Dr. Stahlecker - Where Did He Go?

Dr. Walter Stahlecker was the first commander of Einsatzgruppe A, from June 1941 until his death in March 1942.

Dr. Walter Stahlecker

According to the most recent and very careful calculations of Wolfgang Curilla, EG A was responsible for the execution of almost 250.000 Jewish men, women and children - quite in accordance with  the order issued by Hitler. (Die deutsche Ordnungspolizei und der Holocaust im Baltikum und in Weissrussland 1941-1944, Paderborn 2006, p. 215)

In its Closing Statement for the US, Case 9, The USA against Ohlendorf, et al.., February 13, 1948, the prosecution concluded that the evidence was compelling, that " a German (military) victory would have enormously widened the scope of operations of the Einsatzgruppen and the holocaust  (!) would have been even more staggering...the crimes of the Einsatzgruppen were not, fundamentally, military crimes at all. They were not committed in order to make military victory possible.On the contrary, military victory was sought in order to put the victors in a position where these crimes could be committed. These crimes were a war objective, not a military means" (quoted from Hilary Earl, The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial 1945-1958, Cambridge  2009, p. 215)

This Statement is noteworthy for the fact that we here - to the best of my knowledge - have one of the earliest postwar applications  of the word "holocaust" by the Americans to refer to what the Germans themselves normally called die Endlösung (der Judenfrage).

The US prosecution here seems to use the word "holocaust" in the sense of the executions of Jews by members of the Einsatzgruppen. In so doing, the prosecution not only refers to the operations of Dr. Stahlecker´s EG A, but also to those of the three other Einsatzgrppen, including, of course,  the various Einsatzkommandos, Sonderkommandos etc.

To deny the historicity of " the holocaust"  in this sense would obviously be about as difficult as to deny the reality of the sun and the moon.

Nevertheless, Professor Faurisson recently repeated his conviction that it was NOT the task of the EG, i.e. of Dr. Stahlecker and his colleagues to kill the Jews.

Professor Faurisson is, of course, entitled to maintain this startling  view, but in so doing he is also obliged to explain how in the world all these enormous misunderstandings about the operations of Dr. Stahlecker and his colleagues  can be accounted for? We, therefore, look in the writings of Faurisson, Graf, Rudolf and so on, to see what they have to says about Dr. Stahlecker. And what do we find about Dr. Stahlecker? Answer: Not a word!

This,then, permits us to conclude that it is a vital part of the "methodology" of Professor Faurisson and his imitators  to ignore good German evidence. One cannot claim that we have no evidence about the operations of EG A and the other Einsatzgruppen. Nor can one claim that these operations have nothing to do with the"holocaust" (as used by the Americans in  February 1948).

The various reports of Dr. Stahlecker were known to the public at a very early date. Parts are reproduced e.g. in the book by Léon Poliakov & Joseph Wulf, Das Dritte Reich und die Juden. Dokumente und Berichte, the first (German) edition of which appeared in Berlin 1955.

Professor Faurisson knows the book and its authors/editors  - but obviously  prefers to forget all about Dr. Stahlecker, one of the main characters in that book. Professor Faurisson is, of course, also entitled, alternatively, to hold his startling  view without giving any reason at all for his belief. His belief is, in that case, based on a sort of mystical revelation. A geat mystic, a poor scholar!

Dr. Christian Lindtner
October 2, 2011