HOW BIDEN’S STATE DEPARTMENT WOULD ASSESS HITLER’S EXTERMINATION CAMPS
By Bruce Fein
Suppose the United States State Department was tasked during World War II to assess whether Adolf Hitler’s extermination camps violated international humanitarian law (IHL)
Suppose the State Department used the same Orwellian language as was displayed regarding Israel in its May 9, 2024, Report to Congress under Section 2 of the National Security Memorandum on Safeguards and Accountability with Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Services (NSM-20).
Here is what the extermination camp report would say.
We have engaged at all levels with the Government of the Third Reich to understand its view of the applicable legal framework and the protocols it has embraced to guarantee compliance with international humanitarian law. Hitler, Goring, Goebbels, Himmler, and Von Ribbentrop effusively praised IHL. They chorused that they are seeking to minimize gas chamber deaths. We are uncertain as to their reliability. Third Reich lies have been told in the past, including in Munich. But we do not have informants in the extermination camps that can provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt of Hitler’s genocide of Jews and the mounting corpses from the Zyklon B gas chambers. A few reports from escapees are not enough.
No Nazis have been prosecuted. But at least investigations have been announced. Whether they are sincere only God knows. “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” Matthew 5-7.
Other than deductions from Mein Kampf, the Nuremburg laws, and Kristallnacht, we have no direct proof that the Third Reich is intentionally targeting Jews.
The Third Reich’s commitment to IHL is not necessarily discredited by gas chamber deaths. Hitler insists he will be do better in the future, and diminish the lethality of Zyklon B. Moreover, the Third Reich confronts an extraordinary military challenge after attacking the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa.
In conclusion, we cannot say with certainty that we have disproved with undisputed direct evidence the uniform assertions of the Nazi leadership that they are not intentionally operating extermination camps to destroy Jews.