Robert John's response

Submitted by Levent (Turkey), May 31, 2006 at 23:17

Not verifying something is not the same as establishing it as false, no. But if A and B purport to be the same thing and A is verified, then B must be false. This is not a simple case of not verifying the version of the speech containing the quote, but verifying versions that did not contain the quote. This is elementary.

Nonetheless, youre previous post was in response to a letter by Robert John - to which Robert John replied to as follows:

To the Editor:

Quoting Hitler?

The documentation of Prof. G. L. Weinberg for the alleged Hitler remark seemed impressive. However, I have now examined this publication "by the British Government in the official series 'Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-39,' volume VII, 1954," in the spirit of being prepared to accept new evidence.

It is essentially the same document to which I referred in my letter of June 8; this one, writes Sir G. (Ogilese?)-Forbes from the British Embassy, Berlin, on Aug. 22, 1939, "was communicated to me by Lochner of the Associated Press of America. His informant is a staff officer, who received it from one of the generals present at the meeting" (Page 237).

Both "documents" contain such statements as "Goring jumped on a table, thanked bloodthirstily and made bloodthirsty promises. He danced like a wild man." (page 259).

This "document" would not satisfy the U.S. Provost Marshal at Nuremberg as acceptable in court, and it has not been substantiated since Winston Churchill said, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." We must hold historians to the highest standards of proof in sorting them out.

ROBERT JOHN
Life Member of the Honorshie
Society of the Middle Temple
Inns of Court, London
New York, May 27,1985

Theodore J. O'Keefe points out, in a criticism of the Holocaust Museum's willingness to bend facts ("A Challenge from the USHMM: A Revisionist Response"), that other versions of the Hitler Speech do not "report that the 240-pound Hermann Goering leapt on a table top and danced wildly to celebrate those alleged words of the Fuehrer, a part of this vulgar forgery given to Lochner that the Museum chose not to quote."

This dispute has also been played out between the various posters, Armenian and Turkish, on the relevant wikipedia page - they have concluded:

The source of this problem appears to be that the quote allegedly comes from a speech made by Hitler, not from any written or published text. Its authenticity or otherwise thus depends on the recollections of eye-witnesses, the validity of which may be doubted, and has been doubted, by later commentators. In the absence of any means of either confirming or refuting the authenticity of the quote, and in light of the intense partisan passions surrounding both the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, it is unlikely that this issue can ever be satisfactorily resolved.As popular as it may be to keep presenting this statement and pretending it has been conclusively sourced, it is thoroughly dishonest - though I will accept it has been thoroughly effective. To move on to a real Hitler quote - "they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie".

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