According to the deniers the Holocaust is not the only deceptive legacy of World War II. Another issue of prime importance to them is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Continuing the battle that had been begun by the revisionists after World War II ended, an entire issue of the Journal of Historical Review was devoted to this topic.{78} Its explicit objective was to portray Roosevelt as having known that the attack was imminent and having allowed it to take place unhindered so that America would be forced to enter the war.
The deniers’ obsession with Pearl Harbor has a dual objective: to demonstrate Roosevelt’s and, by association, the American government’s duplicity. It is also designed to dispel the Allied and “court historians’” claim that World War II was a moral as opposed to a power struggle. The revisionists believe that if they can demonstrate that this war was at its heart a conflagration like all others, they can argue that any unique accusations of guilt or special war crimes trials are invalid. In this case the revisionists established a straw man in order to knock him down. The United States entered the war because it was attacked by Japan. Japan’s ally, Germany, then declared war on the United States. But proving that the Allies were motivated by the age-old quest for “power and advantage” is far subtler and less distasteful than creating an immoral equivalence of the gulag versus the death camps or Auschwitz versus the bombing of Dresden.{79}
Despite its attempts to portray itself as a respectable organization, the Institute for Historical Review and its subsidiary publications and associated organizations are in essence nothing but part of a larger effort to further goals remarkably similar to those articulated by national socialism. Just as Holocaust denial must be regarded as not just an attack on a portion of history that is of particular importance to Jews but as a threat to all of history and to reasoned discourse, so too the IHR must not be seen as an entity whose only interest is attacking the historicity of the Holocaust. The tradition to which it is heir and the activities of those who are part of its amorphous orbit indicate that it poses a far greater danger.
CHAPTER NINE
The Gas Chamber Controversy
In 1984 the Canadian government charged Ernst Zundel, a forty-six-year-old German citizen who had immigrant status in Canada, with stimulating antisemitism through the publication and distribution of material he knew to be false.[1] The case against Zundel, who was the country’s most prolific distributor of Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi publications, resulted in two trials, numerous appeals, and extensive media coverage. The Crown Counsel charged that Zundel instigated social and racial intolerance through the publication of two works, “The West, War and Islam,” which argued that there existed a Zionist-banker-Communist-Freemason-sponsored conspiracy to control the world, and Richard Harwood’s Did Six Million Really Die?
Though much of the material he distributed was written by other neo-Nazis, Holocaust deniers, and right-wing extremists, Zundel himself contributed two books to this melange. The Hitler We Loved and Why, which was published by White Power Publications in West Virginia, portrayed Hitler as a saintly man, a messianic figure whose white supremist ideology had brought salvation to Germany. It concluded with the proclamation that Hitler’s spirit “soars beyond the shores of the White Man’s home in Europe. Where we are, he is with us. WE LOVE YOU, ADOLF HITLER!”{1} His book, UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons?, argued that UFOs were Hitler’s secret weapon and are actually still in use at bases in the Antarctic beneath the earth’s surface. In addition Zundel wrote and distributed scores of fliers and pamphlets praising Nazism, advocating fascism, and denying the Holocaust.
Zundel created a publishing house, Samisdat Publications, to reprint and distribute the usual array of antisemitic, racist, and Holocaust denial material. It also sold tapes of Hitler’s speeches, copies of Nazi-sponsored films, and cassettes of music from the Third Reich, including a selection of Hitler’s “favorites” and storm trooper songs and marches. Zundel did not just wait for customers to order his wares. He sent Canadian members of Parliament a steady stream of Holocaust denial publications. Nor did his reach end at Canada’s border. Thousands of Americans received his publications, as did U.S. radio and television stations. (He claims his American mailing list numbers above 29,000.) But it was West Germany that was his main target. In December 1980 government officials informed the Bundestag that during the preceding two years two hundred shipments of neo-Nazi extremist books, periodicals, symbols, films, records, and cassettes had been shipped to the country by Samisdat Publishers in Toronto. In 1981, during a German crackdown on neo-Nazis, West German police discovered in the hundreds of homes they raided weapons, ammunition, and explosives as well as thousands of copies of Zundel-produced material. The German Ministry of the Interior identified Zundel as one of the country’s most important suppliers of radical right and neo-Nazi propaganda material. Zundel has also sent his publications to Australia, the Middle East, and a variety of other countries. (He claims to have subscribers in more than forty-five countries.)
But Zundel is not just a prolific disseminator of extremist, denial, and neo-Nazi publications. A showman who is extremely adept at winning media attention—he has been dubbed by Manuel Prutschi the P. T. Barnum of Holocaust denial{2}—Zundel has honed his public antics over many years. When NBC’s Holocaust was screened in Canada in April 1978 he created an organization, “Concerned Parents of German Descent,” to protest the screenings. He declared the West German government to be the “West German Occupation Regime.” In September 1981 he placed an ad in the classified section of the Toronto Star wishing a “Happy New Year to all our Jewish Friends,” signed by himself and Samisdat Publishers.{3} He has written rabbis and synagogues throughout Canada offering to lecture on topics of common interest to Germans and Jews. When the Canadian Jewish Congress advertised for a director of its Holocaust Documentation Bank Project, Zundel applied for the job. (His application arrived after the official deadline.) He created a German Jewish Historical Commission and announced that it would organize symposia on topics of Jewish interest.
His publicity stunts received the most attention at his trial. Each day he appeared at the courthouse wearing a bullet-proof vest and a hard hat bearing the words “Freedom of Speech.” (His followers sported similar headgear.) On the day of his sentencing he arrived at court in a Rent-A-Wreck vehicle, emerging with a blackened face to demonstrate that “whites could not receive justice in Canada,” hefted an eleven-foot cross labeled “Freedom of Speech” on his shoulders, and carried it up the steps to the courthouse door.{4}
1
In bringing charges against Zundel the Canadian government joined what had begun as a private complaint. Sabrina Citron, a survivor of the Holocaust and a citizen of Canada, initiated the action against Zundel. Most Canadian Jewish organizations did not support her decision.