuaded President Reagan to lay a wreath at the Bitburg Cemetery, where members of the Waffen-SS were buried. Second, Lipstadt gives three pieces of advice for how best to counter the deniers:
Do not give them a forum to spread their poison.
Be very careful about using the law to attack them, because doing so can make them into martyrs to the cause of free speech.
Do not ignore them. They will not go away by themselves. Rather, we should "expose these people for what they are" [p222].
Topics for Discussion:
Some parents have asked to withdraw their children from public school classes in which the history of the Holocaust is taught to protect them from this allegedly questionable and "vulgar hate material." Craft a response to this request.
Is Lipstadt right to attribute the growth of Holocaust denial to a climate in which truth is considered relative, not absolute? Are some ideas "beyond the pale of rational thought?" [p18] Why or why not?
Lipstadt suggests that someone can get respect for an outrageous theory simply by publishing it, having it attacked, attacking the attackers, and then persuading mainstream media that there is a real controversy [p27]. Can you think of examples, other than those in the book, of this happening? Have you ever "fallen" for such tactics?
When you read or hear an argument, what are some "red flags" that go up to help you be suspicious, especially if you do not know a great deal about the subject being discussed? How do you go about testing such arguments? o Do you tend to believe in conspiracy theories, such as those involving the Kennedy assassination? How does belief in conspiracies tend to promote Holocaust denial? How do we detect and respond to a conspiratorial mindset?
How do you respond to people who oversimplify arguments?
What are a standard set of antisemitic stereotypes? How do you address them?
Do you tend to believe statistical arguments? Should you? How can you tell if statistics are being honestly or dishonestly used?
How do you debunk attempts to show that the Allied and German actions were morally equivalent?
Why did supporters of Nazi Germany first try to excuse the Holocaust, and only later try to deny that it had ever happened? Why didn't denial come first?
Does the existence of Israel change traditional antisemitism? Why or why not? o Should we be careful of how we talk about the Holocaust to make sure that deniers cannot twist our words, or is this just a way of allowing them to control discussion of the Holocaust?
Whatdo you think is the principal motive for Holocaust denial--defending Germany over the course of both World Wars, attacking the Allies, or antisemitism?
Go through each of Austin App's eight axioms and explain why they are invalid.
Go through each of Austin App's eight axioms and point out the antisemitic themes at the heart of each.
How do you deal with works such as those of Arthur Butz, which attempt to concede certain points in order to make larger false claims?
Pretend you are an editor of a college paper faced with a Holocaust denial ad? Would you print it? Why or why not? What if a scholar had written an op-ed piece claiming that IQ tests show that black intelligence is below that of whites? Would you publish that?
Is Lipstadt taking too narrow a position in arguing that free speech only applies to government actions? Should we, for instance, demand that online bookstores not sell antisemitic materials, or does that smack of censorship to you?
Lipstadt attacks one student newspaper for arguing that the "quality ..of an idea" should have no bearing on whether the idea should be heard. Do you agree with her?
The Washington Post editorialized that newspapers should be willing to run Holocaust denial ads in order to expose the ad to refutation. Lipstadt believes that the refutation without the ad is the better course. With whom do you agree? Why?
One student newspaper printed a denial ad on a page surrounded by articles that disputed its claims. If you had been the editor, would you have done this?
Do you agree with Lipstadt that the existence of Holocaust denial tends to shift the terms of the debate about other, related subjects as well? If so, how do you prevent that from happening?
Are the gains from court challenges to Holocaust deniers greater than the costs of such challenges? Use the Mermelstein and Zundel cases as examples.
Is it possible, as Lipstadt has tried to do, to refute the deniers without giving them some sort of legitimacy?
What strategy would you use if confronted by someone who denies the Holocaust?
To order Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory Simon and Schuster
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