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Eisenhower Predicted Holocaust Denial? (self.badhistory)

Madoradus が 投稿

“Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses – because somewhere down the track of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened.”

This is the supposed quote that so very many people evoke in claiming that Eisenhower predicted Holocaust denial. This is also, you may notice, sketchy as hell. Typically, when a quote seems to predict something that happened just as the quote said, it's a fake quote. In fact, there is no evidence of this direct quote. It is cited in no books. The first reference to it I could find was a blog post from 2007, and cited Wikipedia which in turn cited an article from the Dominican Republic (which also claimed that the UK no longer taught about The Holocaust.) Even that article states that he only said words to that effect; admitting it's a paraphrase.

Is it true that Eisenhower wanted to make the Holocaust undeniable? Yes. But it wasn't because he predicted a conspiracy theory decades later. According to a trustworthy source (Dear General: Eisenhower's Wartime Letters to Marshall), Eisenhower visited the camps firsthand so that he could provide a firsthand account to anyone who chalked up the horrors of the Holocaust to propaganda. That is not even close to what people online claim. Here's the actual quote:

"The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me a bit sick. In one room, where they [there] were piled up twenty or thirty naked men, killed by starvation, George Patton would not even enter. He said that he would get sick if he did so. I made the visit [to Gotha] deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

Not as soundbite-ready, is it? Beyond the poached paraphrasing, people seem to misunderstand who Eisenhower was expecting to deny the Holocaust. When people cite this as a fact today, they seem to be implying that Eisenhower was expecting anti-semites in the future to deny the existence of the Holocaust, and that's the reason for the documentation. In fact, though, the footage taken by the Army Signal Corps was used at the Nuremberg Trials to indict the Nazis of war crimes.

TL;DR Eisenhower was expecting the Nazis to deny the Holocaust, not antisemitic conspiracy theorists.

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[–]Gunlord500 10ポイント11ポイント  (2子コメント)

Eisenhower was expecting the Nazis to deny the Holocaust, not antisemitic conspiracy theorists.

To be fair, there's a lot of overlap between antisemitic conspiracy theorists and Nazis. Even if they're not registered party members, somebody with swastikas tattooed all over their face and yelling HITLER DID NOTHING WRONG might as well be, IMO.

But yes, you seem to be right, Eisenhower's actual quote is quite a bit different than the soundbitey one we hear often.

[–]Thurgood_MarshallIf it's not about the diaspora, don't trust me. Even then... 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

antisemitic conspiracy theorists

No need to repeat yourself.

[–]Madoradus[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

My point was that he was preparing evidence to condemn the Nazis, not to prove some idiots wrong.

I actually got downvoted the other day for pointing out this out, which prompted me to post this.

[–]youdidntreddit 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

I made the visit [to Gotha] deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to “propaganda.”

That doesn't seem to be a specific to the Nazis as you are stating.

[–]Hates_ect 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

You're certainly correct in saying that Eisenhower wasn't anticipating Holocaust deniers. However, it's probably safe to say he wasn't just trying to make a case for the Nuremberg Trials. His statement that he didn't want people "to charge these allegations merely to 'propaganda'" is a strong indicator of his true target: the Entente's over-the-top use of propaganda in the First World War.

During the First World War, in an attempt to foster public support for the British war effort domestically and gain American sympathy for it, as well, the British government was very liberal with the truth in its allegations toward Germany. There is a good summary of it here, but one example of the British enterprise that best exemplifies this period is the Corpse Rendering Works, or Kadaververwertungsanstalt. This came from a widely-circulated story published in the British press that reported as fact that the Germans maintained a factory that melted down the bodies of their dead soldiers to make fats, for use in candles and other products that were scarce in blockade-choked Germany at the time. The story was entirely false, as was much of Britain’s propaganda, a fact which came out after the war and disillusioned many people.

It’s easy to see, then, how a “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me” mentality could grow up around this. People who had been lied to that the Germans were nothing more than monsters who would treat their fellow countrymen so horrifically that they melted their dead bodies down into candles would be immensely skeptical when some of the first reports of the Holocaust contained almost exactly the same details. The Fox article I linked above even states that fears about a repeat of First World War propaganda led leaders to downplay Nazi atrocities in the Second World War. In that context, Eisenhower’s actions are entirely understandable: he is creating hard evidence so that cynics raised on revelations about government lies will not be able to deny the Holocaust. Cynics and skeptics, though—the peace crowd—not anti-semites.