[Berg:]

There is some technical complexity to this subject matter,

True. Berg hopes people will be dazzled by his science and take his word for everything he says, not checking up on him thinking it's too complicated to understand.

[Berg:]

Exterminationists who have enormous resources available to them have been too lazy - to put it as mildly as one imagine.

Here is the work. Berg was right about one thing - everyone just assumed that since it was an engine, it must have been carbon monoxide. It's one of those things that "everone knows." The problem was, the Nazi killers disposed of the evidence.

The courts and the historians believed the witnesses that gassing happened. They were lawyers and historians, not diesel engineers. No, things weren't up to the standard of forensics used in modern American courts. But that doesn't prove that the gassing didn't happen. All it proves is that the exact cause of death may have been a little different than what people thought.

[Berg:]

Before you accuse someone of murder, make sure you have a murder weapon that makes sense.

Sophistry. Murder doesn't make sense period. But it happened. It happened at Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. It happened at Auschwitz. It happened to the Armenians. It happened to millions of kulaks starved to death during Stalin's forced collectivizations. It happened in Cambodia, in Rwanda.

The Nazis tried diesels because they were available. They probably never realized how stupid they were. It made sense to the people who did it. It worked. That's all they needed or cared to know. They were killers, not diesel engineers.

[Berg:]

Surely, you must agree that to make a lethal Diesel gas chamber, a lot more is involved than simply connecting the exhaust pipe of a Diesel-driven tank or truck to a closed room. Otherwise, just headaches.

Surely you must agree that to make a lethal Diesel gas chamber, a lot more is involved than simply turning an adjustment screw somewhere on the Diesel engine. Otherwise, just headaches.

Or asphyxiation, or death by pulmonary edema due to NO_x poisoning, or some combination of toxic effects. Berg should have read the Holtz and Elliot paper, and should have done more research on toxicology as well. To make a scientific case, a lot more is involved than simply reading one graph based on two engines and handwaving through the toxicology.

[Berg:]

Surely, you must also agree that to make a lethal Diesel gas chamber, a lot more is involved than simply restricting the air intake to the engine. Otherwise, a barely noticeable effect. (See my tabulation from Henderson and Haggard.)

Holtz and Elliot show it's quite possible. Pfannenstiel noticed an effect. He called it asphyxiation. Gerstein noticed an effect. He called it death. The Jews - well, they noticed too, but that was the last thing they ever noticed.

[Berg:]

The fact, which you may indeed never concede (and that is entirely up to you), is that any Diesel gaschamber method is absurd.

Mass murder is absurd by any method. But it happens. After reading Holtz and Elliot, and looking more deeply into the toxicology, it becomes clear that it may not be the best method available, but it is feasible.

[Berg:]

Can anyone really believe the Germans would have used Diesel exhaust as a source of CO, when they had 18% to 35% CO? These were essentially the same people who built the first jet and rocket-propelled fighter airplanes, the first ballistic missiles, who also invented the gasoline engine, Diesel engine and even the automobile.

Yes, but they weren't the ones building the gas chambers. Berg is dishonestly trying to slip past the idea that every German knew as much as every other German about all these technical issues. The rocket scientists were off at Peenemunde building, well, rockets. What did Wirth and Globocnik do before the war? Were they diesel engineers?

Berg's argument only carries weight if the people who were trying to use diesels knew that they were a bad choice.

In fact, Berg argues out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, he tells us how terribly, terribly complicated it is to change the composition of the exhaust gas of a diesel, proving the murderers couldn't possibly have done it. On the other hand, he tells us how brilliant German scientists and engineers were, proving - they couldn't possibly have done it!?

Well, no. Not quite. Berg argues they wouldn't have done it, because there were better methods. His reason tells him that his way is the best, and the Nazis would have done things only in the best way, so any other story is a "dirty Jewish hoax." However, as the eminent revisionist historian Greg Raven, associate editor of the Journal for Historical Review (which Berg tells people to buy all the time) says:

It is sophistry to proclaim that something must have happened a certain way because your "reason" demands it.

With Berg's "better method" (the producer gas-powered vehicles which put out 18% to 35% CO), not only was there so high a concentration of CO that explosion was a danger (as he himself admitted with no recognition of its significance in an unquoted part of his Usenet article), but also that the vehicles in question had an alternative use, as vehicles.

The diesel engines from captured Soviet tanks had no productive use - while the German army did use some captured tanks, they were hardly able even to keep up with the repair demand for their own tanks, and thousands of Soviet tanks sat in place for the duration of the war.

Furthermore, diesel fuel is cheaper to make than gasoline - it's not so highly refined. So when Berg argues that there were better methods, he's only talking from a technical standpoint. When looked at from the viewpoint of an economist, suddenly it makes a lot more sense.

So for all his intellectual arrogance, Berg does not analyze things completely - he doesn't look at all aspects of the question.

That's the scientific end and analytical end. But there's another, more important aspect. There were witnesses. Berg ignores the testimonies of Gerstein, of Pfannenstiel, of Suchomel, or Fuchs. He says they must be liars or lunatics or victims of torture or coercion.

Suchomel appeared on camera for Lanzmann's documentary "Shoah" and didn't deny anything. He could have simply refused to appear. Did the filmmaker torture him?

Gerstein tried to get the story out during the war. He told the Swedish that Jews were being killed at Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka. He told trusted friends that killing was going on. So how did the Soviets torture him into doing that?

Pfannenstiel testified many times, and as Berg's own paper notes, his testimony always supported the Gerstein statement. Berg actually oversimplified - Pfannenstiel contradicted Gerstein on some details, but not about gassing.

Because Berg has a scientific "theory" that "proves" that diesel gas chambers are "stupid," all eyewitness testimony is dismissed.

Well, someone once "proved" that bumblebees cannot possibly fly. Do you see bumblebees walking everywhere?

When facts contradict his theory, Berg revises the facts. He is no honest scientist.

Has this paper proved that gassing did occur at Treblinka with diesel engines? No. It has only proved that contrary to Berg's claims, there is sufficient reason to believe that it is technically possible. To try to claim any more would be to engage in the same violation of scientific principles that Berg commits.

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