The below is a slightly-modified copy of the Usenet article which John Ockerbloom (spok@cs.cmu.edu) posted to alt.revisionism on July 24, 1996. The Message-ID of the original article is <4t5h9v$kjh@casaba.srv.cs.cmu.edu>. The modifications are in formatting, and slight editing adjustments. >> "All but two of the Germans in the 139 cases we investigated, had been >> kicked in the testicles beyond repair." > >http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/r/roberts.jeff/testicles I've recently had the chance to look at Arthur Butz's _The Hoax of the Twentieth Century_, where he leads off his allegations of widespread torture with a report of this anecdote. Butz's citation, which shows up two pages later, cites Freda Utley's _The High Cost of Vengeance_ and some newspaper articles. I wasn't able to retrieve the Chicago Tribune articles cited, but managed to get a look at Utley and the New York Times articles cited in this footnote and some of the cites in the following paragraphs. Utley's book (on p. 186) claims that Judge Van Roden made the quote above in remarks made to the Chester Pike Rotary Club on December 14, 1948. But she doesn't say where she got this information. (It's apparently good enough for Butz, though.) One clue to its source is a New York Times article of May 5, 1949, which Butz himself cites in his footnotes. In the article, which I looked up, Van Roden is reported as saying that an article appeared in _The Progressive_ Magazine with his by-line, but that he was *not* the author: "Judge Van Roden said he was not the author of the article. He had spoken at a luncheon, he told the committee, and later had been called by a representative of the magazine, who had asked his permission to run a condensation of his remarks under the judge's by-line. 'I didn't know what a by-line was,' the judge testified, 'and gave my permission.'" The attribution of the remarks made to Van Roden is put further into doubt by other articles that *Butz himself cites*. One such NYT article, dated March 2, 1949, reports Van Roden's criticisms of solitary confinement and mock trials, but he doesn't mention systematic brutality: instead, "Judge Van Roden said his reviewing agency had found no general conspiracy to obtain evidence improperly." Indeed, a March 5 NYT article, again included in a Butz footnote, says that one of the review board's findings was that "Physical force was not systematically applied to obtain statements, but undoubtedly in the heat of the moment on occasions the interrogators did use some physical force on a recalcitrant suspect." But you'd never know any of this from reading Butz, if you didn't check his cites. Butz claims (p. 24): "Subsequent public remarks by Van Roden and also, to some extent, by Simpson, decisively exposed the whole affair, to the point where the defendants of the trials could only haggle over the numbers of German prisoners subjected to brutalities. The review board confirmed all that Van Roden claimed, taking exception only in respect to the frequencies of the brutalities. Oddly, in his book, _Decision in Germany_, Clay denies the brutalities, but he is contradicted by his own review board." Oddly, in *his* book, Butz claims brutalities like the 137 ruined sets of testicles, and implicitly claims that Van Roden exposed this (through his citation of Utley as a source and his claim that Van Roden and Simpson "exposed the whole affair"). But he is contradicted in *his own claimed sources*! Now, I suppose Butz might have some reason to believe Utley and discount the NYT articles. If so, he could present the data in full and explain himself. But he makes *no* mention that there's even any controversy over his brutality claims in any of the sources he cites (except for his quick mention of Simpson's book, quoted above). This indicates either incompetence or dishonesty in Butz's work. (Now, if I were a 'revisionist scholar', I'd probably lop off the 'in the heat of the moment' part of the NYT quote I give above, because it makes the prosecutors look bad and seems to give some support to Butz's allegations. But I didn't. The key to respectable scholarship, as opposed to the 'revisionist' kind practiced by Butz et al, is that you present *all* the relevant evidence, and don't try to sweep difficult pieces of data under the rug. Particularly not if the data appears in sources you cite.) John Mark Ockerbloom [Note added this afternoon: trying to wriggle out of this by pointing to the 'taking exception' part of the Butz quote won't work. Butz claims that *only* allegation that the board took issue with was the number of brutalities; but we've shown that his own sources say it took exception to considerably more than that. -JMO]
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