I recently came upon a post that was initially deleted because it triggered filters that keep out Holocaust Deniers. It made me wonder if some competing views on the Holocaust may be excluded from the discussion without proper consideration.
Completely Hypothetical Question Scenario Suppose I present a theory with some incomplete research that Germany only killed 4.8 million Jews, 300,000 died due to wartime effects such as bombing and artillery, Non-Government entities or mobs killed 200,000 and the USSR killed 400,000.
Would I be labeled as a Holocaust Denier?
For the second part of my question I am inquiring about controversy in history in general. One example might be in South American archaeology where the Mormon Church does lots of work trying to prove "The Book of Mormon" true. Do archaeologists worry about being labeled with the "Book of Mormon Crowd".
Completely Hypothetical Question Scenario Suppose I present a theory with some incomplete research that Germany only killed 4.8 million Jews, 300,000 died due to wartime effects such as bombing and artillery, Non-Government entities or mobs killed 200,000 and the USSR killed 400,000.
In my view, this would absolutely not constitute Holocaust denial. For one, your hypothetical position still accepts the murder of a significant number of Jews by the Nazi regime - all you're doing is arguing that the number of deaths is lower than the historical community currently thinks it is. If your work was well-constructed and appeared to be the product of a very sincere effort - even if it was a flawed effort - to determine the death count, then I think that would be appreciated, particularly if it drew upon new evidence.
What I think you would very much be criticised for is the incompleteness of the research, depending on what you mean by that. You might be criticised for missing vital but well known primary source material that other historians have identified, or for failing to critically engage with the body of scholarship advocating a higher death count. Other historians might find serious fault with your methodology and present an alternative analysis of your evidence that discredits your claim.
I only think you'd run into trouble if your work appeared to be created purposefully to minimise the significance of the Holocaust; if it felt as though your research followed your conclusions, not the other way around. When David Irving published Hitler's War, in which he made the claim that Hitler was in no way involved with the Holocaust (though at the time it was published he wasn't yet a Holocaust denier - at least not publicy), his critics mainly focused on his deeply flawed methodology. One interesting excerpt from a review at the time:
"It would be unfortunate if Hitler's War were to be judged solely on its treatment of the Holocaust; Irving is neither a closet revisionist nor a covert anti-Semite. The key weakness of his book is professional, not polemic. It tends to push every bit of evidence to the limits of credibility, and the Jewish issue is only one example." [...] "Hitler's War is essentially a nine-hundred-page seminar paper of the kind often produced by intelligent beginning graduate students. It is a work too clever by half, and certainly too clever to be sound history." - Review by Dennis E. Showalter, Historical Review 82, no. 5 (1977): 1,281 (emphasis mine)
Compared to what we think of Irving today, when he has become very vocal in saying that the Holocaust is a hoax, I'd say that's positively a glowing endorsement of his skills as an historian. I would like to think any work like the one in your scenario would be treated much the same; flawed but not necessarily malicious, provided it was as well constructed as it could be.
No, it wouldn't, though it's probably bad scholarship. Lots of historians have written books arguing for various numbers of Jews killed, which are generally between 5 and 6 million (not very far off your 4.8 million). It's probably bad scholarship because you're presenting incomplete research with a definitive number, when complete researches exist and have their own numbers.
In my view, Holocaust denial includes things like:
Note that these are the big themes of Holocaust denial I've seen, which tend to be the over-arching ones. There are some smaller ones that are common, but those are the big claims most Holocaust deniers employ. Sadly, an also very common technique is arguing against "people enforcing an agenda" by not listening to Holocaust deniers (see /r/conspiracy)--that way you can claim to be pro-free speech while supporting Holocaust denial without having to defend ludicrous claims. For instance, it's very common to see people complain about being unable to discuss the Holocaust because they'll be labeled Holocaust deniers for propagating what's clearly Holocaust denial (i.e. "Those academics don't believe in the free and open exchange of ideas! They accuse me of being a Holocaust denier, simply because I believe the Holocaust never happened!", or "Don't call me a Holocaust denier, you're trying to accuse me of thoughtcrimes! I believe in the Holocaust, just that 200,000 Jews were killed by the Soviets after the Nazis put them into camps to protect them".)
As an aside, those hypothetical numbers wouldn't really be possible. By the time the USSR reached the areas large Jewish populations lived, most had already been killed. For example, there are two Warsaw Uprisings that occurred during the war, which are sometimes confused. The Ghetto Uprising was in the spring of 1943, and occurred when the ghetto was to be "liquidated" by being sent to Treblinka. This is already after regular "deportations", and after the earlier phases of the genocide, where Jews were shot en masse by Einsatzgrupen. The second Warsaw Uprising didn't occur until the summer of 1944, 16 months later, when the Soviets were near Warsaw. The same is true for the hypothetical "wartime effects" numbers, since the front was near where Jews were only during the later stages of the war (and things like food shortages would've been most acute), which is after the genocide was mostly complete.
For the second part of my question I am inquiring about controversy in history in general. One example might be in South American archaeology where the Mormon Church does lots of work trying to prove "The Book of Mormon" true. Do archaeologists worry about being labeled with the "Book of Mormon Crowd".
This sort of thing can happen. I've seen it sometimes in Near Eastern stuff, where people don't want to be "that guy who tries to prove the bible". Ultimately, though, while historians can get pushback from colleagues who disagree, the really career-ending stuff isn't because of it. There are lots of historians out there with really wonky ideas who everyone else disagrees with, and they're still employed as historians.
I think your scenario calls to mind the general rule that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. In any academic field, when you present a conclusion that is significantly outside currently-accepted thinking, your scholarship better be bulletproof, because people are going to scrutinize it agonizingly closely. There exists today a generally-accepted range of deaths resulting purely from the Holocaust. Assuming your number is a substantial downward departure, the base question is going to be: is your scholarship sound? If it is, then it's going to be very hard to label you as anything other than an amazing researcher. If it's not, if you've been sloppy, then some people WILL question whether you had motives to be sloppy. Not just on this issue, but on any "loaded" academic issue.
It really does come down to research and your argument. In actuality most of the Holocaust Denying or people that would be labeled as such can be compared to people who just blurt out random information with no citation or facts, "did you know that Obama is a lizardman!". If you take a look at some of the blatant or Stormfront'esk posts that sometimes hit the front page of reddit itself, you can see these kind of arguments; that is the typical questions about tattoos, false camps ect. ect. that really have no authenticity or basis in fact when there is already a mountain of information from numerous sources that say otherwise.
Questioning statistical information and re-evaluating census data is the Sisyphus problem of history, its very time consuming, takes an army of undergrads, and will be debated constantly. For someone to ask if it is a lower number really isn't holocaust denying or calling it an outright hoax. I'm glad someone already mentioned Irving, its a good example to explain this, but it notes that cross examination of numbers trumps any bias feelings of the subject.
Happy Holidays Historians!
As for another topic that is similarly sensitive, I think the French Revolution is a pretty good example. The historiographical debate around that one has been pretty intense, mostly in terms of Marxist vs. anti-Marxist perspectives. Long passages in Francois Furet's "Interpreting the French Revolution" and Albert Soboul's "Understanding the French Revolution" are dedicated to trashing the work of the other in a pretty interesting and often mean-spirited way. (I would find a couple but I don't have the volumes handy! Check them out if you're interested.)
I had a professor who did graduate work in Paris and certain professors refused to talk with him because they knew his adviser wasn't a Marxist historian.
So I would say that the stakes are a little lower than Holocaust denying, but it's sensitive in a way that could be seen as limiting.
There are other subjects of similar sensitivity. One example is the history of Britain and Ireland, particularly from the Famine up to the Partition, but also whatever Cromwell did or did not do.
Another you might see crop up here occasionally is discussion of the status of non-free white persons shipped over to the North American colonies in their early days: London street children, Irish, Covenanting Scots, petty criminals and so on.
Such subjects tend to be out of bounds in particular countries rather than world-wide, but generally so in the countries most affected.