SS-Obersturmbannführer Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höß

Turnagain, did Hoess testify? Yes or no?

Of course Hoess testified at the IMT. The question is whether or not he included any information from his confession in that testimony.

Where is the evidence the Hoess evidence was "crucial" to the mass gassings at A-B?

It is not rough it is fictitious.

What's the correct Höß timeline?

Post by Gibson » Friday May 13th, 2022

In another thread NathanC has informed me that the Höß timeline problem is "easy" and "obvious." Well, it's not obvious to me, so I would appreciate if someone could clarify it for me. I have never been able to make sense of it.

There's an easy, obvious and recorded explanation for the inconsistency in Höß's timeline: he lied/fudged the truth as defence witness at the IMT, at the prodding of Kaltenbrunner's defence lawyer (forgot his name).
Höß fudged the "timeline" because he and the defence wanted to [shift] the blame from Kaltenbrunner to his predecessor, Heydrich, who was dead.
But what then is the correct timeline? Specifically, I am curious to know the following:

1) When did Himmler receive orders to implement The Final Solution?
2) When did the Himmler-Höß meeting in Berlin take place?
3) When did the Eichmann-Höß meeting at Auschwitz take place?
4) When did Höß visit Treblinka?

And then for context,

5) When were the initial plans launched for the construction of the four Birkenau crematoria?
6) When was Zyklon B first used for executions at Auschwitz?

Approximate dates should be fine.

www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=874637#p874637

... ... ... ...
 
As an initial reply, I will just note that this is not simply a matter of Hoess being "bad with dates." More fundamentally, the basic sequence of events he gives is impossible, and his descriptions of the events do not make any sense ( what he discussed with Eichmann, for what purpose he went to Treblinka, etc). This is not deniers seizing upon minor inconsistencies. These are major contradictions that are so huge that we can only conclude that the statements are not factual. And indeed in Nick's timeline above, it is notable that in order to come up with something even remotely plausible he is forced to generate a timeline almost entirely from other sources and disregard Hoess on virtually every point.

From Hoess's famous April 1946 affidavit:
The summer of 1941 dating in this account (which is widely assumed to be a "mistake") is actually a very typical narrative for 1946. The IMT judgment says the same thing and connects the final solution decision with Barbarossa which one would think would provide a very memorable boundary point! (The Goering decree to Heydrich is also dated around that time).  
If we set aside the dating for a moment and focus simply on the sequence, he says that he got the final solution orders, then he went to Treblinka to observe their operation, then, based on what he saw at Treblinka, he devised his extermination method using Zyklon B ("when I set up the extermination building at Auschwitz"). The problem with this is that the earliest deportations to Treblinka were not until July 23, 1942. If we add "one-half year," that would push this supposed visit into 1943 by which point already hundreds of thousands had supposedly been gassed with Zyklon B at Auschwitz and the construction on the new crematoria was almost complete. If we hypothesize a late 1943 Treblinka visit, this not only totally contradicts when Hoess says it happened, the visit also has no discernible purpose, certainly not the one given by Hoess.

I could go on about the endless contradictions, but I think this exercise is best left to the reader.

Further Reading

Kues, "On Rudolf Höss's alleged visit to Treblinka"
codoh.com/library/document/on-r ... blinka/en/

Butz, "Some Thoughts on Pressac’s Opus" [for info on the related issue of the crematoria construction]
codoh.com/library/document/some ... s-opus/en/

Mattogno, "The First Gassing at Auschwitz: Genesis of a Myth" [Later expanded into a book, Holocaust Handbooks #20]
codoh.com/library/document/the- ... a-myth/en/

And of course Mattogno's Hoess book, Holocaust Handbook #35 which is a searchable pdf with a very detailed table of contents.

 www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=33312 

Brushing off major contradictions is NOT accounting for them. [H-believers] don't have a problem IGNORING the contradictions because they are working from a fixed conclusion and don't care if the statements make sense or not.

E.g. 
We have no choice but to conclude that this is false. The only question is why he is presenting us with this particular false story. [H-believers] can't use their usual trick here which is to cry "hearsay." That leaves them  only with:
 1) "confusion," (which can only take you so far),
 2) some sort of legal strategy, or
 3) some sort of social desirability bias.
But I don't think those explain these blunders very well. And I think there is a much better explanation.
~ Gibson 

The holocaust-related info in Höß's statements was not new at the time. The "Höß" Auschwitz gassing story more or less follows Vrba-Wetzler which had already appeared in print by the end of 1944. And the Treblinka gassing story is similar to Wiernik, also published by 1944. The significance of Höß is that having the story come from the camp commandant gives it a lot more credibility than a story said to be written by anonymous escapees.

What we have here is Höß reproducing these known stories in March 1946, under duress. The details in the affidavits likely came primarily from the interrogators rather than Höß and they are a mishmash of nonsense because the stories are made up and they hadn't worked out all the details yet. Only later did people realize that the "final solution" needs to come later, that 3M killed is too high, that Höß's Treblinka visit is impossible, etc. So then they just fudge all the dates and start trying to harmonize all the stories. And when they get something that sounds possible, they declare victory and say the problems have been "accounted for." 
~ Gibson
 www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=875132#p875132 

Below is the Goldensohn version. Based on the sequence of events, it very clearly describes an "early" Treblinka visit, prior to March 1942. But, yes, his description of Treblinka reflects a March 1943 timeframe under the official story which is anachronistic.



This is pretty close to the affidavit but I think it makes the contradictions even more explicit.

Hoess says very explicitly:

-That there were already several extermination camps in the East when he got his orders in the summer of 1941. Even if you grant that this was a mistake (I don't think it was) and move it to early 1942, that's still too early. If we move all the way to July 1942 when Treblinka opened, then that's way too late for the final solution order. We have an irresolvable contradiction here.
-That shortly thereafter Eichmann told him to go to Treblinka to check it out. Again, too early. Not possible.
-He indicates that they were burning bodies in ditches at Treblinka. This is generally not said to have occurred until well into 1943.
-THEN he says he went back to Auschwitz and got the bunkers ready for the first transports. The first transports of Slovak Jews were in March 1942.
-He indicates that they burned bodies in ditches "like in Treblinka" because the crematoria weren't ready yet. That would likely have been in the later half of 1942. At that point the victims at Treblinka are generally said to have been buried in mass graves.

Hoess's Treblinka account in isolation is "accurate" in the sense that it matches up with the official story fairly well, but it's completely anachronistic how he relates this story to events at Auschwitz. He is splicing a 1943 Treblinka story in with a 1942 Auschwitz story. IT DOES NOT WORK.

What Nick Terry has tried to do to fix this is simply REMOVE Treblinka from Hoess's story. But at the same time he can't say that the Treblinka visit was fictional because it would destroy Hoess's credibility entirely plus he'd have to explain how it is that Hoess knows the "correct" Treblinka story without going to Treblinka. So then he has to give the straight Auschwitz story and then tack on a late Treblinka visit with no purpose as an afterthought. But if you reread the accounts, Hoess weaves Treblinka in throughout the story.
~ Gibson
 www.skepticforum.com/viewtopic.php?p=875290#p875290