Joachim Hoffmann

Dr. Joachim Hoffmann (December 1, 1930, Königsberg, East Prussia – February 8, 2002, Freiburg) was a German historian. From 1960 to 1995 he worked at the Military History Research Office of the Bundeswehr, finally with the title of scientific director. He has published a large number of books, among the better known is Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945 (Stalin's War of Extermination, 1995), in which he claimed that Stalin planned a war of extermination against Germany, and that Hitler attacked, to preempt an invasion by the Soviet Union.

Role in the German Historikerstreit "Battle of the Historians"

Hoffmann is a proponent of the Präventivkriegsthese or "preventive war thesis" which postulates that the Nazis only attacked to defend Germany against invasion, a claim first proposed by Adolf Hitler. Hoffmann's book, which he published upon retirement from the MGFA, Stalin’s War of Extermination equates the actions of Soviet Jews with those of the Nazis. In his theory, Stalin ordered his Jewish Minister of Propaganda, Ilya Ehrenburg, "to incite a boundless national and racial hatred against all Germans". According to Dr. Hoffmann, Ehrenburg's "unbridled frenzies of hatred" culminated in his call "to put an end to Germany...reduce the population of Germany...". Hoffmann emphasizes he victimization of Germans at the hands of Jews in particular, but goes beyond that to infer that there was no organized state plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe, merely individual Nazis who committed crimes, just as the Jews did. He states that although some Russian Jews "were responsible for the deaths of millions" "the criminal actions of individual Jews should no more reflect on the Jewish people as a whole than the criminal actions of individual Nazis on the German people" Historians who are not Hoffmann have written that there was an organized state plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe in the Nazi era, and that it was not merely individual Nazis who committed the crimes. The publication of 'Stalin’s War of Extermination' triggered a scandal and a Federal probe into right-wing extremism within the Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes. During this period, he used his status as an expert in military history acquired at The Militärgeschichtlichen Forschungsamtes to validate the book 'Dissecting the Holocaust', a collection of essays edited by Germar Rudolf at a criminal trial on charges of racial persecution. Hoffmann dismissed the number of 6 million Jewish victims as "a propaganda figure of Ehrenburg's" and proposed that "the actions of Einsatzkommando 4a of the Security Police and the SD under Blobel have experienced propagandistic inflation to the point where restoring the actual facts to their real dimensions is an obligation" Hoffmann put the number of "documentarily verifiable" deaths at Auschwitz at 74.000, and claimed that "the number of Auschwitz victims is set at a remaining 631,000 to 711,000, and a further reduction has not been ruled out." This is in stark contrast to the around 1.1 to 1.6 million put forward by historians who are not Hoffmann. He further put the blame squarely on Russian propaganda for disseminating the so called "lie of the soap", and said that "the testimony of eyewitnesses is unreliable" and "their claims with numerous examples...are indeed truly grotesque" Hoffmann assured the court that "eyewitness testimony about details of the events of the war was so unreliable that it would have been a breach of professional duties to base a historical treatise on them" In the end the defendants were convicted in spite of Hoffmann's efforts. Germar Rudolf fled to the United States where he sought and failed to receive political asylum. Rudolf arranged to have Hoffmann translated into English and is Hoffmann's publisher, an operation he runs from his prison cell in Stuttgart. Hoffmann's critiques were not limited to Russians or Russian Jews. A letter published in the Institute for Historical Review titled 'Wartime bombings of neutral Switzerland' blames the United States more than any other nation for "massively and continuously" violating Swiss neutrality, causing "great loss of life and destruction of property". In addition to the Institute for Historical Review, his works are promoted through The Barnes Review, and Noontide Press.

Scandal on Publication of Stalin’ s War of Extermination

A series of questions were put to the German Federal Government by members of the German Parliament regarding Hoffann's association with the Military Historical Office for Research,(MGFA), the apparent endorsement of the director of military archives and the theories espoused in the book.

For months the publication of "Stalins war of extermination 1941 - -1945 "by the former scientific director of the Military Historical Office for Research (MGFA) Joachim Hoffmann has been publicly debated. Hoffmann represents the so-called Preventive war thesis. Therefore, Hitler with the "operation Barbarossa" 1941 only briefly forestalled an attack by the Soviet Union . Also Hoffmann is outspoken about the "Auschwitz problem" and the "matter of the gas", for which he could find in the long run, no proof. He attributes the number of six million murdered Jews to a number from Soviet propaganda'"

Manfred Kehrig leading director of archives of the Federal archives/military archives is responsible for the preface, where the opinions of Hoffmann essentially are confirmed, and which serves in excerpts as advertisement on the envelope of the book. The preface and slogan also appeared in the second examined edition of the publication. Also Hoffmann in a further preface thanks several high federal officials, and the bureau chief of the MGFA for his assistance and support.

In the question time of 28 of February 1996 we placed several questions on the political handling of the Federal Government with that Publication. There we expressed the fear that by the support of the publication, the underlying support by Manfred Kehrig, or by the author in the preface by further high federal officials, the book is given quasi official reputation and could have an encouraging effect on the right-wing extremist scene....

Since the parliamentary State Secretary Michaela Geiger to whom several questions had been referred, had read neither the book nor the preface, (Plenarprotokoll 13/88, 7786 D, 7789 C) and an examination of the entire book in full, from 336 sides, had not yet taken place, she could not answer sufficiently numerous questions and demands. Therefore permit us to address some questions again to the Federal Government. We ask the Federal Government:...

3 a) How does the Federal Government react in particular politically, given the background of Joachim Hoffmann's former affiliation with the Military Historical Office for Research, on the publication of "Stalins war of extermination 1941--1945 " and expressions on "Auschwitzproblem", contained in it, and the statements, that for "affair of the gassing" "no proofs could be found", the number of six million of murdered Jews, is attributable to "a number from Soviet propaganda" "and" actually "Stalin bears as much guilt in the Russia campaign as Hitler"

Answer of the Federal Government on the request of the delegates Annelie Buntenbach, Volker Beck (Cologne), Winfried Nachtwei and the parliamentary group ALLIANCE 90/GREEN - print 13/5559

Attitude of the Federal Government to the preventive war thesis

It is unmistakable that the preventive war thesis of Joachim Hoffmann as well as the remarks over the so-called Auschwitz problem and over the so-called affair of gas in the relevant scientific Literature, as far as this can be determined, are unanimously rejected. It stands firmly in today's level of knowledge that the Germans Preparations for the attack starting from 22 June 1941 against the Soviet Union was not accomplished in view of a preventive strike. The question over Soviet intentions, whether the Russian archives will bring to light new realizations, must await the opening up of these archives to be deployed.

'Dissecting the Holocaust' German trial for racial persecution

One might perhaps summarize by saying that the time for conclusive declarations regarding the great persecution of the Jews has not yet come. Dr. J. Hoffmann, Acad. Director (retired) written on September 28, 1995

---

Hoffmann testified as an expert witness for the defense in the criminal trial of the publisher, editor and authors of Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte (Dissecting the Holocaust) in Tübingen Germany, for the crime of racial persecution. In his expert opinion defending the book Hoffmann cited himself:

As an historian specializing in recent and East European history, and on the basis of my decades of professional experience and practice in the academic service of the Federal Republik of Germany, I am qualified and entitled to give an expert opinion on the matter in question.

The focus is on specific individual topics regarding disputed and controversial aspects of killings of the Jews. The various contributions to the book are expertly written in a predominantly investigative style. Where detail and completeness are concerned, the body of supporting and documenting references leaves little to be desired

The individual contributions to this anthology are logically consistent and objectively descriptive in structure, even though at times a polemic note does become evident - as is perhaps inevitable in such emotionally charged topics, and as is also quite common in political and historical controversies.

Downward Revision of the Number of Auschwitz Victims

On March 1, 1945, an official Soviet announcement stated for the first time that "at least five million people were exterminated" in Auschwitz. This figure was then reduced to four million in the official Soviet communiqué of May 7, 1945. This number of 4 million victims - put about by Soviet war propaganda, in other words by the NKVD, and in no way proven by any evidence whatsoever ... Currently the number of Auschwitz victims is set at a remaining 631,000 to 711,000, and a further reduction has not been ruled out.

The Total Number of Jewish Victims

To this day the total number of Jewish victims is generally given as 6 million. According to the current opinion of the German experts on contemporary history, this figure was first provided to the Americans by SS Sturmbannführer Dr. Hoettl in spring 1945, and repeated at the IMT in Nuremberg on November 26, 1945. It must be noted, however, that this selfsame figure was demonstrably first put forth in the foreign press as early as January 4, 1945, several weeks prior to the January 27, 1945, liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp (with its alleged 4 million victims) - put about by none other than the infamous Soviet Minister of Propaganda, Ilya Ehrenburg. Thus it was Ehrenburg who came up with the figure of six million.[cf. Joachim Hoffmann, Stalin’ s War of Extermination 1941 – 1945, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2001, pp. 189f.]

Regarding Ehrenburg himself, it must be mentioned that in 1941 Stalin had given him the general order to incite a boundless national and racial hatred against all Germans. Ehrenburg's years-long unbridled frenzies of hatred culminated in his call to "put an end to Germany" and in an effort which he described as "modest and honorable", namely "to reduce the population of Germany", towards which end the only thing left to decide was whether it would be better "to kill the Germans with axes or with clubs".

one need only consider the claim (widely accepted in Germany in particular, but now denied by Yad Vashem itself) that the Germans had manufactured soap from the bodies of murdered Jews - a fabrication that also goes back to Soviet war propaganda.

The Problem of Eyewitness Testimony

Several contributions to this anthology point out, and rightly so, that the testimony of eyewitnesses is unreliable; these contributions back their claims with numerous examples, some of which are indeed truly grotesque....My personal experience has been that as early as 1970 eyewitness testimony about details of the events of the war was so unreliable that it would have been a breach of professional duties to base a historical treatise on them

Benz's Anthology Dimension des Völkermords Wolfgang Benz "Dimension of Genocide"

One example in this context is Benz's 1991 anthology Dimension des Völkermords, which displays a downright disarming ignorance of the state of affairs on the Soviet side...Benz bases his studies uncritically on the announcements made by Soviet war propaganda and on the publications about Soviet show trials....Benz attempts, by means of elaborate statistical minutiae, to prove the correctness of the six-million figure. ...Benz is entirely unaware that Ehrenburg had already introduced the six-million figure into the annals of war propaganda on January 4, 1945. Thus, he will have to accept the charge that, though unwittingly, he has really only worked to confirm a propaganda figure of Ehrenburg's.

Babi Yar

The mass execution of Jewish inhabitants of Kyiv, known as the massacre of Babi Yar, is also subjected to justified and necessary criticism ...the actions of Einsatzkommando 4a of the Security Police and the SD under Blobel have experienced propagandistic inflation to the point where restoring the actual facts to their real dimensions is an obligation

The prosecution argued that the phrases in the book "supposed annihilation camp", "Auschwitz club", "Holocaust religion", "identity-forming group phantasies", "supposed genocide", "established Holocaust scene", "lead ad absurdum" to deny the Nazi murder of Jews and therefore qualify as race persecution. According to the States Attorney, the expert witness Dr. Hoffmann was not competent to judge whether the book was scientific as a jurist and his expert report should therefore be disregarded. The publisher Grabert should be sentenced to 9 months prison with possibility of parole.

The court found that phrases such as "supposed", "presumed", "victim of the Jews", "imputed forethought", "furious phantasies", denied the Holocaust and therefore qualified as the crime of race persecution. On June 15, 1996, judge Burkhardt Stein from Tübingen County Court ordered the confiscation and incineration of all books Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte and the destruction of all means for manufacturing them.

Common Techniques of Holocaust Denial Employed By Hoffman

The Auschwitz Numbers Gambits

Holocaust deniers rely on several common gambits, or ploys, which scholars are familiar with, when accounting for the number killed at Auschwitz to distract from the known facts. These are know as Auschwitz Numbers gambits.

The Four Million Variant

This selfsame figure was demonstrably first put forth in the foreign press as early as January 4, 1945, several weeks prior to the January 27, 1945, liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp (with its alleged 4 million victims) - put about by none other than the infamous Soviet Minister of Propaganda, Ilya Ehrenburg. Thus it was Ehrenburg who came up with the figure of six million.

Joachim Hoffmann, Stalin’ s War of Extermination 1941 – 1945, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2001, pp. 189f.

In studies of Holocaust denial tactics, specific reference to the 1945 Soviet figures for Auschwitz is known as the four million variant of The Auschwitz gambit.

The Auschwitz Shell Game

"Daß die dokumentarisch verbürgte Zahl von 74.000 nur einen Teil der tatsächlichen Verluste umfassen kann, dürfte im übrigen nicht zu bezweifeln sein."

Joachim Hoffmann, Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945 Verlag für Wehrwissenschaften, München 1995, Seite 302 f.

Where Did They Go?

No records were kept of people murdered after selections at the Auschwitz train station; they were never assigned numbers or entered into camp records. Franciszek Piper, head of the Historical Department at the Auschwitz State Museum collected the more accurate records of people deported to Auschwitz, and subtracted the number of people known to have been transferred to other camps or to have survived the war.

Deportees to Auschwitz	1,300,000
Transfers:	-212,820
Released prisoners:	-1,500
Liberated Prisoners:	-8000
Total Dead:	1,077,180

1. (1,300,000 deportees minus 200,000 survivors), at least 1,100,000 persons were killed or died in the camp. But if this number is regarded as a minimum estimate, what figure can we accept as a hypothetical ceiling?...a hypothetical increase in the number of Jews killed at Auschwitz can occur only if one lowers the estimates of losses in other camps and extermination sites and adjusts the Auschwitz tally accordingly. [...] If Auschwitz is "credited" with this difference,the number of Jewish victims killed in the camp would rise to about 1.35 million, with the total number of Auschwitz victims reaching about 1.5 million.

• Piper, F., "The Number of Victims," in Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp.,

• Gutman, Yisrael, and Michael Berenbaum. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. (Published in association with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.)

The Chemistry of Auschwitz

"Forensic chemistry is, I repeat, an exact science."

Holocaust-denier David Irving, introduction to the Leuchter Report, 1988

"[C]hemistry is not the science which can prove or refute any allegations about the Holocaust 'rigorously'."

Holocaust-denier and chemist Germar Rudolf

response to Rich Green, 1998

The So Called Lie of the Gas

According to Hoffmann on the "affair of the gassing" "no proofs could be found"

The reports of Holocaust deniers Leuchter, Lüftl and Rudolf have been used to claim that there is no proof that gas was used to kill people at Auschwitz. Scientific studies belie this claim.

The Soap Gambit

Der Sowjetische Ankläger, Oberjustizrat Smirnov, hatte vor dem Internationalen Militärgerichtshof am 19. Februar 1946 des langen und breiten und auf der Basis fabrizierten Materials (USSR-196, USSR-197, USSR-393) die Anklage vorgetragen, die Deutschen hätten aus den Leichen ermordeter Juden fabrikmäßig Seife hergestellt.

The Soviet prosecutor, Chief Counselor Smirnov, had soap brought before the International Military Court... and on the basis of this material made the accusation that the Germans would have had industrial production of soap, made from the corpses of murdered Jews

Joachim Hoffmann, Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945 Verlag für Wehrwissenschaften, München 1995, Seite 162

Immoral Equivalence

The Bolshevik Canard

Regarding Ehrenburg himself, it must be mentioned that in 1941 Stalin had given him the general order to incite a boundless national and racial hatred against all Germans. Ehrenburg's years-long unbridled frenzies of hatred culminated in his call to "put an end to Germany" Hoffmann

It is common for deniers to attempt to displace blame onto Soviet Jews. This is known amongst scholars of denial as "The Bolshevik Canard". In fact Russians, Communists or Russian Communist Jews, did not attempt to exterminate the "German race", and there was no plan for a "final solution" of the "German problem" in Europe.

The Allied Bombing Canard

"none of the nations at war so massively and continuously challenged Swiss neutrality, and caused such great loss of life and destruction of property, as the bombers and fighter planes of the United States air force." Hoffmann

It is common for deniers to attempt to displace blame onto Allied bombing, claiming that what they did was just as bad or immoral.

The Jewish Non Sequitur Gambit

The National Socialist war on the Soviet Union was conducted in the spirit of a statement once made by Benjamin Disraeli, the Earl of Beaconsfield: "The racial question is the key to world history". It should be born in mind, in this regard, that, by the very nature of things, no conflict between the National Socialist German Reich and the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, could possibly resemble an "ordinary" war; the war was inevitably fated to acquire extraordinary features from the very outset. War of Extermination pp 331

It is well know that Benjamin Disraeli the Prime Minister of Great Britain, and romantic novelist, was of Jewish Parentage. Hoffmann is paraphrasing a line from the character Baron Sergius in Disraeli's 1880 novel Endymion. Baron Sergius is not telling young Endymion how to conduct a war of extermination in Europe. ( CHAPTER LVI )

Historic Exponents of Hoffmann's Preventative 'War of Extermination' Thesis

The "Victorious Red Army" with its Jewish Propaganda Minister and many thousands of surviving Jewish-Bolshevik troops, along with their allies, burdened with the historic baggage of Novel writing Prime Ministers and guilty American bombers, Crushed Germany in 1945. Hoffmann does not point out the killing pits or gas cellars for German women and children in "Stalins War of Extermination". Historians who are not Hoffmann do not agree that he fulfilled his "obligation" to debunk the "propagandistic inflation" Paul Blobel and Einsatzkommando 4a suffered in the wake of Babi Yar. However they have illuminated the historic rational for a Preventative War of Extermination. It was expressed by Blobel's comrade and superior to the South. On trial for his life Otto Ohlendorf, Commander of Einsatzgruppen D didn't need a whole book to explain why every child needed to be killed in order to defend Germany.

I believe that it is very simple to explain, if one starts with the fact that this order did not only try to achieve a temporary security (for Germany) but also a permanent security. For that reason, the children were people who would grow up and surely, being the children of parents who had been killed, would constitute a danger no smaller than that of their parents.

Current Intellectual Supporters and Promoters

Germar Rudolf is the editor of the book who requested Hoffmann's aid, and whom he defended in his court testimony. Rudolf fled to the United States to avoid prosecution under European laws against Holocaust denial. He was able to operate a web site from there and attempted to claim political asylum. He was deported in 2005 and is now in prison in Stuggart. His and other Holocaust denial web sites promote Hoffmann's works.

The Institute for Historical Review also published his article 'Wartime bombings of neutral Switzerland' in which he decries that "none of the nations at war so massively and continuously challenged Swiss neutrality, and caused such great loss of life and destruction of property, as the bombers and fighter planes of the United States air force."

His work is distributed by Castle Hill Publishers exclusive publishers of Holocaust Denial literature. Hoffmann's 'Stalin's War of Extermination' is featured alongside Germar Rudolf: Dissecting the Holocaust, (a collection of essays, which contains within it Hoffmann's defense of the book), Arthur R. Butz:The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry ,Germar Rudolf, Carlo Mattogno: Auschwitz-Lies. Legends, Lies, and Prejudices on the Holocaust, Carlo Mattogno: Bunkers of Auschwitz. Black Propaganda versus History etc, etc.

'Stalin's War of Extermination' is featured on "The Barnes Review" Selected Book List, a creation of American neo-Nazi Willis Carto.

'Dissecting the Holocaust' is promoted through Noontide Press also founded by Carto.

Selected Works

• Die Ostlegionen 1941 - 1943. Turkotartaren, Kaukasier, Wolgafinnen im deutschen Heer, 1976
• Deutsche und Kalmyken 1942 - 1945, 3. Auflage 1977
• Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, in: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, mit Jürgen Förster; Horst Boog, 1987
• Kaukasien 1942/43. Das deutsche Heer und die Orientvölker der Sowjetunion, 1991
• Die Angriffsvorbereitungen der Sowjetunion 1941 ,in: Zwei Wege nach Moskau. Vom Hitler-Stalin-Pakt bis zum "Unternehmen Barbarossa" , München und Zürich 1991
• Stalins Vernichtungskrieg 1941-1945, Herbig Verlag, [3rd edition] 1999 ISBN 3-7766-2079-X
  • Reviewed by R.C.Raack in Slavic Review Vol. 55, No. 2 (Summer, 1996), pp. 493-494
• Berlin Friedrichsfelde. Ein deutscher Nationalfriedhof, 2001
• Die Tragödie der 'Russischen Befreiungsarmee' 1944/45. Wlassow gegen Stalin, Herbig Verlag, 2003 ISBN 3-7766-2330-6

External links

• Template:PND