2. Archives
3. IHR
4. JHR Volume 1

Letter From Berlin

OTTO KANOLD WITH MARK WEBER

I first heard about your Revisionist Conference in a rather short, two page report in issue 3/79 of Bauernschaft (October 1979), published by my friend Thies Christophersen (D 2341 Mohrkirch). I saw a more complete report in the South African Observer (P.O. Box 2401, Pretoria, South Africa, November 1979, pp. 11-15) which I receive by airmail.

I have known several of the participants attending your meeting for some years now-some of them personally. Above all, I exchanged correspondence in the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s with the honorable Harry Elmer Barnes. He encouraged David L. Hoggan, the author of Der Erzwungene Krieg, a book which was immediately damned in Germany. Barnes also arranged for the translation of the work into German. We Germans above all owe thanks and respect to Prof. Barnes because over 50 years ago he made a very important contribution to subduing the first war guilt lie against the German Reich and people.

I own a German translation of his work, Die Entstehung des WeItkrieges (The Origin of the World War), published in 1928 by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt (Stuttgart, Berlin and Leipzig). I was a school pupil when the victorious powers forced a signature to the dictated peace of Versailles by continuing the hunger blockade against Germany which claimed 100,000 German children as victims even after the armistice of 11 November 1918 and which extorted the German acknowledgement of guilt (Article 231) for the (first) world war. Of course, the Reich government and the entire German public had already undertaken a worldwide moral campaign against this war guilt lie.

Back then, all factions of our people were united in the urgent necessity of resisting or refuting the war guilt lie contained in Article 231 of the Versailles “treaty.” With the active leadership of the Reich governments, regardless of political party, this resistance was conducted on a foundation of historical science. German and foreign historians worked together, and among the latter, Harry Elmer Barnes was the greatest and most important. The Reich government, back then, showed great honor to him, and, significantly, Kaiser Wilhelm II was proven innocent of the war guilt lie of the victorious powers, a personality very much opposite in ideology to the republican ("Weimar") government. On 18 September 1927, Reich president Paul von Hindenburg, a man who as General Field Marshal had been the liberator of East Prussia from Russian occupation in the battle of Tannenberg at the beginning of the first world war, ceremoniously denounced the Versailles war guilt lie before the entire world. Barnes had been the herald of that!

Since then, this denunciation has been proven a hundred times over as consistent with historical truth and has been internationally recognized.

We Germans have thus had (successful!) “experience” in fighting lies! But how different the situation is today. First of all, a “peace treaty” with Germany has still not been concluded. Instead, an armistice status still exists. For during and after the first world war, world “public opinion” has become a hundred times more “refined” and has assumed the most virulent form. The treaties with the western powers led to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany and moved Prof. Theodor Eschenburg of the University of Tübingen (since retired) to declare that “the thesis of Germany’s exclusive guilt for the second world war is the foundation of every Bonn policy.” Thus, Bonn places an ideology based upon the thesis of “liberation” from National Socialism above the historical truth. What a contrast to “Weimar"!

“A double stitch holds better,” we say. To that lie has been added the lie about six million dead Jews, which appears to be the main theme of your conference.

The six million lie had been planned much longer ago than is realized by many of the most enthusiastic of those who

fight it. So also was the worldwide propaganda machine which today, particularly in Germany, cements the lie more and more. See the enclosed photocopy from Gefesselte Justiz/Die Krankheit Unserer Zeit (Chained justice — the Sickness of our Times), by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Grimm. He reports on a conversation with an enemy propagandist (who was probably Sefton Delmer). Everyone must take that to heart and take it into account if there is to be any successful defense against the second world war guilt lie and the six million lie.

The powers who lie have learned from their defeat in their attempt to falsify history after the first world war. Therefore, in response to their immeasurably sharper methods, equally new and equally effective methods for the truth must be found and applied.

I should mention that the “stages” upon which the efforts at resistance against the six million lie are to be played include the stifling and persecution, and so forth, of individual fighters for truth. The enclosed photocopy from Die Welt of 31 October 1979 reports what may be the latest effort: “In a fundamental decision, the Federal Supreme Court has defined the act which constitutes defamation: Whoever terms genocide ficticious…”

There must also be a way to fight judicially against the claim (which is apparently not explained in detail in the decision) that the documentation for the annihilation of millions of Jews is “overwhelming.” Admittedly, as a simple man of the people and, as mentioned before, a non-academician, I can’t advise as to the way to go about doing this.

In any case, we Germans will have to rely even more upon the efforts of non-German fighters for truth than was the case after 1918-19. Especially because they are not subject to the restrictions of German historians, their truths must not only be published, but must be made available to the widest possible circles in Germany using the methods and techniques which apply best to this people (which means paying attention to details such as book format, the best possible German translations, etc.).

One really underhanded method now being used is the well-known practice of placing otherwise irrefutable books on the “Index of writings dangerous to youth” which hold up historical truth against the claims of Bonn (and, of course, East Berlin as well). They know very well what the consequences of that are for the publishers. Those in Bonn also believe that this indexing of books is in harmony with Article 5 of our Basic Law (constitution) regarding freedom of expression!! (As an individual, I don’t know how to deal with this situation.) Nevertheless, please consider the following thoughts and the possibility of putting them into effect:

Over 450 years ago the Catholic Church placed the “Five Books on the Movements of Heavenly Bodies” written by the (German) astronomer Nicholas Copernicus on the Index of Prohibited Writings. (He let them be published only just before his death, but they have long since become the common heritage of all educated persons!) For 300 years this prohibition was maintained. And even when Keppler reconfirmed the Copernican thesis a century later, the Church continued to deny it for centuries! One may ask today, was it really so important for the Church to suppress the findings of Copernicus? It was, after all, only an (admittedly explicable) mistake maintained for centuries!! Today, however, known lies are maintained using an Index-namely those about million gassed Jews!

A change in technique for the worse: The war guilt lies of 1918-19 contrasted with those of 1945, and the search for truth 450 years ago as contrasted with today!

But this is also evidence for the importance of using new methods to fight the lies! During the past 30 years, it should have been possible to constantly strengthen the resistance against the lies, but that shows that it must not take another 300 years before the liars capitulate!

Best regards
Otto Kanold

Summary of Attachment #1

(Photocopy of pp. 146-48 from Politische Justiz by Prof. Dr. Friedrich Grimm, first published in 1953.)

Prof. Grimm relates a conversation from 1945 with “an important representative of the other (Allied) side” who “introduced himself as a university professor of his country.” The two discussed the Allied atrocity propaganda against Germany, which the Allied professor admitted was not factual. The Allied professor said that the real atrocity propaganda campaign would begin now that the war was over and would be progressively intensified “until no one would ever again accept a good word about the Germans, until every last bit of sympathy which had been held in other countries would be completely destroyed, and until the Germans themselves would become so confused that they wouldn’t know any longer what they were doing.”

*********

Summary of Attachment #2

(The article from Die Welt of 31 October 1979 contains extracts from the decision by the Federal Supreme Court (Bundesgerichtshof) regarding denials of the “Holocaust.")

The court ruled that “Whoever denies the murder of Jews in the Third Reich defames every one of them. Such statements apply, first of all, to those persons born after 1945 who, as full Jews or part Jews, would have been persecuted in the Third Reich.” The court also ruled that statements denying the “Holocaust” are not protected under the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech because such statements are untrue. “The documentation about the annihilation of millions of Jews is overwhelming.”

The accused in this case put up a leaflet on a wall which called the “Holocaust” a “Zionist swindle.” The accused conceded that some millions of Jews may have been killed, but that the claims about six million murdered Jews are unfounded. The court declared that the action by the accused was defamatory, regardless of how many Jews died, because it “attacked the image of the human as a personality” in much the same way as was done in the “Third Reich.”

The court further ruled that, because of the Nuremberg (racial preservation) Laws which “robbed humans of their individuality … a special relationship between Jews living in the Federal Republic (of Germany) and their fellow citizens has been created. Within this context the action (under review) is relevant today.”

The court further ruled that it must be “taken for granted” that “a special moral responsibility by all others exists” toward the Jews. This responsibility is a part of the dignity of every Jew, the court stated. “For the person so affected, this means the continuation of the discrimination against the group of human beings to which he/she belongs, and thus directly against his/her own person…”

“The attempt to justify, whitewash or deny these events (the “Holocaust") also means disrespect for that (affected) person.”