I have time and again run into online discussions where the other guy comes with the typical bs of:
Hitler didn't know about it or was against it.
There is no way that many people could've been murdered. The number is much lower.
They were just following orders.
Can anyone give a well structured and sourced answer that completely disproves what are obvious falacious arguments?
First off, you're never going to instantly shut down Denialists. These are people who are not playing by the rules of historical evidence or even logic. For all their talk of debate, they simply are not interested in one except to try and score metaphorical points that the other side is afraid to debate them. David Irving has made a career out of Denialism and one of his tactics is to challenge historians to a debate and when they sensibly refuse (after all, most professional historians have duties like teaching, research, or personal lives!), he uses that as proof that historians are scared of his ideas. That their ideas are facile or easily dismissed is irrelevant to the broader notion that they are somehow in opposition to the historical profession.
Each of the OP's bullet points are reflective of the rank ignorance of German history denialists display. Point #1 for instance is easily dismissed because the Third Reich was an incredibly chaotic entity that does not hew to the stereotype of a top-down, pyramidal hierarchy. Moreover, dictators are notorious for making off the cuff oral decisions without much of a paper trail; Stalin's dictatorship was far more centralized than Hitler's and even here there are gaps in the archival paper trail over key decisions such as the postwar division of Germany. Bullet point #2 likewise shows someone having little knowledge of census records and other dull facets of state records. Denialists sometimes use European actuary tables to prove a smaller Holocaust without really understanding how actuarial tables work.
Bullet point #3 is a favorite of mine and one that can be used to quickly show the denialists' ignorance of German history. German military law had stricter language and responsibilities than Anglo-American military law with regards to obeying criminal orders. §. 47 of the Militär-Strafgesetzbuch für das Deutsche Reich stated:
If carrying out an order in the course of duty should violate a law, only the superior who gives the order is responsible. However, the subordinate who obeys it is punishable as a participant: a.) if he goes beyond the given order or b.) when he knows that the superior's order would have the aim of leading to military or other crime or violation.
This regulation dated back to the Kaiserreich and remained in force during the Third Reich. Mass murder of civilians, mass shootings of Jews, and other atrocities were still crimes under German military law. §. 47 gave any German soldier legal cover to refuse to obey them. German Jews, while stripped of citizenship and civil rights, were technically wards of the state and could not be murdered under German law. German military authorities were aware of §. 47 and its implications for destroying racial enemies of the state, but either the Germans ignored these restrictions or crafted their own orders that declared them null. The most salient example of the latter was the Barbarossa Decree of 13 May 1941 in which OKW declared that there was “no compulsion to prosecute,” criminal offenses committed by Wehrmacht troops against enemy civilians unless such offenses directly hindered German military objectives. Other decrees like the Commissar Order sidestepped procedures in favor of more violent and immediate measures. However, despite these various edicts, the legal mechanisms of German military justice remained intact. The historian Christopher Browning has found that of the decidedly small minority of Germans who did refuse orders to commit war crimes, none suffered any punishment or court martials. Postwar investigations have yet to find a single example of direct punishment for refusal to obey criminal orders despite numerous investigations.
Hi! As this question pertains to basic, underlying facts of the Holocaust, I hope you can appreciate that it can be a fraught subject to deal with. While we want people to get the answers they are looking for, we also remain very conscious that threads of this nature can attract the very wrong kind of response. As such, this message is not intended to provide you with all of the answers, but simply to address some of the basic facts, as well as Holocaust Denial, and provide a short list of introductory reading. There is always more than can be said, but we hope this is a good starting point for you.
##What Was the Holocaust?
The Holocaust refers the genocidal deaths of 5-6 million European Jews carried out systematically by Nazi Germany as part of targeted policies of persecution and extermination during World War II. Some historians will also include the deaths of the Roma, Communists, Mentally Disabled, and other groups targeted by Nazi policies, which brings the total number of deaths to ~11 million. Debates about whether or not the Holocaust includes these deaths or not is a matter of definitions, but in no way a reflection on dispute that they occurred.
##But This Guy Says Otherwise!
Unfortunately, there is a small, but at times vocal, minority of persons who fall into the category of Holocaust Denial, attempting to minimize the deaths by orders of magnitude, impugn well proven facts, or even claim that the Holocaust is entirely a fabrication and never happened. Although they often self-style themselves as "Revisionists", they are not correctly described by the title. While revisionism is not inherently a dirty word, actual revision, to quote Michael Shermer, "entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust."
It is absolutely true that were you to read a book written in 1950 or so, you would find information which any decent scholar today might reject, and that is the result of good revisionism. But these changes, which even can be quite large, such as the reassessment of deaths at Auschwitz from ~4 million to ~1 million, are done within the bounds of respected, academic study, and reflect decades of work that builds upon the work of previous scholars, and certainly does not willfully disregard documented evidence and recollections. There are still plenty of questions within Holocaust Studies that are debated by scholars, and there may still be more out there for us to discover, and revise, but when it comes to the basic facts, there is simply no valid argument against them.
##So What Are the Basics?
Beginning with their rise to power in the 1930s, the Nazi Party, headed by Adolf Hitler, implemented a series of anti-Jewish policies within Germany, marginalizing Jews within society more and more, stripping them of their wealth, livelihoods, and their dignity. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, the number of Jews under Nazi control reached into the millions, and this number would again increase with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Shortly after the invasion of Poland, the Germans started to confine the Jewish population into squalid ghettos. After several plans on how to rid Europe of the Jews that all proved unfeasible, by the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, ideological (Antisemitism) and pragmatic (Resources) considerations lead to mass-killings becoming the only viable option in the minds of the Nazi leadership. First only practiced in the USSR, it was influential groups such as the SS and the administration of the General Government that pushed to expand the killing operations to all of Europe and sometime at the end of 1941 met with Hitler’s approval.
The early killings were carried out foremost by the Einsatzgruppen, paramilitary groups organized under the aegis of the SS and tasked with carrying out the mass killings of Jews, Communists, and other 'undesirable elements' in the wake of the German military's advance. In what is often termed the 'Holocaust by Bullet', the Einsatzgruppen, with the assistance of the Wehrmacht, the SD, the Security Police, as well as local collaborators, would kill roughly two million persons, over half of them Jews. Most killings were carried out with mass shootings, but other methods such as gas vans - intended to spare the killers the trauma of shooting so many persons day after day - were utilized too.
By early 1942, the "Final Solution" to the so-called "Jewish Question" was essentially finalized at the Wannsee Conference under the direction of Reinhard Heydrich, where the plan to eliminate the Jewish population of Europe using a series of extermination camps set up in occupied Poland was presented and met with approval.
Construction of extermination camps had already begun the previous fall, and mass extermination, mostly as part of 'Operation Reinhard', had began operation by spring of 1942. Roughly 2 million persons, nearly all Jewish men, women, and children, were immediately gassed upon arrival at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka over the next two years, when these "Reinhard" camps were closed and razed. More victims would meet their fate in additional extermination camps such as Chełmno, but most infamously at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where slightly over 1 million persons, mostly Jews, died. Under the plan set forth at Wannsee, exterminations were hardly limited to the Jews of Poland, but rather Jews from all over Europe were rounded up and sent east by rail like cattle to the slaughter. Although the victims of the Reinhard Camps were originally buried, they would later be exhumed and cremated, and cremation of the victims was normal procedure at later camps such as Auschwitz.
##The Camps
There were two main types of camps run by Nazi Germany, which is sometimes a source of confusion. Concentration Camps were well known means of extrajudicial control implemented by the Nazis shortly after taking power, beginning with the construction of Dachau in 1933. Political opponents of all type, not just Jews, could find themselves imprisoned in these camps during the pre-war years, and while conditions were often brutal and squalid, and numerous deaths did occur from mistreatment, they were not usually a death sentence and the population fluctuated greatly. Although Concentration Camps were later made part of the 'Final Solution', their purpose was not as immediate extermination centers. Some were 'way stations', and others were work camps, where Germany intended to eke out every last bit of productivity from them through what was known as "extermination through labor". Jews and other undesirable elements, if deemed healthy enough to work, could find themselves spared for a time and "allowed" to toil away like slaves until their usefulness was at an end.
Although some Concentration Camps, such as Mauthausen, did include small gas chambers, mass gassing was not the primary purpose of the camp. Many camps, becoming extremely overcrowded, nevertheless resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of inhabitants due to the outbreak of diseases such as typhus, or starvation, all of which the camp administrations did little to prevent. Bergen-Belsen, which was not a work camp but rather served as something of a way station for prisoners of the camp systems being moved about, is perhaps one of the most infamous of camps on this count, saw some 50,000 deaths caused by the conditions. Often located in the Reich, camps liberated by the Western forces were exclusively Concentration Camps, and many survivor testimonies come from these camps.
The Concentration Camps are contrasted with the Extermination Camps, which were purpose built for mass killing, with large gas chambers and later on, crematoria, but little or no facilities for inmates. Often they were disguised with false facades to lull the new arrivals into a false sense of security, even though rumors were of course rife for the fate that awaited the deportees. Almost all arrivals were killed upon arrival at these camps, and in many cases the number of survivors numbered in the single digits, such as at Bełżec, where only seven Jews, forced to assist in operation of the camp, were alive after the war.
Several camps, however, were 'Hybrids' of both types, the most famous being Auschwitz, which was a vast complex of subcamps. The infamous 'selection' of prisoners, conducted by SS doctors upon arrival, meant life or death, with those deemed unsuited for labor immediately gassed and the more healthy and robust given at least temporary reprieve. The death count at Auschwitz numbered around 1 million, but it is also the source of many survivor testimonies.
##How Do We Know?
Running through the evidence piece by piece would take more space than we have here, but suffice to say, there is a lot of evidence, and not just the (mountains of) survivor testimony. We have testimonies and writings from many who participated, as well German documentation of the programs. This site catalogs some of the evidence we have for mass extermination as it relates to Auschwitz. I'll close this out with a short list of excellent works that should help to introduce you to various aspects of Holocaust study.
##Further Reading
Hitler didn't know about it or was against it.
When exactly Hitler made his decision is not known for certain, but he announced it in an address to the Gau and Reich leaders on 12.12.41 (as recorded by Goebbels in his diary): "As concerns the Jewish question, the Führer is determined to make a clean sweep. He had prophesied to the Jews that if they once again brought about a world war they would experience their own extermination. This was not just an empty phrase. The World War is there, the extermination of Jewry must be the necessary consequence. This question must be seen without sentimentality. We are not here in order to have sympathy with the Jews, rather we sympathize with our own German people. If the German people have now once again sacrificed as many as 160,000 dead in the Eastern campaign, then the authors of this bloody conflict must pay with their lives."
It is unlikely that Hitler knew the details and the nitty-gritty of the Holocaust, that was Himmler's task, but Hitler was interested in the progress of the Final Solution and the SS statistician Richard Korherr, who wrote a 16 page report about this progress, was ordered to compress it to 6.5 pages specifically for Hitler. So yes, Hitler obviously knew. (That's just the gist of it, one could go on.)
There is no way that many people could've been murdered.
Mass murder was implemented through shootings and gassings - both effective methods; many hundreds of thousands died from starvation, illnesses, etc. Killing people is not a huge technical problem (but it could be a psychological problem, hence gas chambers replaced the shootings).
The deniers sometimes claim that there were not enough Jews in Europe, but this is obviously not so - according to the Wannsee protocol there were 11 million Jews in Europe. (This statistic, which appears in many internal Nazi documents at the time, is not exact and is somewhat exaggerated, especially when it comes to France - apparently hundreds of thousands North African Jews were also added - but as a ballpark figure it's solid). The above-mentioned Korherr estimated that there were 10,3 million Jews in Europe in 1937. So yes, there were "enough" Jews in Europe.
And we know that from 5 to 6 million Jews died due to the Nazi policies since we can study the demographic data country by country and sum up the numbers. That has been the basic method of arriving at the Holocaust deaths total. (Here is one definitive study.)
They were just following orders.
This is, strictly speaking, not a Holocaust denial argument since the deniers deny that orders were given and followed.
Can anyone give a well structured and sourced answer that completely disproves what are obvious falacious arguments?
It depends. For a longer reading I would recommend the expert reports from the Irving v. Lipstadt trial.
If you want an overview of the most popular denier arguments that you can meet on the internet, I've made this list with refutations.
A quick addendum: if we see the Holocaust denial as a combination of three denials:
then one could "instantly" shut it down by pointing to:
Apart from the boilerplate response deployed by u/rusoved below, we've had some excellent posts on this topic thanks to resident expert u/commiespaceinvader. Have a look at his comprehensive discussion of our approach in this Monday Methods thread.
Hitler didn't know about it or was against it.
While it is true that the Nazis had avoided overt death camps until later in the war, to suggest that Hitler didn't know what was going on in camps administrated by the goddamn SS is hysterical. Hitler's membership number in the SS is one.
There is no way that many people could've been murdered. The number is much lower.
This is one of those things where they set up a mathematical equation that'd never work and then proclaim it can't work. They are quite correct that the death camps can't account for 6 million dead, or however many they account for, because of the simple physical limitations of zyclon B showers and incinerators for corpses.
But that ignores the fact that well before overt death camps were implemented, the Nazis were more than happy to work their inhabitants to death, and the Germans actively employed death squads who's overt job was to loot, pillage and kill Jews and other politically expedient groups as the Wehrmacht conducted it's wars. Eastern Europe is still trying to make heads or tails of bodies found in mass-graves from the war- and yes, some of them were made by the Soviets but please, spare me here.
They were just following orders.
...Isn't really an argument. Aside from the fact that humans are not robots and can think for themselves, there isn't really much evidence to suggest the Germans were particularly harsh on conscientious objectors.
Can anyone give a well structured and sourced answer that completely disproves what are obvious fallacious arguments?
You can't.
The reality of Holocaust deniers is that they cannot be reasoned with because they do not want to act in good faith. Arriving at a conclusion and then looking for data- or simply making it up as you go along- that vets your argument is bad science, and it's bad history. In a stroke of irony, what Hitler said about the Jews and their propensity for lying with conviction and shuffling arguments to win by merit of exhausting their opposition can actually be asserted against Holocaust deniers; they lie, every time you trap them in a lie their arguments shift, and every time they shift you get worn down because the effort to prove a lie is far greater than trying to make one in the first place. If it's not apologia about how the Nazis didn't want to kill the Jews but instead kick them out- to Madagascar!- it's justification (muh conspiracy of communist Jews!) or deflection (can't feed Jews if the allies keep bombing supply lines!) or misdirection (the Soviets did something mean! No physical documents for General Plan Ost were ever collected!) or data-based white noise (we scanned the ground around the death camp and found nothing to suggest the ground was disturbed below 100 meters! It's a hoax! We found this grainy black and white photo of Nazi soldiers but if you look closely the uniforms are actually Yugoslavian and the rifles aren't even German!)
Follow-up question related to #2: why do denialists bother to argue this point? Is there anyone who would be horrified at 6 million deaths, but shrug their shoulders at 4 million or 2 million?
It’s like a moon landing conspiracist saying “well I believe we landed there three or four times, but there’s no way it’s nine.” You would think the argument would be either 6 million or 0 — not how many millions.
When and why did the number become a point of contention? What do denialists hope to achieve by arguing it?
The book Telling Lies About Hitler outlines a series of specific claims by David Irving, and examines the evidence he cites. It conclusively demonstrates that Irving's conclusions were not bourne out by the evidence he cites, and that he unfailingly tended to skew his conclusions toward denialism, playing down German crimes and exaggerating supposed Allied excesses.
What are the motives of these deniers, and why don't the thousands of photographs and recorded survivor interviewers work?