One of the problems in reading the scholarship of the Nazi period is that the Nazis had an elevated sense of amorality that led them to being total liars and two-faced double speakers. I think it will also be a problem for the, hopefully less absolutely necessary study of the Trump regime's crimes. I'll leave aside the very real problem of the opportunity such scholars of the period find in the fact that you couldn't trust anything they said, David Irving used that and the general ignorance of the German language to pass off his stuff in English language scholarship for decades. What you say about the David Irving style of polemical scholarship is ever more so for the writers of plays, screen plays, novels, etc. whose work is at best an unacceptable abbreviation of reality or permitted to be a complete lie. Unfortunately, in the last two decades of reading what those with college credentials believe is real, the worst of that has the most persuasive power to defeat reality.
Every single thing that not only Hitler said but every single thing that his inner circle said, at every point, is very likely to be a lie, every statement that can and is used to try to exonerate them one or another of them can be totally belied by, not only other statements but, even more so, can be totally disconfirmed by their actions.
Even after the war, during the Nuremberg trials Alfred Thoma, the lawyer of Alfred Rosenberg, the entirely and viciously antisemetic chief theorist and intellectual propagandist of the Nazis, hand chosen for that role by Hitler, tried to twist the undeniable fact of Rosenberg's advocacy for genocide in Rosenberg's favor by making recourse to the fact that they were all a bunch of epic scale liars:
It was not a mere question of chance that Rosenberg did not take part in the boycotting of Jews in 1933, that he was not called upon to work out the laws against the Jews in 1933, 1934, 1935, and so on (expatriation, prohibition of marriages, withdrawal of the right to vote, expulsion from all important positions and offices). Above all, he never took part in the action of 1938 against the Jews, nor in the destruction of synagogues, nor in anti-Semitic demonstrations. Neither was he the instigator in the background who sent out, or ordered, lesser people to commit certain actions. To be sure, Rosenberg was a true follower of Hitler, who took up Hitler's slogans and passed them on. For example, the motto, "The Jewish question will be solved only when the last Jew has left Germany and the European continent," and once the slogan of "Extermination of Jewry."
Exaggerated expressions were always part of the National Socialist weapons of propaganda. A Hitler speech was hardly imaginable without insults to his internal or external political opponents, or without threats of extermination. Every one of Hitler's speeches was echoed a million times by Goebbels down to the last speaker of the Party in a small country inn. The same sentences and words which Hitler had used were repeated, and not only in all the political speeches, but in the German press as well, in all the editorials and essays, until, weeks or months later, a new speech was given which brought about a new echo of a similar kind.
Rosenberg was no exception. He repeated, as everyone did, all of Hitler's slogans, including that of the "solution of the Jewish question," and once also that of the "extermination of Jewry." Apparently, like Hitler's other supporters, he gave as much or as little thought to the fact that in reality none of those phrases were clear but that they had a sinister double meaning and, while they might have meant real expulsion, they might also have implied the physical annihilation and murder of the Jews.
May I remind the Tribunal at this point that Rosenberg, during his testimony, made a reference to a speech of the British Prime Minister in the House of Commons in September 1943, in which speech it was stated that Prussian militarism and National Socialism had to be exterminated root and branch. No German interpreted that literally, and I believe no one interpreted it to mean that German soldiers and the National Socialism had to be exterminated physically.
Talk about your big lies. Like Trump's lawyers as seen on FOX, lots of them feel they have a professional privilege to say anything no matter how huge a lie it is, how obvious their lie is a lie, how beside the point it is. The judges at Nuremberg made the right decision and Rosenberg was found guilty. Though I am a complete opponent of the death penalty, Rosenberg is near the bottom of the list of hundreds of millions of others killed by execution whose execution I'll regret. I'd think he's in the bottom 10 or 20 on that list.
In reading the OSS confidential report I'm in the process of posting, the thing that impressed me most strongly as something we need to take with the utmost seriousness as we face what makes Alfred Thoma's description of Hitlers propaganda method so chillingly familiar as Trump and the Republican-fascists are in control of the Congress and Courts, it is that the best evidence comes from what these criminals do, not what they happened to have said.
The Problem of Proof. The best evidence now available as to the existence of an anti-Church plan is to be found in the systematic nature of the persecution itself.
When their words become facts in actions is the only time you can have any confidence they're not lying.
I will resume posting the OSS documents on Tuesday, after the holiday, because I think they're too important to get lost due to the usual drop off in readership over a long holiday weekend.
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