Counter-Currents Calls Me Out for Denying Denial

Here's my response...

This is supposed to be a supplemental piece that this week’s Takimag column links to, but I’m new to Substack and I don’t think you can do an “unlisted” column that doesn’t get blasted to your subscribers immediately upon link generation, so in order to get the link for my column, I gotta publish this now, even though it’ll be in service of a column that won’t be up for another day, so you know what? I’m so inebriated at the moment I’m just gonna ask you guys to roll with it, okay?

Last November a dude named Beau “Rainbow” Albrecht wrote a piece about me in Counter-Currents. Here it is. And then in January I started a correspondence with him. And tomorrow my Takimag column will explain the context. But you’ll be saddled with this in your inbox a day early, because this is my decennial “outing” weekend and I’m very drunk and last night my best friends took me to my favorite Greek-fusion restaurant (Avra on Beverly Drive. If you ever want to kill me, just hang out there; I’ll show up eventually, and please make it quick) and I woke up on my living room floor with no memory of how I got home and my shirt smells of perfume and I don’t know why but by God I hope I behaved myself and also, I should probably dry out for a spell.

Anyway, while this exchange between me & Albrecht is self-explanatory, it’ll go better with this week’s column…which will post in a day or so.

I’ve fatigued you with exposition, and you haven’t even read the fucking piece yet.

A good writer wouldn’t do that.

So let’s jump in.

Cole to Beau, January 6th

Hi Beau,

David Cole here. I’m planning to do a couple of Holocaust-related columns this year, and I’d like to have a back-and-forth with you regarding the one you penned about me. Lemme know if that’s okay. It’s not something I’m going to do immediately, but maybe in the next month or so.

Best to you in 2023,

David

Beau to Cole, January 7th

Hey, it's good to hear from you.  I hope you're doing well and enjoying life with a girlfriend who treats you right.  The psychos certainly can be a royal pain in the neck, and then some.  Borderline personality disorder is no joke!

Anyway, hopefully my article came across as fair, since those were my intentions.  If you'd like to further clarify my thoughts, ask away.  Please note that as far as my interest in history goes, I'm more of a generalist than perhaps some of the folks you've met, and I prefer not to gaze too far into the darkest depths more than necessary.

Best wishes and kind regards,

   - Beau

Cole to Beau, January 9th

Hi Beau,

Thanks for getting back to me. I actually enjoyed your piece. It wasn’t a fair piece, but it was respectful, and that’s all I ever ask. I don’t expect opinion guys to be fair; I’m not fair. But I appreciate that you were respectful. Whatever I write about you, please know that I’ll return that favor.

So consider this a friendly exchange, not a hostile one.

If you’ll allow me to drone for a moment, last year’s Kanye thing, which coincided with Musk ending the Twitter ban on Holocaust denial, led to a flood of tweets from randos invoking me and my work in a way that damn-near made me want to get liquored up and do a Dennis Wilson off a pier. It’s very unpleasant to realize that the thing you devoted your life to, the thing you got beaten up and threatened with death for, has been warped and mutilated by a generation of tards.

That I inadvertently inspired and empowered stupidity kills me inside. It’s the exact opposite of what I wanted to do with my life.

As it’s clear that you are most definitely not stupid, I’d like to probe you about something you wrote.

It’s possible he might change his mind if he had a look at some of the research his fellow revisionists have done since he left the scene. On the other hand, as objective as he’s been in the past, I could still hardly blame Mr. Cole if he does not look into it or wish to comment further. He’s already come close to getting the ultimate penalty for heresy.

That’s not fair at all. It implies that I haven’t examined such “research,” and – worse – it implies that I’m scared to do so, or scared to admit that those “researchers” are right.

Beau, I’m a 54-year-old man with no family. Everyone I ever loved is dead. I own my Beverly Hills house outright, and if I’m ever in a pinch, I could sell it and live like a king in Asscrack Montana for one-tenth of what I get from the sale. And my job (not my “pursuit,” as you incorrectly phrase it, but my full-time job) with Takimag is secure; Taki knows my baggage, and I’ve been allowed to say whatever I want for eight years.

No “enemy” could possibly hold any leverage over me; I can’t be fired or impoverished, and I have no family members who can be threatened. It was absolutely unfair of you to insinuate that my historical views are influenced by reluctance to face the truth, or fear of facing it.

But since you opened that can of worms publicly, I’m gonna call you out on it.

Please tell me the specific things you think might “change my mind” about the Reinhard camps. What specifically did you read that made you say, “hmm, I bet this info might make Cole question his thesis. Or maybe this info is so powerful, Cole doesn’t even want to face it.”

I’ll show you my hand. Here’s MY evidence:

Contemporaneous documentary evidence

1942: Goebbels writes in his diary, “The 60% of non-laboring Polish Jews are being liquidated. It’s being handled by the head of Aktion Reinhard in a manner so ghastly I won’t describe it further. It’s barbaric but justified. Not many Jews will be left.”

1942: SS statistician Korherr states that 2.4 million Jewish “evacuees” predominantly from Poland and Russia were “abgang” (dispatched/departed) via “special treatment in the Eastern camps” and those evacuees are “todesfallen” (that word ONLY means dead). He stresses that those Jews are “not in camps and ghettos,” or in Europe at all. They are part of the DECLINE in numbers (zurückgegangen) of European Jews. Not relocation, but reduction. And his figure of “departed” aligns perfectly with 60% of Polish Jewry, just as Goebbels said.

1942: Kube, Lohse, Strauch, and Heydrich have multiple correspondences regarding the mass-murder of Russian Jews, which Kube states is part of a plan that’s being carried out for the total elimination of Eastern Jewry. Kube becomes furious when a single transport of 1,000 laboring Polish Jews is sent to the Ostland to work for the Luftwaffe. He angrily states that this is irregular and must never occur again. He does, however, argue that the German/Austrian Jews being sent into his territory should be spared. He later relents and says that the non-laboring German/Austrian Jews were killed, too.

1943: Stroop writes “I’m sending Jews to be killed at Treblinka.”

1944: Himmler states: “We had to kill all non-laboring Polish Jews, even the kids. It sucked, but it was a necessity and it's good that we no longer have a large enemy population that close to the front.”

Postwar supplementary evidence

All Reinhard Nazis (including the Treblinka commandants) confirmed that these were extermination camps. They confirmed it regardless of their postwar status (free, imprisoned, imprisoned then freed, free but awaiting trial, elderly and freed).

Circumstantial evidence

Sobibor and Treblinka were the only Nazi camps to see a full-on revolt and mass escape. No camp, especially innocent transit camps, ever saw a mass escape. It’s an irregularity that just so happens to have only occurred at those two camps once Himmler announced they’d be closed.

Himmler ordered those two camps plowed under and erased from the face of the earth, replaced by pastoral fields. There was zero military necessity for this; by late 1943, the Nazis were losing the war in the East. What gain was there to spend the time and manpower to erase from existence these simple “transit centers?” Oh, and the erasure corresponded with Goebbels worrying that the advancing Reds might find war crimes evidence, as the Nazis did when THEY were advancing and found the Katyn bodies.

And the denial response?

After 35 years of trying, no denier has ever found a single piece of evidence that Korherr’s 2.4 million Jews were relocated. Not a document, not an eyewitness account, not an aerial photo, not a physical remain. Nothing.

Deniers (Graf and Mattogno) found that ONE transport of Polish Jews to the Ostland, but they admit that those were not Treblinka Jews, and Kube’s correspondences confirm that this was a one-time deal. Plus, those 1,000 Jews were laborers. No denier has found proof of any non-laboring Polish Jews who were resettled.

Okay, Beau. That’s my hand. Now, show me yours. You tell me the amazing research you found that you feel outweighs what I just detailed.

Looking forward to being educated!

One last thing: your column contained something so false that it’s either an outright lie or a product of willful ignorance:

“Lately, orthodox sources concur that the only actual death camps in the concentration camp system were located in territories later to be occupied by the Soviet Union — surely an odd coincidence.”

Where the flyin’ fuck did you get that? “Lately?” Dude, even while the war was still going on it was understood that the Polish Jews were sent East. Everyone – deniers, revisionists, and orthodox historians alike – confirms that the official Nazi policy for targeted Jewish populations was for them to be “evacuated East.” That ain’t even in question. The “debate” is that orthodox historians and honest revisionists hold that the Jews were killed in the Reinhard camps, whereas deniers claim they were sent ON from the Reinhard camps to be “resettled” further East. But EVERYONE agrees that whatever happened to the Jews happened in the East. That’s not a “lately” thing; it’s been a claim since day one. Even before the Russians occupied that territory, years before postwar Poland was handed to the Soviets, it was understood that the fate of the Jews, whatever you think it might be, happened in the East.

Where did you get that “lately” nonsense from?

And why is it an “odd coincidence” that something that was carried out (whether you believe it was murder or resettlement) AT THE RUSSIAN BORDER ended up in territory liberated by the Russians?

“Coincidence?” It’s the only logical outcome that Russia would liberate territory at its own border. Who else would do it? The Belgians?

The Nazis put their “solution” to the Eastern European Jewish problem (whether you think that solution was murder camps or resettlement towns) right next to the Russian border.

So yeah...that territory was liberated by Russia.

By going “ooooooh, wotta COINCIDENCE,” you’re mystifying the explicable. That’s the opposite of what someone trying to enlighten would do.

David

Cole to Beau, January 14th

Hey Beau! Did you receive my reply? I haven't heard back in six days. I'm sure you're quite busy, but I just want to be certain you got the email.

David

Beau to Cole, January 15th

Apologies for the late reply; things got quite hectic here and I was away for a while.

That was quite a lot, so I'll take it from the top.  I don't much keep up with the goings-on of Twitter, but I can understand that must be royally frustrating.  From my experience, there have been times I wish my audience would read what I wrote rather than what they think I wrote, so I get it there!  One time I wrote about Turkish history, and half of my audience was calling me pro-Muslim.  (Who, me?)  I suppose I had it coming, waded right into it, and earned my bloody nose - anything to do with Turkey has a way of starting fights online.

As for Kanye, the strange religious kick he's on seems pretty far out into left field.  Well, I suppose I'm quite the one to talk about odd religions.  (I try to keep an open mind about all that and not get uptight about sectarian differences, but even I have my limits.)  Something tells me the chapter on this isn't closed yet.  Time will tell.

Moving onto the next item, let me clarify.  As I recall, your book states that you exited revisionist circles around 1995.  I certainly wouldn't expect you to follow what they were saying long after you'd left the scene.  Instead, I would find it understandable that you might prefer not to keep up with revisionist literature any further, especially after having a fatwa taken out on you and all that.  (If I were in such a position, I'd be shut of it and never look back after a bitter experience like that.)  That's all I meant.  In any event, I wouldn't expect you to martyr yourself like St. Thomas More or anything of the like.  I wasn't calling you a chicken, or attempting to hurt your feelings.  Dude - take a chill pill!

It seems you read more into it than I'd intended at this point and elsewhere, taking offense where none was meant.  Please allow me to clarify some other things too.  First, I never meant anything as a personal attack.  Really, I have no quarrel with you.  Also, I'd rather not get into a silly online pissing match; nobody looks good coming out of those.  Other than that, my position is not to say that there couldn't have been any atrocities during the Second World War at the areas under discussion.  Putting things very briefly, the orthodox narrative has numerous serious problems, and it falls apart when closely examined.  If you like, later on I could see about going into detail, which would generally address the specifics that you mentioned.   Unfortunately I can't make any promises, since my writing projects are pretty backlogged at the moment, as well as other things going on in my life.

Last, I strongly recommend avoiding Asscrack, Montana.  It's populated by anthropophagous mole people who have 45 chromosomes and really don't like outsiders.  They wouldn't even want a reprobate like me as a neighbor.

Cole to Beau January 16th

Hi Beau,

Please don’t see this as a “pissing match.” As I said, it’s a friendly exchange. No acrimony on my part. But, I have several Holocaust-themed columns planned for this year, as it’s the tenth anniversary of my “outing,” and among the matters that weigh heavily on my mind is the realization that my work spawned a veritable cult of morons who invoke my name yet get my work drastically wrong.

I’m not referring to you. You’re not a moron; quite the opposite – you’re a smart and reasonable guy. That’s why I’m engaging with you. And hopefully via that engagement, I can perhaps craft a column that will help my readers understand some of the issues surrounding the gulf that’s developed between rational revisionism and outright denial.

Understanding as I do that you’re busy, I want to ask you two questions for the column I’m writing. Take your time with your reply; I have my next three weeks of columns mapped out, so the Holocaust one won’t be for a while. But your response will be tremendously appreciated.

1) I really want to understand your “what a coincidence” position regarding the Reinhard camps being in Soviet territory. Because it’s a position that baffles me. Yet it’s become a very popular point among deniers.

You wrote “Lately, orthodox sources concur that the only actual death camps in the concentration camp system were located in territories later to be occupied by the Soviet Union — surely an odd coincidence.”

Please help me out here. Where did the “lately” come from? Why did you say lately?

And why is it a coincidence that the territory where “evacuated” Jews met their fate was liberated by Russia? Deniers and mainstream scholars alike agree that whatever happened to the evacuated Jews happened in the east. So why is it a “coincidence” that Russia liberated that land? What other nation would’ve done it?

2) Sorry that this will be a long question; I’m doing it for selfish reasons. If I write the question out in detail here, I can cut-and-paste when it comes time to write my column. And man, am I a sucker for decreasing my workload on column day by being able to have a bunch of pre-written content.

You wrote “It’s possible he might change his mind if he had a look at some of the research his fellow revisionists have done since he left the scene.”

What I’d like to know, specifically, is what you read that you think might make me change my mind. I’m not asking you to do any new research. I want to know what was in your head the day you wrote your piece that prompted you to write the above sentence. What were the things you were thinking of that made you say I might change my mind if I knew those things.

Please indulge me. Here’s what I base my thesis on:

Contemporaneous Nazi documents that mainstream historians and revisionists agree are genuine

July 1941: SS-Obersturmbannführer Rolf-Heinz Höppner, in charge of Jewish resettlement east, inquires of Eichmann if perhaps in the overcrowded Warthegau district it might be more humane to put non-laboring Jews to sleep instead of letting them freeze to death or starve in the coming winter, as there will likely not be enough food to go around.

September 1941: An impatient Höppner asks for a clarification: are the Jews sent east to be killed or not?

November 1941: Hinrich Lohse (Reichskommissariat Ostland) asks Otto Bräutigam (Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) a similar question. Confirming that killing of Jews had begun, Lohse asks if all Jews sent east are to be killed, or just the non-laboring ones. Bräutigam indignantly replies that such matters are only to be discussed verbally. What he DOESN’T say is, “Oh GOD no! Kill them? We’d never do that!” Rather, he chastises Lohse for wanting the answer in writing.

January 1942: The Wannsee conference is held. According to the minutes, Jews useful for labor will be put to work for the Reich; many will die from overwork, and caution must be taken with those who survive because, being the strongest, on release they could form a new Jewish “germ-cell.” Left unsaid is what will happen to the non-laboring Jews. However, Secretary of State Dr. Buehler of the General Government (occupied Poland) asks that non-laboring Jews in his territory be “removed” immediately, because they are a “danger” as disease-carriers and black marketeers. He asks for a “final solution” to be initiated in Poland at once (he also stresses that the majority of his 2.5 million Jews are “unfit for work”).

First quarter, 1942: the Reinhard camps are opened.

March 1942: Goebbels writes in his diary that the 60% of non-laboring Polish Jews are being liquidated. It’s being handled by the head of Aktion Reinhard, with great discretion, in a manner so barbaric he refuses to describe it. He admits that it’s the “extreme” solution, but justified because “if we don’t kill them they’ll kill us.”

December 1941 to July 1942: Kube (Generalkommissar for White Russia), Lohse, and Strauch (security police, White Russia) have multiple correspondences regarding the mass-murder of Russian Jews, which Kube states is part of a plan that’s being carried out for the total elimination of Eastern Jews. Kube does, however, argue that the German/Austrian Jews sent into his territory should be spared. Following pushback, he relents and says that the non-laboring German/Austrian Jews will be killed, too.

April 1943: Himmler’s statistician Korherr states that 2.4 million Jewish “evacuees” predominantly from Poland and Russia have been dispatched/departed (“abgang”) via “special treatment in the Eastern camps” and those evacuees are “todesfällen” (dead). He stresses that those Jews are “not in camps and ghettos,” or in Europe at all. They are part of the DECLINE in numbers (zurückgegangen) of European Jews. Not relocation, but reduction. And his figure of Jews “dispatched” via the Reinhard camps aligns perfectly with 60% of Polish Jewry, just as Goebbels said.

May 1943: SS-Gruppenführer Stroop writes “I’m sending Jews to be killed at Treblinka.”

May and June 1944: Himmler makes a series of speeches to his generals explaining why it had been necessary to kill (“umbringen,” a word that only means kill) the Polish Jews. He declares that it was the right thing to do, and considering that the Eastern front is collapsing, if there were still 2.5 million Polish Jews near the front, it would be a disaster.

So, a very linear chain of contemporaneous evidence. Höppner suggests killing the non-laboring Polish Jews. He grows impatient that a decision has not yet been reached (i.e., he was NOT told “no, we’d NEVER do such a thing!”). Once killings had begun, Lohse asks if the killings are for all Jews sent east or just non-laborers. He’s admonished that such matters should only be discussed verbally. At Wannsee, the fate of non-laboring Jews is left out of the minutes, but Buehler says these “dangerous” Jews must be removed at once. The Reinhard camps are opened. Goebbels writes in his private diary that the Reinhard camps are being used to liquidate non-laboring Polish Jews in a barbaric manner.  Kube, Lohse, and Strauch confirm that mass killings are going on in the east. Stroop reports that following the cleanout of the Warsaw Ghetto he’s sending Jews to Treblinka to be killed. And once Reinhard concludes Himmler tells his generals why the mass murder was necessary.

Postwar supplementary evidence

All Reinhard Nazis (including the Treblinka commandants) confirmed that these were extermination camps. They confirmed it regardless of their postwar status (free, imprisoned, imprisoned then freed, free but awaiting trial, elderly and freed).

Circumstantial evidence

Sobibor and Treblinka were the only Nazi camps to see a full-on revolt and mass escape. No camp, especially innocent transit camps, ever saw a mass escape. It’s an irregularity that just so happens to have only occurred at those two camps once Himmler announced they’d be closed (the point being, whereas inmates at an innocent transit camp would expect to be transferred elsewhere, the Reinhard Jewish staff knew they’d be liquidated along with the camp, and thus braved mines and machine guns to flee en masse).

Himmler ordered those two camps plowed under and erased from the face of the earth, replaced by pastoral fields. There was zero military necessity for this; by late 1943, the Nazis were struggling on the Eastern Front. What gain was there to spend the time and manpower to erase from existence these simple “transit centers?” Oh, and the erasure corresponded with Goebbels worrying that the advancing Reds might find war crimes evidence, as the Nazis did when THEY were advancing and found the Katyn bodies.

Okay, Beau, now what is it you read that made you think, “David Cole might change his mind if he knew this shit!” What specific thing(s), what specific “research,” struck you as so powerful that it might make me discard all of the evidence I just outlined?  

I’m not asking you to do any new research! But when you wrote “this thing might make Cole change his mind,” you must have had something in mind. I just want to know what that thing is.

I very much look forward to your reply.

David

Beau to Cole January 20th

I can get into all that, but first, I'd like to clarify.  My correspondence to you here is just personal dialogue, off the record and not for publication.  Correct?

Cole to Beau January 20th

Beau,

My first email to you clearly stated that I was seeking a response for a future column ("David Cole here. I’m planning to do a couple of Holocaust-related columns this year, and I’d like to have a back-and-forth with you regarding the one you penned about me. Lemme know if that’s okay. It’s not something I’m going to do immediately, but maybe in the next month or so"). I reiterated that in my most recent follow-up email to you ("Understanding as I do that you’re busy, I want to ask you two questions for the column I’m writing. Take your time with your reply; I have my next three weeks of columns mapped out, so the Holocaust one won’t be for a while. But your response will be tremendously appreciated").

But now you write "I can get into all that, but first, I'd like to clarify. My correspondence to you here is just personal dialogue, off the record and not for publication.  Correct?"

Really, dude? How is "I want to ask you two questions for the column I’m writing" an unclear statement of purpose?

Don't vex a greying, decaying old man, my friend. It's cruel. I have irritable bowels, and an irritable manner. I can't control the former, but I really, really try to control the latter. You called me out publicly by saying "Cole might change his mind on Reinhard if he read this amazing new research," so I have a right to ask you, publicly, "what's the 'new research' that you think might make me disregard all the contemporaneous documentary evidence?"

You started this, Beau. I'm simply asking you to clarify the claim you made about me.

David

Beau to Cole January 27th

OK, my apologies for the confusion.  It wasn't entirely clear to me how much was going to be for public consumption.  Generally when I'm invited to my own lynching, I decline the offer to bring extra rope.  So in this case, I'll have to trust your word for it that this is not what you have in mind.  Hopefully the following will clarify any ambiguity on my part without introducing more.

Regarding the matter of why Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor are considered especially deadly according to orthodox historiography, it's more than just those three.  The Yad Vashem website distinguishes death camps as a separate category from other concentration camps. "The 6 death camps, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau were used to carry out the systematic mass murder of Jews as part of the Final Solution, first in gas vans, and later in gas chambers."  (Hopefully that's orthodox enough for an official source!)  These were in the Greater Poland area, which ended up in the Soviet occupation zone.

So I'll spell out what this looks like, which I'm rather surprised wasn't more obvious.  To begin, of all the Allied powers, the Soviets by far had the greatest ax to grind with the Nazi regime, both ideologically and from the outcome of the war.  The Soviets also were quite well known for propaganda with remarkably little regard for the truth.  I doubt I have to go too far explaining that, since you remember the Cold War and the nature of the USSR's closed society and their ideological fanaticism.  It's not like you're one of those university-educated millennials who thinks Communism means unlimited free shit for everyone.

No other country - Allied or Axis - was particularly squeaky clean about integrity in journalism.  Still, the above factors would rather obviously make the Soviets more inclined than any of the other postwar occupying powers to spin narratives, coerce testimony, modify buildings in their possession, otherwise manufacture evidence, jazz up the story beyond recognition, and outright lie about their former enemy.  In totalitarian Iron Curtain conditions, it was easier to maintain impostures indefinitely without too much contrary investigation.  That eventually changed later, such as with chemical assays at Auschwitz, Californians with camcorders asking the director pointed questions, and so forth.

So onto the "lately" thing, by which I meant that the story had changed.  In particular, Dachau used to be considered a death camp equipped with a gas chamber.  (That's mighty far away from Greater Poland, now isn't it?  What's up with that?)  That position was abandoned by orthodox opinion - on their terms, quietly and with no fanfare.  As far as I can tell, that was perhaps around the early 1970s or so.  Thereafter, Dachau was demoted from being a death camp.  As for the gas chambers there, I believe it's not entirely so controversial to say that they were installed in early postwar times; our grandparents' tax dollars at work.

Other than that, on the subject of the story being scaled down lately from what it used to be, I should say that what we learned at school was that all concentration camps were death camps.  Auschwitz was the big one, but beyond that, no functional distinction was made between them.  As far as we knew, every single one was a slaughterhouse equipped with a hydrogen cyanide gas chamber disguised as a shower room, with every prisoner marked for death.  If all that lacks nuance and clarity, that one is on whoever designed our curricula.  As to whether this was the orthodox narrative at the time, it certainly was official enough to be taught in public school history classes, so I say that counts.  Moreover, at our school, questioning any facet of that would've been nearly the equivalent of spitting on the flag.

Onto the next item.  There are a number of logistical difficulties with the orthodox narrative about Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor.  These elements of the story range from highly unlikely to insurmountably wrong.  It doesn't help that the star witnesses lied extensively.  For example, they certainly spun quite a yarn, which made for great theatrics, but they had no idea what was involved in cremation.  (I wonder if they even had any experience barbecuing a steak.)  It's people like that who turned an exceedingly tragic war into a big melodrama.  When I observe a pattern of lying, I'm no longer willing to assume good faith or take their word for much.

There's a lot that can be said about all that, but a good introduction to the problems in the orthodox narrative can be found in the documentary "One Third of the Holocaust."  In places, it goes into some of the other items you brought up earlier.  This may be viewed at https://odysee.com/@montysthinkingoutsidethebox:2/One-Third-of-the-Holocaust:3c

I would suppose it's unlikely you've met the filmmaker, since he didn't begin producing anything until long after you've left the scene.  However, he did give you a brief favorable mention.  His position is that war sucks - I'll concur - and that propaganda tends to generate war fever.  His video is pretty incisive, going to source texts from which the official story was distilled, working out what the details would've been like, and so forth.  So I'm indeed confident that, were you to have the time and inclination to watch this very long documentary (and I'm not expecting you to do so), you would conclude at least that there's a lot wrong with the official story.  So would any other objective viewer who does not tremendously overestimate the combustibility of cadavers and swallow a lot of other poppycock from the star eyewitnesses.  On the other hand, if you're inclined to dismiss the lot of it because the filmmaker sleeps with his teddy bear or some such, then we simply will have to agree to disagree.

I should add that none of the above is exclusive of the fact that there was considerable evil intent, as you've noted, which did result in evil deeds.

Cole to Beau, January 31st

Hey Beau,

Sorry for the delay; I had to finish my columns (my free days are Monday through Wednesday).

I’m not trying to “lynch” you, Beau. First of all, I like Greg Johnson. Unlike Ron Unz, with whom I will ALWAYS pick a fight, I have no desire to slam Johnson or Counter-Currents. So even if I didn’t genuinely like you – and I do – I wouldn’t attack you if only out of respect for Greg.

I’m gonna have my last words here. If you feel the need to respond to anything, please do.

The first problem, Beau, is that you’re giving me philosophy. “Communism is evil!” Okay sure, agreed, but that’s got nothing to do with the hard evidence I cite – documents confirmed as genuine by mainstream historians, revisionists (Irving, Weber), and even deniers (Mattogno, Graf).

So I gave you a pile of legit contemporaneous docs from Höppner, Eichmann, Lohse, Bräutigam, Buehler, Goebbels, Kube, Strauch, Himmler, Korherr, and Stroop. And your response was, “I don’t trust Russians.” What the hell that has to do with what Nazis wrote when they were in power, you fail to explain.

But then, regarding the “Dean Irebodd” film, you say to me, “On the other hand, if you're inclined to dismiss the lot of it because the filmmaker sleeps with his teddy bear or some such...”

Wait! You mock the notion that I might dismiss a film because of the failings of the filmmaker (“don’t look at the man; examine his evidence!”), but then you dismiss mounds of evidence because of the failings of a communist state that had nothing to do with the production of that evidence.

How is “I reject Dean Irebodd’s film because he sleeps with his teddy bear” worse than “I reject documents from the Nazi inner circle because communists, who are bad, exist?” You want me to look at Irebodd’s EVIDENCE even if I don’t like the man, but you reject every document I presented to you because you don’t like the Soviets, who...uh...had nothing to do with those documents.

That’s bizarre!

For the record, I’ve SEEN the “Irebodd” film (do you think there's a single denier talking point I haven't heard in 33 years?). It’s as slanted and deceptive to one side as any Lipstadt book is to the other. Lots of misrepresentations, and some outright lies. I don’t know a thing about “Irebodd” the man and I don’t need to. I only examine the evidence.

Also for the record, Beau, the documents I cite were not magically produced by the Russians. I don’t think you have the slightest comprehension of how these things actually worked, which is a shame, because learning the details is the fun part. After the war, in preparation for the Nuremberg Trial, the Allies collected everything they could from the Nazi archives, and every Allied power at the trial wanted copies of everything. Hence as Nazi records were collected, copies went to the Americans, and the British, and the Russians. Everybody’s seen everything from the get-go. They may not have interpreted the docs well at the trial (they didn’t), but in terms of possession, everybody saw the same shit from day one.

By the time the trial was over and historians took over from military tribunals, everyone had copies of everything. There’s a finite (though large) number of Nazi docs, and we all (Americans, Brits, Russians) know what they are.

After the trial, originals of the docs ended up housed in different archives.

For example, the Goebbels Diary. Goebbels handwrote/typed the pages, then he had them microfilmed for posterity. The physical pages ended up with the Americans; they’re housed at the Hoover Institution. The microfilms ended up with the Russians, who completely ignored them because they didn’t fucking care. Your view of the Soviets is juvenile. You act like they were concerned with churning out forgeries. In fact, it was the nature of the Soviet state that evidence didn’t matter at all. Forgeries are for states where evidence needs to be presented. The Soviets had no need to bother with that, because Soviet trials, history books, etc., didn’t rely on evidence but on the unquestioned word of the state.

Most Holocaust forgeries are, in fact, from the denier side, because deniers pretend to care about evidence, so they fake it. The Soviets didn’t give a shit about evidence. They didn’t even use the real evidence in their possession.

It wasn’t until the fall of the Soviet Union that historians went to Moscow to look at the Goebbels microfilm, to see if it matched the Hoover Institution’s handwritten/typed pages. And it did. David Irving himself went to Moscow, and at the 1994 IHR conference, where he and I appeared together, he announced that the diaries were 100% verified because the handwritten/typed pages that the Americans held and the microfilm that the Russians held were in complete agreement.

There’s an ART to verifying documents. Signatures, official stamps, letterheads, copies sent to other government offices, acknowledgment of receipt from those offices, follow-up docs, responses to the follow-ups. Document verification is a skill, but you dismiss it because you don’t trust the Soviets, which – for reasons you don’t explain – means that nothing any Nazi wrote from 1933 to 1945 can be used as evidence, even if those docs were not found or produced by the Russians.

“The Soviets were bad actors so nothing any Nazi ever wrote can be trusted even if the Soviets were nowhere in the chain of possession.”

Jesus, that’s odd. You’ve built a psychological wall, a rationalization, that allows you to dismiss as false anything that threatens your bias.

You also seem to be under the impression that the Soviets liberated the Reinhard camps and THEN decided to claim they were extermination camps. That’s completely false. The Reinhard camps were well-known from 1942 onward. Goebbels specifically wrote of Jews being liquidated in the Reinhard camps in 1942. Stroop specifically wrote of sending Jews to be killed in Treblinka in 1943. Korherr specifically wrote of Jews being “dispatched” via “special treatment” at the Reinhard camps in 1943.

What’s actually rather impressive is that when the Soviets liberated Reinhard ground in 1944, they DIDN’T fake any buildings. The camps had been razed by the Nazis (as Allied aerial photos prove), and the Russians didn’t try to build anything phony there. They “modified” no buildings.

Our knowledge of the Reinhard camps comes from Nazi docs, NOT anything the Russians did.

On Dachau, you wrote, “In particular, Dachau used to be considered a death camp equipped with a gas chamber. (That's mighty far away from Greater Poland, now isn't it? What's up with that?)”

I don’t even understand that sentence. It’s all attitude, no substance. Dachau was never considered a JEWISH extermination camp. Yes, immediately after liberation, the U.S. Army constructed a fake gas chamber (nobody claimed the camp was part of the extermination of Eastern Jewry), invited a congressional delegation to tour it, and made a propaganda newsreel. But here’s where you completely miss the point of what revisionism is. Revisionism assumes that at the close of every war the winning armies lie. That acknowledgment is at the core of revisionism. Military misrepresentation at a war’s end is EXPECTED. Revisionists don’t clutch their pearls like Southern belles and say “oh mah oh mah, I am shocked by this behavior! My faith has been a-shattered!” Revisionists don’t use the lies of victorious armies as an excuse to dismiss the historiography that comes afterward. Revisionists don’t go, “The army lied? Well, now I don’t believe ANUHTHANG!” Rather, revisionists expect the immediate postwar lies, because it happens in all wars. The point of revisionism is that the accurate history is written when the war has been over for enough years.

But you’re like, “the army lied while the war was still hot? Well, that means I shouldn’t believe what historians wrote in the decades after.”

That’s retarded (no offense). Revisionists EXPECT armies to lie. And then once the years pass and the military no longer controls the narrative, historians go in and write narratives based on evidence, not the clumsy wartime propaganda of soldiers.

You wrote that the Dachau gas chamber “was abandoned by orthodox opinion - on their terms, quietly and with no fanfare. As far as I can tell, that was perhaps around the early 1970s or so.”

Dude, you literally made that up. You dreamed that up. In 1953, in the first (and still arguably most authoritative) Holocaust book, The Final Solution, author Gerald Reitlinger dismissed the notion of Dachau gassings.

Have you read The Final Solution? No? Why not? You can watch a four-and-a-half hour Bitchute video that supports your bias, but you can’t read the standard book in the field of Holocaust history?

So yeah, the army lied in April 1945. By 1953, the record was already being corrected. Did idiots (NOT mainstream historians, but Hollywood writers, pulp fiction novelists, etc.) in the 1960s and '70s continue to cite photos of the Dachau gas chamber? Sure. But instead of using the idiots who still believed in Dachau gassings as a reason to doubt the entire history, why not instead see those fabricators as your mirror image. Because they ARE. They have a bias and they dream shit up to support it with no evidence, and you have a bias and dream shit up to support it with no evidence.

They’re no different from you.

Them: “Sure there’s no documentary evidence to support Dachau gassings, but I WANT there to be Dachau gassings, so I’ll say there were. After all, I don’t trust Nazis.”

You: “Sure, there’s a mound of documentary evidence to support Reinhard exterminations. But I don’t WANT there to be Reinhard exterminations, so I’ll just say there weren’t. After all, I don’t trust Soviets.”

Peas in a pod, you and they.

Finally, you disrespect me by bringing up Reinhard survivors when I only mentioned Reinhard administrators. I specifically told you that the commandants and other Reinhard staff told the exact same story of exterminations regardless of their postwar status. Imprisoned, free, free and on trial, imprisoned and released, speaking on the record, speaking while being secretly recorded, in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. No matter the circumstances, every Reinhard staffer told the same story: these were extermination camps.

And you ignore that...which reflects poorly on you.

And regarding “combustibility of cadavers,” 8 million bodies a year are burned on open pyres in India. 8 million. And that’s one by one, respectfully, taking the time for the relatives to do their ooga-booga chants and shit. If you don’t think Treblinka could open-pit burn 700,000 in a year and a half, well...how do you explain India? Are Indian bodies just more “combustible?" Is it the curry?

So to conclude...

I asked you a simple question: you said there was evidence that might change my mind regarding the Reinhard camps. So tell me that evidence.

I presented you with a pile of contemporaneous documents, the postwar testimony of the Reinhard staffers, coupled with the fact that there’s not a single – not one – piece of evidence that the Polish and Russian Jews “sent East” were resettled. After 35 years of searching, Mattogno, Graf, and Rudolf cannot present a single piece of evidence that the 2.4 million “dispatched” Jews (2.4 million is the entire population of Houston) were given their own resettlement city near the Front.

The entire population of Houston was relocated and not a single Nazi, German soldier, Russian soldier, Jew, Soviet-friendly partisan, Western-friendly partisan, farmer, peasant, journalist, spy, counterspy, or aerial recon pilot saw it.

I gave you a pile of wartime documents from top Nazis saying “we’re killing them,” postwar testimony from Reinhard staff saying “we killed them,” and deniers who say “they were settled in a town...that was rendered invisible by wizards.”

And I asked you to back up your claim that there existed evidence that might change my mind.

And all you gave me was “I don’t trust the Soviets” (even though none of my evidence came from the Soviets), “the Dachau gas chamber was abandoned in the 1970s” (a falsehood), and something about “cadaver combustibility.”

While ignoring every piece of evidence I took the time to spell out for you.

Dude, I’m not out to lynch you, but if you can step away from your bias, even if just for a moment, you’ll see that this exchange did not favor you. Try to read it as an unbiased reader will. It ain’t flattering.

David

Beau to Cole, February 5th

It looks like we're talking in circles here.  In light of how things have been going, it now appears unlikely to me that we'll come to terms on this matter.  Even so, I do wish you the best.  Cheers! 

Cole to Beau, February 6th

Oy, Rainbow my friend, we’re not talking in circles. I’ve tried to make this exchange as straightforward as possible.

In your Counter-Currents piece, you wrote “It’s possible he might change his mind if he had a look at some of the research his fellow revisionists have done since he left the scene.”

Why is it odd that I wanted to know what that research is? I think anyone who’s been in a field for 33 years who’s told “hey, this research might change your mind,” would want to know the details.

Holocaust history isn’t a joke to me. I’m not a memer or LULZer. I’ve spent three decades honing my thesis. If someone calls me out publicly and says “if Cole saw this research, he’d change his mind,” of course I’ll want to know more.

But what did you give me? Not a single specific response to any of the documents I cited. Not one. You said “I don’t trust the Soviets,” as if that would be news to me.

“Oh my, the Soviets were untrustworthy? I never imagined!”

C’mon, I’m the dude who traversed that part of the world at the close of the Cold War. I’m the dude who exposed the Soviet falsehoods at Auschwitz. I know the Soviets were untrustworthy. But at no point did you address any of my specific evidence for Reinhard.

You just didn’t. That ain’t my fault.

It seems to me that you can’t back up your claim of knowing about “research” that might “change my mind.” I gave you a bunch of opportunities to show this research to me, and all you gave me was, “I don’t trust the Soviets” and “survivors tell tall tales.”

Granted and granted. But none of that has anything to do with my evidence for Reinhard.

So please, don’t walk away like “well, we’re just talking in circles.”

You made a claim, I requested evidence to back up your claim, you failed to provide it.

You erred. There’s no harm in admitting that.

Christ, if I had a dollar for every mistake I’ve made in my life, I’d have enough for that liver transplant I’m gonna need in a few years.

David

Beau to Cole, February 7th

Despite taking much time meticulously editing my replies for clarity and to prevent unintentional offense, I haven't been getting through.  Moreover, your replies have been unnecessarily combative, and I'm concerned that you might be under a lot of stress.  Basically, this just isn't working.  Although I could spend lots of time debating all sorts of morbid minutiae if I felt like it, this wouldn't get us anywhere.  I still like you, so let's keep this amicable and just move on. 

Postscript

And there we go. Just as the ADL always defaults to the easy out of “you’re RAYCIST!” Beau defaults to “you’re under a lot of stress.” As if I’d been screaming like a banshee instead of citing specific documents and asking for those documents to be addressed.

“You’re hysterical, Dave. Calm down, ya ditsy dame!”

Even drunk, I’m never hysterical.

But why the fuck does my shirt smell of perfume?

Well, unlike the fate of the Reinhard Jews, some mysteries may never be solved.

Also, buy me a beer!

*

Postscript II

The point of this post was to run the Beau/Cole exchange without editorializing, to run it as-is. The point was that he had no comeback to the documents I cited, which are familiar docs to anyone who knows Holocaust history.

If you are not familiar with Holocaust history, i.e. if you’re a denier who thinks history can be learned via memes and cartoon frogs, I recomment these three books, all available for free on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/documentsonholoc0000unse

https://archive.org/details/thegoodolddaysho0000unse

https://archive.org/details/finalsolution00reit