Biographisches Lexikon des Revisionismus

Biographical Encyclopedia of Revisionism

 

 
History of Revisionism as of 1993 

Yoshua Shalev

Harwood and Butz

This state of affairs changed dramatically in early 1974 with the publication and wide distribution of Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth At Last [152], a 28 page, magazine-format booklet written by an Englishman under the name of Richard Harwood. According to a slender biographical note on the last page, the author was: 

a writer and specialist in political and diplomatic aspects of the Second World War. At present he is with the University of London. Mr. Harwood turned to the vexed subject of war crimes under the influence of Professor Paul Rassinier, to whose monumental work this little volume is greatly indebted. The author is now working on a sequel in this series on the main Nuremberg Trial. 1945-1946.

Indeed, the influence of Rassinier on this "specialist" is apparent; this thin Revisionist booklet is essentially a condensation of the Frenchman's main writings (almost to the point of plagiarism), combined with some commentary on Christophersen's experiences at Auschwitz and on Walendy's workon photographic fraud. Because almost, nothing within the book is original, a discussion of the contents would he superfluous, suffice to say that Harwood 

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152 / Richmond, Surrey: Historical Review Press, 1974.
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had  combined the weightiest arguments of the abovenamed Revisionists to form a well-written but journalistic introduction to the (early-1970s) Revisionist position on the Holocaust, touching on most important topics and lines of argument.

In November 1974 British public reaction to Did Six Million Really Die? changed in a flash from smouldering displeasure into a blistering inferno of anger and opposition: the 'accelerant' [71] being an article by Colin Wilson, a popular British author and well known personality, in that month's issue of Books and Bookmen. After reviewing two books on Adolf Hitler, Wilson, unaware of the reaction it would cause, provided a brief critique of Harwood's booklet, which he described in quite laudatory terms. [153]

Wilson wrote that whilst he expected "a piece of violent antisemitic propaganda" the booklet actually contained no overtly anti-Semitic or racist statements. Rather, it was written in a "reasonable and logical" tone. He also stated that he considered it correct of Harwood to demand evidence for the horrific events that allegedly occurred ("Is there, then, any reason why we should be afraid to dig down until we get to the truth?") and to submit all such evidence to a systematic and impartial investigation. Whilst he did not deny that many Jewish people perished, Wilson then intimated that the Nazis may not have murdered "six million" Jews, and asked whether perhaps the claim that they did is "another sign of the emotional historical distortions that makes nearly all the books on Hitler so far almost worthless?" [154]

The reaction to Wilson 's review of Harwood's booklet was phenomenal. The editors of Books and Bookmen were deluged with letters from outraged readers and were still publishing them six months later. Undiluted vitriol flowed from the pens of almost all of these letter writers.

For example, in the April 1975 issue appeared a letter by Dr. R. Wistrich which began:

I was appalled to see Mr. Colin Wilson lending respectability to Richard Harwood's hideous whitewash of Nazism – Did Six Million Really Die? ... The grotesque inaccuracy of Mr. Harwood's pamphlet is only matched by the mind-boggling spectacle of a well-known author praising its reasonable and logical tone ... Why does Colin Wilson go to the lunatic fringe for his information, especially on a matter like this? ... What Mr. Wilson has done is to turn the Nazis into innocent victims of a devilish Jewish conspiracy, which invented a fictional holocaust. Is there any assertion which could be more patently sick, perverted and evil, yet Colin Wilson finds it all reasonable and logical. [155]

A similar letter from the next issue reads in part:

To our knowledge, no intellectual of any standing in Germany, France, Britain or the United States has publicly associated himself with this Goebbelsian lie until Colin Wilson's defence of it in the columns of Books and Bookmen. Nor are we aware of any periodical or newspaper that is not openly propagating Neo-Nazi ideas or ever providing a forum for Neo-Nazi propaganda. It is therefore with a feeling of disbelief and horror that we findbooks and bookmen, a publication that would be the first to suffer in a Hitlerian regime, provide a forum for brazen and cynical propaganda aimed at whitewashing Hitler and the Third Reich. [156]

It was possibly hypocritical of the writers of that letter to intimate that fascist 
censorship of literature and literary appreciation is very wrong whilst they themselves condemned the editors of Books & Bookmen – an apolitical, areligious, and unationalistic literary guidance magazine – for publishing a review of a book that they personally felt to be objectionable.

However that letter, like many others, debated several points made by Harwood and provided evidence that his booklet contained a myriad of errors, such as attributing to the founder of political Zionism, Theodore Herzl (in his 1896 The Jewish State), the conception of Madagascar as a national homeland for the Jewish people. [157] Harwood had continued by insisting that Herzl's plans for that already inhabited island "had been a main plank of the National Socialist party platform before 1933. [158] It was correctly pointed out in several letters that Herzl had not mentioned Madagascar as a possible Jewish homeland in The

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153 / C. Wilson, "The Fuehrer in Perspective", Books and Bookmen, November 1974, pp. 28-31.
154 / Ibid., p. 31.
155 / Books and Bookmen, April 1975, pp. 7-8. Wilson had not mentioned a Jewish conspiracy.
156 / Letter signed by R. Ainsztein, T. Allen, Philip Jacobson, Sydney Jacobson, Phillip 
Knightley, Alan Sillitoe, in Books and Bookmen, May 1975, p. 5.
157 / Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 3.
158 / Ibid., p. 3.
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Jewish State or any other publication. [159] Finally, the possibility of expelling Jews to Madagascar was not seriously investigated by the Nazi government until 1940, and was certainly not considered "a main plank" of the party platform even in that year. [160]

Another of the many errors pointed out was Harwood's misquoting of Benedikt Kautsky, an Austrian Socialist Jew who, according to Harwood, is supposed to have written on pages 272-3 of his book Teufel und Verdammte (Devil and Damned, Zurich 1946) that "I was in the big concentration camps [including Auschwitz]. However. I must establish the truth that in no camp at any time did I come across such an installation as a gas chamber" [161]. In actual fact, what Kautsky wrote on those pages was: "I should like to include here a brief 
mention of the gas chambers. Although I did not see them myself, they were described to me by so many different people in a credible fashion that I have no hesitation in rendering the description herein." The difference [73] between Harwood's quote and the original text are obvious. This inexcusable error exemplifies the Englishman's overall low standard of scholarship.


Despite the seriousness of the error it would appear, nonetheless, that Harwood did not intend to deceive his readers by misquoting Kautsky. In fact, he had probably never seen a copy of Teufel und Verdammte, and copied the incorrect Kautsky quote from the aforementioned book by Thies Christophersen, who had himself copied it from the books of earlier Revisionists who were responsible for the original misquoting. [162] On several other occasions Harwood made similar errors – copying quotations from secondary sources without actually seeing the originals. For example, he repeated the error Rassinier made in stating that Raphael Lemkin, in his 1943 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, made "the first 
accusation against the Germans of the mass murder of Jews in war-time Europe". [163] Although the, errors (which do not in all cases affect his central thesis) indicate that the scholarship of Harwood and several previous Revisionist pioneers was very poor in places, they do not necessarily indicate malice or deliberate falsification of evidence.

After the first attacks on Wilson's intellectual freedom and integrity appeared in Books and Bookmen, Wilson felt a need to defend himself against the charges of neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism, and he accordingly published a letter of defence in the February 1975 issue. Insisting again that the Holocaust was not a sacrosanct subject, but an alleged historical event that should be studied without bias or fear of persecution, he countered the defamatory allegations that he was anti-Semitic or neo-fascist by writing "Now although I am certainly anti-Nazi, and in no sense anti-Jewish, I am, with all my instincts, deeply pro 'objectivity'. [164]

His claims of "objectivity", however, did not appease the offended letter writers. Even Simon Wiesenthal entered the war of words with a letter that appeared in the April 1975 issue of Books and Bookmen. It was in that short letter that he made his widely-quoted concession that "there were no extermination camps on German soil". [165]

One fact pointed out in most letters to the magazine was that Historical Review Press, the publishers of Harwood's booklet, had direct links to the National Front, a very right-wing British political party with pronounced pro-white, anti-immigration views. That 'discovery' was actually made (many months before Wilson chose to review Harwood's booklet) by Andrew Fyall of The Daily Express in a highly critical expose of Harwood that appeared in that newspaper on June 17, 1974. Fyall had visited the publisher's address, only to find that it was just a forwarding address. Its absentee landlord was Robin Beauclair, an associate of 

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159 / An English translation of The Jewish State can be found in A. Hertzberg, (ed.), The 
Zionist Idea: A Historical Analysis and Reader (New York: A Temple Book, Atheneum, 1951), pp. 204-226. Madagascar is not mentioned.
160 / Cf. C. R. Browning, "Nazi Resettlement Policy and the Search for a Solution to the 
Jewish Question, 1939- 1941". German Studies Review, Volume 9 (1986), pp. 497-519 (esp. pp. 511-12).
161 / Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 14.
162 / The incorrect quotation appeared in T. Christophersen, Die Auschwitz Lüge, p. 5. 
Christophersen probably copied it from Heinz Roth, who quoted this alleged statement by Kautsky repeatedly in his books and booklets, or from Franz Scheidl, who made the same
error in Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands, Volume IV, p. 53.
163 / Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, p. 7. Also see above, p. 39. Previous to 
Lemkin's book there was, for example, the Joint Allied Declaration of December 17, 1942, which accused the "German authorities" of conducting a "bestial policy of coldblooded
extermination" of Europe's Jews. The Declaration, signed by eleven nations, was read in the 
British House of Commons and published worldwide in newspapers. Cf. The New York Times, December 18, 1942, pp. 1 and 10.
164 / Letter from Wilson in Books and Bookmen, February 1975, p. 6.
165 / Letter from Wiesenthal, Books and Bookmen, April 1975, p. 5.
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the National Front, who allegedly stated (according to Fyall) that "The story of six million Jews being slaughtered is a total myth. Our purpose is to sweep aside all the Jewish propaganda of the past". The Daily Express article also noted that whilst Harwood claimed to be "at present with the University of London", that University had never heard of him. [166]

Indeed, as was later brought to light and widely publicised in an attempt to discredit him [167], "Richard Harwood" was a pseudonym used by Richard Verrall, a British journalist with connections to far right political organizations, who became – in February 1976 – the editor of the National Front's newspaper, Spearhead. Whereas Mark Weber (one of the most outstanding Revisionist Historians in the United States) testified at the 1988 trial of Ernst Zündel [168] that Verrall had graduated from the University of London with high honours [169], the university informed the present writer that they had no record of him  either teaching or studying there. [170]

Notwithstanding, Harwood's theses should not be automatically disregarded because his political views are offensive to many. His theses should be studied and judged according to their merits or demerits, and refuted, if possible, in a thoughtful and scholarly manner. Few of Harwood's opponents [171], however, have shared these views. Instead, since the publisher's connections tothe National Front were revealed in 1974 (even before Harwood's identity became known) his opponents have maligned him repeatedly for his alleged "Nazism", pointing out many of his minor errors, but not attempting seriously to disprove his principal theses. [172]

The furor over his booklet was not limited to magazines, journals and academic circles. Almost as soon as it was published it became an underground 'best seller', causing Jewish organizations and disturbed and angry individuals – even some former concentration camp internees – to express their disgust publicly, such as by writing letters to Members of Parliament (who had each, incidentally, been sent a free copy by the author) and to the editors of local newspapers. [173] Regardless – or perhaps because – of the public controversy, the distribution of the booklet could not be stopped. By November 1979 hundreds of thousands of copies had reportedly been distributed in forty countries [174], and in languages including Spanish, Dutch, Flemish, Swedish, Finnish, French, German and Polish.

In Britain, after copies of Did Six Million Really Die? were posted to the heads of historydepartments and libraries, the Jewish Board of Deputies sent out a warning to every educational authority in the nation about the booklet's contents. Even the Under-Secretary for Education considered it necessary to involve himself in the controversy, condemning the booklet in Parliament. owever, despite pressure from Jewish organizations, no legal action was taken in England to prevent the further publication and distribution of the booklet, because of the limitations of the now replaced Race Relations Act 1965, and because Sam Silkin, the Attorney General, insisted that a legal prosecution would only provide "undesirable publicity for the author's unsavoury views". [175]

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166 / The University of London similarly told the present writer that "Richard Harwood is 
not, and never has been, associated with the University of London in any capacity." Letter 
from H. Kneeshaw, University Information Officer, dated December 5. 1989.
167 / Cf. Searchlight, Issue 31, p. 4: Patterns of Prejudice, September/October 1977, p. 
19; C. C. Aronsfeld, "Debauchers of the Truth: How the Facts of the Holocaust Are 
Distorted", Jewish Frontier, June/July, 1978, pp. 9-13; New Statesman, September 7, 1979,
October 5, 1979. November 2, 1979, July 17, 1981; L. Dawidowicz, "Lies About the 
Holocaust", Commentary, p. 34; et al.
168 / Zündel is a German-Canadian Revisionist who was charged with violating Canada's 
'false news' laws by publishing his own edition of Harwood's booklet. He was tried and 
convicted in 1985, but in 1987 Ontario's Court of Appeal ordered a re-trial. He was retried 
in 1988 and was again convicted. In 1990 the Court of Appeal rejected his petition. He took 
his case to the Supreme Court of Canada, which in August 1992, much to the horror of 
Canadian Jewry which had been seeking Zündel's imprisonment or deportation back to
Germany, struck down as unconstitutional the 'false news' law. Zündel's legal battles, which he finally won after more than a decade, attracted international media attention. Rather than Zündel being on trial, it was almost as if the Holocaust itself was on trial. Revisionist historians, including Robert Faurisson, David Irving and Mark Weber, appeared for the defence and challenged the accuracy of accepted opinion on the Holocaust. Orthodox historians, notably Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning, appeared for the prosecution and defended accepted opinion.
169 / Cf. SZTR, 23-5725.
170 / "... there is no trace in the records of the university of an individual with the 
surname Verrall being, or having been, associated with the University of London in any 
capacity." Letter from H. Kneeshaw, dated January 8, 1990.
171 / The present writer recognises the author's right to use a pseudonym, regardless of 
the reason, and when discussing his booklet and reactions to it, will refer to him by the 
name Harwood.
172 / One of the first such articles was "Harwood's Distortion of Holocaust Facts", Patterns of Prejudice, May/June 1975, pp. 25-27. Cf. also the publications listed in footnote 167.
173 / To list just a few from one newspaper, cf. The Daily Telegraph, December 17, 1974, 
December 30, 1974, January 30, 1975, February 26, 1975.
174 / Gitta Sereny quoted Robin Beauclair giving the figure of "almost a million" copies 
distributed before November 1979, in her article "The Men Who Whitewash Hitler", New 
Statesman, November 2, 1979, p. 670.
175 / Quoted in the Jewish Chronicle (London), October 2, 1974.
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In South Africa the popularity of the booklet prompted the very worried South African Jewish Board of Deputies to seek to have it prohibited in that nation. In late 1976 the South African government agreed that the booklet was "harmful", and placed a total ban on it. The Board of Jewish Deputies was not propped to rest at that, and a year later published a book that purported to refute Harwood's theses: Six Million Did Die: The Truth Shall Prevail, by Arthur Suzman and Denis Diamond. [176] Another year later a second edition of this work was published.

This 139-page, illustrated book is to date the most detailed critique of Harwood's booklet, and superficially appears to be well researched and written. Almost all of the Englishman's errors were correctly pointed out, as they were by his previous detractors. However, when the book is carefully analysed it becomes obvious that the level of the authors' own scholarship is low. Many of their arguments in defence of accepted opinion on the Holocaust are weak and unsustainable. To provide just a few examples: they repeated the now-discredited testimony of Rudolf Vrba, a former Auschwitz internee who stated that he personally counted the number of Jews gassed at that camp to he 1.750,000 – of which 150,000 were French Jews. It is now accepted, however, that only 75,781 Jews were deported from France to all camps, very many of whom survived the war. They also quoted at length Nuremberg Document 3311-PS which states that the Germans murdered Jews en masse at Treblinka not in gas chambers, as is now stated by historians, but by steaming them to death in thirteen "steam chambers". For many years no reputable historian has believed this strange tale, yet Suzman and Diamond presented it as factual. They also insisted – and presented as evidence testimonies that have long been discredited – that mass gassings occurred at camps where it is agreed by more cautious historians that no people were killed in gas chambers, such as Dachau. One must concede that, all in all, the well-intended book has almost no value as historical evidence and does not warrant a more detailed analysis.

In 1978 another Revisionist booklet – Nuremberg and Other War Crimes Trials [177] – appeared under Harwood's name. which caused further controversy in Britain. This 70-page booklet, however, whilst briefly touching on the subject of the alleged genocide of Jews, deals primarily [with] the cases of the main defendants at the International Military Tribunal and subsequent war crimes trials, including that of Eichmann in 1961. As large sections of this booklet appear to have been copied from The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, a critique at this point is unnecessary.

Before our analysis moves from Harwood, another relevant point could be made. AlthoughRichard Verrall was the first to use the pseudonym 'Richard Harwood', several other Revisionists in the late 1970s – Udo Walendy in particular also adopted that pseudonym to publish their books under. They knew that the large circulation of Did Six Million Really Die? guaranteed them a more receptive marketfor their publications. For instance, under that pseudonym Walendy published in 1977 his Der Nürnberger Prozess – Methoden und Bedeutung ("The Nuremberg Trials: Methods and Significance") [178], a critical study of the 
International Military Tribunal and of the text of Herman Göring's purported letter to Winston Churchill written shortly before the former's suicide. This booklet by Walendy had the additional subtitle of Historische Tatsache Nr. 3 (Historical Fact No. 3), obviously intended to make it appear as if it is part of the same series as Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die?, which carried the subtitle "Historical Fact No. 1". Indeed, Walendy has written approximately three dozen books in the Historische Tatsache series, under his own name, many of them dealing with aspects of accepted opinion on the Holocaust. [179] Walendy's booklets were, and continue to be, widely circulated in German speaking nations. There 

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176 / A. Suzman and D. Diamond, Six Million Did Die: The Truth Shall Prevail (Johannesburg: 
Committee of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies, 1977).
177 / Southam, Warks: Historical Review Press, 1978. Mark Weber told the present writer 
(letter and notes, dated 2 August 1992) that, as he recalled, "the real author of this 2nd 
"Harwood" booklet was really David McCalden." For McCalden, see below, pp. 147-149.
178 / R. Harwood, Der Nürnberger Prozess – Methoden und Bedeutung (Vlotho/Weser: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1977).
179 / Some of the early works in the "series" that are directly relevant to this study are: 
U. Walendy, Die Methoden der Umerziehung (Richmond, Surrey: Historical Review Press, 1976), 1979, English translation: The Methods of Reeducation (Vlotho/Weser: Verlag für
Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1979) The following were all published by Verlag für 
Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Vlotho/ Weser: – Der Verrat an Osteuropa (Nr. 3), 
published 1977, U. Walendy, and W. Stäglich, NS-Bewältigung – Deutsche Schreibtischtäter 
(Nr. 5), published 1979, U .Walendy, Der moderne Index (Nr. 7), published 1980 – , 
Holocaust nun unterirdisch? ("Holocaust Now Underground?") (Nr. 9), published 1981. This 
book analyses some of the aerial photographs of Auschwitz released by the CIA in 1979. See 
above, p. 60 n. 124. Udo Walendy has also published at least one book that is not in the 
series, namely Auschwitz im IG Farben Prozess – Holocaust-"Dokumente"? ("Auschwitz in the 
I.G. Farben Trial") (Vlotho/ Weser: Verlag für Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1979), 
a central point of which is that none of the engineers who worked at the immense Farben 
plant at Auschwitz heard of Jewish exterminations before May 1945.
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Holocaust Revisionism is growing in acceptance, partly due to the efforts of Walendy, Stäglich, Christophersen and other Revisionists, but also to the efforts of several nationalistic newspapers and journals, including Deutsche National Zeitung and Nation Europa, which have chosen to champion Revisionism despite the risks of prosecution.

The cost of this growth in popularity, however, was the increased effort of the West German government to curtail it. More and more Revisionists were routinely slandered as Nazis and, even worse, anti-Semites. Increasingly more Revisionist works were placed – as had been Stäglich's – on the 'index' of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften, thereby essentially robbing citizens of their right to form intellectually independent views on a period of their recent history. These books included the German translations of Harwood's Did Six Million Really Die? ("Starben Wirklich Sechs Millionen?") and Professor Arthur Butz's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century [180] ('indexed' in late 1978), and Udo Walendy's 1964 Wahrheit für Deutschland ('indexed' in 1979).

The publication in 1976 of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century created a controversy in the United States rivaling that caused by Harwood's in England over two years earlier, raising Butz to national notoriety. The author was and is still Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. His book is without doubt the most carefully researched and argued single work of Holocaust Revisionism and, as noted above, forms one 'testament' of the Revisionist bible (the other being Stäglich's The Auschwitz Myth). Due to the weight of the arguments contained within these two publications, they will be discussed in a separate chapter below.

The Hoax of the Twentieth Century was initially published in Britain in May 1976, more than a year before its first American publication. The publisher was the aforementioned Historical Review Press (the nationalistic publishing house connected to the National Front), which had its printing done by the Brighton-based firm of Tony Hancock. Not only did the "Hancock family" – as detractors described this business – print Harwood's booklets, but they alsoprinted Spearhead, the magazine then edited by Richard Verrall [181], and numerous other right-wing publications. John Kingsley Reed, an ex-chairman of the National Front who personally designed the original cover of Butz's book (showing a swastika bisecting a star of David) and was involved in at least some of its initial distribution, later stated that a copy of the book was sent to every member of the British House of Commons, the money for the printing and posting– "roughly about £2-3,000" – coming from "an Arab source". [182]

This does not necessarily mean, of course, that Butz himself possessed a fascist or anti-Semitic ideology, shared the political views of his book's publishers, or endorsed the activities of Reed and his associates (such as sending copies to MPs). The far-right publisher was not, it would seem, his first choice. The New York Times quoted him as stating: "I had trouble finding a publisher for it, and finally went to Britain to the Historical Review Press in Richmond after I found out they had published a pamphlet entitled 'Did Six Million Really Die?' "[183] Yet even if Butz was a fascist and anti-Semite, his sophisticated, seriously presented and meticulously documented arguments would still have to be investigated in a dispassionate, scholarly manner before his work could be discounted.

In Britain The Hoax of the Twentieth Century was treated by the public with the same disgust as had been Harwood's booklet, with angry letters being written and Jewish groups protesting at the publication of this latest example of "anti-Semitism" and "hate literature". The London-based Institute ofJewish Affairs (an agency of the World Jewish Congress) published a disparaging article on the book in the November-December 1976 issue of Patterns of Prejudice, its journal

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180 / A. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Ladbroke, Warwickshire: Historical Review 
Press, 1976). Published in German as Der Jahrhundert-Betrug (Vlotho/Weser: Verlag für 
Volkstum und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, 1977). First United States edition by Noontide Press, Torrance, 1978. All references herein to Butz's book will be, unless otherwise indicated, from the seventh U.S. printing (Costa Mesa: Institute for Historical Review, 1985).
181 / Spearhead, although not the most widely read of the National Front publications, had 
substantial ideological significance within the ranks of the party. It expounded a 
Revisionist position on most modern events and epochs, especially the Second World War, and 
– particularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s – endorsed a Revisionist position on the 
Holocaust. To give just a few examples: Spearhead 80 referred to the "six million Jew myth" 
which "the propaganda machines have seemingly embedded into the world conscience" (p. 15). Butz's book was reviewed in very laudatory terms in Spearhead 95, and in issue 108 Butz was interviewed at length.
182 / Interviewed on The Other Face of Terror (Belboa Film Productions, 1984). See below, 
p. 285 ff.
183 / S. S. King, "Professor Causes Furor by Saying Nazi Slaying of Jews Is a Myth", New 
York Times, January 28, 1977, p. A10.
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devoted to the themes of multiculturalism, racism and anti-Semitism. Butz's book was also discussed in the aforementioned South African publication, Six Million Did Die, although the Jewish authors were clearly unable to refute his arguments as easily as they had Harwood's.

Butz traveled extensively to promote The Hoax, including a European tour in 1977 which was partly sponsored by the nationalistic German organization, Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) [184, which arranged several speaking engagements for him. Early in the same year the (Deutsche) National Zeitung, the DVU's widely circulated weekly newspaper, serialized portions of Butz's book over several successiveissues. [185]

However, it was in the United States that the 'Butz affair' was most prominent, 
particularly after the Daily Northwestern, the campus paper of Northwestern University (where Butz taught), published in January 1977 an expose of Butz's book, which had not yet even been published in that country. The campus newspaper article was based on an article that had appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Its appearance caused a flood of letters from students and faculty members, almost all of them sharply critical of the beleaguered professor and accusing him of anti-Semitism. Many even demanded his resignation. Petitions
were circulated and signed by many students, faculty members and others, demanding that the university administration – which was highly embarrassed to discover that its professor of electrical engineering had written such a book – take disciplinary action against Butz. The furor was reported nationwide, and featured in an article in the influential New York Times, which inaccurately referred to the book as "The Fabrication of a Hoax."[186] Raymond W. Mack, the university provost, was quoted in that article as stating that he agreed with students and colleagues who believed that Butz's book had constituted a "contemptible insult to the dead and the bereaved." Further, he stated that under the First Amendment Butz had the right to publish his book, but lamented that "its a shame when that right is used to insult survivors of concentration camps."

It is clear, however, that at least in the early days of this controversy very few of the outraged people, including university administrators (to their discredit), had even seen a copy of Butz's book, instead relying entirely on hearsay evidence. This suggests that they considered any challenge to accepted opinion on the Holocaust to be anti-Semitic and unacceptable. One example of this is a letter in the New York Times by a Professor Wolfe of New York University, who, displaying a total disregard for intellectual freedom, declared that Northwestern University should bring Butz up on charges of "moral turpitude" and "academic incompetence" for daring to write such a horrendous book as "Fabrication of a Hoax". [187] If Wolfe had ever seen a copy of Butz's book, he would have known that the title was The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Obviously he had read the New York Times article of January 28, which had erroneously referred to the book as "Fabrication of a Hoax", and had not seen the book itself. Thus, his own "academic incompetence" sadly became apparent.

The result of the controversy, which continued for several months, was a decision by the academic authorities at Northwestern University not to initiate proceedings against Butz. However, they did issue public statements denouncing his book and distancing themselves from any anti-Semitism. They also decided – partly to appease "Jewish contributors [who] threatened to withhold their financial support" [188] – to sponsor a series of lectures entitled "Dimensions of the Holocaust", which presented accepted opinion on that event. Those lectures, "delivered by three Jews and a philo-Semite" [189], were organized by the history department of the university and the (Jewish) Hillel Foundation. The latter organization also sponsored a full page statement condemning Butz and his book, which was published in the Daily Northwestern. [190] This statement was signed by approximately half the university faculty, which can only be considered a disgrace in the light of the fact that almost none of them had seen a copyof the book or even read excerpts.

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184 / See below, pp. 284-285.
185 / For example, see "Der Schwindel des 20. Jahrhunderts: Das Ende der 6-Millionen-Lüge, 
von Prof. Dr. Arthur R. Butz" ("The Hoax of the 20th century; the end of the six million 
lie"), National Zeitung February 18, 1977, et al.
186 / S. S. King, S. S., "Professor Causes Furor".
187 / New York Times, February 4, 1977, p.A22.
188 / The quote is from Lucy S. Dawidowicz, "Lies About the Holocaust", Commentary, p. 34.
189 / Ibid., p. 34. Dawidowicz was one of the three Jewish lecturers. Elie Wiesel, the 
'heavyweight champion' of Holocaust orthodoxy, was another.
190 / Daily Northwestern, March 30, 1977, p. 5.
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The controversy gradually died down, although the Revisionist professor has continued to exercise his right to express his views on the Holocaust, both at Northwestern university and elsewhere. An interesting offshoot of the 'Butz affair' was the furor that erupted in Australia in February 1979. It was discovered that John Bennett, a civil rights lawyer and secretary of the reputable Victorian Council for Civil Liberties, had sent to several academics in Melbourne a complimentary copy of Butz's The Hoax. An accompanying letter (not intended for a public readership) summarized what Bennett considered to be the book's thirteen principal arguments, and included an invitation for critical comment. After the letter was 'leaked', Bennett suddenly found himself accused of anti-Semitism by Rabbi John Levi, the honorary secretary of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. [191] This charge was echoed by numerous media commentators, who were further offended by Bennett's decision to champion the civil liberties of 3CR, a far-left Melbourne radio station. 3CR had broadcast anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian statements on several occasions, causing theVictorian Jewish Board of Deputies to request the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal to investigate what they considered to be "anti-Semitism". In response Bennett had written an article in the December 1978 issue of Civil Liberty, the newsletter of his civil liberties organization, and had a letter published in the January 22, 1979 issue of The Age. In both publications he argued that the Palestinian viewpoint was being suppressed, and noted that Australian Jews, by attempting to stifle all criticism of Zionism, Israel or Jewish interests, had imposed a form of "political censorship". That censorship, he continued, "effectively banned" works revising accepted opinion on the Holocaust.

Bennett published in 1979 a small booklet on the Holocaust, and began distributing a pamphlet by Robert Faurisson, a French Revisionist. He also attended, in September of that year, the First International Revisionist Convention in Los Angeles. These activities, his defence of Butz, and his letter writing to newspapers caused an angry, at times almost hysterical, response. Publications across Australia [192] (and some in Europe and the United States [193]), when describing his activities, referred to him as a"Holocaust denier", "neo-Nazi", "anti-Semite" and other even worse titles. He was also featured on 
several television programmes, where he was generally criticized and condemned for his views. He thus became a liability to his civil rights organization. Although Dr. Alan Hughes, the President of the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties, initially defended his freedom of speech, in 1980 Bennett was suspended and removed from his position as Secretary of that organization, a position he had held since 1966, when the organization was formed.  The irony is noteworthy: a defender of civil liberties and free expression was [83] expelled from a civil liberties union precisely because he exercised his right to free expression.

In 1980 Bennett established the Australian Civil Liberties Union, of which he has been the president every year since its formation. He has continued to defend with zeal and sincerity the civil liberties of all Australians, and to publish annually Your Rights, a small and very widely read handbook on civil and legal rights, first published in 1970. He is also still reproached and insulted for his continued promotion of Holocaust Revisionism [194], and is considered (by both detractors and supporters) to be the foremost Revisionist in Australia. Further, by including since 1983 a small amount of Revisionism in each issue of Your Rights, he is the only author in the world to publish a book containing Holocaust Revisionism which is available throughout the year from most newsstands in the country.

To sum up briefly, it has been shown that Holocaust Revisionism had its origins in the postwar writings of Paul Rassinier, a left-wing libertarian who aided Jews during the war and suffered alongside them at the hands of the Nazis in two of their concentration camps. His writings contain a number of errors of fact and judgement, most of them minor but some major. He also produced several weighty arguments and sound conclusions, and these have served as the foundation upon which most subsequent Revisionists have built. Working 

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191 / Cf. J. Jost, " 'No Holocaust' Theory Starts Major Storm", The National Times, Week 
ending February 10,1979.
192 / Cf. The Age, February 16, March 3, 15, 17, 22, 24, April 14 (all 1979); National 
Review, May 31, 1979, June 28, 1979 (a 2,000 word letter by Bennett); Quadrant, September 
1979; Quadrant, October 1981 (which described Bennett as possibly being more evil
than Himmler and Pol Pot); Farrago 2/7 (1982); et al.
193 / For example, see New Statesman, September 7, 1979 (The article, entitled "Nazis", 
referred to Bennett's Revisionism as "pathological ravings") (p. 332); New Statesman, 
October 5, 1979; P. Vidal-Naquet, Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent (Paris: Petite
Collection Maspero, 1980), p. 268; L. S. Dawidowicz, "Lies About the Holocaust"; et al.
194 / Cf. Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 1985; "Harvest of Hate", The Bulletin, April 4, 
1989, pp. 42-49; The Australian Jewish News, July 27, 1990; Sunday Sun, August 12, 1990; W. Rubinstein, "Profile: John Bennett"; Without Prejudice, No. 2, February
1991, pp. 47-51; et al.
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ignorantly of each other, Revisionists in several countries began in the 1960s to challenge accepted opinion on the Holocaust with a few tenable arguments, which were, nonetheless, considerably weaker and less sophisticated than the Revisionist theses of today. Their works were mostly journalistic in style and lacked highly-developed analysis. 

By the middle of the 1970s Holocaust Revisionism was beginning to flourish. As a result of the gradual refinement of the arguments of predecessors the standard of Revisionists' scholarship had improved slightly. Their publications, replete with appendices and footnotes to primary sources, at least appeared to contain impartial and thoughtful investigations of evidence. Many Revisionists were still overly reliant on Rassinier, and, by not submitting his sources and arguments to close scrutiny, some of them carelessly repeated the Frenchman's inaccuracies or misinterpretations (as well as making a number of their own). But they also investigated new sources [84] and arrived at fresh – and often more plausible – interpretations, and thus managed to take the debate farther. In the next 
chapter, which focuses on the writings of Butz and Stäglich – who represent Holocaust Revisionism's 'coming of age' – we shall see just how far the debate has been taken.

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