I
Introduction
have been passionate about geothermal air-conditioning for 20 years
because it is renewable, sustainable, and comfortable. And now
with new federal incentives in the United States, I am glad to say
that I can add a fourth watchword: doable. Even so, my favorite word of
the four is sustainable. You may think it’s because geothermal technologies
can reduce
our reliance
on dirty,
scarce
fossil fuels and lessen our
impact
on the environment.
That’s certainly true,
but that’s not the fi
rst
thing
I think of.
You see, I grew up as the oldest of nine children on a nine-acre ranch
in the high desert of California. My father is a great man, a high school
English teacher, who provided well for our family on $18,000 per year
during the 1970s, my formative years. Our electrical budget was $50.
Our food budget was $200. We had a shared party line for the phone
and no cable TV. We could get one or two network affi liates by antenna
if the atmospheric conditions were right. By our very nature, we were
green before it was cool.
If we wanted hot water, we had to make sure the black garden hose
was spread out just right on the roof and turned on to fi ll the hot water
tank. We never had a dryer. A warm fi re in the winter and a swamp
(evaporative) cooler in the summer in the common room were the total
extent of climate control. Most of our fruit and vegetables came from the
garden. We had livestock for milk and food, including chickens for eggs
and the occasional Sunday dinner. We were able to sustain our lives on
what we had. To this day, that’s what “sustainable” means to me.
I now live in a 3000-square-foot home on a tad over two acres in
Pasco County, Florida, not far from Tampa. My beautiful wife and I
have four children, a garden, goats, chickens, pigs, dogs, cats, and a
solid desire to maintain family values and a sustainable lifestyle. We
live a very comfortable life, with every luxury I could ever have imagined,
but sustainable. A
wise leader in the Church
once provided
counsel
that I can’t forget:
When you buy an item, luxury or not, the retail

cost
is only a fraction of the real
cost.
Picture a boat, an ATV, or an RV. The real costs are quantifi ed in the
time and resources it takes to fuel it, maintain it, repair it, clean it, store

Introduction
it, insure it, license it, and then advertise and fi nally sell it for a loss—or
dispose of it properly. It turns out that, in most cases, these are not very
sustainable items.
The same goes for many landscaping items, such as nonnative sod
and shrubbery. I have a beautiful, natural Florida landscape with native
grasses, pine trees, and scrub oak. My Bahia grass, which you often see
along freeways here, requires only monthly mowing. Imported grasses
require constant watering and mowing and infl uxes of fertilizers and
pesticides, although they still get brown spots from dryness and cinch
bugs. Sure, I have been tempted many a time to install a sprinkler system
and a “perfect” manicured
lawn, or some exotic fl
owering plants

like
the neighbors have. Then the idea of sustainability comes to mind.
If
I get such items, nice as they may seem, there’s
an ongoing cost to
maintain
them, water them, fertilize them, protect
them from
pests, and
so
on.
I could afford all of the above items. But I choose not to have a boat,
an RV, or a carpet of green grass, or any of the costs that go along with
them. What I have is a house with a solar water heater, geothermal airconditioning,
fl

uorescent and LED lighting, beautiful garden, and a few
farm animals. I have fi ve bedrooms and fi ve bathrooms, a 15,000-gallon
pool, and a 1500-foot lanai. My energy bill averages about $250 per
month. I have no water, sewer, cable, or phone bill. I call that sustainable.
The money I save goes to saving for retirement, schooling, children,
charity, and a good dose of spontaneous family fun. Things like eating
out, vacations, and visiting theme parks and museums. These are things
that bring our family closer together, truly enrich our lives, and sustain
our economy.
Sustainability is what this book is really about. I have one employee
for whom we are sizing a geothermal system at the time of this writing.
He has a 2000-square-foot home with an average monthly electric bill of
$450, on top of water, sewer, and trash. That is not sustainable for him.
It is so expensive that he may never get ahead. With utility bills rising
beyond infl ation, he may be facing $600 to $800 bills in the next few
years. Many others are in this situation.
Typical air-conditioning (AC) equipment, which has a seasonal
energy effi ciency ratio (SEER) of 10, is sucking the life right out of our
fellow consumers. The cost of air-conditioning systems has doubled
over the past fi ve years. This is partly a result of rising material costs,
but is primarily due to government-mandated effi ciency requirements
for 13-SEER equipment. A 30% increase in effi ciency makes a big difference,
but it’s not enough. The federal stimulus package has allowed
for
$1500 tax credits
for air-source
(nongeothermal) residential
systems
that
meet certain criteria. That stops at the end of 2010. After
that, the
only
air-conditioning
and heating product
left on the stimulus radar is
the
little-known geothermal system, the subject of this book. The tax
credit
for geothermal heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning
(HVAC)

will be in force until 2016, offering an unprecedented 30% of costs, with

Acknowledgments
Jay: Thank you to Seth Leitman for fi nding me through the Web and
asking if I would be interested in writing a book, and then recommending
Brian Clark Howard
to cowrite. Brian’s wealth  of knowledge on all
subjects
concerning the environment
has been irreplaceable,
as has his
patience
and encouragement.
I would like to thank Judy Bass for seeing far beyond my vision for
this book. I certainly never expected to be a writer, and her encouragement
was all I needed to start.
Thank you to Tom Cavanaugh, currently serving as a mission president
for the Church
in Colombia. He counseled with me on the diffi
culties
that I would and did endure
in the process
of writing this book.
Thanks
to the folks at ClimateMaster,
Dan Ellis and especially John
Bailey,
who spent a good deal of one-on-one time with me to answer
some
tough questions.
My entire staff at Egg Commercial have been so very patient with
me. A big thank you to Christina Brewer, our chief executive; Kristin
Sagert, our executive offi ce administrator; Jason Hodges, our Webmaster
and marketing genius; and Sarah Cheney, our illustrator.
No words can express my gratitude to my family. They have seen
little of me these past fi ve or six months. Thank you to Kevin and Katie;
Jordan, my 16-year-old beauty queen; Taylor, my strong 14-year-old son
who still can’t beat me in wresting; Hannah, my 11-year-old beautiful
little pixie, and Theron, my 10-year-old all-American boy and fourthgeneration
namesake. My heart goes out to the lovely Mrs. Egg… I

would
have quit long ago if not for her absolute, unending love and
faith
in me. Thank you baby doll. This has been an entirely
encompassing
endeavor of love.
Brian: First of all, thank you to Jay Egg, who has been exceedingly
gracious in sharing his wealth of experience and in-depth technical
knowledge. Working
with Jay has been a great
pleasure,
and I am
deeply
inspired
by his passion, commitment, and Herculean
work ethic.
Without
Jay,
this book would have been impossible. I would also like to

18 The Plot to Seize the White House


The general pointed out wryly that no action had been taken at the
convention to endorse the soldiers’ bonus.  MacGuire airily repeated his
contention that there was no point in that until the country had sound
currency.
 Shortly afterward MacGuire came to Newtown Square again and
surprised the general with the news that a dinner had been arranged by
Boston veterans in his honor.  He was promised transportation in a private
car, and, MacGuire beamed, Butler would be paid a thousand dollars to
speak at the dinner-in favor of the gold standard, of course.
 Butler was dumbfounded at MacGuire’s incredible persistence.
Surely the indefatigable bond salesman had realized by this time that he was
barking up the wrong tree!  But perhaps, the general speculated, MacGuire
felt challenged to “make the sale,” in much the same manner that he
undoubtedly sought to overcome the sales resistance of reluctant prospects
for his bonds.  And apparently MacGuire was convinced that only Smedley
Butler had the prestige and popularity among veterans that his coterie
needed to put over the scheme.
 Irked by the new attempt to bribe him, Butler rasped that he had never
been paid a thousand dollars for any speech and had no intention of
accepting such a sum to let words be put in his mouth.  Chagrined but
undiscouraged, MacGuire cheerfully promised to come up with some other
more acceptable plan to utilize the general’s talents as a public speaker.
 In October a former Marine running for office in Brooklyn, New
York, begged Butler to make some campaign speeches in his behalf.  Butler
was hesitant because he was about to leave on a tour of the country for
Veterans of Foreign Wars, speaking for the bonus and for membership in the
V.F.W. as the best way to get it.  But loyalty to the men who had served
under him took him first to Pennsylvania Station.
 To his astonishment he was met by MacGuire.  The bond salesman
somehow knew where he was headed and asked to accompany him.  Butler
consented, more and more intrigued by the ubiquitous MacGuire who kept
turning up everywhere he went like a bad penny.  He found himself even
growing perversely fond of MacGuire for his stubborn refusal to take No for

16 The Plot to Seize the White House


That would be an important step toward organizing the veterans of American
to put pressure on Congress and the President for such a bill.
 Why, Butler asked him curiously, did he think the President would
allow himself to be pressured by such tactics?  Clark expressed confidence
that Roosevelt would yield because he belonged, after all, to the same social
class that was solidly behind the gold standard.  Once he had restored it, his
fellow patricians would rally around him and defend his position against
criticism.
 Butler was shocked by Clark’s blatant snobbery, but even more by the
millionaire’s assumption that the wishes of economic royalists should-and
would-prevail over the democratic processes of government.  Once more his
anger boiled over. In a voice that cracked with indignation, he exploded that
he wanted nothing to do with a scheme to exploit veterans.  Furthermore, he
rasped, he intended to see to it that the veterans of the country were not used
to undermine democracy but to defend it.
 Clark’s face turned crimson.  Chagrined, he reproached Butler for
being stubborn and “different,” hinting that such things as the mortgage on
Butler’s house could be taken care of for him, and in a fully legal fashion.
 This crude attempt to bribe him was too much for the dumbfounded
general.  Bellowing his indignation, he roared an order at the millionaire to
follow him into the living room.  Clark meekly trailed him into a large hall
resplendent with flags, banners, decorations, plaques, scrolls, citations, and
other symbols of esteem that had been presented to the general during his
long career in the Marines.  The hall was flanked at both ends by huge
canopies on tall poles-“Blessings Umbrellas” awarded by unanimous vote of
the people of Chinese cities only to their greatest benefactors.
 Quivering with rage, Butler pointed out to Clark that most of the
awards in the hall had been given to him by poor people all over the world,
and he vowed that he would never betray their faith.  Ordering Clark to
inspect them until he understood the enormity of his mistake, Butler stormed
off to his study, pacing back and forth in an effort to simmer down.
 In a few minutes a chastened Clark joined him and meekly

The Plot 11


be candid and disclose the sources of the funds that were behind it.
 After some hesitation MacGuire revealed that they had been provided
by nine backers, the biggest contributor putting up nine thousand dollars.
Pressed to explain their motives, MacGuire insisted that they were simply
concerned about helping veterans get their bonus and a square deal.
 People who could afford such contributions, Butler reflected
ironically, were hardly the type who favored a two-billion-dollar bonus for
veterans.
 When he prodded MacGuire further, the fat veteran revealed that one
of his chief backers was a wealthy Legionnaire he worked for, Colonel
Grayson M.-P. Murphy, who operated a brokerage firm at 52 Broadway in
New York City.  Butler pointed out the contradiction between MacGuire’s
claim that his group was concerned with the problems of the poor rank-andfile
veteran and the fact that his backers
were all obviously
wealthy men.

MacGuire
simply
shrugged and frankly admitted
that as far as he personally
was
concerned, he was primarily involved
in the transaction as a
businessman
and was being well taken care of
for his efforts.
 It
would
be
equally
profitable for Butler, he hinted,
if the general were disposed to
cooperate.



Butler pumped him about Colonel Murphy’s connection with the plan.
Murphy, MacGuire revealed, was one of the founders of the Legion and had
actually underwritten it with $125,000 in 1919 to pay for the organizational
field work.  He had been motivated by a desire to see the soldiers “cared
for.”
 When Butler questioned Murphy’s motive in wanting the goldstandard
speech made
at the convention,
MacGuire explained
that he and the
other backers simply wanted to be sure that the veterans would be paid their
bonus in sound gold-backed currency, not in “rubber money.”
 He showed Butler several checks for large amounts signed by Murphy
and two other men-Robert S. Clark and John

9 The Plot to Seize the White House


4


Butler detected an odor of intrigue.  Some kind of outlandish scheme, he was
convinced, was afoot.  Knowing little about the gold standard, why
Roosevelt had taken the country off it or who stood to gain by its restoration
and why, he began thumbing through the financial pages of newspapers and
magazines-sections of the press he had never had any occasion to read.
 The first important fact he learned was that the government no longer
had to back up every paper dollar with a dollar’s worth of gold.  This meant
that the Roosevelt Administration could increase the supply of paper money
to keeps its pledge of making jobs for the unemployed, and give loans to
farmers and homeowners whose property was threatened by foreclosure.
Banks would then be paid back in cheapened paper dollars for the goldbacked
dollars they had lent.


Conservative financiers were horrified.  They viewed a currency not
solidly backed by gold as inflationary, undermining both private and
business fortunes and leading to national bankruptcy.  Roosevelt was
damned as a socialist or Communist out to destroy private enterprise by
sapping the gold backing of wealth in order to subsidize the poor.
 Butler began to understand that some wealthy Americans might be
eager to use the American Legion as an instrument to pressure the Roosevelt
Administration into restoring the gold standard.  But who was behind
MacGuire?
 A short while after MacGuire’s second visit, he returned to see Butler
again, this time alone.  MacGuire asked how he was coming along in
rounding up veterans to take with him to the convention.  Butler replied
evasively that he had been too busy to do anything about it.  He then made it
clear that he could no further interest in the plan unless MacGuire was
willing to

The Plot  9

typewritten pages from an inside jacket pocket.  They would leave a
speech with him to read.  MacGuire urged Butler to round up several
hundred Legionnaires, meanwhile, to take to Chicago with him.
 Holding on to his fraying temper, Butler pointed out that none of the
Legionnaires he knew could afford the trip or stay in Chicago.  MacGuire
quickly assured him that all their expenses would be paid.  But Butler,
who was constantly being approached with all kinds of wild schemes and
proposals, was not prepared to take the plotters seriously until they could
prove they had financial backing.  When he challenged MacGuire on this
point, the veteran slipped a bankbook out of his pocket.  Without letting
the name of the bank or the account be seen, he flipped over the pages
and showed Butler two recent deposits-one for $42,000 and a second for
$64,000-for “expenses.”
 That settled it.  No wounded soldiers Butler knew possessed $100,000
bank accounts.  His instincts sharpened by two years’ experience, on loan
from the Marines, as crime-busting Director of Public Safety for
Philadelphia, warned him that there was something decidedly unsavory
about the proposition.
 He decided to blend skepticism, wariness, and interest in his
responses, to suggest that he might be induced to participate in the
scheme if he could be assured that it was foolproof.  He would profess
himself interested, but unconvinced as long as he suspected that there
was more to be learned about the scheme.  So far they had told him
practically nothing except what was barely necessary for the role they
wanted him to play.  He determined to get to the bottom of the plot, while
trying not to scare them off in the process.
 After they had left, he read over the speech MacGuire had left with
him.  It urged the American Legion convention to adopt a resolution
calling for the United States to return to the gold standard, so that when
veterans were paid the bonus promised to them, the money they received
would not be worthless paper.  Butler was baffled.  What did a return to
the gold standard have to do with the Legion?  Why were MacGuire and
Doyle being paid to force this speech on the convention-and who was
paying them?

8 The Plot to Seize the White House


to himself,  he heard out his visitors in the hope of learning why they
were so anxious to use him.
 They explained that they had arranged for him to attend the
convention as a delegate from Hawaii, which would give him the right to
speak.  When he still declined, they asked whether he wasn’t in sympathy
with their desire to oust the “Royal Family.”  He was, he said, because
the leadership had simply been using the organization to feather their
own nests, but he had absolutely no intention of attending the convention
without an invitation.
 His disappointed visitors took their leave but asked permission to
return in a few weeks.


3


A month later Doyle and MacGuire returned.  Without waiting to inquire
whether Butler had changed his mind, MacGuire quickly informed him
that there had been a change of plans.  The general had been right to
object to coming to the convention as just another delegate, MacGuire
acknowledged.  It would have been ineffective, and a waste of the
general’s immense prestige.
 MacGuire outlined a new plan in which Butler would gather two or
three hundred Legionnaires and take them to Chicago on a special train.
They would be scattered throughout the audience at the convention, and
when Butler made an appearance in the spectators’ gallery, they would
leap to their feet applauding and cheering wildly.  The proceedings would
be stampeded with cries for a speech that would not die down until Butler
was asked to the platform.
 Incredulous at the audacity with which this scheme was being
unfolded to him, Butler asked what kind of speech his visitors expected
him to make.  MacGuire produced some folded

The Plot  7

Butler to join them and stampede the convention with a speech designed
to oust the “Royal Family” controlling the organization.
 Their dissatisfaction with the leadership of the American Legion did
not find Butler unsympathetic.  He had long been privately critical of the
organization’s close ties with big business and its neglect of the real
interests of the veterans it presumably represented.  These convictions
were to be made dramatically public before the year was out, but now he
declined his visitors’ proposal on the grounds that he had no wish to get
involved in Legion politics and pointed out that, in any event, he had not
been invited to take part in the Legion convention.
 MacGuire revealed that he was chairman of the “distinguished guest
committee” of the Legion, and was on the staff of National Commander
Louis Johnson, a former Secretary of Defense.  At MacGuire’s
suggestion Johnson had included Butler’s name as one of the
distinguished guests to be invited to the Chicago convention.  Johnson
had then taken this list to the White House, MacGuire said, and had
shown it for approval to Louis Howe, Roosevelt’s secretary.  Howe had
crossed Butler’s name off the list, however, saying that the President was
opposed to inviting Butler.  MacGuire did not know the reason, but Bill
Doyle assured Butler that they had devised a plan to have him address the
convention anyhow.
 Butler remained silent.  He was used to oddball visitors who called
with all kinds of weird requests.  Curiosity, and the leisure afforded by
retirement, often led him to hear them out in order to fathom their
motives.
 He thought about his visitors’ finely tailored suits and the chauffeurdriven
Packard an their claim
to represent
the “plain soldiers” of the
Legion.  The story about the rejection of his name on the Legion
convention guest list by the White House struck him as more than
peculiar, in view of the fact that the President had gratefully accepted his
campaign help in a “Republicans for Roosevelt” drive eight months
earlier.  Why should F.D.R. suddenly be so displeased with him?
 It crossed his mind that the purpose of the story, true or false, might
be intended to pique him against the Roosevelt Administration, for some
obscure reason.  Keeping his suspicions

5 The Plot to Seize the White House



On July 1, 1933, General Butler’s phone rang soon after he had had
breakfast.  Calling from Washington, an American Legion official he had
met once or twice told Butler that two veterans were on their way from
Connecticut to see him about an important matter and urged him to make
time for him.
 About five hours later, hearing a car pull up into his secluded
driveway at Newtown Square, Butler glanced out the porch window.  His
lips pursed speculatively as two fastidiously dressed men got out of a
chauffeur-driven Packard limousine.
 At the door the visitors introduced themselves as Bill Doyle,
commander of the Massachusetts American Legion, and Gerald C.
MacGuire, whom Butler understood to have been a former commander of
the Connecticut department.
 Butler led the visitors into his study at the rear of the house, and they
took chairs opposite his desk.  MacGuire, who did most of the talking,
was a fat, perspiring man with rolls of jowls, a large mouth, fleshy nose,
and bright blue eyes.  He began a somewhat rambling conversation
during which he revealed that he, too, had been a Marine, with a war
wound that had left a silver plate in his head.  Doyle established his
combat credentials by mentioning that he also had a Purple Heart.
 Butler’s compassion for wounded veterans made him patient as
MacGuire encircled the subject of their visit in spirals that only gradually
narrowed until their apex pierced the point.  The point, it seemed, was
that MacGuire and Doyle, speaking for a coterie of influential
Legionnaires, were intensely dissatisfied with the current leadership of
the American Legion.  Considering it indifferent to the needs of rankand-file
veterans, they revealed that they
hoped to dislodge the regime at

a
forthcoming Legion convention to be
held in Chicago.  They urged

The Plot  5
coffee, he learned that the food was running out, and veterans were
muttering about rioting against Congress if it did.  Before he left for his
home in Newtown Square, a small town outside of Philadelphia, he
warned the Bonus Marchers, “You’re all right so long as you keep your
sense of humor.  If you slip over into lawlessness of any kind, you will
lose the sympathy of a hundred twenty million people in the nation.”
 It was the government, however, that unleashed the violence.  Under
orders from President Herbert Hoover, General Douglas MacArthur led
troops in driving the Bonus Army out of Washington at bayonet point
and burning down their shacktowns.
 By August 1 rumors spreading from the last stronghold of the
veterans, an encampment at Johnstown, Virginia, indicated that the
infuriated Bonus Marchers were determined to organize a new
nonpartisan political organization of veterans and wanted General Butler
to lead it.  Reporters pressed him to comment.
 “I have heard nothing about it at all, although I was in Washington
about two weeks ago to address the veterans,” he replied with a shrug.  “I
have neither seen nor heard from Mr. Waters or any of the other leaders
of the Bonus Expeditionary Force.”
 Meanwhile he phoned the governors of a number of states and won
their agreement to provide relief for those of their veterans who wanted
to return home.  He phones Waters in Washington to urge that the
remnants of the Bonus Army break camp and start back home under this
plan, and he issued a blast at the Hoover Administration as heartless for
its treatment of the veterans and its failure to help them, their wives, and
their children return home without further humiliation.
 That November lifelong Republican Smedley Butler took the stump
for Franklin D. Roosevelt and helped turn Herbert Hoover out of the
White House.

4 The Plot to Seize the White House

into battle.  He was even more famous and popular among rank-and-file
leathernecks, doughboys, and bluejackets for the fierce battles he had
fought against the American military hierarchy on behalf of the enlisted
men.  He was also admired, respected, and trusted because of his oneman
fight to compel
Americans
to remember
their tragic war casualties
hidden
away in isolated veterans’ hospitals.



Smedley Butler was a wiry bantam of  a man, shoulders hunched
forward as though braced against the pull of a heavy knapsack, his hawk
nose prominent in the leathery face of an adventurer.  Silhouetted against
a flaming sunset, he made a blazing speech of encouragement in the blunt
language that had kept him in hot water with the nation’s highest-ranking
admirals and generals, not to mention Secretaries of State and Navy.
 “If you don’t hang together, you aren’t worth a damn!” he cried in the
famous hoarse rasp that sent a thrill through every veteran who had heard
it before.  He reminded them that losing battles didn’t mean losing a war.
“I ran for the Senate on a bonus ticket,” he said, “and got the hell beat out
of me.”  But he didn’t intend to stop fighting for the bonus, and neither
should they, he demanded, no matter how stiff the opposition or the
names they were called.
 “They may be calling you tramps now,” he roared, “but in 1917 they
didn’t call you bums! … You are the best-behaved group of men in this
country today.  I consider it an honor to be asked to speak to you. …
Some folks say I am here after something.  That’s a lie.  I don’t want
anything.”  All he wanted, he told the cheering veterans, was to see that
the country they had served dealt with them justly.  He concluded his
exhortation by urging, “When you get home, go to the polls in November
and lick the hell out of those who are against you.  You know who they
are. … No go to it!”
 Afterward he was mobbed by veterans eager to speak to him.  Until
2:30 A.M. he sat sprawled on the ground in front of his tent, listening
sympathetically to tales of lost jobs, families in distress, and troublesome
old wounds.  He slept three hours, then woke up to resume talks with the
veterans.
 Sharing a Bonus Army breakfast of potatoes, hard bread, and

Perspiring on the raw-wood platform in the broiling heat of a July day in
Washington, Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, retired, took off his
coat, rolled up his sleeves, and opened his collar.  His violent deep-set eyes
surveyed ten thousand faces upturned among the lean-tos, shanties, and tents
on Anacostia Flats.
 Bums, riffraff, drifters, and troublemakers-those were some of the
descriptions being applied to the Bonus Army.  Many of the ragged veterans
who had marched on the Capital had been sleeping in doorways and under
bridges, part of the vast army of twelve million unemployed.  Some were the
same men who had fought under Smedley Butler in the Spanish-American
War, the Philippines campaign, the Boxer Rebellion, the Caribbean
interventions, the Chinese intervention of 1927-1928, and World War I.
 Butler had come to Washington in 1932 at the urging of James Van
Zandt, head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, to lend moral support to
veterans at a crucial moment.  Congress had just voted down the Patman
Bonus Bill to pay veterans the two-billion-dollar bonus promised them in
bonus certificates payable in 1945.  Bonus Army Commander Walter W.
Waters, a former army sergeant, and other leaders feared that their
discouraged followers would now give up and return home.
 When Waters introduced Smedley Butler to the huge crowd of
veterans gathered along the Anacostia River to hear him, he was greeted
with an enthusiastic roar of acclaim that echoed through Washington like
thunder.  They all knew Old Gimlet Eye, one of the most colorful generals
who had ever led troops

Raul Hilberg

[Raul Hilberg testified at the first trial of Ernst Zündel in 1985. Prior to the second
trial in 1988, Hilberg was asked by Crown Attorney John Pearson to reattend in
Canada to give expert historical testimony on the Holocaust. Hilberg refused. In a
letter to Pearson dated 5 October, 1987 Hilberg wrote:
"I have grave doubts about testifying in the Zündel case again. Last time, I testified
for a day under direct examination and for three days under cross-examination. Were I
to be in the witness box for a second time, the defense would be asking not merely the
relevant and irrelevant questions put to me during the first trial, but it would also
make every attempt to entrap me by pointing to any seeming contradiction, however
trivial the subject might be, between my earlier testimony and an answer that I might
give in 1988. The time and energy required to ward off such an assault would be
great, and I am afraid that the investment of time alone would be too much, given all
the commitments and deadlines I am facing now."
As a result, Crown Attorney Pearson applied to the court to have Hilberg's 1985
testimony read to the jury. Defence attorney Christie objected to the reading in of the
testimony, alleging that Hilberg had perjured himself in 1985 with respect to his
views on the existence of a Hitler order or orders, and that this was the real reason he
was refusing to reattend in Canada. Christie pointed out that in 1985 Hilberg had
testified that he believed a Hitler order existed; within weeks of that testimony,
however, Hilberg's second edition of his book The Destruction of the European Jews
had been published, in which he excised all mention of a Hitler order in the main
body of the work. Christie argued it would be gravely prejudicial to Zündel and an
insult to the administration of justice to allow the evidence to go to the jury without
benefit of cross-examination in person of Hilberg.
The application was nevertheless granted by Judge Ron Thomas and Pearson read
Hilberg's previous testimony into the record over a four day period on February 4, 5, 8
and 9, 1988. What follows is the 1985 Hilberg testimony. All references are to the
1985 transcript.

Raul Hilberg was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1926. He emigrated to the United States
in 1939. He came alone, without his family. In 1944, Hilberg started service with the
United States Army doing intelligence work. (4-680)
After the war, Hilberg obtained a B.A. degree in political science from Brooklyn
College and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in public law and
government. His doctorate was obtained in 1955. Hilberg subsequently took up a
teaching post at the University of Vermont which he still held. A full professor,

Witnesses for the Prosecution
Diana Mendl

[Diana Mendl was the third witness called by the Crown. She testified on February 4,
1988.]
Diana Mendl was a supervisor of the radio program archives and music library for the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). The archive maintained tapes of
programs which went on the air, firstly, as a record for the history of Canada as
portrayed by the CBC and, secondly, as a resource for reuse in other programs such as
current affairs news programming. (8-1615-16)
On January 7, 1988, in response to a search warrant, Mendl provided Sgt. John Luby
with two duplicate tapes of the Christof Friedrich item broadcast on "As It Happens"
on February 27, 1975. The cassette copies were taken from the archives master tape
number 750227-2 recorded during the broadcast. (8-1617)
On cross-examination, Mendl stated that the CBC was very reluctant to give up
master tapes. The tape segment introduced in court was a tape of the broadcast itself
and not necessarily a tape of the entire interview which took place. She admitted that
it was "possible" that the interview had been edited and cut for the radio program. The
only persons who would be privy to the circumstances of that particular interview
would be Barbara Frum, the interviewee, any technicians present and the likely
producer of the show, Mark Starowicz. (8-1619, 1620; tape of the "As It Happens"
segment filed as Exhibit 5.)

District Court Judge Ron Thomas

Prior to the commencement of the trial, Crown Attorney John Pearson requested
presiding Judge Ron Thomas to take judicial notice of the historical fact that during
the Second World War, the National Socialist regime of Adolf Hitler pursued a policy
which had as its goal the extermination of the Jews of Europe. Thomas granted the
application in the following terms:
It is my respectful view that the court should take judicial notice of the Holocaust
having regard to all of the circumstances. The mass murder and extermination of Jews
of Europe by the Nazi regime during the Second World War is so notorious as not to
be the subject of dispute among reasonable persons. Furthermore, it is my view that
the Holocaust is capable of immediate accurate demonstration by resort to readily
accessible sources of indisputable accuracy. But I emphasize the ground upon which I
hold that the court should take judicial notice of the Holocaust is that it is so notorious
as to be not the subject of dispute among reasonable persons ... The Holocaust is the
mass murder and extermination of Jews by the Nazi regime during the Second World
War, and the jury will be told to take judicial notice of that.
As a result, the jury in the Zündel trial was directed that it was required to accept as a
fact that the "Holocaust", as defined by Thomas, actually occurred.

The Charge

Ernst Zündel was charged on 18 November 1983 under section 177 of the Criminal
Code of Canada which provides:
Every one who willfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and
that causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an
indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.
The charge was originally laid under a private complaint by Canadian Holocaust
Remembrance Association founder Sabina Citron. The carriage of the charge was
later assumed by the Crown, however, under an indictment dated 26 July 1984 which
read as follows:
1. Ernst Zündel stands charged that he, during the year 1981, at the Municipality of
Metropolitan Toronto in the Judicial District of York, did publish a statement or tale
that he knows is false, namely the article "The West, War, and Islam", and the said
article is likely to cause mischief to the public interest in social and racial tolerance,
contrary to the Criminal Code.
2. Ernst Zündel stands further charged that he, in or about the year 1981, at the
Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto in the Judicial District of York, did publish a
statement or tale, namely "Did Six Million Really Die?" that he knows is false and
that is likely to cause mischief to the public interest in social and racial tolerance,
contrary to the Criminal Code.
On 28 February 1985, after a thirty-nine day trial, Zündel was acquitted on the charge
concerning The West, War and Islam but convicted on the charge concerning Did Six
Million Really Die?. The conviction was overturned on appeal to the Ontario Court of
Appeal on 23 January 1987 and a new trial was ordered.
The second trial of Zündel, which concerned only the booklet Did Six Million Really
Die?, commenced on 18 January 1988. This book summarizes the evidence that was
heard at the second trial over a period of three months. The last witness appeared on
26 April 1988.
The case was heard before District Court Judge Ron Thomas. Appearing for the
Crown were attorneys John Pearson and Catherine White. Acting for the accused,
Ernst Zündel, was defence attorney Douglas H. Christie.

Discredited Perspective
So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Those who advocate criminal
persecution of "Holocaust deniers" seem to be still living in the world of 1946 where
the Allied officials of the Nuremberg Tribunal have just pronounced their verdict. But
the Tribunal's findings can no longer be assumed to be valid. Because it relied so
heavily on such untrustworthy evidence as the Höss testimony, some of its most
critical findings are now discredited.
For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups desperately seek to keep
substantive discussion of the Holocaust story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by
purposely mischaracterizing revisionist scholars as "deniers." But the truth can't be
suppressed forever: There is a very real and growing controversy about what actually
happened to Europe's Jews during World War II.
Let this issue be settled as all great historical controversies are resolved: through free
inquiry and open debate in our journals, newspapers and classrooms.
Notes
1. Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 22, 1992.
2. Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal
(IMT "blue series"), Vol. 22, p. 496.
3. IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 496.
4. Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1990; See also: M. Weber, "Jewish
Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
5. Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), Jan. 30, 1992.
6. See: Barbara Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die: Report of the
Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zundel (Toronto:
Samisdat, 1992), pp. 192, 300, 349.
7. "The Revised Hilberg," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986, p. 294.
8. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), pp. 24-25.
9. A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in History
(Pantheon, 1988), p. 365.
10. Nuremberg document 008-USSR.; IMT "blue series," Vol. 39, pp. 241, 261.
11. B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), p. 441.
12. Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept. 22, 1989;
Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," Daily Telegraph (London), July 17,

Höss' Testimony
One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Höss, an SS officer who served
as commandant of Auschwitz. In its Judgment, the Nuremberg International Military
Tribunal quoted at length from his testimony to support its findings of extermination.
(note 14)
It is now well established that Höss' crucial testimony, as well as his so-called
"confession" (which was also cited by the Nuremberg Tribunal), are not only false,
but were obtained by beating the former commandant nearly to death. (note 15) Höss'
wife and children were also threatened with death and deportation to Siberia. In his
statement -- which would not be admissible today in any United States court of law --
Höss claimed the existence of an extermination camp called "Wolzek." In fact, no
such camp ever existed. He further claimed that during the time that he was
commandant of Auschwitz, two and a half million people were exterminated there,
and that a further half million died of disease. (note 16) Today no reputable historian
upholds these figures. Höss was obviously willing to say anything, sign anything and
do anything to stop the torture, and to try to save himself and his family.
Forensic Investigations
In his 1988 book, Professor Mayer calls for "excavations at the killing sites and in
their immediate environs" to determine more about the gas chambers. In fact, such
forensic studies have been made. The first was conducted in 1988 by American
execution equipment consultant, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. He carried out an on-site
forensic examination of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and
Majdanek to determine if they could have been used to kill people as claimed. After a
careful study of the alleged killing facilities, Leuchter concluded that the sites were
not used, and could not have been used, as homicidal gas chambers. Furthermore, an
analysis of samples taken by Leuchter from the walls and floors of the alleged gas
chambers showed either no or minuscule traces of cyanide compound, from the active
ingredient of Zyklon B, the pesticide allegedly used to murder Jews at Auschwitz.
(note 17)
A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report) commissioned by the
Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by Institute of Forensic Research in Krakow
has confirmed Leuchter's finding that minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can
be found in the sites alleged to have been gas chambers. (note 18)
The significance of this is evident when the results of the forensic examination of the
alleged homicidal gas chambers are compared with the results of the examination of
the Auschwitz disinfestation facilities, where Zyklon B was used to delouse
mattresses and clothing. Whereas no or only trace amounts of cyanide were found in
the alleged homicidal gas chambers, massive traces of cyanide were found in the
walls and floor in the camp's disinfestation delousing chambers.

Auschwitz
So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Surely a claim that most Auschwitz
inmates died from disease and not systematic extermination in gas chambers would be
"denial." But perhaps not. Jewish historian Arno J. Mayer, a Princeton University
professor, wrote in his 1988 study Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final
Solution" in History': ... From 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably
overall, more Jews were killed by so-called 'natural' causes than by 'unnatural' ones."
(note 9)
Even estimates of the number of people who died at Auschwitz -- allegedly the main
extermination center -- are no longer clear cut. At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal,
the Allies charged that the Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz.
(note 10) Until 1990, a memorial plaque at Auschwitz read: "Four Million People
Suffered and Died Here at the Hands of the Nazi Murderers Between the Years 1940
and 1945." (note 11) During a 1979 visit to the camp, Pope John Paul II stood before
this memorial and blessed the four million victims.
Is it "Holocaust denial" to dispute these four million deaths? Not today. In July 1990,
the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum, along with Israel's Yad Vashem
Holocaust center, conceded that the four million figure was a gross exaggeration, and
references to it were accordingly removed from the Auschwitz monument. Israeli and
Polish officials announced a tentative revised toll of 1.1 million Auschwitz dead.
(note 12) In 1993, French Holocaust researcher Jean-Claude Pressac, in a muchdiscussed
book
about
Auschwitz,
estimated
that
altogether
about
775,000
died
there

during
the
war years.
(note
13)

Professor Mayer acknowledges that the question of how many really died in
Auschwitz remains open. In Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? he wrote (p. 366):
... Many questions remain open ... All in all, how many bodies were cremated in
Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the national, religious, and
ethnic breakdown in this commonwealth of victims? How many of them were
condemned to die a 'natural' death and how many were deliberately slaughtered? And
what was the proportion of Jews among those murdered in cold blood among these
gassed? We have simply no answers to these questions at this time.
Gas Chambers
What about denying the existence of extermination "gas chambers"? Here too, Mayer
makes a startling statement (on page 362 of his book): "Sources for the study of the
gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable." While Mayer believes that such
chambers did exist at Auschwitz, he points out that
most of what is known is based on the depositions of Nazi officials and executioners
at postwar trials and on the memory of survivors and bystanders. This testimony must

Human Soap?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that the Nazis didn't use Jewish fat to
make soap? After examining all the evidence (including an actual bar of soap supplied
by the Soviets), the Nuremberg Tribunal declared in its Judgment that "in some
instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the
commercial manufacture of soap." (note 3)
In 1990, though, Israel's official "Yad Vashem" Holocaust memorial agency "rewrote
history" by admitting that the soap story was not true. "Historians have concluded that
soap was not made from human fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever
happened, why give them something to use against the truth?," said Yad Vashem
official Shmuel Krakowski. (note 4)
Wannsee Conference?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he does not accept that the January 1942
"Wannsee conference" of German bureaucrats was held to set or coordinate a program
of systematic mass murder of Europe's Jews? If so, Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda
Bauer must be wrong -- and a "Holocaust denier" -- because he recently declared:
"The public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at Wannsee the
extermination of the Jews was arrived at." In Bauer's opinion, Wannsee was a meeting
but "hardly a conference" and "little of what was said there was executed in detail."
(note 5)
Extermination Policy?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that there was no order by Hitler to
exterminate Europe's Jews? There was a time when the answer would have been yes.
Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, for example, wrote in the 1961 edition of his study,
The Destruction of the European Jews, that there were two Hitler orders for the
destruction of Europe's Jews: the first given in the spring of 1941, and the second
shortly thereafter. But Hilberg removed mention of any such order from the revised,
three-volume edition of his book published in 1985. (note 6) As Holocaust historian
Christopher Browning has noted: (note 7)
In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler order for the
"Final Solution" have been systematically excised. Buried at the bottom of a single
footnote stands the solitary reference: "Chronology and circumstances point to a
Hitler decision before the summer ended." In the new edition, decisions were not
made and orders were not given.
A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has contributed to a
controversy that divides Holocaust historians into "intentionalists" and
"functionalists." The former contend that there was a premeditated extermination
policy ordered by Hitler, while the latter hold that Germany's wartime "final solution"
Jewish policy evolved at lower levels in response to circumstances. But the crucial
point here is this: notwithstanding the capture of literally tons of German documents
after the war, no one can point to documentary evidence of a wartime extermination

Criminal Prosecution of 'Holocaust
Denial'
by Barbara Kulaszka

In recent years, more and more attention has been devoted to the supposed danger of
"Holocaust denial." Politicians, newspapers and television warn about the growing
influence of those who reject the Holocaust story that some six million European Jews
were systematically exterminated during the Second World War, most of them in gas
chambers.
In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and Austria, "Holocaust
denial" is against the law, and "deniers" have been punished with stiff fines and prison
sentences. Some frantic Jewish community leaders are calling for similar government
measures in North America against so-called "deniers." In Canada, David Matas,
Senior Counsel for the "League for Human Rights" of the Zionist B'nai B'rith
organization, says: (note 1)
The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews, including two million children.
Holocaust denial is a second murder of those same six million. First their lives were
extinguished; then their deaths. A person who denies the Holocaust becomes part of
the crime of the Holocaust itself.
Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just what constitutes
"Holocaust denial"?
Six Million?
Should someone be considered a "Holocaust denier" because he does not believe -- as
Matas and others insist -- that six million Jews were killed during World War II? This
figure was cited by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-1946. It
found that "the policy pursued [by the German government] resulted in the killing of
six million Jews, of which four million were killed in the extermination institutions."
(note 2)
Yet if that is so, then several of the most prominent Holocaust historians could be
regarded as "deniers." Professor Raul Hilberg, author of the standard reference work,
The Destruction of the European Jews, does not accept that six million Jews died. He
puts the total of deaths (from all causes) at 5.1 million. Gerald Reitlinger, author of
The Final Solution, likewise did not accept the six million figure. He estimated the
figure of Jewish wartime dead might be as high as 4.6 million, but admitted that this
was conjectural due to a lack of reliable information.

Editor's Introduction
This book began in the fall of 1987 as a series of witness evidence summaries to be
used in the then rapidly approaching second Zündel trial (which commenced on
January 18, 1988). Evidence from the second trial was later summarized for use in
preparation of the appeal to the Ontario Court of Appeal in 1989. The project
expanded considerably in 1990 when Ernst Zündel asked me to put the summaries in
a form which could be published as a record of the evidence presented in the 1988
trial. This book is the result.
Most of the considerable testimony given at the trial over a period of three months has
been condensed into summaries for the reader. The testimonies of important
historians, however, have been included almost in their entirety. These historians are
Raul Hilberg and Christopher Browning for the prosecution and Robert Faurisson and
David Irving for the defence. Every attempt has been made to ensure the accuracy of
direct quotes from the transcript and the accuracy of reproductions of exhibits referred
to in the trial. It should be noted that the questions and comments made by defence
attorney Douglas Christie, Crown Attorney John Pearson and Judge Ron Thomas are
not direct quotes unless indicated by quotation marks.
My own involvement in the Zündel case began in early 1985 when I worked part time
in the County Courthouse library in Toronto at the time of the first trial. I attended the
proceedings during my free mornings and was shocked by what I saw. There can be
nothing more disgusting than watching a man being forced to justify his writings, his
beliefs and his opinions before a criminal tribunal in a supposedly civilized and "free"
country.
Zündel was being portrayed in the media as a man of hatred; but the man I saw in the
courtroom was calm and always gracious to everyone he dealt with. When he
testified, he did not repudiate his belief in Germans or Germany or Adolf Hitler. He
expressed clearly his admiration for their accomplishments and his disbelief that they
had committed what is known as the "Holocaust". Perhaps I had never really known
what it meant to be courageous before that trial; but I knew what it meant after I
watched Ernst Zündel testify to his true beliefs notwithstanding his knowledge that
the voicing of those beliefs would almost certainly seal his conviction.
And everyday as I watched defence attorney Douglas Christie, his legal assistant
Keltie Zubko and the various defence witnesses make their way through crowds of
hostile Jews, some of whom spat on them, as I watched them being savaged by a
hysterical media, as I experienced the lynch-mob atmosphere of that trial day after
day, I learned again and again what real courage was and what real dedication to the
principles of a free society meant. It affected me profoundly. When the second Zündel
trial began in 1988, it was no accident that I had also become part of the defence
team.

While Jewish organizations and the mass media expressed satisfaction that Zündel
had been convicted, many ordinary people in Canada were shocked at the
implications of the trial for freedom of speech and thought. In a letter to the Toronto
Sun, Lynda Mortl of Toronto wrote:
Why are we Canadians allowing a certain pressure group to act as censors for us? And
worse, to have a member of society brought to trial, probably jailed, and/or deported
for saying something we will not even be allowed to read. The more I think about the
implications of this trial, the more angry and frightened I become. I am one Canadian
who does not want Sabina Citron, Alan Shefman or Julian Sher to decide what I will
read or what I will call the truth.
Indeed, the purpose of the prosecution of Ernst Zündel was to make sure that ordinary
Canadians would not have access to the type of information contained in Did Six
Million Really Die?. Even today, Canadians do not realize how far the original
"Holocaust" story has disintegrated in the face of ongoing historical research and
forensic studies of the alleged Auschwitz execution gas chambers. The tight control of
information in this regard is a wonder to behold to those of us involved in this case.
Canadians who believe they enjoy a "free" press in North America are sadly mistaken.
There is never any attempt in the mass media to analyse why more and more people
no longer believe in the "Holocaust"; there is no transferal of any basic information to
the average reader to let them decide for themselves whether there is anything to what
the revisionists say or whether it is hogwash. Instead, Zündel and anyone else who
questions Holocaust claims are simply branded as "evil" and "hatemongers".
This book ensures that both sides of this ethnic dispute are at least available to the
general reader. The record of the 1988 trial is unique in that the major historians on
both sides of the issue testified and were cross-examined relentlessly on their research
methods, bias, sources and findings. It records the only instance where Holocaust
historians have been forced to defend their assertion that the Jews of Europe were
exterminated (mainly in gas chambers) by the Nazi government during World War II.
For the reader it is a rare opportunity to see how in fact history is written, how indeed
history has become the tool of politics.
British historian David Irving testified that it is the reader who decides what
constitutes a "historical fact"; it is the reader who decides what has been proven to
happen in history and what has not. I therefore invite the reader to read the evidence
of one of the most significant trials of our century and with respect to the story of
what really happened to the Jews of Europe during World War II, to decide for
himself.
Barbara Kulaszka
August 1992

Walter Lüftl
Walter Lüftl is a professional engineer with a large engineering firm in Vienna and is
president of the Austrian Chamber of Engineers. In 1992 Lüftl wrote a report calling
the alleged extermination of millions of Jews in gas chambers "technically
impossible." He pointed out that the design of the crematories themselves showed that
they were incapable of handling the number of victims alleged. "Corpses are not
flammable material," wrote Lüftl, " to cremate them requires much time and energy."
These reports and other mounting evidence have shown the durability of the
conclusions stated in Did Six Million Really Die?. The booklet has proven to be, in
the words of Dr. Robert Faurisson, "prophetic."
Today Samisdat is proud to publish Did Six Million Really Die?: Report of the
Evidence in the Canadian "False News" Trial of Ernst Zündel, 1988. This book is the
result of four years of work and summarizes for the reader the evidence presented at
the second Zündel trial in 1988. This includes, for the Crown, the evidence of
Holocaust historians Raul Hilberg (whose evidence from 1985 was read to the jury
since he refused to reattend personally) and Christopher Browning and the evidence
of Red Cross representative Charles Biedermann. For the defence, it includes the
evidence of the premiere revisionist historian today, Dr. Robert Faurisson, that of the
internationally renowned British historian David Irving, German historian Udo
Walendy, American historian Mark Weber, Canadian crematory expert Ivan Lagacé
and Canadian aerial photograph expert Ken Wilson. It includes the evidence and the
report of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., concerning his forensic investigation of the alleged gas
chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek and the evidence of chemistry expert
Dr. James Roth concerning the cyanide content of samples removed from the alleged
Auschwitz gas chambers by Leuchter. It summarizes the evidence of the pathbreaking
Swedish
revisionist
writer,
Ditlieb
Felderer,
and
reproduces
the
revealing

photographs
of
Auschwitz
and
Birkenau
which
Felderer
showed
the
jury.

It is shocking that the persecution of Ernst Zündel has continued for ten years and
continues today with virtually no protest either in the intellectual or media elites of
Canada. These elites are apparently no longer interested in objective truth, but
interested only in maintaining the "political correctness" which will ensure access to
lucrative government and institutional positions, the continuation of government and
academic grants and the accolades of their like-minded peers. These elites did not


simply remain silent concerning the Zündel trials but participated in a feeding frenzy
of hatred against him simply because he had published a booklet questioning the
Holocaust. Few voices were raised in defence of intellectual freedom and its relation
to the workings of a true democracy. Instead, Zündel was attacked, vilified and
ridiculed. The media willingly censored the 1988 trial. The performance of these
elites in the Zündel affair has shown that they are unwilling to inform Canadians
honestly about controversial and vital issues which offend powerful vested interests;
indeed, it has proven their total corruption.
Ernst Zündel, in the foreword to the first Did Six Million Really Die?, wrote the
following words:
Truth has no need of coercion. Those who choose to ignore the truth are not punished
by law -- they punish themselves. We of Samisdat Publishers do not believe that you
should be forced to read something, any more than we believe that you should be
forced not to read something...Whether you agree or disagree with the facts presented
in this booklet, we invite you to assist us in reclaiming and safeguarding the freedoms
we have all so long enjoyed, until now, in Canada...Without freedom of enquiry and
freedom of access to information we cannot have freedom of thought and without
freedom of thought, we cannot be a free people.
Today those words apply with even greater force as more and more individuals face
prosecution in Canada and Europe for their beliefs and opinions. Samisdat offers this
book to its readers in the hope that they will reclaim for themselves the right to decide
what is truth in history.

Germar Rudolf
Germar Rudolf, a diplom chemist in Germany, investigated the sites of the alleged gas
chambers of Auschwitz and took samples for the purpose of determining cyanide
levels. Tests on the samples showed no or minimal traces of cyanide. Rudolf's report
concluded, like Leuchter's, that the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz could never
have been used for gassings. Rudolf disputed the Krakow Forensic Institute's
conclusion that the cyanide had been removed by environmental factors, pointing out
that it was well-known that cyanide compounds have enormous environmental
resistance. Ernst Zündel's attempts to call Rudolf as an expert witness on charges in
Germany regarding the "Holocaust" were prevented by the German judge.

Krakow Forensic Institute
In response to the Leuchter Report, the Auschwitz State Museum in 1990
commissioned the Krakow Forensic Institute to carry out an investigation of the
alleged gassing sites at the camp. The result of the testing of brick and mortar samples
fully corroborated the findings of Leuchter: the Institute found either no traces or
extremely small traces of cyanide in its samples. The Institute explained the test
results, however, by stating that it could not be assumed that cyanide traces would still
be detected after 45 years of being subjected to the weather and the elements. The
Krakow Forensic Institute also tested samples of hair from the Auschwitz Museum for
cyanide. The tests proved negative. (For a copy of the report and commentary, see
"An Official Polish Report on the Auschwitz 'Gas Chambers'", Journal of Historical
Review, vol. 11, pp. 207- 216).
 5

Publisher's Notes

In the early 1980s, Samisdat Publishers Ltd., under the signature of its president,
Ernst Zündel, published a 32-page booklet entitled Did Six Million Really Die?. The
booklet was published under a licence from Historical Review Press in England which
prohibited Samisdat from making any changes whatsoever to the publication.
Samisdat sent the booklet to hundreds of teachers, ministers, politicians and media
personalities across Canada in the hope that interest could be aroused in discussing
the subject explored in the booklet: did six million Jews really die pursuant to a
systematic policy of extermination by Nazi Germany during World War II?
Samisdat received no complaints regarding the booklet's factual accuracy.
Nevertheless, in 1983, Samisdat's president, Ernst Zündel, was charged under a
private information laid by Sabina Citron, a founder of the Canadian Holocaust
Remembrance Association, with the criminal offence of "spreading false news" likely
to cause racial and social intolerance. The charge was later assumed by the Crown and
led to two lengthy jury trials in 1985 and 1988, both of which ended in convictions.
There is no doubt that Did Six Million Really Die? contained errors. It was written
hastily by a young University of London graduate, Richard Verrall (who used the
pseudonym "Richard Harwood") in the early 1970s. The errors, however, were the
type of minor error which one can find in the first edition of any non-fiction book. For
example, Verrall wrote that the first allegation of mass murder of Jews was made
against the Germans in 1943 by the Polish Jew Raphael Lemkin. In fact, the first
charge of mass murder was made by the Allies in a Joint Declaration issued on
December 17, 1942. The error played no significant part in the argumentation of the
author. The significance and importance of Did Six Million Really Die? lay in its
logic, its reasoning and its opinions. It critiqued the weaknesses of the evidence and
arguments provided in orthodox "Holocaust" literature and it gave to the reader littleknown
alternate
views
of
what
happened
in
the
camps,
such
as
those
of
Dr.
Russell

Barton
(who
was present
in
Bergen-Belsen
immediately
after
its
liberation)
and
Thies

Christophersen
(who
was
stationed
near
Auschwitz
during
the
war).
It
summarized

the findings of the French revisionist historian Paul Rassinier, whose works at that
time were not known at all in the English-speaking world. In short, Did Six Million
Really Die? did what polemical works were meant to do: it provided the reader with
an alternate viewpoint on a historical event.
Two juries convicted Zündel notwithstanding devastating cross-examination of
Holocaust "survivors" and Holocaust historians by defence attorney Douglas H.
Christie and notwithstanding expert evidence which crushed the basis of the
Holocaust story, namely, the allegation that millions of Jews were done to death with
industrial efficiency in gigantic gas chambers and disposed of in crematories and
burning pits. It did not matter to the jury in the second Zündel trial in 1988 that the
warden of a United States penitentiary, Bill M. Armontrout, testified to the enormous
difficulties of gassing even one person today in gas chambers. It did not matter to the


jury that a forensic investigation of Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek by the only
expert in gas chamber technology in the United States, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., resulted
in Leuchter's opinion that no gassings could have taken place in the alleged Nazi gas
chambers. It mattered not that the Canadian crematory expert, Ivan Lagacé, testified
that the thousands of persons alleged by Holocaust historians to have been cremated
in Birkenau and Auschwitz daily were "ludicrous" and "beyond the realm of reality."
It did not matter to the jury that the internationally-known British historian David
Irving testified that he no longer believed in the "Holocaust" as it had been defined by
its historians. It did not matter that Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg refused to return
to testify in 1988 after testifying in 1985 for fear of cross- examination. It did not
matter that the Crown could not produce one expert witness in gas chambers or
crematories to refute the defence expert evidence.
If the evidence presented at the 1988 trial of Zündel was not enough to convince the
jury to acquit him, it was enough to start an explosive chain reaction of books and
studies into the veracity of the gas chamber claim. The evidence of Fred A. Leuchter,
Jr. and his report on the gas chambers at Auschwitz and Majdanek by far caused the
most reverberations. The Jewish Holocaust lobby at first ignored the Leuchter Report,
but as its influence mounted internationally, they scrambled to attempt to refute it.
The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation published the books Auschwitz: Technique and
Operation of the Gas Chambers and Truth Prevails: Demolishing Holocaust Denial:
the end of "The Leuchter Report." The success of these books in "demolishing" the
Leuchter Report can perhaps be measured by the fact that almost no one has heard of
them; the mass media, usually so willing to use anything to smear Holocaust
revisionism, has virtually ignored them.
Apparently unable to find competent experts to support the gas chamber claim among
engineers and crematory experts, the Jewish Holocaust lobby turned the use of their
considerable resources instead to ensuring the destruction of Fred Leuchter's career
and the passage of laws in France and Austria making "denial of the Holocaust" a
criminal offence. A full account of the tactics used against Leuchter can be found in
his article "Witch Hunt in Boston" (Journal of Historical Review, vol. 10, pp. 453460).
While
the
Jewish
lobby
has
succeeded
in
the
political
arena
in
having
repressive

laws
enacted
against
revisionism,
they
have
not
succeeded
in
refuting
revisionism
on

its
merits,
most
importantly
its
technical
and
forensic
evidence.
The
report
of
Fred
A.
Leuchter,
Jr.,
has
engendered
three
further
studies
of
the
gas
chambers.