Discovering Absurdistan

     

• What kind of a country is it where a considerable part of the people think, singing their national anthem could be forbidden?
• What country is it where folksingers might be put in jail for singing peaceful songs?
• What kind of a country is it where a mother of five gets a prison term for having sold one CD with peaceful music on it?
• What country is it where a pastor raising his national flag in his church would get kicked out of his parish for being an extremist?
• What country is it where somebody raising his country's flag would be harassed by his neighbors for being an extremist?
• What country is it where a teacher suggesting that all students should sing the national anthem first thing every morning would lose his job for being an extremist?
• What country is it where showing uncompromised flags of its past is considered a threat to "public peace"?
• What country is it where people can get fined for raising an arm to wave their hands at a person?
• What country is it where people can be fined for collecting and displaying full-scale models of historical weapons?
• What country is it where one can be fined or sent to jail for showing symbols and insignia that have been, and still are, used in many cultures for centuries and millennia?
• What country is it where a professor who writes his disbelief about certain historical events in a footnote, written in Latin, in a scholarly anthology can be prosecuted and threatened with jail?
• What country is it where a judge, writing a well-founded, but highly controversial book on historical topics, sees his book confiscated and burned, his pension cut, and his PhD title withdrawn as a result of this?
• What country is it where a highly renowned historian writing a well-founded book of his country's history can be threatened with prosecution because what he found out is not liked by the authorities?
• What country is it where a history teacher is sent to jail for uttering historical dissent in a private letter to a high-profile personality?
• What country is it where a professor criticizing internationalism can be kicked out of his job, harassed, prosecuted and driven into suicide?
• What country is it that sends a historical dissenter to prison for more than two years just because he published peaceful, scholarly historical material?
• What country is it that denigrates, defames and humiliates its war veterans to such a degree that finally one of them burns himself publicly in protest against what he calls a "Niagara flood of lies" against his generation?
• What country is it that outlaws the commemoration of such a self-sacrifices and punishes everybody who dares to publish this man's last appeal?
• What country is it where well-founded, heavily footnoted books on political and historical topics, authored by academics with plenty of credentials, can be confiscated and burned by the authorities?
• What country is it where authors, editors, publishers, printers, wholesalers, retailers, importers and exporters, warehouses, and customers buying more than two copies of a certain medium can be prosecuted for producing, stocking, importing/exporting, distributing dissenting political and historical literature?
• What country is it that hides from its citizens, which media are outlawed, so that one cannot possibly know whether or not one commits a crime when distributing such media?
• What country is it where judges are threatened with prosecution because they did not punish political and historical dissenters harshly enough?
• What country is it that outlaws the introduction of exonerating evidence?
• What country is it that prosecutes defense lawyers if they try to introduce exonerating evidence on behalf of their clients?
• What country is it that does not keep records of what is said and is happening during trial proceedings?
• What country is it that has institutions designed to conduct political trials?
• What country is it that has a huge spy agency designed to snoop on opposition groups?
• What country is it where members of certain political opposition groups considered constitutional can nevertheless be deprived of some of their civil rights?
• What country is it that, according to experts, will be a totalitarian state very soon, if things keep developing as they did so far?
• What country is it where even the mainstream media admit that this country is in a state of hysteria while persecuting political dissidents?
• What country is it where the head of state asks for children to spy on their parents and parents to spy on their children to make sure they do not harbor unwanted political views?
• What country is it where authorities and the public declare publicly to fight everything that is deemed to be politically on the right?
• What country is it where the authorities declare that half of their population deserves to be ostracized for harboring political views?
• What country is it that is proud of conducting more than 10,000 criminal prosecutions against persons for having committed peaceful "thought crimes"?
• What is the country in the world with the second harshest censorship after China?

The correct answer is:

Surprised? If so, read on.

Germany's national anthem was written in 1848 by Ludwig von Fallersleben, and it is sung to a melody of Joseph Haydn. In contrast to many other national anthems, it has no military, imperialistic or violent content, but restricts itself to a description of Germany, Germans, and their ideals. By a misrepresentation of a section of its first verse, however, certain anti-German forces managed to give it a bad reputation. The first verse reads in translation:

This verse is obviously totally defensive, but by omitting the second line, it can be misrepresented as a claim of German superiority, which is contrary to the actual content. The third and fourth lines describe characteristic borderline rivers (Maas, Memel, Etsch) or parts of the Baltic Sea (Belt), which in 1848, when this song was written, were actual geographic, political and/or ethnic borders of Germany. That they are no longer today, is a result of two lost world wars, after which the victorious powers conquered and annexed huge parts of German territory and partly expelled and killed millions of Germans. Today, singing this verse is often viewed as if territorial claims are being made against Germany's neighbors, though strictly seen it isn't Germany that has territorial claims, but its neighbors, who simply managed to realize their claims with brute force since 1918, killing millions of Germans along the way. Hence, singing this verse should not be seen as an aggressive territorial claim, but as an eternal reminder of the huge illegal losses in territory and human life Germany suffered since the beginning 20^th century.

The two other verses of the German national anthem are pretty harmless, the second describing what the Germans are proud of (German loyalty, German wine, German singing, and German women), and the third is an appeal to unity, justice and liberty, three ideals that were not given in the politically splintered and often despotic Germany of 1848.

As a result of these historical and territorial problems, the first two verses of this anthem are never sung at official occasions, since the first verse is considered to cause diplomatic trouble with Germany's conquering neighbors and public relation problems with the media. But even singing the third verse or merely playing the melody of Germany's national anthem is everything but common practice in Germany. It is basically restricted to international events in sports and politics, for example when the German national soccer team plays against another team, or when some high foreign official is greeted with his country's anthem, followed by the melody of the German anthem.

Otherwise, singing the German national anthem is considered to be something for either morons or neo-Nazis in Germany, as a British newspaper observed correctly in 2001.[1] In the 1980s, there were still a few public radio stations in Germany that would play the melody of the German anthem at midnight, and once in a while I used to pop up the volume of my radio to maximum, and put it right at my opened window to let all the neighbors and all the students in my dormitory hear it. This was and still is quite a provocation, as most people really think that somebody who does that must be either insane or a Nazi. Consequently, this was one of the reasons why a lecture announcement (about abortion) that I posted on one of those days was nicely embellished with a swastika after just one day.

To understand the degree to which German self-denigration has lead, I had to come to the United States and experience myself - with great surprise and a bit of an uncomfortable feeling - that the first thing the entire school did in the morning was to sing the national anthem as it was broadcasted over the loud speakers. If any teacher or headmaster would even dare to suggest such a practice in Germany, s/he would probably lose his job on the spot for being a right-wing extremist. Not even I, who considers himself to be a patriot, would have thought of letting all students sing the anthem each and every morning. This seems extreme to me, that is to say, right-wing radical. But here in the U.S., it is considered to be just perfectly normal.

Because of the artificial controversy about the first verse of the German national anthem, domestic as well as foreign media are spreading rumors or false news that it is actually illegal in Germany to sing this first verse. This is not true at all. But today, many Germans believe it.[2]

What should one think of a country where a considerable percentage of the population believes that it is illegal to sing its national anthem? What should one think of a people, which considers it to be alright that its national anthem is (allegedly) illegal? And what is one to think of a country where considerable parts of the population find it not irritating that songs could possibly be outlawed in the first place?

Unfortunately, things are just as bad in Germany, and even worse. As a matter of fact, many songs are actually outlawed in Germany, most of them because they have a military connotation, others only because they were sung during the third Reich, and others again because they allegedly or actually incited to unfavorable feelings to identifiable groups. As an example, I would like to refer to the case of Frank Rennicke, a German folksinger who composes and sings patriotic and nationalistic songs. Rennicke is as old as I am. He lives in a small town in southern Germany, only a few miles away from where I once lived. Eventually, I had the chance to meet him, and though his music is not always my style and I also do not agree with all of his political views, we became friends.

In 1986, Frank composed a song in which he describes the terrible experience of Germans who lost their home, their goods, and many of them even their lives during the last war. In a second part of this song, Frank draws parallels with today's Germany, where Germans are supposedly again expelled from their home by a massive immigration of foreigners, in his view forced upon Germany by the then occupying forces (Americans and Russians). The song ends with the following two lines:

Mainly because of these two lines, the song was banned from distribution in Germany in 1996. As a consequence, Frank rewrote the song and simply omitted these two lines. I won't translate the entire song here, but these two lines are really the only ones that could possibly be interpreted as causing some irritations for "alien people" (foreigners). The rest of the song is much milder. Though still expressing discomfort with the presence and activities of aliens, it doesn't ask for their removal.

Because Frank kept distributing this truncated song, he was sentenced to 17 months in prison on  probation in early 2003. Frank is a father of five children and has no criminal record. His wife, who was found guilty of having taken ONE order over the phone for one copy of this song, was sentenced to five months on probation. And this is just one case out of many, one that touched me personally.

So what kind of a country is it where folksingers are threatened with prison for their (unpopular) songs, and where mothers are threatened to go to jail for taking just one(!) order for a music CD?[3]

For centuries, Germany had no flag, or at least not a flag accepted to represent the entire nation, since Germany was split in many principalities for most of her history. The first flag that was seen by many Germans to represent the nation was the one adopted from the colors of one of the student fraternities whose members volunteered to fight against Napoleon in 1813: Black, Red, Gold. However, in lack of an all-comprising German nation based upon the will of the people, it was not to be accepted officially by any German monarchy. Only after the demise of the German Kaiserreich after WWI, it was introduced in Germany, but it was not accepted by a considerable part of the nation. For many, the so-called Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag, see picture) represented a more glorious Germany. This flag was introduced by the Second German Reich, the Kaiser, as a symbol of its Army. Since the Kaiserreich was a confederation, where all membership states, kingdoms and smaller monarchies, had their own symbols, flags, rulers, independent police forces and armies, the Imperial War Flag was a symbol representing the whole, which was accepted by many people. Hence, still today, this flag is a strong symbol of German glory.

The first official flag to be accepted by the huge majority of all Germans was - unfortunately - the swastika flag used between 1933 and 1945. After WWII, the Black-Red-Gold flag was introduced again, this time to be accepted by all, accept for the Austrians who, forced by the victorious powers, had to say goodbye from their German motherland and stay independent.

As with singing their national anthem, the Germans have similar problems with showing their flag, though it is not historically compromised at all. The first time I realized that there is something different with Germany as compared to other countries was during a summer vacation in Switzerland when my mother and we kids visited a Swiss catholic church. The ceiling of that church showed a scene from the New Testament where Jesus rises from his tomb in glory, holding the Swiss flag in his hand. It is incomprehensible to me, why Jesus would hold any flag in his hand, not to mention a Swiss flag, a country that did not even exist 2000 years ago. I considered this a kind of displaced patriotism.

However, having lived in the US for a while, I have realized that in this country, too, having the national flag somewhere hoisted in the church doesn't seem to be anything unusual. However, if any pastor or priest in Germany would suggest to have the German flag displayed anywhere in his church, I assume he would be ousted as a right-wing extremist and, if persisting, would be kicked out of his parish.

Similarly, if a German mayor of any city would suggest to have German flags decorate the city throughout, as it is quite common in the US, particularly after 9/11, he would need to have an extreme patriotism which, if detected while running for office, would prevent him to come into office in the first place, and if exposed only while in office, the media would make such a huge right-wing radical scandal out of this that this mayor certainly would be forced to resign.

It can be a similarly unpleasant experience to try to hoist the German flag in one's front yard, if there is no particular reason to do so. This would be taken as evidence for right-wing extremism by the environment and would lead to a social ostracizing, which can become quite unpleasant. As The Independent recently noted correctly, raising the German national flag, like singing her national anthem, is considered to be something for "morons and neo-Nazis".[1]

In the early 1990s, when a wave of patriotism was going through Germany after its reunification, many people dared showing the Reichskriegsflagge again, that is, the imperial war flag of the Kaiser's time. As a reaction to this, the authorities declared it a misdemeanor to show this flag in public.[4] It is that simple in Germany to ban the showing of uncompromised symbols. Just because some media and politicians didn't like it.

Needless to say that showing any flags of the Third Reich is outright illegal in Germany and can be punished with heavy prison terms. A legal practice that was even unheard of during the Third Reich. Similarly, all kinds of symbols used during the Third Reich are illegal to show in Germany. This does not only include the swastika and the SS-Runes, but many other rune symbols and insignia which are identical or only similar to symbols and insignia used during the Third Reich period. Some of these symbols were in use in various cultures of the world for many centuries or even millennia. Showing them in Germany, however, leads to prison terms.[5]

Let us assume somebody collects models of warplanes and tanks, as so many people do. What to do with the German weapons of WWII, which all had certain insignia on them? Displaying such models with the historically correct, but politically incorrect insignia in Germany is a crime. Even if you have such items only in your private collection, if you are so unfortunate to tell your neighbor about this, he might be so mean and denounce you to the authorities, which can lead to a house search, confiscation of the items in question, and a prosecution for displaying illegal symbols. This, too, is an extreme overreaction, which was not even heard of during the Third Reich.

Another topic is the so-called "Hitler salute" (stiff arm salute, originally a Roman salute, as so many things used by Hitler Germany). It is illegal in Germany and can be punished with fines or imprisonment. However, consider this:

Two friends of mine, who are certainly no Nazis and would never consider using this salute, once visited an ongoing trial against a historical dissenter. The local Jewish community sent one of their representatives to this trial, as it is usually the case during such cases. As my friends approached the courtroom, they saw an acquaintance in the hallway waiting to be admitted as a visitor. My friends greet their acquaintance by briefly lifting an arms and waving at him. The representative of the Jewish community files a criminal complaint against both for having used the "Hitler salute". They are both indicted. The older of my two friends can prove that a) he was not a member of the Nazi party during the war, and b) his right arm is disabled, which proves that he could not possibly have made a stiff right-arm salute. So he gets acquitted. My other friend cannot prove that he was not a Nazi during the war, because he was born after the war, and he also cannot prove that he cannot lift his right arm, since he is healthy. So he gets convicted and needs to pay a hefty fine. Hence, any German encountering anybody lifting his arm to a greeting, and if only for a wave, will experience what I do: a Pavlovian reflex like somebody had given me a high voltage shock. Seeing somebody rising one arm, for what reason so ever, is frightening to Germans. Yes, we Germans are paranoid; we were made paranoid by our society. But this is only the start. Just read on.

In 1979, German historian Prof. Dr. Hellmut Diwald published a book simply entitled „German History".[6] It covered 2000 years of history, of which an appropriate amount of pages dealt with the Third Reich. When dealing with the concentration camps and the Holocaust, Diwald ended his section about this topic by stating that what really happened during this time is still not really clear, that many questions are still open, and that much more research needs to be done. This sufficed to trigger a storm of outrage both in the media as well as in academia. Eventually, Diwald's publisher changed this statement in a second edition - without asking the author - to the effect that it then expressed horror and outrage about the unimaginable atrocities committed during the Holocaust, an emotional statement which is quite common, but is neither scholarly nor does it solve any of the scientific problems surrounding this event in history.[7]

After Prof. Diwald had died in 1993, several prominent German scholars compiled a commemorative anthology for him.[8] One of the contributing authors was Dr. Robert Hepp, professor for sociology in Osnabrück. In his contribution, he retold the story of this "Diwald scandal." While so doing, he mentioned in one footnote:[9]

In brief: Prof. Hepp declares here that in Germany everybody is punished who publicly expresses certain dissenting views. If one nevertheless does want to speak out because truth demands it, one has to use certain methods. For this reason, this footnote is in Latin. Next, Prof. Hepp denies that the story about gas chambers used during the genocide of Jews in so-called extermination camps is a true story. He says he has been convinced by scholarly revisionist arguments.

Because of this footnote in Latin language, Prof. Hepp was prosecuted for "Instigating to hatred" and "Incitement of the masses". Since the statute of limitations was already passed, he could not be prosecuted, but the commemorative anthology was subsequently confiscated[10] and burned in waste incinerators under the supervision of the German police.[11] How a Latin footnote can incite anybody to hatred, not to mention "the masses", remains a riddle. And what kind of a system is it that burns scientific, commemorative anthologies written on behalf of one of the nation's great post-war historians?

A single case? Far is this from being true. In these matters, this is actually the rule in "democratic" Germany. The first and most spectacular burning of a scholarly, heavily footnoted historical book by the German authorities occurred in the early 1980s. Victim was a book written by a retired judge who analyzed the historical and legal foundations of several trials held against defendants, who were accused of having committed crimes in the former concentration camp Auschwitz.[12] Since the author openly showed his disagreement with the "official" version of history and came to "wrong" conclusions, the book was confiscated and destroyed. Not enough with that, Stäglich saw his pension cut down, and the University of Göttingen, where Stäglich had made his PhD in 1951, withdraw his PhD title.[13] This was done with reference to a law introduced in 1939 by Adolf Hitler.[14] The law says that an academic degree can be withheld or revoked if the owner of a title proves to be "academically unworthy." Today's legal understanding in Germany assumes such unworthiness, if the academic credentials have been used to commit a crime leading to a prison term of more than one year.[15] Though Dr. Stäglich was not sentenced to anything - he could not be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired - the German Federal Constitutional Court nevertheless decided that the University of Göttingen acted perfectly legally.[16]

The most rabid reaction of the German authorities so far was doubtlessly caused by an anthology authored by some 15 scholars from various countries. The book critically analyzed various aspects of the Holocaust and came to several quite controversial conclusions.[17] Though two well-renowned German mainstream historians testified publicly and in court on behalf of this book, endorsing it as a scholarly book which ought to be protected by the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of science,[18] the book was nevertheless confiscated and burned,[19] criminal proceedings started against authors, the editor, the publisher, the printer, wholesalers, and retailers.[20] After the authorities confiscated the customer list of this book, over 100 house searches where conducted all over Germany at customers, who had bought more than two copies of said work, indicating that they had an "illegal" intention to distribute the work.[21] All books found were confiscate and burned. In protest against this rampage, some 1,000 German academics published an "Appeal: Freedom of Expression is Endangered" in various German newspapers[22] - to no avail.[23]

In another example, another famous German historian barely escaped criminal prosecution for his historically accurate, but politically "incorrect" findings. For decades, Dr. Joachim Hoffmann was a leading scientist at the German government-owned Research Institute for Military History. His field of expertise was Russia, and the German-Russian war 1941-1945 in particular. Just prior to his retirement, he published a thoroughly researched and well-documented book on the way Stalin planned and conducted this war. Hoffmann shows how Stalin planned as early as 1939 to overrun and conquer all of continental Europe, what extremely cruel method he used to force his soldiers to fight an unwanted war, how he unleashed a reign of terror over not only his own people, but all people that he (re-)conquered during the years 1943-1945. But what enraged many left-wing politicians and media personalities most was the fact that Hoffmann exposed some of the Soviet atrocity propaganda unleashed against Germany exactly as what it was: untrue or exaggerated war-time propaganda. Since Hoffmann also touched upon certain aspects of the "Holocaust" in this context, proving the propaganda origin and untruthfulness of certain aspects, this lead to voices calling for Hoffmann's prosecution and the confiscation of his book. Only because the judge responsible to decide whether or not a trial should be held was a personal friend of Dr. Hoffmann, was he left unharmed.[24] He was also told that a prosecution could not be avoided anymore, should he change only one word in his book, because this would renew the statute of limitations.[25]

The sad story of this attempt of censorship is described in the book itself, which I published in English in 2001. A longer, clearer, and more courageous preface attacking the restriction of freedom of speech in Germany was initially written by Prof. Topitsch, an Austrian historian who had published on the German-Russian war himself. But facing an escalating wave of prosecution of historians (see next section), Prof. Topitsch got so scared that only a very brief preface was finally approved by him.[26]

Prof. Werner Pfeifenberger once taught political science at a fine German university. Then he committed the crime of quoting the German communist Kurt Tucholsky out of context. Tucholsky once wrote that the German bourgeois should be asphyxiated. As dramatic as this sounds, read in context it is not that dramatic anymore. Since Prof. Pfeifenberger had used this and other quotations in an article he wrote juxtaposing nationalism and internationalism, he was massively attacked for being a right-winger. First, Prof. Pfeifenberger temporarily lost his job at the state university where he worked. He fought against this dismissal and won. But in a later case, he lost and was hence removed from his chair and "promoted" to a small university in nowhere-land. Next, certain political and media lobbies demanded that he ought to lose this job as well and that he be prosecuted for his writings. After many years of harassment by his colleagues and students, and after having lost his job, he finally was indeed indicted for allegedly having committed a crime by writing critical comments about internationalistically inclined Communists. On May 13, 2000, when Prof. Pfeifenberger received notice of the initialization of criminal prosecution with the threat of up to five years in prison, he committed suicide.[27]

One may consider this suicide unreasonable, but it was also tragic and went like a shockwave through Germany's conservative and patriotic academia. Prof. Pfeifenberger was considered an Austrian patriot and conservative who had many friends in academia and politics, most of them conservatives and patriots themselves. I myself know quite a few of those academics, and the fear I heard and read expressed in communications, panic stricken fear of facing possible persecution against anything right-wing, conservative, patriotic in Germany and Austria, has stunned and frightened me.

Since the mid 1990s, an exhibition organized by communist propagandists is shown all over Germany, with public approval and support, depicting the activities of the German armed forces during World War II in a one-sided, derogatory way, as a formation of mass-murderers and criminals.[28] Most German WWII veterans, of course, feel heavily offended by this, but they are not listened to anymore. The propaganda-warfare against the Wehrmacht in particular and the German nation in general has become so bad that some elderly people are getting massively upset. A defense against these lies is almost impossible, since any dissent from the official line can lead to ostracizing and in extreme even criminal prosecutions. In 1995, after years of suffering under what he perceived as a "Niagara flood" of lies and distortions poured out about and over him and his generation, Reinhold Elstner, one of the many surviving German war veterans, wrote a flaring appeal to the German people to stop these lies and distortions. He went to the Munich Feldherrnhalle, poured gasoline over himself and set himself ablaze. He died shortly thereafter.[29]

Again, one might consider such self-sacrifice foolish, but even more foolish was the reaction of the authorities to this: they confiscated Elstner's final appeal and outlawed its publication. They also outlawed any commemorative gathering at the Feldherrnhalle on his behalf, and they seized and destroyed any wreath and flowers that were laid down on Elstner's behalf.

Compare this with the reaction of the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia in 1968 when the Prague student Jan Palach burned himself in protest against the Russian suppression of the "Prague Spring". As Germany suppresses any commemoration of Reinhold Elstner, so did the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia until 1989, when their system finally collapsed.

In 1994, I was invited by a small historical society to lecture on some historical research I had done in 1991 and which had been published in 1993. The president of this society is the Fürth high school history teacher Hans-Jürgen Witzsch. After my lecture, this society gave me an award for my research accompanied with a small donation. During later years, I stayed in touch with Mr. Witzsch and learned more about his activities and ongoing research projects, which focus on the post-war Nuremberg trials and other post-war trials. Having analyzed a massive amount of original documents as they are stored in several Nuremberg archives, he had come to well founded conclusions regarding some of those trials which did not go conform with the "officially" held view. Of course, in a democracy, there is no "officially" held view on history, since science is a field where no authority can prescribe any research results or opinions on any topic. But in Germany, things are a bit different when topics are touched which could undermine the reputation or self-proclaimed moral superiority and the justification of existence of certain pressure groups who define themselves primarily by being opposed to anything that did actually or only allegedly happen during the years 1933 through 1945. Hence, anybody daring to revise the black-and-white all-negative historical image of this period of German history, no matter how well founded such revisions may be, will feel the heat of those pressure groups, which mainly consists of anything liberal and left-wing as well as anything Zionist, Jewish, or philo-Semitic. And since almost all relevant social groups in Germany are at once leftist, Zionist, and philo-Semitic, anybody daring to approach the Third Reich history from a "politically incorrect" angle will unavoidably unleash a hurricane of slander, insinuations, ostracizing, persecution, and possibly even prosecution.

Mr. Witzsch did exactly this. As an honest researcher and scholar, he felt obligated to publish his research results despite the fact that the authorities would not like his results. For example, he proved in detail that most foreigners who worked in Germany during the war were not, as widespread media propaganda wants us to believe, forced laborers or even slave laborers, but that they were paid, received social benefits, vacations, decent living quarters, and even enjoyed their own social activities and access to media in their own language. Hence, in most cases, the working and living conditions for those foreigners were probably by far better than the conditions they could ever have enjoyed in their countries of origin which in most cases did neither grant social benefits nor decent working and living conditions. In another work, Witzsch was analyzing the conditions of one of the post-war trials against Oswald Pohl, head of the economic branch of the Third Reich concentration camp system. Witzsch proved the illegality of the court procedures used by the allied victorious powers and that the verdict handed down against Pohl was legally and historically untenable when considering the evidentiary situation.

As a result of these works, Witzsch first got suspended as a high school teacher, and the State of Bavaria tried to kick him out of this position forever and to reduce his pension.

In the late 1990s, Mr. Witzsch wrote a private letter to a Jewish Professor of history at the University of the German Army at Munich, asking him to intervene and put a stop to the ongoing false historical atrocity propaganda against Germany. In Witzsch's mind, this propaganda would not only harm the German people, but since the inaccuracies of the historical picture spread by media and pressure groups would sooner or later be revealed as distorted, this will, in the long run, also do tremendous harm to the German Jewish community as one of the pressure groups which pushes this propaganda most intensively. In reaction to this private letter, said Jewish professor filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Witzsch for inciting the masses to hatred. In early 2003, Mr. Witzsch was sentenced to three months imprisonment for having written this private letter. After his conviction, Witzsch also lost his position as a teacher, and his pension was considerably cut down.[30]

Another representative example is Udo Walendy, a political scientist who edited a historical series called "Historical Facts" which focused on the history of the two World Wars. Walendy is best described as an old Prussian: stiff, stubborn, sometimes arrogant, and not very diplomatic. He also is a dedicated German nationalist, which made him the target of social and criminal persecution. Many of Walendy's historical writings, most of them featuring right-wing views on Third Reich history, were put on the "Index", a list of publications deemed dangerous for the mental development of young people. Publications listed on this Index may no longer be offered and sold in public; hence they exist only as underground literature.

A particularly tragic-comic case was the attempt of the German authorities to ban Walendy's book "Truth for Germany",[31] in which Walendy tries to dispel the claim that Germany is solely or even mainly responsible for the outbreak of World War II. Walendy sued the German government repeatedly for their censoring his book. Walendy won each case, but after the German government was forced to release the book, they simply but it back on the index the next day, with only a slightly different reason given. Walendy sued again, won again, and this case was developing into a mad-house play. In one of their writings, the German authorities were stupid enough to state that Walendy's book would be well founded, and that his thesis about Germany's lack of guilt for the outbreak of WWII could not be refuted, which, in their eyes, was even more reason to ban the book, since young people, when exposed to such a thesis, must necessarily become mentally disoriented after hearing the opposite claim of Germany's sole responsibility in all media and at the schools for decades. In other words: The German government admitted that Walendys' book was scientifically correct, that all government school books were a bunch of lies, and that the fact that kids, who are learning about the fraudulent nature of their government, might get upset, which would be reason enough - not to change the school books, but to censor Walendy! Eventually, the ban of Walendy's book, which had been imposed for almost 30 years, was lifted by the decision of Germany's Constitutional High Court. In essence, this verdict says that the German government lies to all students (in Germany, almost the entire school system is public), and that it is highly active in illegal censorship.[32]

Of course, such a victory for Walendy could not be left unpunished. As a consequence, the German authorities indicted Walendy for several issues of his historical periodical, where he had critically analyzed certain aspects of National Socialist anti-Jewish politics, in particular regarding the so-called Holocaust. Since Walendy had dissenting views to those prescribed in Germany by its harsh penal law, he was eventually found guilty of inciting the masses etc., and sentenced to 29 months imprisonment.[33]

In German history, censorship unfortunately is more of a rule than an exception. It was introduced by the Catholic Church in the form of the Inquisition. However, it was left to the well-known Austrian statesman Metternich to perfect the system of suppressing freedom of speech by means of a comprehensive spy and surveillance apparatus introduced in the early 1800s. Neither the German Empire nor the Weimar Republic were particularly soft in their dealings with unwelcome literature,[34] but the worst reputation was doubtless acquired by the Third Reich, which managed, within the twelve years of its existence, to black-list some 10,000 books.[35] While these books were not burned, they did disappear from the shelves of bookstores, to be banned to library archives.

What is not nearly as well known is the fact that it was the Allied "liberators" of Germany who staged the greatest campaign of book destruction that mankind had ever seen. Among the victims of Allied displeasure were 34,645 titles as well as, comprehensively, all school textbooks published between 1933 and 1945; not only where these no longer permitted to be printed and sold after the war - they also had to vanish from the archives of many libraries. In the years from 1946 to 1952, the Soviet Occupation Power published four such lists ("Liste der auszusondernden Literatur", or list of literature to be destroyed) of titles earmarked for destruction. In accordance with the instructions in the censors' introduction to the second and third volumes, the first three of these lists also went into force in the western Occupation Zones.[36]

In modern Germany, things are not quite as arbitrary and rigorous, but censorship is still an intrinsic part of German society.[37] Though the German Basic Law (similar to a constitution) expressively prohibits general censorship, it allows censorship by "general laws." The German Constitutional High Court rule that such "general laws" may not be sweeping in nature and may not prohibit a specific opinion, and may be used only to protect other fundamental human rights, like human dignity. However, the same court ruled that media can be banned from public distribution already if they are "a constant threat" to the mental development of young people.[38]

The German Criminal Code has at its disposal several laws facilitating censorship. One is used to prevent or punish libel (§185), another to prevent the defamation of the memory of dead persons (§189). Both activities are considered to be an attack on the fundamental right or human dignity. Two other German penal laws are used to prevent or punish the "stirring up of the people" (§130) and the "incitement to hatred" (§131), offenses which are considered to be an attack on human dignity and/or on public peace.[39] Though German courts originally ruled that an attack on human dignity (libel, defamation of the dead, incitement to hatred) is committed only by the use of insulting/denigrating words, legal practice has shifted the border line from which onward a crime is committed more and more from insult to justified criticism.

Also, the question of when "public peace" might be threatened is handled more and more arbitrarily. There has never been a need that "public peace" was actually disturbed (for example by demonstrations and riots caused by a certain publication). It suffices that some authorities think that if a certain dissenting view would be widespread in Germany and would be accepted by a certain portion of society as being true, than a scenario could be thought of where certain unpeaceful activities could occur. This construction, of course, can be applied to almost all views dissenting with the views held by the current authorities, and is thus the perfect tool to suppress any real and fundamental opposition.[40]

Following this changing practice, the German penal law was revised in autumn 1994 to reflect these changes. The revised law now includes regulations, which expressively criminalizes dissenting historical views of certain aspects of German history (primarily about National Socialist persecution of minorities), and additionally in a certain sense anything, which could be considered a "politically incorrect", yet perhaps justified criticism of population subgroups of potentially any definition - though only those subgroups will find protection from insult and criticism under this law which are considered "politically correct" (foreigners, Jews, homosexuals, but not Germans, German veterans, patriots, right-wingers, etc.).

In this regard the foremost German criminal law commentary observes that this amendment means that practically any kind of criticism of population subgroups - however they are defined - can become a criminal offense, since the legal right that is supposed to be protected (the anti-discrimination rule) and the feature it is supposed to protect (public peace) are rendered too general and vague in this law.

Also, the outlawing of dissenting historical views about a narrowly defined historical event is precisely the scenario, which the German Federal Constitutional Court has ruled out years ago (but is ignoring today): this law criminalizes a specific opinion about one detail of the history of only one single, past regime. From this perspective alone, this "hastily passed and unthought-out",[41] "special law against freedom of speech"[42] would seem to be unconstitutional, and it has been criticized commensurately in German legal subject literature, where it is described as being, in effect, "an attack on the intellectual freedom of dissidents"[43] and "virtually the classic example of a norm [...] directed against a specific opinion."[42]

The concept of "denying" something, which the authorities deem true, is a new element in German criminal law and poses problems, which it seems quite impossible for criminal procedure to solve, except with the means of political show trials, where nothing else is accused than one's "wrong" historical views. In order for denial to objectively constitute a criminal offense, it must be done deliberately; that is, the "denier" must know that he is not telling the truth and the Judge must prove this knowledge, which in and of itself is already virtually impossible. But in order to be able to also punish (especially) the so-called "criminals of belief" who are convinced that they are telling the truth, in particular when the accused are academic experts with dare trying to prove in public and in the courts in a scholarly way that they are right, the German judiciary has concocted an entirely new definition of "intent":[45]

The new law also permits preventive censorship, as it were, by providing for the confiscation of publications or other data carriers considered to be inciting or posing a potential threat to "public peace", which are allegedly "intended for" distribution. The judiciary holds that the intent to distribute prohibited publications exists if a person has in his or her possession more than one single copy of a data carrier.

That this new German law cannot be reconciled with international human rights standards - this was also thoroughly demonstrated by a PhD thesis analyzing this problem[46] - is a fact openly acknowledged by Germany's leading politicians, but it is excused by virtue of the country's particular history. The flawed logic goes something like this:[47]

The first step in the process of German censorship is the black-listing or "indexing" of, for example, a book or pamphlet. This indexing is done by the Federal Review Office for Youth-Endangering Media (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien, BPjM), which can decide without any court or government order which media is to be indexed. This indexing means that the black-listed work may no longer be advertised and that it may not be sold or otherwise made available to persons under 18 years of age. In practical terms this means that the work ceases to exist for the public, as one can then legally learn of its existence only by private means - or, alternately, via the list of indexed works which the BPjM regularly publishes in its Report. By now this list includes thousands of printed, audio and audio-visual works.[48]

While the BPjM was initially created primarily to protect German youth from pornography and the glorification of violence, it has increasingly also engaged in the battle against politically or historically unpopular literature. As early as 1990 Eckhard Jesse, who is today a Professor of Sociology in Chemnitz, criticized that the BPjM had in many ways turned out to be a gateway for a one-sided fight against everything, which is deemed to be on the right of the political spectrum.[49] According to Jesse, the censorship measures of the BPjM are "difficult to reconcile with the principles of a liberal society [...], because, on principle, in an open society the printed and spoken word may not be stifled."[50]

While Jesse regrets that the printed word is being stifled in our society, he considers it a comforting thought that these black-listing decisions were published in those years, thus allowing the public to review them.[51] However, in 2002, the German Law for the Protection of the Youth was changed to the effect that from now on, media, which are considered to be a serious threat to the youth, will be listed in a non-public list.[52] Affected by this new rule are mainly political and historical works which breach penal laws like "incitement to hatred" and "stirring up the people". The public can now no longer learn which media are outlawed and which are not. Hence, one of the most important rule of a state under the rule of law, that its legal decisions and laws must be made public so that all citizens can learn about them and hence abide by them, is breached: The German authorities keep their decisions secret, and the German citizen who distributes banned media will run afoul with the law without having had any chance to prevent this. This is a first class example of a totalitarian law.

The second stage of German censorship is the so-called confiscation (or seize-and-destroy) stage. This stage is hardly known by the public, and even Professor E. Jesse, whom we quoted earlier, seems either not to be aware of it or to ignore it. The confiscation of a publication takes place on the order of a court. What happens to the confiscated copies of such a publication is not quite clear, but it probably varies with the police station in charge. One publisher who is quite frequently the target of such book confiscations reported that he had been told that the books are burned under police supervision, and this was also confirmed by various mainstream media reports.[53] This seems logical, since dangerous books are, in the eyes of the German authorities, to be treated like drugs: they poison our minds and turn us into defunct members of the society. Hence the weapon of the crime - drug or book - must be destroyed by fire (or for the book the shredder, as an alternative).

According to information from the German Federal Government, and unlike for indexed works, there is no office or authority which publishes an even remotely complete list of confiscated books;[54] similarly, the confiscation orders issued by the courts are not published anywhere. According to a hardly known administrative rule of the German police, every court that orders or revokes the confiscation of a medium is required to communicate its decision to the German Federal Bureau of Investigation (Bundeskriminalamt), which therefore ought to have a complete and current list, particularly as it serves the courts as information central regarding confiscation orders already issued.[55] However, inquiries to receive a copy of this list are never answered by this German FBI, a behavior in concordance with the secrecy the above mentioned list of "dangerous" banned media.[56] So here as well, the public is left completely in the dark about which media are confiscated and which are not. Should a person dare to import, export, stock, reprint, distribute, or sell such a confiscated media, he will find himself in front of a judge charged with thought crimes.

Although pornographic or pro-violent publications are also affected by confiscations, which will find approval by most people, and justly so in most cases, these media are not a particular focus here, since the destruction of political or historical publications is a much more explosive issue from a human-rights point of view.

Whereas no author, printer, wholesaler, retailer or multi-copy purchaser can be punished for having distributed a banned book prior to its banning, all of these individuals can be, and usually are, prosecuted for such activities even if these activities occurred prior to the actual court decision which declared the confiscation of such media a legal fact. According to German law, a medium that will eventually be confiscated is illegal not by its declaration of illegality by a court, but by its content. Subsequently, already the bringing into existence of such a medium is a crime, even if the authorities did not yet know of this medium at the time when it was produced. Hence, authors, translators, editors, publishers, printers, warehouse owners, wholesalers, retailers, and customers who bought more then one copy of such media - indicating an intention of distribution - are all subject to criminal prosecution even if their activities took place prior to any court decision.

In reply to an inquiry the Ministry of Justice of the Federal Land of Baden-Württemberg has stated that in the time between the end of 1994 and mid-1996, in Baden-Württemberg alone, there were 32 cases of preliminary proceedings being instituted against private individuals for their multiple purchases of confiscated books of political and/or historical nature.[57] Extrapolated to cover all of Germany, this figure indicates some 250 to 300 such criminal cases. Exactly how many persons have been punished in recent years for their will to produced and/or disseminate media which were confiscated afterwards is not known; the aforementioned figure of several hundred preliminary proceedings, however, would indicate that the number is substantial.

Most people prosecuted under these censorship laws adhere to more or less right-wing views, starting from simply conservatives and patriots via nationalists to fascists and National Socialist. However, it does not really matter what one thinks of the views advocated by this group of persons. The fact is that the human right to freedom of speech must be indivisible, as Professor R. Dworkin stated it in an issue of the British periodical "Index on Censorship" that addressed the German wave of censorship.[58] Not a single one of the cases described here involved any calls to violence, instructions for violent acts, or trivializations of violence - at most, violence is disputed for certain historical events, or portrayed as less than generally usual in other accounts. Hence, the harshness with which the German judiciary proceeds against these dissidents is incomprehensible and unjustified.

If the cases described herein affected any other persons or groups, such as Jews, homosexuals, women, left-wingers, there would be a worldwide outcry in the press, denouncing such human rights violations. But since the victims are after all only the "right" ones, the matter is ignored and hushed up. But from an objective perspective there is no difference between, for example, Communists and Jehovah's Witnesses being imprisoned in the Third Reich for their beliefs, and right-wingers and historians skeptical about certain aspects of Holocaust history being thrown behind bars in the Federal Republic of Germany today for the sake of their publications. Human rights remain human rights. They go for leftist radicals just as much as for right-wing radicals.

It seems that Germany's tradition of free speech is rather underdeveloped. In light of her history, the only correct position for Germany to take would doubtlessly be to strictly and impartially grant human rights for everyone - and not to simply deny those human rights to the other side of the political spectrum, as it happens right now. Obviously, where human rights are concerned, Germany is caught in a historical vicious circle, or, to use a different metaphor: the pendulum is swinging wildly from one extreme to the other. It is high time that it came to rest in the middle.

One of the Allied conditions for establishing the Federal Republic of Germany was the creation of a "Federal Bureau for Protection of the Constitution." This Orwellian device's name was chosen in order not to give German citizens the impression that they were exposed to governmental snooping, which was of course the mission of the Bureau, and as such it was just a kind of successor of the infamous Gestapo, the Secret State Police of the Third Reich. From this bureau subsequently evolved, within the Interior Ministry, the Department for Protection of the Constitution.

Recently, Claus Nordbruch exhaustively documented the scandalous jurisdictional expansion of this domestic spy service.[59] Although this Department possesses no police or legal resources, it nevertheless wields tremendous power. If an individual or organization is mentioned in one of its "Constitutional Protection" reports, it is the social equivalent of a death sentence. The person or institution targeted is ostracized and shunned like a leper, often fired from his job and denied right of appeal before the employment courts.

The role of the victorious allies is evident also in the first disfranchisement of a political party, which occurred early in the 1950s. In those days the newly organized German Reich Party, which was very popular among former soldiers and the patriotically inclined, was enjoying rapid growth and electoral successes. The leading personality and draft horse of the new party was Major General Otto Ernst Remer. Because of his success he was visited by an Allied delegation. They issued him an alternative: either quit the Reich Party or else the Allies would ban it. Remer refused to knuckle under and the party was banned. For the sake of appearances the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was also banned, but it promptly re-emerged as the DKP (German Communist Party.)

The introduction of the Emergency Decrees ("Notstandsgesetze"), which occurred toward the end of the sixties, was a decisive step toward gutting constitutional rights. Theses laws were intended to enable the government to restrict civil rights in case of a severe conflict with the Soviet Union. Before the Emergency Decrees were introduced, it was legally impossible for the government to restrict individual rights. It has now become commonplace.

Controversy over the Emergency Decrees also gave impetus to the student revolts of the late 1960s, which occurred at the end of the sixties. With good reason, the students feared that the decrees would open the door to despotism, which they mistakenly believed would be "fascistic" in nature.

When the emergency decrees were finally accepted under the Grand Coalition of Christian Liberals and socialist at the end of the sixties, the "extraparliamentary opposition" ("Außerparlamentarische Oppostion", APO) was organized, which challenged the accumulation of power within the established parties through struggles in the street. Out of this APO developed the terrorist movement of the seventies, which gave the government a pretext for restricting human rights still further. It became permissible to search domiciles, tap telephones and open mail, even without official court permission, provided the intent was to head off "development of a potentially dangerous situation." ("Gefahr im Verzug")

With the expansion of organized criminality in the eighties, basic human rights (inviolability of the home, and privacy of mail and telephone) were weakened still further. Now came another striking innovation: such measures could be applied without judicial permission, under the simple pretext of "Suspicion [sic] of potential danger." This is commonly called "Salami tactics."

No one seems interested in the fact that combating organized crime is not caused by inadequate legislation, but rather by lack of support for the police and lack of will on the part of politicians, who are frequently involved in organized crime. The period around 1980 also saw the first flowering of Holocaust revisionism. The government responded to this challenge with another streamlining of its procedure for prosecuting thought crime. It raised such violations to the level of crimes that are to be prosecuted automatically, i.e., they do no longer be initiated by complaints by anybody.

Since Germany's reunification in 1989/90, a flood of patriotism and patriotic organizations has been sweeping across Germany. International power brokers were then exerting tremendous pressure upon Germany to repress the patriotic movement. During this time, several xenophobic attacks against foreigners occurred, some of which may well have been engineered. The German government has certainly exploited all these attacks in order to create the specter of a "brown threat," a resurgence of fascism. As a result of this, on December 1, 1994, Germany's Penal Code was changed on an unprecedented scale. Freedom of opinion regarding German social taboos such as foreigners, multi-culture, Jews, Holocaust and the Third Reich has been banned altogether.

The government's most recent step toward total surveillance occurred at the end of the nineties. This was the so-called "Great Spying Assault" ("Großer Lauschangriff"), which legalizes constant residential surveillance with microphones and cameras under certain circumstances. Simultaneously, the German judiciary launched prosecutions of foreigners as well as German nationals for disseminating "contraband" documents over the Internet.

In Germany at present, all the following are treated as illegal items or activities:

• Anything which might be construed as a threat to "public peace" can be prohibited at the discretion of a prosecutor or judge.
• All symbols, gestures, songs, speeches, and poems, which directly or indirectly suggest anything associated with the Third Reich are prohibited.
• Criticism of "multicultural" society and immigration policy can be construed as an illegal act.
• It is unlawful to publicly voice dissenting research results about the circumstances surrounding National Socialist crimes, whether actual or alleged. Every critical researcher who investigates the Third Reich works under the threat of persecution and suppression.
• The punishment meted out for "inciting to hatred" can be up to five years in prison.
• Even criticism of established parties, government and its representatives can be prosecuted as an offense (denigration of symbols and representatives of the state).
• As a result, thousands of books have been burned, tens of thousands of German citizens punished for thought crimes, hundreds of citizens thrown into prison, and numerous opposition parties and other organizations outlawed. Other parties and political groupings are severely restricted in their constitutionally guaranteed rights. They are subjected to social and criminal punishment, if they openly oppose or expose the conditions mentioned above. The formation of a parliamentary or extra-parliamentary opposition to these conditions has thus been made legally impossible.
• If one criticizes despotic measures, one makes oneself liable for prosecution on grounds of maligning the government, its representatives and symbols. The government has hermetically sealed itself off from all criticism and possibility of reform.

In view of such conditions it is not surprising that political scientists, sociologists, and historians no longer dare to call things by their real names. They are afraid of being hauled before the German "State Protection Police" and the courts' "State Protection Chambers" and sentenced to severe punishment over more or less trivial expressions of political opinion.

In all the years I have been associated with representatives of German intellectual life, I have been hearing formulaic expressions such as "Freedom is in peril" and "Are our opinions really free?" It has now become clear that freedom is not "endangered" - it no longer exists. Likewise there is no longer any question about whether one's thoughts are still free. Given the present climate of anxiety in Germany's society, media and government, many citizens are actually afraid to express their opinions. More and more often one hears it said: "You can't even think that!" People are afraid to openly discuss conditions in Germany because they could suffer serious consequences if they did.

Prof. Gottfried Dietze, Emeritus of Johns Hopkins University, responded to my request to comment from the unassailable position of retired emeritus in a foreign country. His response was discouraging: the world has already dragged Germany through the mud so badly that he chooses not to make the situation even worse with negative comments about present day conditions in his beloved fatherland. What a heartbreaking observation![60]

There is a little German witticism going around that illustrates the difference between the former DDR and the present government. Today's Germany does the opposite of what the DDR used to do: it keeps its citizens fat and politically impotent and takes away their hope of escape by incorporating all German territory and pressing its neighbors to act as she wishes, and so she has no further need of walls and self-firing robot guns at the borders.

In 1994, Germany had a president named Richard von Weizsäcker who publicly called upon children to spy upon their parents and vice versa in order to denounce them should they harbor right-wing views. In the meantime, Germany even has a toll-free number where German citizens can denounce their co-citizens in case they harbor unwanted right-wing views: 011-49-1805-234566. Only totalitarian states can sink this low.

On January 19, 1993, Mr. E. Mußmann, Professor of Police Law at the Ludwigsburg Academy for Public Administration, delivered a lecture to the German Catholic Student Organization Nordgau Prag in Stuttgart, entitled "How the Police Change with the Times." In this lecture he criticized the relentless undermining of constitutional rights and the expanding power of the police apparatus. Prof. Mußmann remarked that, if these trends were not reversed, he would not want to live in Germany in forty years, because it would have become a police state with pronounced Orwellian tendencies. Prof. Mußmann was mistaken. It took only ten years.

Today, the leaders of the 1968 student revolt have become Germany's political leaders - almost all of them radical socialists, Communists, Marxists, Spartacists, or even supporters of Red Army terrorists, like Trittin (Minister for Ecology), Schröder (Federal Chancellor), Fischer (Minister for Foreign Affairs), Schilly (Minister for Internal Affairs) -, and the persecution they unleash against the German people has no parallel in German post-war history. Factually, Germany has turned into a left-wing extremists state, closer to the former communist East Germany than to the U.S.

In such an atmosphere, everybody visiting Germany should be aware that telling the wrong kind of jokes with the wrong kind of audience - and if it is only the guy on the table next to you in the restaurant who doesn't like your joke - might be a free ticket to a German jail, because making jokes about certain minorities (Jews, Turks, homosexuals, gypsies...) might be interpreted as "Incitement to hatred." So you better watch your back when visiting Germany!

One certain law of the German criminal rules of procedure enables German judges to disallow evidence or testimony if the point to be proven is considered by the legal system to be common knowledge. The purpose of this law is to create obstacles to a possible defense tactic of prolonging the trial, or making it more expensive for the authorities.[61]

There is, however, one topic where the German legal system misinterprets this rule, and that is in connection with historical events of the Third Reich period, with criticism of the Jewish religion, or with criticism against multiculturalism or mass-immigration. If anybody publicly utters beliefs that are not in accordance with the officially decreed truth, s/he might find her/himself in front of a judge, not able to present any evidence that would possibly substantiate her/his views. The reason is that according to present day German legal practice, certain aspects of Third Reich history are considered to be proven facts, and criticizing victims of the Third Reich - Jews, foreigners, any minority in general - is considered a crime, whether the criticism is justified or not. Regarding criticism of such groups, truth is no defense. What matters is the impact a dissenting view could possibly have if a majority in Germany agreed with it. Therefore, defendants holding such dissenting views have no right to prove their point. The public prosecutor does not have to prove s/he is right, since the judges decree "common knowledge" of the fact that the public prosecutor is always right, and the defendant has no right to introduce evidence, since the judges decree "common knowledge" of the fact that the defendant is always wrong.[62] Trying to prove his point nevertheless only results in more severe punishment, since it proves that the defendant is willing to repeat his crime of dissent in front of the court and is not willing to submit.

It has been ruled that "common knowledge" can be abandoned if there is evidence which is new and/or superior to any other evidence ever produced in a German court of law, or if there is noticeable public dissent.[63] However, all attempts of lawyers to introduce new, superior evidence or evidence proving that there is noticeable public dissent have been dismissed due to - guess what - "common knowledge" that the defendant is wrong. In perversion of every proper legal system, historical and forensic experts who prepared evidence far superior to any other evidence ever produced have always been rejected - due to "common knowledge that they are wrong" - and also been subjected to prosecution and sentenced, without having a chance to even introduce their own evidence - due to "common knowledge that they are wrong".[64]

Public personalities who dare to start creating "noticeable public dissent" are also prosecuted without having a chance to present their own public activity as "noticeable public dissent", because it is "common knowledge that they are wrong".

Most recently, the German Federal Supreme Court has even decided that any defence lawyer, who dares to present or ask for the introduction of evidence challenging the officially decreed historical truth of the Third Reich, has to be prosecuted and sentenced for collaborating with the defendant in harboring and spreading his dissenting views, hence "incitement of the masses" and "stirring up the people".[65] That is exactly the same state as the medieval witch trails had been in, where lawyers trying to prove that there is no devil or no witchcraft were prosecuted themselves for collaborating with the devil and the witches.

To peak this all, in 1994, German judge Rainer Orlet who, in the opinion of the media and many politicians, did not punish a historical dissenter and leader of a nationalistic opposition group harshly enough and even showed some sympathy with the sympathetic, thus far law-abiding defendant, was threatened with prosecution and finally had to resign. All the right-wing defendant had done was to translate a speech by an American who expressed dissenting, but peaceful views on Third Reich history. This case made it clear to all judges in Germany that they better punish all dissenters on certain historical topics without mercy, or they might find themselves persecuted.[66]

The organizational framework of the German legal system is somewhat awkward as well. For example, as I experienced myself while active as an expert in several court cases, German prosecutors as well as judges in conference with defense lawyers openly admit that trials against political and historical dissenters are political trials whose outcomes are predetermined from the beginning by order from higher up, as I had to experience myself while I was summoned to testify as an expert witness. Thus it happened that a prosecutor of the court in Bielefeld let slip the following "lapsus linguae" in a conference with Attorney H. Herrmann during court recess:

This was by no means an exceptional case. To Munich Attorney Klaus Göbel, who frequently represented revisionist defendants during the early 1990s, a judge in the evidentiary phase of a trial expressed himself quite candidly, as follows:

Attorney Göbel shared this with me on July 22, 1992, during the preliminary proceedings of the trial for which I was to be summoned as an expert witness. He did this in order to make it clear to me that our tactic of "considered, innovative, up-to-date evidence" in order to break the "common knowledge" could not prevail. German courts are charged with suppressing all exculpatory evidence in such trials, and to disqualify expert witnesses without a hearing.

Toward the end of 1992, I accidentally learned about the existence of a certain "Department of State Protection" of the District Criminal Court of Baden-Württemberg. I was so flabbergasted to see a title with such an obvious political program that I investigated. It turned out that there really exists such State Protection Departments in Germany's police headquarters, whose mission consists of prosecuting crimes, which could threaten the existence of the Federal Republic and/or the "basic principles of freedom and democracy." Evidently, in the eyes of the criminal police, harboring certain dissenting political and historical views represents just such a threat. The State Protection Department is divided into three units: Rightwing Extremism, Leftwing Extremism, and Political Extremism by Foreigners.[66]

One would assume that the bureaucrats in their respective units have been instructed in these respective ideologies so that they will be able to recognize their particular brand of "extremism", be able to combat it, and avoid falling victim to it. A conversation with one of these bureaucrats showed me just how thorough his instruction had been. One certainly cannot accuse these people of ignorance, and most particularly not of ideological insensitivity!

In the fall of 1994, I learned that even the German courts of laws have their political section, doing nothing else but prosecuting crimes with a political background, or crimes consisting of nothing else but expressing "illegal," dissident political or historical views. They are internally referred to as "Chambers of State Protection."

Nothing of this is actually kept secret in Germany, yet the average citizen has no idea of how deeply the principle of politicized judiciary has taken root in the German criminal justice system, penetrating even into organizational structure. As far as the public is concerned, there has been a complete news blackout on the subject. Nobody asks if there could or should possibly be such things as State Protection Departments in a state under the rule of law, specialized Courts of State Protection and political trials in a system which, after all, pretends to be a liberal democracy.

To make matters worse, the German criminal rules of procedure are awkward as well, to say the least. Every TV viewer is familiar with court procedures as they are common in most countries. While a trial is under way, the court secretaries are sitting at a stenographic table and are industriously typing away creating an official court record. Today, much of this work is done by automatic voice recognition. That is the way it is done in the USA, England, Austria, and even in German civil trials.

But not in German criminal trials! Here, no court record is kept!!! This is extremely ominous, since afterwards it cannot be pointed out just what the judge, prosecutor, defendant, defense attorney, or witness has said.[66] This opens the door very wide for lies and errors on the part of the judge. As a matter of fact, there is absolutely no excuse for German criminal courts' not keeping a court record, considering the state of modern stenographic technology. The absence of such a record invites for all kinds of judicial misconduct, which, as I may add, does occur especially frequent in the political trials discussed here. Not even the best judge remembers everything that was said during his trial, but even if discrepancies resulting from such errors could be remedied, there would still remain the worst evil of all: That is the very existence of a political judiciary, which is bound to find a way to convict whomever it targets.

The avalanche of persecution described here is mainly directed against anything on the right side of the political spectrum. To understand this, one must look back into the early history of post-war Germany. After their conquest of Germany, the allied powers instituted a rigorous policy to uproot and destroy any German nationalism, militarism and historical pride.[67] To achieve this, they introduced several measures:

1. A system of media licensing guaranteed that only left-wing oriented media could be established during the first ten years after the war. These media do still dominate the German media market. Basically, no noticeable patriotic, right-wing media do exist.
2. All German academics who were deemed right-wing lost there positions and were replaced with left-wingers. The most important positions in the humanities at the most important German universities were occupied with dedicated anti-German, left-wing radical (Marxist) individuals.
3. No right-wing political party was allowed to establish itself. The only one that had initial success (Deutsche Reichspartei) was outlawed by the Allies.
4. A program of re-education was introduced which turned German history into a horror cabinet, with the intention to break German pride and self-confidence.

After some 50 years, the allied post-war re-education program showed full success. Today, German society is lead by personalities who are filled with contempt for anything patriotic, right-wing, conservative, and who view German history mainly under the perspective of the (often exaggerated and distorted) events of the Third Reich. To quote The Independent once more: German individuals who dare to declare that they are proud to be a citizen of their country are called neo-Nazis and Skinheads in Germany, even if they are mainstream politicians. For comparison: An American individual who would declare that he is not proud of his country would never be elected into any US office. In Germany, the opposite is true: A person who would declare that he is proud of his country would never be elected into any office.

In the meantime, the word "Rechts" - right-wing - has become synonymous with evil in Germany. Virtually everybody - political parties, religious groups, commercial associations, social entities, the media and corporations... - is joining in the fight against "right." Note: this is not a fight against radicalism, extremisms, fascism, or neo-Nazism, but against everything deemed to be "right". Government agencies spread brochures entitled "Laws against right",[68] showing how everybody can help to fight anything deemed to be politically right. The situation has become so hysterical that in late 2000, Germany's leading, left-wing political magazine Der Spiegel justly headlined that Germany would be in a hysteria against right, caused mainly by a media paranoia that falsely (!) suspected a right-wing conspiracy behind almost each and every crime that had shattered Germany during that year.[69]

The climax was reached in 2001, when a German public prosecutor rejected the criminal complaint of a conservative activist who had been slandered as a Nazi by certain media. As a reason not to allow this complaint, this prosecutor stated that the German public would consider everybody on the political right to be a Nazi, whether they are conservatives, patriots, right-wingers, radicals, extremists, fascists, or National Socialist. Since "Nazi" had become a collective term for everything on the right, nobody could be insulted by such a designation as long as he indeed belongs to any group considered to be right-wing in any regard. That means that everybody who is politically on the right is a Nazi by definition of the German authorities. And since obviously one half of the population is right of the middle and the other half left of it, 50% of all Germans are by public definition Nazis.

Nowadays, one is tempted to support the repression of neo-Nazis, who are depicted in the media as intolerant, racist, anti-Semitic, brutal, and disgusting. However, one should consider this: whoever blithely agrees that Nazis ought to be prosecuted solely on account of their dissenting political views, should not complain if tomorrow he finds himself slandered as a Nazi and persecuted only because a neighbor denounces him for waving a national flag or singing the national anthem. Because that is exactly what is happening in Germany: Those who express plain normal patriotic feelings, as it is quite common and considered normal in the U.S., are considered to be Nazis in Germany - so far to the left has the political spectrum drifted there. Everybody has the duty to protest the persecution of unconventional thinkers. This is true not only if persecution comes from a dictatorship, but also if it emanates from a state that claims to be a constitutional democracy!

To give another example of the mental conditions of Germans, I want to tell a story of my own making, using true data I had learned about in 1989. During a business management course in 1994, I once had to hold a spontaneous lecture about anything. I walked to the overhead projector and began:

With color markers, I drew the columns for each answer:

The class room was silently listening, as I continued:

Now one could hear a needle drop on the floor. I carried on:

This shocking revelation even flabbergasted the most left-wing radical students in that course.

Germany today: 105,678 Criminal Prosecutions Because of "Thought Crimes" During the Last Ten Years:

Year Right Left Foreign Sum 1994 5,562 185 235 5,982 1995 6,555 256 276 7,087 1996 7,585 557 818 8,960 1997 10,257 1,063 1,029 12,349 1998 9,549 1,141 1,832 12,522 1999 8,698 1,025 1,525 11,248 2000 13,863 979 525 15,367 2001 8,874 429 353 9,656 2002 9,807 331 467 10,605 2003 9,692 431 1,340 11,463 Total: 90,395 6,397 8,886 105,678

• Right: "Offenses with right wing extremist background", that is: "Propaganda Offenses" and "Stirring up the People" • Left: "Offenses with left wing extremist background", generally referred to as "other offenses" • Foreign: offenses committed by foreign extremists, mainly against the German law of organizations ("Vereinsgesetz") by Kurds in the prohibited Kurdish Liberation Army PKK. Source: Bundesministerium des Inneren (ed.), Bundesverfassungsschutzbericht (Report of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution), Bundesdruckerei, Bonn 1995-2002, acc. to the German FBI (BKA)

Especially right-wingers are persecuted in Germany.

Just recently, the Canadian media referred to Germany as a country with one of the toughest "hate crime" legislation in the world.[70] This choice of words is unfortunate, since what we are dealing in Germany has nothing to do with what is called a "hate crime" in Canada or the U.S. In America, a hate crime is a normal criminal offense (theft, robbery, rape, murder, assault, etc.) driven by hatred. Feelings themselves, be they hate or love, are not a crime in both America and Canada. Expressing feelings or opinions is never a crime. But it is different in Germany: If one expresses hate, contempt, disgust or any other negative feeling for somebody or a certain group, this by itself can be a crime. There is, of course, one big exception: Everybody is allowed to spread unlimited hatred, contempt, and disgust against Germany, the German people, and its culture. This is not an offense. But doing the same against any other group may very well constitute a crime. And even worse so: Expressing views out of love, affection, and altruism can be a crime as well, that is, if somebody expresses opinions driven by his love for the German people, the German nation, or the German culture, this can be regarded as a denigration of other nations, people, and cultures and can get one into legal trouble.

And even worse, in cases where no feelings are expressed, but simple, unemotional facts and opinions are claimed, a "hate crime" can be committed in Germany if any identifiable, influential group hates that such facts or opinions are voiced publicly. For example, if one has dissenting views on certain historical topics, this does, of course, not come with any emotional statement about any identifiable group. But such dissenting views are very often hated by certain leftist and/or Jewish groups, hence they are classified as "hate crimes" - allegedly because they incite to hatred against those groups, but actually because those groups hate such opinions.

It would therefore be helpful if the German prosecution of such "crimes" would not be referred to as "hate crimes", since they do not consist of crimes in a legal sense, but as Orwellian "thought crimes" or, as the German authorities call them, as "propaganda offenses".

To summarize the situation: Germany and its leaders have fallen from one extreme to another, from extreme nationalism to extreme self-hatred and self-destruction, from the brutal suppression of anti-patriotic forces to the brutal suppression of patriotic forces. The pendulum swings to the other extreme, but hopefully it will not get stuck there, which would ultimately lead to the destruction of Germany, its people, and its culture, to a geno-suicide.

But how come that we do not hear about this in our media? Must one not expect that at least some human rights organization would speak out about it?

The reason for this total silence is simple: Would you dare to defend individuals who are called neo-Nazis by the German authorities and media?

The president if one human rights organization, the German Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (IGFM, International Society for Human Rights), clearly spelled it out when approached to assist the victims of modern day German persecution. Though they know about the injustice done to many scholars and publishers, they decided not to assist:[71]

The background of this is that this society has already come under massive attack by the German media and left-wing organizations for their firm stance against communism and for assisting ethnic Germans who experience persecution due to their ethnic background in eastern European countries (mainly Poland and Czechoslovakia). Assisting individuals who are accused of being "politically incorrect" due to their (alleged) right-wing views would most likely unleash a wave of persecution against this society itself, which it thinks it could not deal with.

400 years ago, nobody would dare to defend those made out as witches by the authorities. In the Soviet Union, it could prove fatal to defend someone depicted as a capitalist. In Nazi Germany, you better would not dare to defend a Jew or a Communist. The labels change which dictatorial systems put on people to ostracize them. But neither do the methods of persecution change, nor the indifference or even active approval of the public.

What will you say if they call you a neo-Nazi tomorrow because you dared to sing your national anthem in public? So think twice, if somebody is called a neo-Nazi by the media. It is perhaps only a patriot.

Source: The Revisionist 1(2) (2003), pp. 203-219.

Flaws of the State Under the Rule of Law

Where politics and the Zeitgeist exert heavy pressure on justice, one must expect that unjust judgments will be handed down on purpose. For this there is no need either for a state with a constitution which is openly contrary to the rule of law or a condition similar to civil war. With respect to normal prosecutions of criminals, the legal procedures of nations observing the rule of law and those not observing the rule of law are similar. Only in politically motivated prosecutions will it show whether or not judges follow the rule of law, that is, whether they can be forced by trial procedures not to deviate from them. For some time there has been a discussion as to how far the character of the Federal Republic of Germany as a nation observing the rule of law has been endangered by certain phenomena of the Zeitgeist.

One case in particular caused severe accusations from many sides of the German society so that the political distortions within the German legal system have indeed reached such a degree that even legal experts are seriously troubled: In 1991, Günter Deckert, then leader of the German nationalistic party NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands), organized a convention where Fred. A. Leuchter, a U.S. expert for execution technologies, lectured about his technical and chemical research regarding the alleged ‘gas chambers’ of Auschwitz. Deckert translated his speech for the audience into German. He was subsequently prosecuted for this and eventually sentenced to 12 months on probation. Following a huge media-outcry and massive intervention of national as well as international politicians, Deckert was put on trial again-at a different court with different judges-and sentenced to two years without probation. His first judge Dr. Rainer Orlet was threatened to be prosecuted for violating the law-his sentence was considered to have been too mild-but was eventually only forced to retire.[1] Deckert’s publication about this affair,[2] together with other ‘thought’ crimes like writing naughty letters to Jewish representatives and selling prohibited revisionist literature-were prosecuted as well and, together with his first conviction, led to an accumulated prison term of more than five years. Eventually, even his defense lawyer Ludwig Bock was prosecuted and sentenced for too vigorously defending Deckert by asking for permission to introduce revisionist evidence. This was considered criminal behavior because Bock allegedly indicated with this that he identifies himself with revisionist thoughts.[3] In a similar case, the well-know German right-wing defense lawyer Jürgen Rieger was put on trial in 2000, because during the proceedings against one of his clients in summer 1996, he had filed a motion to introduce me as an expert witness as evidence for the fact that his client’s revisionist claims were well founded. Though Jürgen Rieger was initially acquitted by the Hamburg District Court,[4] the German Federal Supreme Court subsequently overturned this verdict, demanding the sentencing and punishment of every lawyer who dares to ask for, or introduce, evidence challenging the common ‘knowledge’ about the Holocaust.[5] Thus, it is clear that every judge, who dares to hand out lenient sentences to revisionist, at least risks an abrupt end of his career, and defense lawyers trying to defend their clients effectively may themselves be prosecuted for that.

In what follows, I shall show by my own experience which indicates that the rule of law in the German state has many flaws that make it easy for the judicial system in general and the judges in particular to deliberately make bad decisions uncorrectable, because they have the appearance of being decided according to the rule of law.

Again and again in various sorts of company I encounter the same disbelieving astonishment as to the state of the German criminal justice system that overcame me at the beginning of the prosecution avalanche against me. Despite my lack of legal qualification I believe I have been called upon to raise my voice on this subject, since the numerous formal defects of the German legal system have apparently not been dealt with by those with the professional competence to do so.

Since I am no legal expert but only one who has been self-educated on the subject through painful experience, I hope readers will excuse my ineptness of expression. If I make frequent reference here to my trial before the District Court of Stuttgart (ref. 17 KLs 83/94), it is because these examples serve to indicate major problems in the German system of government and its judicial system.

Until the end 70s, a record of the proceedings was kept during German criminal trials, in which the statements of witnesses and responses of the accused were set down. The contents of this record were never relevant for an appeal or revision. For example, if in the record it said ‘The witness said A’, but in the decision the court stated ‘The witness said B’, the assertion in the decision would be taken as the fact and that in the record would be considered meaningless.

In the course of a change in the German criminal law at the end of the 70s, the duty to make entries in the record of the proceedings was removed for reasons of economy for all courts higher than the County Courts. What appears now in German trial records is something like ‘The witness made statements on the subject’ or ‘The accused made a declaration’. The substance of what was said cannot be found there and it can no longer be proven by documentation when the court uses statements incorrectly.[6]

In other nations observing the rule of law, such as the United States, Canada, Australia, or Austria, word-by-word transcripts of the proceedings are prepared.

The anti-justice consequences of the present German system can easily be imagined, and I will briefly illustrate it with three examples from my own trial.

1. The issue in this trial was whether or not I had participated in the distribution of a version of my expert report with added commentary by Generalmajor O.E. Remer in April 1993. The court was interested in, among other things, how Remer had come into possession of that particular version of my report which he used for producing his printed version. In the trial I had stated that Remer had probably received it from his attorney Hajo Herrmann. The court was more than eager to nail me as a liar, so they were trying to make Hajo Herrmann concede that he never sent a copy of this particular version to his client. Remer had reproduced the "second version of the 3rd edition" of my report, which the court called version "F2".[7] In the trial report made by an observer, the questioning of Herrmann on December 6, 1994, ran somewhat as follows:

What can be seen from this is that the witness Herrmann was basically confused and could not remember details about which version he had sent to whom and when. But at least Herrmann remembered clearly that he had requested changes to the expert report, so he concluded logically that I must have sent him copies of this rearranged version; after all, I had prepared this version on his request. The court, however, described the statements of the witness on page 199 as follows:

The difference between the two texts is obvious: The independent observer reported that Herrmann did revise his initial statement after I made him remember that it was Herrmann himself who made me prepare this particular version "F2", which leads to the logical conclusion that he did, of course, receive at least one copy of this version he had specifically demanded. But the court simply ‘forgot’ about this detail. From its own faulty reasoning, the court concluded on page 202f.:

2. The Court was also eager to try to prove that I did tell my sister about Remer’s commentary before Remer had even started to distribute my report, which would have been possible only if I had been involved in the production of said commentary. The first copies of my report mailed out by Remer arrived at their destinations briefly after Easter 1993. Did I tell my sister already before Easter about these comments, then this would put a ‘nail into my coffin’. According to the above-mentioned independent observer, the sister of the accused made the following statement on January 24, 1995:

The court described this witness statement as follows (p. 210):

However, according to the independent observer, my sister thought "it was possible" that Remer’s mailout had already taken place before Easter 1993, which is clearly incorrect-all copies of Remer’s version were mailed to their recipients only after April 15, 1993. This proves that my sister’s memory was wrong regarding the chronology, which is also supported by her own statements under intensive inquiry both by the judges and by me that she simply could not remember when she had heard what from me. The fact that the witness could no longer remember the exact chronology was duly omitted by the court for obvious reasons. Who of us can remember, down to the exact day, what we heard from our siblings two years ago? But for the court, this was a major stepping stone to its verdict.

3. Another way to prove me a liar was the court’s attempt to prove that my statements regarding contacts with the Remer couple were a lie. By showing that I was hiding my contacts to Remers, they sought to prove that I was in fact involved in their plot to hide the truth from the court. On my contacts with O.E. Remer, the independent observer wrote the following on the trial day November 11, 1994:

For January 24, 1995, one reads there:

But the court portrayed both happenings, which it interpreted as evidence of my lack of credibility, as follows (p. 148ff.):

Since the original of the application form to the revisionist gathering in Roding had been introduced as evidence during the trial and not a copy, as the court falsely claims in its written verdict, it is easy to see that I was not present at the gathering in Roding. In a later publication, my defense lawyer confirmed the report of the independent observer and criticized the court harshly for this rather odd mistake.[9] One can see even further that the report of the independent observer is correct with respect to my responses. If one considers that Remer was absolutely not involved in arranging the publication of the brochure Die Zeit lügt!, i.e., that it did not lead to any correspondence or meetings between Remer and me (not even the Court claimed that), that it was not me who decided to put Remer’s name and publishing house on the imprint of the brochure,[10] and that in the letters and statements quoted by the Court I was always writing and speaking about actual dealings with Remer-there was none in connection with the brochure Die Zeit lügt!-it must be asked: who lacks credibility here?

A large number of similar cases could be shown in which the court made observations on the statements of mine or of witnesses that differ from the trial report. Since the differing interpretation of the court were always disadvantageous for me, the question must be raised whether we are supposed to believe that these errors were made unintentionally.

It appears possible that in German courts, the written judgment will suddenly present evidence as the main proof of guilt which had remained in the background during the proceedings of the trial, in that the court reinterprets it in a way that had not been mentioned during the proceedings. In this way, it is impossible for the defense to bring in evidence to refute evidence which at first appears to be harmless since no one can tell what evidence the court will use as proof of what fact.

When the defense attorney wants to introduce a piece of evidence, he must always provide a reason for it so that the court can decide on the request. On the other hand, this rule does not seem to apply to the court itself.

Here is one example of that. The court interpreted certain publication details of the original version of the Rudolf expert report used by Remer in his version as well as of the version without comments published by me a few months later as proof that Remer’s distribution activities of his version and the subsequent publication of my authorized version were one single operation planned in advance. As one of the main proofs for this the court pointed to the fact that in the draft of my expert report produced in November 1992 (version F2), Prof. R. Faurisson had not been mentioned in the acknowledgements at the end of the report. He had first been expressly thanked in the authorized version of my expert report published in July 1993 on the inner cover. According to the Court, this allegedly proves that the authorized version was planned already in November 1992 (decision, pp. 93, 208ff. Don’t try to find logic in it. There is none.). It did not enter the judges’ minds that I had deleted the acknowledgement to Faurisson from the November 1992 version simply because I feared to be rejected as an expert witness, should any court recognize that I had been in contact and on good terms with the world’s leading revisionist, and not because I already planned to thank Faurisson later in a prominent place in the authorized version. The whole argument spun around this point about the acknowledgement, which first surfaced in the decision and was based on different versions of the expert report that had been introduced as evidence, had never been mentioned even peripherally in the 29 days of the trial proceedings, so that the defense was unable to bring in any evidence to counter this supposed evidence proving the guilt of the accused.

It is doubtful whether the introduction of evidence following the trial is admissible. Nevertheless, the District Court of Stuttgart used exactly this method in order to portray me as untrustworthy. As supposed proof that I had manipulated witnesses, on page 170f. of its decision the court stated:

First, the description of the court is misleading, since I had only declared that my computer had been seized, but not that an answer list had been found on it. This document had been mentioned by the court in the trial but it had not been introduced as evidence in the trial. For this reason, the defense attorney did not think it necessary to produce evidence to oppose this imputation, which might have explained that the item was not an answer list intended for use in an upcoming questioning of a witness. In fact, it was a detailed record I had prepared about what Dill was asked and what he answered when he appeared for the first time in front of the court, and this list was prepared after this interrogation, hence could not be used to manipulate this witness at all.

In the middle of the 1980s, the German criminal justice system was altered so that motions could effectively be denied to hear the testimony of foreign witnesses in their own country. In the course of the trial concerning Remer’s distribution of my report, it became obvious that several foreign revisionists had participated in the operation indirectly or directly. Since these revisionists faced the possibility of arrest if they traveled to Germany, due to their revisionist activity, they would have had to give their testimony outside the country. Because of the reformulation of the German law, however, it was possible for the court in the final phase of the trial to deny numerous motions of the defense that were intended to hear the testimony of foreign witnesses outside the country on key questions. The effect this can have on the judgment is obvious.

In criminal proceedings caused by crimes that are considered by the German authorities to have caused major violations of law and order, the trial is held immediately on the District Court level, i.e., on what normally is supposed to be the appeal level (the first level is the County Court). In such cases, the accused has only one trial during which evidence can be presented, that is, there is no appeal possible to the verdict of this court! Only a so-called application for a revision of the verdict with the German Federal Supreme Court is possible, but such an application can only criticize errors of form (matters of law). The factual assertions of the deciding court, i.e., description and evaluation of evidence (matters of fact), will not be discussed anymore. Furthermore, it is usually the case that applications for a revision will be denied by the German Federal Supreme Court, if the defense is the only party to request it.

Whoever determines, and on whatever basis, whether or not law and order have been seriously violated by an offender, must remain open. But such a serious violation seems to be always given, if the offence massively attacked political taboos. In such cases-where the accused’s entire existence is at stake-he has no possibility of reopening the taking of evidence in an appeal.

The fact that recent attempts were made in Germany to deny an appeal even for trials of minor misdemeanors held before County Courts for the sake of relieving the workload of the court, shows how little room for maneuver is left to him who gets caught up in the wheels of justice.

Even if a court has introduced evidence in the course of a trial that made its delicately constructed bridge of circumstantial evidence to collapse by refuting it, this is no reason not to impose a sentence. Here is an example.

In my case, the court had come up with the idea that, already in October 1992, I had planned Remer’s distribution activities of his version and the subsequent publication of my authorized version as one single operation planned in advance (decision pp. 207ff.).

At the same time, on Feb. 16, 1995, the court introduced a letter of mine to Mark Weber, dated May 22, 1993, from which it was clear that up to the end of May 1993, a month after the end of Remer’s distribution operation, I still did not know where I could publish my authorized version of the expert report, which indisputably contradicted the court’s thesis that I was already planning to publish the authorized version at the same time as I was allegedly helping to plan the Remer operation.

Here is a discussion of a second example of the court’s logic-free evaluation of the evidence. In its written verdict, the court conceded that I intended to get the attention of the lay public for my expert report (decision pp. 23f., 108f., 210), so that I had paid attention that there was no reason for the general public to suspect any lack of technical merit and reputation, e.g., by including political comments (decision pp. 17ff., 196f., 218). This was supported by the evidence as a whole and in particular by the documents introduced on June 13, 1995, which was a series of letters that I wrote to various persons between 1991 and 1993, all clearly stating that I did not want any political or polemic comments included in or associated with my expert report. However, if one was to follow this logic, one has to assume that I would have sent out-or agreed to the distribution of-a version of my expert report which confined itself to technical discussion but would never have sent out one such as the Remer version with its polemical/political commentary. In the decision the court can escape this logical contradiction only by claiming that I had miscalculated the effect of Remer’s commentary (p. 228).

Having arrived at a verdict in this way, the tens of pieces of exonerating evidence-documents and witnesses-that my lawyer had introduced served the court as evidence of my "criminal energy", since, according to the court, this exonerating evidence was all partly made up (decision pp. 13, 22, 65, 118-126, 131, 175, 192) and served only to deceive the court:

Which leads to the Court’s conclusion:

since:

Given the present circumstances of the criminal justice system in the Federal Republic of Germany, when a judge or a panel of judges intend to render an unjust verdict, they will have no difficulty in doing so as long as they are assured there is no organized public resistance from the media, academia, the police, or the churches.

The statements of witnesses and accused may be manipulated at will. Evidence may be interpreted any which way in the decision or may be brought in after the process is over. Submitted evidence may be passed over without mention and use of foreign witnesses may be denied arbitrarily.

Exculpatory evidence may be discredited as a deceptive maneuver of the accused and serve as evidence that the accused is particularly deserving of punishment. A second trial instance to try to correct these measures can be denied in case of public necessity. The evaluation of evidence is bound neither by the evidence introduced nor by logic.

The question, how these conditions can be overcome so that further misuse can be reduced as much as possible, needs to be answered by honest jurists and politicians.

The court based its refusal to allow for a probation of the sentence of imprisonment not only on my supposedly high "criminal energy," but also on the fact that I did not seem to have a favorable social prognosis, since I had not only not repudiated my revisionist views, but defended them even more vehemently and kept propagandizing them. As proof for this the court pointed to the book Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte,[11] edited by me under a pen name, which had come onto the market just at the beginning of this trial, as well as to the almost-complete book Auschwitz: Nackte Fakten[12] found on my computer during a house search conducted in March 1995, i.e., right in the middle of the ongoing proceedings.

With this, a fact was used to harden my punishment that had not even been determined to be a criminal offense in a legally binding decision by a German court in the first place, as was a work which had not yet been published and which therefore could not even theoretically have been a crime. By German law, it is admissible for a German criminal court to take account of the opinions of the accused-here my historical revisionist opinions-in the weighing of punishment. Through this back-door, the trial against me was turned into a political trial.[13]

By Germar Rudolf

In German history, censorship unfortunately has been more of a rule than an exception. It was introduced by the Catholic Church in the form of the Inquisition. However, it was left to the well-known Austrian statesman Metternich to perfect the system of suppressing freedom of speech by means of a comprehensive spy and surveillance apparatus. Neither the German Empire nor the Weimar Republic were particularly soft in their dealings with unwelcome literature,[1] but the worst reputation was doubtless acquired by the Third Reich, which managed, within the twelve years of its existence, to black-list some 10,000 books. While these books were not burned, they did disappear from the shelves of bookstores, to be banished to library archives.[2]

But what is not nearly as well known is the fact that it was the Allied 'liberators' of Germany who staged the greatest campaign of book destruction that mankind had ever seen. Among the victims of Allied displeasure were 34,645 titles as well as, comprehensively, all school textbooks published between 1933 and 1945; not only were these no longer permitted to be printed and sold after the war - they also had to vanish from the archives of many libraries.[3] In the years from 1946 to 1952, the Soviet Occupation Power published four such lists ("Liste der auszusondernden Literatur", or list of proscribed literature) of titles earmarked for destruction. In accordance with the instructions in the censors' introduction to the second and third volumes, the first three of these lists also went into force in the western Occupation Zones.

In its Article 5, Section 1, Clause 3, the current German Constitution (Grundgesetz, or GG) prohibits censorship. Section 2 of that same Article, however, limits this freedom from censorship as per the regulations imposed by "general laws", among other things. A fundamental human right can thus be suspended, at least theoretically, by everyday laws such as those of criminal law.[4] In this respect, the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) has determined that "general laws" are such that do not prohibit a specific opinion, or freedom of speech per se. Furthermore, general laws may impose limits on a fundamental right only if doing so serves to safeguard another fundamental right. In accordance with the principle of proportionality, the benefits of both conflicting fundamental rights must be weighed against each other.[5]

Further restrictions imposed on freedom of speech by Article 5 Section 2 GG serve the protection of young people and of personal honor. According to rulings of the German Federal Constitutional Court, the core significance of the human right to freedom of speech is that censorship of publications is permitted only if these publications are at least a constant or typical source of endangerment to the young people who might read, hear or watch them.

Regarding injury to honor, the Federal Constitutional Court has ruled that such injury generally has not occurred if no insulting expressions have been used.

The German Criminal Code (Strafgesetzbuch, StGB) has at its disposal tools facilitating censorship, particularly in §§ 185, 189 and 130f. While §§ 185 and 189 (slander, disparagement of the memory of persons deceased) may be subsumed under the category of "injuries to honor", §§ 130f. (incitement of the people, incitement to hatred) are a mixed grouping of injuries to honor, injury to human dignity (Article 1 GG), and endangerment of the public peace, a conceptual chimera which we shall not investigate in greater detail here.

The autumn 1994 revision of § 130 StGB (the so-called Lex Deckert) decreed, among other things, that it is a criminal offense

This is precisely the scenario which the Federal Constitutional Court has actually ruled out: this law criminalizes a specific opinion about one detail of the history of only one single, past regime. From this perspective alone, this "hastily passed and unthought-out"[6] "special law against freedom of speech"[7] would seem to be unconstitutional, and it has been criticized commensurately in German legal subject literature, where it is described as being, in effect, "an attack on the intellectual freedom of dissidents"[8] and "virtually the classic example of a norm [...] directed against a specific opinion."[7]

The concept of "denying" something which the state deems true is a new element in German criminal law and poses problems which it seems quite impossible for criminal procedure to solve. In order for denial to objectively constitute a criminal offense, it must be done deliberately; that is, the denier must know that he is not telling the truth and the judge must prove this knowledge, which in and of itself is already virtually impossible. But in order to be able to also punish (especially) the so-called 'criminals of conviction' who are convinced that they are telling the truth, the German judiciary has concocted an entirely new definition of intent:

However, the revised § 130 StGB includes regulations which even go considerably further. It criminalizes not only dissident views of certain aspects of National Socialist persecution of minorities, but in a sense anything and everything which could be considered incitement to hatred against population subgroups of potentially any definition. In this regard the foremost German criminal law commentary observes that this amendment means that practically any kind of criticism of population subgroups - however they are defined - can become a criminal offense, since the legal right that is supposed to be protected (the anti-discrimination rule) is rendered too general and vague in this Section.[11]

Furthermore, it also permits precautionary censorship, as it were, by providing for the confiscation of publications or other data carriers which are allegedly intended for distribution. The judiciary holds that the intent to distribute prohibited publications exists if a person has in his or her possession, more than one single copy of a data carrier.

That this new German law is difficult to reconcile with international human rights standards is a fact openly acknowledged by Germany's leading politicians, but it is excused by virtue of the country's particular history.[12]

The first step in the process of German censorship is the black-listing or "indexing" of, for example, a book or pamphlet. This indexing is done by the Federal Review Office for Youth-Endangering Media (Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien, BPjM).[13] Until 2002, this authority could only become active after a complaint by, e.g., a public youth welfare department. However, a more restrictive law introduced in 2002 now allows this authority to index media without the need of a complaint. This indexing means that the black-listed work may no longer be advertised and that it may not be sold or otherwise made available to persons under 18 years of age. In practical terms this means that the work ceases to exist for the public, as one can then legally learn of its existence only by private means - or, alternately, via the list of indexed works, which the BPjM regularly publishes in its Report. By now this list includes thousands of printed, audio and audio-visual works.[14] Once readily accessible by everybody, this Report is now sold only to libraries, wholesalers, and retailers, and even libraries have stopped giving free access to it, which renders the censorship activities of this authority more and more obscure. This tendency to hide its censorship activities was even more enhanced in 2002, when the law was changed so that media, which are regarded to be an especially severe threat to the mental development of young people, are now listed in secret lists. The victims of this secret censorship are media whose content violates German criminal law (libel, denigration of the dead, incitement to hatred, stirring up the people), which includes basically all revisionist literature.[15]

While the BPjM was initially created primarily to protect German youth from pornography and the glorification of violence, it has increasingly also engaged in the battle against politically or historically unpopular literature. As early as 1990 Eckhard Jesse, who is today a Professor of Sociology in Chemnitz, criticized that the BPjM had "in many ways turned out to be a gateway for one-sided anti-Fascism"[16] and that its measures are "difficult to reconcile with the principles of a liberal society [...], because, on principle, in an open society the printed and spoken word may not be stifled."[17]

To date, this astonishing admission of the violation of human rights through censorship under the auspices of the Federal Constitutional Protection Office, which edited the contribution of Jesse, has received little attention.

The decision of German courts in the case of the book Wahrheit für Deutschland (Truth for Germany) has taken on a central significance where the BPjM's practice of censorship is concerned. This book dealt in an allegedly unacademic manner with the question of who bears the blame for World War Two.[18] The BPjM black-listed it in the late 1970s. In 1994 the Federal Constitutional Court declared this black-listing decision unlawful,[19] but the BPjM promptly re-indexed the book on slightly reworded grounds.[20] The author's appeal against this, as well as his complaint to the Administrative Court of Cologne, were successful. According to the verdict the BPjM had failed to prove that the book posed a danger to the young people who might read it:

However, this verdict, as well as the Federal Constitutional Court's previous verdict, also indicate that these principles do not apply if it is, for example, the historiography about the fate of the Jews in the Third Reich that is questioned. Such questioning, the argument goes, not only represents a scientifically blatantly incorrect opinion, it also glorifies National Socialism and disparages the Jews as a group. This does not by any means require that the publication in question verbally attacks the Jews or identifies itself with National Socialist ideology. Not even an open declaration of sympathy with the Jews and a condemnation of National Socialist transgressions in other respects will serve in the publication's favor if the factual nature of the Holocaust is questioned at even one single point in the work. German courts consider even one such occurrence to be adequate proof of a glorification of the National Socialist system and of an intention to slander the Jews.

To date, appeals against the black-listing of "Holocaust-denying" books have been uniformly unsuccessful, since German courts refuse all motions to bring evidence in such trials.[22] Documentation, however, is very fragmentary in this context. Older books which dispute the factuality of the Holocaust - such as Geschichte der Verfemung Deutschlands (History of the Defamation of Germany),[23] Hexeneinmaleins einer Lüge (Magic Square of a Lie),[24] Feuerzeichen (Fire signal)[25] or Die 2. babylonische Gefangenschaft (The 2nd Babylonian Captivity)[26] - are not to be found on the Index of the BPjM. On the other hand, one of the first books of this genre - a book that, regarding its style, must certainly be accorded scientific and academic credit, namely, Der Jahrhundertbetrug[27] (The Hoax of the Century) - was black-listed as early as spring 1979.[28]

A work issued by the publisher Kritik-Verlag, lately of Denmark, has achieved fame at least indirectly. In the early 1970s this publisher issued a brochure titled Die Auschwitz-Lüge (The Auschwitz Lie), in which a former German soldier described his experiences in Auschwitz, which are diametrically opposed to those recounted in the well-known eyewitness testimony.[29] At least in Germany the title of this publication became the embodiment of what is otherwise known less polemically as Holocaust revisionism, i.e., the thesis that there was no Third Reich policy of extermination of the Jews. A portrait of Thies Christophersen, the brochure's author, who was prosecuted in Germany and had fled abroad, was used in 1995 by Amnesty International as advertisement for free speech because even the most controversial of all opinions, namely the one that disputes the Holocaust, ought to be protected by the human right to freedom of speech.[30] The publication was not indexed until 1993, fully 20 years after its first publication.[31]

Since the 1994 tightening of criminal law no change has become apparent in the BPjM's decision-making process, and neither is any change necessarily to be expected, since the BPjM proceeds in accordance with the Law for Youth Protection (Gesetz zum Schutz der Jugend, or GjS), not with criminal law.

The second stage of German censorship is the so-called confiscation (or seize-and-destroy) stage. This stage hardly registers with the public at all, and even Professor E. Jesse, whom we quoted earlier, seems either not to be aware of it or to ignore it. The confiscation of a publication takes place on the order of a court. What happens to the confiscated copies of such a publication is not quite clear, but it probably varies with the police station in charge. One publisher who is quite frequently the target of such book confiscations reported that he had been told that the books are burned under police supervision.[32] In one case the press reported that confiscated literature is being burnt in waste incinerators.[33]

According to information from the German Federal Government, and unlike for indexed works, there is no office or authority which publishes an even remotely complete list of confiscated books; similarly, the confiscation orders issued by the courts are not published anywhere.[34] Certainly every court that orders or revokes the confiscation of a publication is required to communicate its decision to the Federal Criminal Investigation Office (Bundeskriminalamt), which therefore ought to have a complete and current list, particularly as it serves the courts as information central regarding confiscation orders already issued.[35] However, these confiscation orders are published only every now and then in the Bundeskriminalblatt, a publication not readily accessible to the public. What goes for the public's review of black-listing does not go for the actual confiscation of the works in question. In this respect the public is left completely in the dark.

Although pornographic or pro-violent publications are also affected by confiscations, these are not discussed here, since the destruction of political or historical publications is a much more explosive issue from a human-rights point of view.

Up to 1994 it was still possible to keep track of all the confiscated publications with political or historical content. The most spectacular case was no doubt the confiscation of the revisionist book Der Auschwitz-Mythos (The Auschwitz Myth). Due to the book's 'Holocaust-denying' theses, the author, a former judge, was stripped of his doctorate, and his pension was reduced.[36]

Another interesting case are the confiscations of the books published by the revisionist Jew Joseph Ginsburg, under the pseudonym J. G. Burg. His Holocaust-denying books also fell victim to German book burning, even though - being a Jew, and in light of the contents of his writings - he could hardly be accused of anti-Semitism.

Germany today: 105,678 Criminal Prosecutions Because of "Thought Crimes" During the Last Ten Years:

Year Right Left Foreign Sum 1994 5,562 185 235 5,982 1995 6,555 256 276 7,087 1996 7,585 557 818 8,960 1997 10,257 1,063 1,029 12,349 1998 9,549 1,141 1,832 12,522 1999 8,698 1,025 1,525 11,248 2000 13,863 979 525 15,367 2001 8,874 429 353 9,656 2002 9,807 331 467 10,605 2003 9,692 431 1,340 11,463 Total: 90,395 6,397 8,886 105,678

• Right: "Offenses with right wing extremist background", that is: "Propaganda Offenses" and "Stirring up the People" • Left: "Offenses with left wing extremist background", generally referred to as "other offenses" • Foreign: offenses committed by foreign extremists, mainly against the German law of organizations ("Vereinsgesetz") by Kurds in the prohibited Kurdish Liberation Army PKK[37]

Especially right-wingers are persecuted in Germany.

Up to the winter of 1996, and where political and historical publications are concerned, the BPjM itself had listed the confiscation of only a few issues of the Swiss-based revisionist periodical Der Eidgenoss. The various issues of the revisionist periodical Historische Tatsachen (Historical Facts), on the other hand - which have long been subject to confiscation, and which are published by the same publisher whose book Wahrheit für Deutschland the BPjM has now been trying for over 20 years to ban - are not mentioned.[38] It was not until the spring of 1997 that the BPjM updated its list, particularly with four books by the Swiss revisionist author Jürgen Graf. With one exception, however, these books had all been confiscated before late 1994, and one had already been de-indexed again in 1995.[39] The BPjM itself is thus even less clear on the state of confiscations than is the author of the present article.

This 'moderate' confiscation policy changed radically after the revised § 130 StGB took effect on December 1, 1994. Even though the time from December 1, 1994 (the date the new § 130 StGB came into force), and mid-1997 (the authorship date of this article) is only two and a half years, the list of books ordered seized and destroyed during this period is about as long as that of the books which to our knowledge were confiscated in the previous 45 years of the Federal Republic of Germany's existence.

It is important to note that in most instances the court case reference numbers given refer not only to the confiscation proceedings directed at the books themselves, but refer also to concomitant criminal trials of authors, editors, publishers, booksellers, sometimes even against the printers and multiple-copy purchasers of the publications in question. Criminal prosecution of the purchasers of prohibited publications is initiated even if the books were bought at a time when they were not yet prohibited. In actual fact almost all such trials are of this retroactive nature, i.e., they deal with cases where books were bought before they were confiscated, since as a rule it is no longer possible to obtain the books at all after they have been violently withdrawn from the market.

In reply to an inquiry the Ministry of Justice of the Federal Land of Baden-Württemberg has stated that in the time between the end of 1994 and mid-1996, in Baden-Württemberg alone, there were 32 cases of preliminary proceedings being instituted against private individuals for their multiple purchases of such books.[40] Projected to cover all of Germany, this figure indicates some 250 to 300 such criminal cases.

Revisionist books which, to our knowledge, have not even been black-listed yet - such as Feuerzeichen or Die 2. babylonische Gefangenschaft - were not the only victims of this new wave of censorship. Books with strictly political content, such as In Sachen Deutschland (In the Matter of Germany) or Wolfsgesellschaft (society of wolves), were also destroyed. Both these books deal in an unpolemic but rejective manner with the problems of multiculturalism and the supposed incompetence of German politicians. However, since this openly negative attitude allegedly represents incitement against the foreigners in Germany and against the establishment political parties and their representatives, in other words since the books endangered the internal peace of the Federal Republic, they were confiscated.

It is impossible to discuss every prohibited book adequately within the scope of this article. We shall therefore focus on only one case, namely the first seize-and-destroy order that was issued after the legal revision of December 1, 1994. This order was carried out in late March 1995 against the scientific handbook Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte (German original of Dissecting the Holocaust), which deals very critically with the Holocaust. Since then, 1,000 persons, primarily from the ranks of academia, have spoken out publicly in support of de-indexing this book,[41] and two distinguished historians have even testified in court that the book is scientific and academic in nature and thus ought to be protected under Article 5 Section 3 of the Constitution, where freedom of research is guaranteed without limitations.[42]

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice of Baden-Württemberg has announced that this constitutional provision is not sacrosanct. The Ministry has ruled that destruction of a scientific work is permissible if said work unduly restricts the fundamental rights of a third party.[43] This interpretation is not new, as the German Constitutional High Court decided already in 1985 in the matter of Wilhelm Stäglich/Der Auschwitz-Mythos, that the freedom of science is no longer granted when its results allegedly attacks the human dignity of Jews.[44] The implications of this are that scientists may not postulate certain theses and may not question or seek to refute certain establishment theses when this perhaps runs counter to Jewish interests. This ruling of the German Constitutional High Court is quite obviously a violation of human rights, for this interpretation strikes at the heart of the fundamental right to freedom of research, i.e., the right to freedom of choice in the selection of one's theses and the right to openness of research findings (cf. Karl R. Popper[45]). Publications of subject specialists have confirmed that this approach is clearly unconstitutional.[46]

The trial concerning the book Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte - that is, concerning the freedom of its authors, editor, publisher, printer, sellers and buyers - will likely drag on for several more years and is indeed a crucial case which will contribute significantly to shaping the future course of human rights in Germany.

Naturally, every trial for printing, publishing or disseminating a prohibited work also involves at least one personal fate. Exactly how many persons have been punished in recent years for their will to disseminate publications which were outlawed afterwards is not known; the aforementioned figure of several hundred preliminary proceedings, however, would indicate that the number is substantial. In the following we shall touch on only four of the most prominent examples from recent years. (The corresponding court case reference numbers may be found with the entries for the books in question, in the appended list of confiscated books.)

First and foremost, we would mention the case of Günter Deckert, the former Federal Chairman of the German right-wing Nationaldemokratische Partei (National Democratic Party). This case even attracted international attention. As early as 1994 Deckert was sentenced to two years' imprisonment for having interpreted, in an assenting manner, an American speaker's English-language presentation which disputed the mass extermination of the Jews in Auschwitz.[47] This case has been partially recounted in the book Der Fall Günter Deckert (The Case of G.D.), co-edited by Deckert himself.[48] This book, in which Deckert supported his revisionist views with new arguments, as well as the sale of 50 copies of the revisionist anthology Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, resulted in renewed proceedings against him, the bottom line of which was that he was sentenced to another 20 months' imprisonment in spring 1997. He is supposed to be released from jail in August 2000 - after almost 5 years.

The second-worst fate struck a long-time publisher from Vlotho, the academically accredited political scientist Udo Walendy. In December 1996 he was sentenced, in his last possible appeal, to 15 months' imprisonment for four issues (nos. 1 (2^nd ed.), 59, 60 and 64) of his revisionist series Historische Tatsachen, a series which includes 77 issues to date. In May 1997 the County Court of Herford struck a supplemental blow, as it were, by sentencing Walendy to yet another 14 months' imprisonment for his issues 66 and 68. Subsequently, Walendy's license as a publisher was withdrawn in September 1999, so it is no longer permitted to Herrn Walendy to publish or distribute any media.[49] This case shows especially clearly how German censorship has escalated since the introduction of the relevant legal revisions in late 1994: while none of Walendy's issues had had any criminal consequences for the author prior to the revision, fully six of the twelve issues that appeared afterwards resulted in trials and convictions, even though neither the style nor the content of the periodical had changed in any way.[50]

Our third example is the fate of academically accredited chemist Germar Rudolf, who also publishes under the pseudonym Ernst Gauss. For drawing up and disseminating a chemical and technical expert report known as Das Rudolf-Gutachten (The Rudolf Report), which claims to disprove the mass gassings in Auschwitz, he was sentenced in June 1995 to 14 months' imprisonment and has since been prosecuted and persecuted for authoring or editing various revisionist books and brochures (for example, Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, Prof. Dr. Ernst Nolte: Auch Holocaust-Lügen haben kurze Beine, Auschwitz: Nackte Fakten, Kardinalfragen zur Zeitgeschichte, various issues of the Journal Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung). He avoided his first prison sentence as well as the trial for editing the book Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte by fleeing into exile.[51] Wigbert Grabert, the publisher of the book Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, was unable to avoid his punishment, and was fined DM 30,000.00.

And last but not least, we would mention the case of Hans Schmidt, an American citizen born in Germany. He is the head of a US-based right-wing organization that claims to represent the interests of the German-Americans in the United States. In this capacity he has for many years annoyed numerous prominent persons in Germany with Open Letters. When Schmidt visited Germany in the summer of 1995, he was held in custody, awaiting trial, for more than five months, since one of these Open Letters, in which he had described the German elites as "infested by Jews and Freemasons", allegedly constituted incitement of the people. Schmidt avoided prosecution by fleeing to Florida.[52]

The fact that there is no publicly accessible list of confiscated books makes it difficult in some cases to determine whether or not a confiscation order exists. Sometimes one only learns of confiscations by the various public prosecutors' offices in the course of full-blown criminal investigations. If proceedings are then stopped or abandoned for reasons other than supposed innocence (for example, a legally valid conclusion to the proceedings, lapse, or a consolidation with other proceedings, frequently accompanied by the withholding of evidence such as the confiscated books), the legal state of the confiscation proceedings - i.e., with respect to the 'weapon', the book - often remains unclear. And quite a few of the censored publishers and authors are not very co-operative, as they do not want to see their case dragged into the public. They fear damage to their reputation, so they stay silent, too. Obviously, the general confusion regarding the law in matters of German book confiscations is a constant uncertainty factor for every publisher, bookseller and book buyer. For this reason a trend towards preventive self-censorship is becoming increasingly manifest in Germany: to avoid the incalculable risk of criminal prosecution, one is less and less inclined to pick up politically or historically hot potatoes which a judiciary might choose to single out as being right-of-center. This silent, hidden censorship is admittedly the most effective and thus the most dangerous one that can be. That in the long term this must bring catastrophic effects on social and political life in Germany seems not to interest anyone.

Now it does not really matter what one thinks of the theses advocated by this group of persons. The fact is that the human right to freedom of speech must be indivisible, as Professor R. Dworkin already put it in Index on Censorship.[53] And since none of the cases described here involved any calls to violence, instructions for violent acts, or trivializations of violence - at most, violence is disputed for certain historical events, or portrayed as less than generally usual in other accounts - the harshness with which the German judiciary proceeds against these dissidents is incomprehensible and unjustified.

If the cases described herein affected any other persons or groups, then there would be a worldwide outcry in the press, denouncing such human rights violations. But since the victims are after all only the right ones, the matter is ignored and hushed up. But from an objective perspective there is no difference between, for example, Communists and Jehovah's Witnesses being imprisoned in the Third Reich for their beliefs, and right-wingers and Revisionists being thrown behind bars in the Federal Republic of Germany today for the sake of their publications. Human rights remain human rights. They go for leftist radicals just as for right-wingers.

Considering the results of a more comprehensive, highly recommended study about the deterioration of civil rights in Germany in general,[54] one must conclude that Germany's tradition of free speech is rather underdeveloped. The general German attitude behind this - 'tough measures are justified to prevent the repetition of this dark (Third Reich) chapter of our history' - is understandable, but it is wrong, too, since it leads to the paradox and perverse situation where, in order to prevent the persecution of minorities and the burning of books, minorities are persecuted and books are burned. This is exactly the situation we are facing in Germany today. In light of her history, the only correct position for Germany to take would doubtless be the strict and impartial granting of human rights for everyone - and that is not to suggest that this time they ought to be denied the other side for a change, either. Obviously, where human rights are concerned, Germany is caught in a historical vicious circle, or, to use a different metaphor: the pendulum is swinging wildly from one extreme to the other. It is high time that it came to rest in the middle.

Germany – a Summer Nightmare           About the development of civil rights in my fatherland

It is well understood that historical revisionism is a forerunner of political revisionism, because it has already happened before. Germany already proved to itself and the world that it did not bear sole responsibility for the First World War, and the political revisionism of the Thirties was the logical result. What was the Second World War, the sequel to the First World War, if not the Allied reaction to political revisionism? In 1939 Germany had as yet committed no so-called "Holocaust." All it had done was participate in the First World War twenty-five years earlier. This was enough to cause the world to inflict a real holocaust upon Germany.

However, Article 244 StPO also provides that evidence which is present in the courtroom can be disallowed only if such evidence is "entirely inappropriate." Concerning the testimony of expert witnesses, it can be deemed "entirely inappropriate" if the witnesses have absolutely no training or analogous experience in the subject area where they want to testify, or if at the time of testimony they are incapable of answering questions (for example on account of drunkenness or mental incapacitation.) Furthermore according to law, the "common knowledge" criteria can be suspended in case new evidence is presented which supercedes other evidence heretofore presented to the court.[1]

But what would happen if the German courts and prosecutors should remain inactive and, despite the request by the defense, simply would not present such expert testimony? In such cases, German criminal law gives the defense the possibility to offer its own evidenciary material, that is, providing its own expert testimony and submitting it as evidence. In the summer of 1991 I received just such a commission from the Düsseldorf defence attorney Hajo Herrmann. I completed research for my testimony at the beginning of 1992 and was then subpoenaed by various lawyers to testify as an expert witness in several trials of revisionists.[2]

It was fascinating to observe how the judges bent and broke the law in order to disqualify me. One of the judges interrupted the proceedings in order to confer with government officials government in Bonn.[3] So much for the political independence of German judges. Then he summarily disallowed my testimony on grounds that the "Holocaust" is "common knowledge." Another judge proclaimed that the training for a German Diplom-Chemist– the academic degree I have – was so difficult to obtain that it actually corresponded to the title of doctor in another profession; but, since I did not actually possess a doctor title in Chemistry, my expert testimony was "entirely inappropriate evidentiary material."[4] Still another judge went so far as to actually threaten me, saying that if I supported the position of the accused, I would be committing a punishable offense. So much for the protection of witnesses in German courts! Expert witnesses are charged with testifying truthfully and to the best of their knowledge and conscience, but woe to the witness who says anything that displeases the judge![5] In all cases, the law was flagrantly violated by the judges dismissing me with the magical incantation "Common knowledge of the Holocaust." They did this even though the point on which they were supposed to rule was whether my expert testimony would constitute evidentiary material which qualitatively superceded other evidentiary material. Obviously this question can not be answered by references to the "Common knowledge of the Holocaust.".[6] Thus it happened that I was not allowed to testify in a single case before the court.

Today, furthermore, prosecutors as well as judges in conference with lawyers for the defense openly admit that "Auschwitz denial trials" are political trials whose outcomes are predetermined from above. Thus it happened that a prosecutor of the court in Bielefeld let slip the following "lapsus linguae" in a conference with Attorney H. Herrmann during court recess:[7]

This was by no means an exceptional case. To Munich Attorney Klaus Göbel, who frequently represented revisionist defendants during the early 1990s, a judge in the evidentiary phase of a trial expressed himself quite candidly, as follows:

Attorney Göbel shared this with me on 22nd July 1992, during the "discovery" phase of the trial for which I had been subpoenaed to appear as an expert witness.[8] He did this in order to make it clear to me that our tactic of "considered, innovative, up-to-date evidence" could not prevail. German courts are charged with suppressing all exculpatory evidence in "Holocaust" trials, and to disqualify expert witnesses without a hearing.

Toward the end of 1992 I received a letter, ostensibly from a "Department of State Protection" of the District Criminal Court of Baden-Württemberg, informing me that I had been accused of "Denying the Holocaust."[9]  

But not in German criminal trials! Here, no court record is kept!!!

This is extremely ominous, since afterwards it can not be pointed out just what the judge, prosecutor, defendant, defense attorney or witness has said. This opens the door very wide for lies and errors on the part of the judge. I have given several examples of how my presiding judge falsified testimony and the course of my trial in several critical points.[10] Of course I would never have the chance to prove that my accusations are right, since it conflicted with the testimony of three judges. In a contest between three judges and a convicted criminal, who wins? However, that is all irrelevant now. The point to be made is that there is absolutely no excuse for German criminal courts’ not keeping a court record, considering the state of modern stenographic technology. The absence of such a record invites for all kinds of judicial misconduct. Not even the best judge remembers everything that was said in his court. And even if the discrepancies I have described were remedied, there would still remain the worst evil of all. That is the very existence of a political judiciary, which is bound to find a way to convict whomever it targets.

Recently, Claus Nordbruch exhaustively documented the scandalous jurisdictional expansion of this domestic spy service.[11] Although this Department possesses no police or legal resources, it nevertheless wields tremendous power. If an individual or organization is mentioned in one of its "Constitutional Protection" reports, it is the social equivalent of a death sentence. The person or institution targeted is ostracized and shunned like a leper, fired from his job and denied right of appeal before the employment courts.

The role of the victorious allies is evident also in the first disfranchisement of a political party, which occurred early in the 1950s. In those days the newly organized German Reich Party, which was very popular among former soldiers and the patriotically inclined, was enjoying rapid growth and electoral successes. The leading personality and draft horse of the new party was Major General Otto Ernst Remer. Because of his success he was visited by an Allied delegation. They issued him an alternative: either quit the Reich Party or else the Allies would ban it. Remer refused to knuckle under and the party was banned.[12] For the sake of appearances the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) was also banned, but it promptly re-emerged as the DKP (German Communist Party.)

In 1954 the Youth Protection Act was passed and the "Federal Censorship Office for Youth Endangering Publications" was founded. At the request of various public agencies it can index publications, which are then disapproved for youthful readers and removed from the public market. When this happens, the publications cease to exist, of course. Originally touted as protection of juveniles against pornography and the glorification of violence, this department has increasingly misused its power to censor politically suspect publications. In the seventies this censorship was applied primarily against the political left. Since the eighties it has been used primarily against publications on the right.[13]

When the emergency decrees were finally accepted under the Grand Coalition of conservatives and socialist at the end of the sixties, the "extraparliamentary opposition" ("Außerparlamentarische Oppostion", APO) was organized, which challenged the accumulation of power within the established parties through struggles in the street. Out of this APO developed the terrorist movement of the seventies, which gave the government a pretext for restricting human rights still further. As I can personally attest, it became permissible to search domiciles, tap telephones and open mail, even without official court permission, provided the intent was to head off "development of a potentially dangerous situation." ("Gefahr im Verzug")

With the expansion of organized criminality in the eighties, basic human rights (inviolability of the home, and privacy of mail and telephone) were weakened still further. Now came another striking innovation: such measures could be applied without judicial permission, under the simple pretext of "Suspicion of potential danger." This is commonly called "Salami tactics."

No one seems interested in the fact that combating organized crime is not caused by inadequate legislation, but rather by lack of support for the police and lack of will on the part of politicians, who are frequently involved in organized crime.[14] The period around 1980 also saw the first flowering of Holocaust revisionism.[15] The government responded to this challenge with another streamlining of its procedure for prosecuting thought crime. It raised such violations to the level of crimes that are to be prosecuted automatically, i.e., they do no longer be initiated by complaints by Jews. This is the so-called Engelhardt or Stäglich law.

Since Germany’s reunification, in 1989/90, a flood of patriotism and patriotic organizations has been sweeping across Germany. International power brokers were then exerting tremendous pressure upon Germany to repress the patriotic movement. In the course of this repression several xenophobic attacks have occurred, some of which may well have been engineered. Certainly the government has exploited all the attacks in order to create the specter of a "brown threat," a resurgence of fascism. As a result of this, on December 1, 1994, Germany’s Penal Code was changed on an unprecedented scale. Freedom of opinion regarding German social taboos such as foreigners, multi-culture, Jews, Holocaust and the Third Reich has been banished altogether. I am referring to the new Article 130, the so-called Deckert Law.

The government’s most recent step toward total surveillance occurred at the end of the nineties. This was the so-called "Great Spying Assault" ("Großer Lauschangriff"), which legalizes constant residential surveillance with microphones and cameras under certain circumstances. Simultaneously, the German judiciary launched prosecutions of foreigners as well as German nationals for disseminating "contraband" documents over the Internet.

In Germany at present, all the following are all treated as contraband or illegal activities:

• Anything which might be construed as a threat to public order can be prohibited at the discretion of a prosecutor or judge.
• All the symbols, gestures, songs, speeches, and poems which directly or indirectly suggest anything associated with the Third Reich are prohibited.
• Criticism of "multicultural" society and immigration policy can be construed as an illegal act.
• It is unlawful to investigate the circumstances surrounding National Socialist crimes, whether actual or alleged.
• Every critical researcher who investigates the Third Reich works under the threat of persecution and suppression.
• The statute of limitations for journalistic crime, regulated independently by the German States (Bundesland), which was heretofore six months, has been extended in some states to five or even ten years.
• Even criticism of established parties, government and its representatives can be prosecuted as an offense.
• As a result, thousands of books have been burned, tens of thousands of German citizens punished for thought crimes, hundreds of citizens thrown into prison, and numerous opposition parties and other organizations outlawed. Other parties and political groupings are severely restricted in their constitutionally guaranteed rights. They are subjected to monstrous social and criminal punishment, if they openly oppose or expose the conditions mentioned above. The formation of a parliamentary or extraparliamentary opposition to these despotic conditions has thus been made legally impossible.
• If one criticizes despotic measures, one makes oneself liable for prosecution on grounds of maligning the government, its representatives and symbols. The government has hermetically sealed itself off from all criticism and possibility of reform.

In view of such conditions it is not surprising that political scientists, sociologists and historians no longer dare to call things by their real names. They are afraid of being hauled before the criminal police and sentenced to severe punishment over trivial expressions of political opinion. The Pfeiffenberger case demonstrates very well the course which contemporary developments are taking. It makes the present situation clear to even the most befuddled German professor.[15a]

In all the years I have been associated with representatives of German intellectual life, I have been hearing formulaic expressions such as "Freedom is in peril" and "Are our opinions really free?" It has now become clear that freedom is not "endangered" – it no longer exists. Likewise there is no longer any question about whether one’s thoughts are still free. Given the present climate of anxiety in our general society, media and government, many citizens are actually afraid to formulate opinions. More and more often one hears it said: "You can’t even think that!" People are afraid to openly discuss conditions in Germany because they could suffer serious consequences if they did.

Prof. Gottfried Dietze, Emeritus of Johns Hopkins University, responded to my request to comment from the unassailable position of retired emeritus in a foreign country. His response was discouraging: the world has already dragged Germany through the mud so badly, that he chooses not to make the situation even worse with negative comments about present day conditions in his beloved fatherland. What a heartbreaking observation!

There is a little German witticism going around that illustrates the difference between the former DDR and the present government. Today’s Germany does the opposite of what the DDR used to do: it keeps its citizens fat and politically impotent and takes away their hope of escape by incorporating all German territory and pressing its neighbors to act as she wishes, and so she has no further need of self-firing robot guns at the borders. Things are not much different in Austria and Switzerland, and the other European countries have also begun to march in step, not at least because of German pressure. Thus France recently installed a telephone hotline: Dial 114 to denounce a revisionist! This is no joke, my friends: a nationwide emergency telephone number which allows the government to compile a list of revisionists. In 1994 Germany had a president named Richard von Weizsäcker who publicly called upon children to spy upon their parents and vice versa in order to discourage the growth of right wing sentiments.

Only totalitarian states can sink this low.

On 19 Jan 1993 Mr. E. Mußmann, Professor of Police Law at the Ludwigsburg Academy for Public Administration, delivered a lecture to the German Catholic Student Organization Nordgau Prag in Stuttgart, entitled "How the Police Change with the Times." In this lecture he criticized the relentless undermining of constitutional rights and the expanding power of the police apparatus. Prof. Mußmann remarked that, if these trends were not reversed, he would not want to live in Germany in forty years, because it would have become a police state with pronounced Orwellian tendencies. Prof. Mußmann was mistaken.

It took only seven years.

Therefore I declare to the world and posterity that:

All those who, because of this peaceful statement, are now heaping faggots to burn me at the stake prove that I am telling the truth.

Let me assure you that I would prefer to be mistaken in this. Proof that I am mistaken would be if I could return to Germany and not disappear in prison for many years. But since nobody thinks this would happen, I probably am not mistaken:

My fellow Germans
when will you finally stand up and say aloud:
"We have been robbed of honor and freedom.
Today no one is dying of privation,
but wealth has corrupted and crippled our spirits.
Just what are we afraid of?

To hell with our worldly possessions,
we must have the courage to listen to our hearts.
Not until the day comes when German prisons
can no longer hold all the German prisoners of conscience
will the sun dawn upon a free Germany."

This address was published in Vierteljahresheften für freie Geschichtsforschung (Quarterly Publication for Free Historical Research), 4(2) (2000), pp. 133-138, online: vho.org/VffG/2000/2/Rudolf133-138.html.

                                   In German Published in: Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung (VffG) 4(2) (2000), S. 133-138.

All articles were reproduced from Germar Rudolf's website.

In early 1996, the revisionist Web site www.zundelsite.org  caused a storm in the then still relatively tiny internet-pot, since its content was hated by several Jewish lobby groups and in particular by the German authorities, who all together tried with several legal and less than legal techniques to shut down this controversial site. These attempts on censorship resulted in a massive movement of solidarity in the then still quite idealistic internet community. At the end of many months of struggle, all measures to stifle the zundelsite had failed, also because many idealists around the world posted copies of the zundelsite, not because they agreed with the content of the zundelsite, but because they wanted to defend the highly regarded freedom of speech against all attempts of censorship.

Of course, governmental as well as non-governmental institutions kept trying to find more effective ways to censor the internet. The censorship case, with perhaps the most damaging impact on freedom of speech, was probably that against Dr. Fredrick Töben, who has been arrested and sentenced to a prison term in Germany for having posted revisionist contents on his Australian website.[1]

In October 2002, an academic paper about censorship of internet search engines has caused quite a stir on an international level, but has unfortunately not led to a similar reaction by the internet free speech community as it did in 1996.

Background

End of 1996, U.N. Secretary General Boutros Bourtros-Ghali demanded that action should be taken on an international level to censor xenophobic and racist material on the Internet. In a U.N. report on human rights, Maurice Glele-Ahanhanzo also mentioned alarming, renewed tendencies to deny the "Nazi-Holocaust", referring explicitly to the website of German historical dissident Ernst Zündel (www.zundelsite.org; Inter Press Service, Nov. 21, 1996). Since early 1996, Zündel's website, had been the battleground of massive attempts to censor it with both legal and illegal measures, as the site itself documents. Also in 1996, the European Union agreed to introduce a system of voluntary internet censorship, which enables internet users to report websites with illegal material to the authorities, which in turn would take legal actions against Internet service provides to force them to delete the content of such sites or to prevent access to them. [Index on Censorship, 6/96]

On March 20, 1997, the Austrian authorities confiscated all computers of the Internet Provider VIP located in Vienna, because it hosted a website with child pornography. In protest to this censorship all Internet service providers of Austria shut down all their services for two hours on March 25, 1997, but to no avail. [http://www.vov.de/von-uns/presse/mitteilung.phtml?id=40]. Also in early 1997, the head of CompuServe Germany, Felix Somm, was indicted for distributing pornographic as well as dissenting historical and political material deemed illegal in Germany. First sentenced to a two years suspended prison term, Somm was acquitted in late 1999 during his appeal only because the court stated that there is currently no technology available allowing the filtering of internet content [Associated Press, November 17, 1999, http://www.cyber-rights.org/isps/somm-dec.htm]. That decision meant, however, that Internet service providers will be held responsible for content hosted on computers located in Germany. It also meant that the intentional spreading of illegal content can and will be prosecuted and punished, which means that placing links to illegal content can suffice to cause a criminal investigation. [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/51930: fined for placing links to political right-wingers]

This restriction to their own territory did not stop the German authorities, who keep threatening Internet service providers to filter out websites that have a content deemed illegal in Germany. In 1999, the German Supreme Court decided that even foreign citizens not residing in Germany who put content on the Internet deemed illegal in Germany will be prosecuted and sentenced, should they dare to step onto German soil. [German Federal Supreme Court, ref. 1 StR 184/00, Dec. 12, 2000; re. F. Toben, see note [1]] Even though there may not be a bullet-proof way to block access to internet sites that cannot be shut down by the German authorities because they are locate abroad, it is of course possible to demand from providers not to forward the content stemming from certain domains to their customers. That is exactly what the German authorities started doing in late 2002: They sent out letters to German Internet service providers demanding to block access to certain domain names for their customers. The victims of such censorship are no longer pornographic site, but exclusively political and historical dissidents. [http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/24721] And it did therefore come as no surprise that more and more people from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland inform the author of this article that they can no longer reach websites with dissident historical material like www.vho.org.

In September 1997, I established the website www.vho.org, initially under the legal cover of the Belgian non-profit foundation Vrij Historisch Onderzoek (Free Historical Research), thus the name vho.org. Initially, this site had only some five visitors per day, and maybe most of these visits were by the webmaster, that is me. Today, this site has several thousand visitors every day, which means that within five years www.vho.org has grown to be the biggest revisionist website worldwide.

One of the first steps after creating the site was to have it listed with the major search engines, which could still be done manually and for free at that time. Today, considering the vast amount of new websites flooding the internet every day, one has to pay a fee to get registered by the noble club of the big engines.

In 1998 I learned that Germany has its own search engines concentrating only on German language material. Since at that time the content of www.vho.org was almost completely in German language, it was only logical to have the site registered with those search engines as well. To my surprise, one of the search engine companies told me that they had decided not to list my site, because after reviewing my content they had come to the conclusion that it was illegal under German law. This is so because dissenting views on the Holocaust are punishable with up to five years in Germany. Strictly formally seen, of course, this is wrong, since it is not the content of my website that is illegal but the German censorship laws. But the German bureaucrats were never really impressed by arguments about human rights and epistemological considerations. Thus, I had to accept that www.vho.org was not listed with this search engine.[2]

On an international level, Yahoo.com was the first big search engine who got in trouble primarily due to massive critique from Jewish lobby groups. Yahoo is one of the biggest internet service providers worldwide, whose search engine is currently powered by a company named Google. Google itself is a search engine which has succeeded only recently to beat all its competitors in that field, like Altavista.com, Lycos.com, and Excite.com, thanks to a very user friendly service. End of October 2002, this service had 2.5 Billion websites indexed.

In 2000, the attacks against Yahoo escalated in that the company was sued, and on November 20, 2000, sentenced in France for having offered National Socialist memorabilia on its internet auction site and for offering access to sites with Holocaust-revisionist content.[3] Since then, Yahoo has cleaned its French search engine from almost all links to such sites. Later, due to pressure from the usual Jewish pressure groups like the Simon-Wiesenthal-Center, Yahoo announced that it would be prepared to even clean its U.S. main search engine from links to any content which is hated by those Jewish associations.[4] It seems, however, that this did not happen so far.

As a result of Yahoo's conviction in France, the Central Council of Jews in Germany felt encouraged to announce that it will file similar suit cases against German search engine companies as well.[5] It does therefore come as no surprise that German search engines or the German sections of internationally operating search engines started to clean undesired content from their engines as well.

On October 22, 2002, Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School published a study, in which they reported which internet sites are censored by the German and French sections of the search engine Google, in contrast to the company's international, US-based main search site Google.com.[6]

The result of this study is that the French and German search engines of Google exclude 91 internet sites completely or partly.[7] Even though such an exclusion doesn't prevent anybody from accessing these sites, this must nevertheless be considered to be a massive impediment to find these sites, because a considerable part of the population residing in Germany and France finds content on the internet by using these search engines. The exclusion of search results from websites which are involved in controversial debates leads to nothing less than that a majority of the population will no longer be able to take notice of the arguments of the other side of that debate.

Of course, censorship by search engines is not solely an effect of governmental pressure. Even private companies and individuals can pursue such censorship and might even prevail. For example, The Church of Scientology allegedly succeeded to convince Google not to list certain websites, which express critical views about Scientology.[8] In other cases, organizations or individuals have the option to apply to have certain websites unlisted, if these sites commit copyright violations.[9] Only a few of these censorship cases are ever published; most of them happen in secrecy. No search engine likes to admit publicly that they manipulated their search results. According to Edelman, Google should at least indicate that its search results are not complete:[10]

According to the authors of the study quoted, they have analyzed several thousand websites until the end of October in order to find out, if the search results delivered by the three Google sections google.com (USA), google.de (Germany) and google.fr (France) differ. The censorship victims discovered by this method are divided in basically three categories. The largest group consists of right-wing websites, which are usually summarized under the term "White Supremacy." The second biggest group consists of revisionist websites-with one surprising exception: The most embattled website, carrying the name and the mission of the German-Canadian Ernst Zündel, www.zundelsite.org , is not included! The last category consists of radical, anti-Jewish, mostly Arab groups. In the list printed in this article, I have emphasized revisionist websites in bold face, and those consisting only partly of revisionist content in italics.

A more detailed analysis of the censored websites shows that some Christian and conservative-fundamentalist websites are victims of this censorship as well, and in one case even an anti-revisionist website ( www.williscarto.com  ). Left-wing extremist, communist, or other politically or religiously fanatic/fundamentalist sites have either not even been considered worth an investigation by the authors, or they are simply not censored by Google.

It is also worth noting that all of the German sites censored by Google are equally censored by its French site (65), whereas 45 websites, which are accessible through the German search engine, are inaccessible through the French search engine. This means that censorship is currently tougher in France than it is in Germany.

Google does not only serve as the search engine for Yahoo, but also for AOL, the worldwide largest internet service provider. As a consequence, all German and French AOL-customers not intentionally using a different search engine, are censored just as badly as are all users of google.de/.fr and yahoo.de/.fr. Three major other search engines with separate German and French sections-altavista, lycos and excite, censor their search result as well, though apparently not quite as strict as google. For instance, webpages from the once leading revisionist websites codoh.com and codoh.org can be found when searching with these engines. All of these search engines have in common, however, that the worldwide largest revisionist website www.vho.org  is not listed under any circumstances.

Before getting upset about Google, Altavista, and all other censoring search engines, one should keep in mind that these companies do not censor voluntarily. They were forced to do this by court orders and several legal threats. The true perpetrators are sitting in Paris and Berlin and to a disproportionate degree also in synagogues.

One can of course try to use non-censoring search engines instead. For example, one could visit the uncensored.com search domains instead of going to the.de and.fr domains (aol.com, yahoo.com, google.com, altavista.com. excite.com, lycos.com). But Google has put a stop to this as well for all visitors, whose internet service providers have an IP address which can be identified as being located in Germany or France respectively. In such cases, Google redirects any attempt to access google.com automatically to google.de/.fr. Thus, all internet users in Germany and France are now sitting in the dark regarding the possibility of thoroughly searching the internet with the help of the largest and best search engine that there is: google.com.

It would be desirable if all users who are upset about such totalitarian censorship would demonstrate their solidarity by no longer using the search domains.de and.fr of these search engines, and in particular by not using those search engines which refuse access to its uncensored international domain, like Google. After all, this is not a matter of whether or not one agrees with the content of those sites which are censored. Tomorrow, when other powers rule or their interests change, other websites may be the victims of this censorship, and a totally different group of users might then face the situation that exactly the content he is looking for is being withheld from him, or even worse, that the content he is offering is being withheld from his potential clientele.

During a session of the European Council in Strasbourg on November 6^th and 7^th, 2002, the foreign ministers of 44 European countries represented in the European Council agreed to a protocol, which demands from those 44 nations to outlaw the following activities:[11]

All offenses mentioned in this protocol need to be committed deliberately in order to be a crime, which means that an internet service provider would not commit a crime if helping to distribute such material unknowingly, but would have to cease assisting the crime if made aware of it. During the negotiations for this protocol, representatives of the USA, of Canada, Japan, Mexico and South Africa were present as well.

Fortunately, the European Council has no legislative powers. But it may only be a matter of time until this program is accepted and cast into law in many countries around the world.

Only as an aside, it should be mentioned that the prohibition of the distribution of pedophilic material was apparently not even discussed during this Conference.

Source: The Revisionist 1(2) (2003), pp. 220-222. Updated and expanded version

All articles were reproduced from Germar Rudolf's website.

The Role of the Press in the Case of Germar Rudolf

A Potpourri of Falsehoods on the Rudolf Expert Report and its Author

Notes

 

[1]	Appeared in Staatsbriefe 2-3/1996, Verlag Castel del Monte, Postfach 14 06 28, 80456 Munich, pp. 23-30.
[2]	The uninitiated reader may be unaware that in Germany there is a division of the Criminal Police called the State Security Department which prosecutes politically motivated crimes. This department, by far the largest of the criminal offices, has separate areas for right-wing extremist, left-wing extremist, and foreign-influenced political crimes, respectively. Those employed in one department tend to have a political opinion hostile to their target group. For example, those in the right-wing extremist department tend to have left-wing, anti-fascist orientations. In addition, the German Federal court system includes State Security Chambers whose only work is to punish politically motivated crimes. The prosecutors who work in these courts were politically trained to deal with such crimes.
[3]	This house search concerned the commented version of my expert report distributed by Remer.
[4]	This house search was due to suspicion of participation in the production and distribution of the newsletters Remer Depesche and Deutschland Report. (See http://www.nationaljournal.org )
[5]	This house search concerned the revisionist anthology edited by my under the pseudonym Ernst Gauss entitled Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte. Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte, ibid. 1994 (online: codoh.com/inter/intgrundex.html); Dissecting the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press, Capshaw, AL, 2000, pp. 555-559 (online: www.vho.org/GB/Books/dth/fndwood.html )
[6]	R. Kammerer, A. Solms (ed.), Das Rudolf-Gutachten, Cromwell, London 1993 (online: www.vho.org/D/rga ).
[7]	Daily newspapers, such as Süddeutsche Zeitung, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Südwestpresse-Verbund (March 29, 1994), taz, Frankfurter Rundschau (March 30, 1994).
[8]	Telephone conversation of K. Philipp, Frankfurt/Main, March 30, 1994.
[9]	Telephone conversation of G. Rudolf, Jettingen, March 30, 1994.
[10]	Press release, G. Rudolf on April 8, 1994.
[11]	D. Ebeling’s response to numerous queries to the Stuttgarter dpa bureau, April 13, 1994.
[12]	In the referenced book by Max Frisch, Herr Biedermann played just the opposite role of a paper criminal, he was the victim of a criminal (and his own gullibility). But this fact was not made clear to the viewer.
[13]	Cf. E. Gauss (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, op. cit.aaO. (note 5), pp. 31-34.
[14]	There is a detailed discussion of this broadcast in: W. Schlesiger, Der Fall Rudolf, Der Fall Rudolf, Cromwell, London 1994 (Engl. online: www.vho.org/GB/Books/trc/index.html ); there Rudolf disputes that he hid behind the pseudonym Ernst Gauss. He had admitted that in the trial in the District Court of Stuttgart, ref. 17 KLs 83/94.
[15]	Cf. chapter 11.4.2. in this volume.
[16]	Should be: Germar. Error in Original.
[17]	Cf. "About true and false Perceptions" ( www.vho.org/GB/Books/cq/percept.html  ).
[18]	Cf. Die Welt, May 15, 1995: "Unterstützen Unternehmer die rechtsextremen Szene?" (Do Businesses Support the Right-wing Extremist Scene?). As a result of this broadcast, Germar Rudolf’s employer was placed under such pressure from his customers, suppliers, competitors, and employees that he terminated Herr Rudolf’s employment contract.
[19]	Knaur, Munich, May 1995.
[20]	Süddeutscher Rundfunk, in all four afternoon radio programs on Nov. 25, 1994.
[21]	The video of this program distributed by the Süddeutscher Rundfunk was correspondingly labeled with the caption "Neo-Nazi".
[22]	Because of the Remer’s commented version, the University of Stuttgart refused to give Rudolf an appointment to take the rigorosum, the final examination for his PhD title.
[23]	Confidential letter of G. Rudolf to H. Herrmann, Dec. 20, 1992, Computer Data File 2, sheet 222, in records of the District Court Stuttgart, ref. 17 KLs 83/94, introduced Dec. 6, 1994.
[24]	Letter to K. Philipp on March 1, 1993, Investigation File 1, sheet 351, in records of the District Court Stuttgart, ref. 17 KLs 83/94, introduced on Dec. 17, 1994.
[25]	Response of G. Rudolf to accusation May 1994, introduced in trial before District Court Stuttgart, ref. 17 KLs 83/94, on March 17, 1995 in chambers, in records.
[26]	H. Lummert thinks that one should stay with the abbreviation for BRD: "Bubisrepublik Deutschland" (Bubis Republic Germany). Approximately 30 witnesses testified that they had never heard Germar Rudolf make anti-Semitic remarks and that he had even protested against their use. There was no contrary testimony. The media likewise ignored a speech at an academic fraternity by Rudolf to students which was clearly pro-Jewish. On May 9, 1995, the court verified that the speech had taken place.
[27]	SDR 3, June 23, 1995, 13:30 hours.
[28]	Verdict of the District Court Stuttgart, ref. 17 KLs 83/94, pp. 15, 156ff. As evidence the court used an unpublished writing of the accused. In it, Rudolf commented how the confirmation of revisionist theses might embarrass Jews. Records of the District Court Stuttgart, ref. 17 KLs 83/94, Computer Data File 3, introduced on Jan. 26, 1995. Where there is racism in these speculative remarks is unclear.
[29]	BRT 1 (Belgian Television), Panorama, April 27, 1995.
[30]	Kreiszeitung Böblinger Bote and Gäubote/Südwestpresse-Verbund, May 6, 1996.
[31]	Jessica Berry and Chris Hastings, "German neo-Nazi fugitive is found hiding in Britain", The Sunday Telegraph, Oct. 17, 1999; repeated on Oct. 18, 1999 in the Independent.
[32]	Address: Castle Hill Publishers, PO Box 118, Hastings TN34 3ZQ, UK; online: http://vho.org/VffG
[33]	This was echoed, e.g., by the Australian Jewish News, Nov. 5, 1999.
[34]	The German matching piece to this periodical, blick nach rechts, started its campaign as late as June 2000 with a contribution by Thomas Pfeiffer in the same style, of course.
[35]	Online at: http://www.codoh.com/newsdesk/000107.html .
[36]	This is the trick used to send revisionists to jail: Since everyone knows that the Holocaust happened, revisionists must know it also. When they still assert the opposite, they must do so wittingly and therefore they lie. Whoever lies has evil intentions and therefore belongs behind bars. Such is the logic of terror.

 

 

 

 

 

Germany holds the world to ransom

Any individual anywhere in the world will be hounded down for expressing thoughts, not in line with the German political holocaust dogma

"The right to know is like the right to live. It is fundamental and unconditional," wrote Nobel-Price winner George Bernard Shaw. "Democratic Germany" denies this fundamental human right to its people although it adopted Article 19 of the United Nations Human Rights Charter as superior and overriding to its own law. Article 19 of the United Nations Human Rights Charter reads: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."   "You pronounce with greater fear your verdict on me than I receive it," were Giordano Bruno's last words on Feb. 17, 1600 before he was burned at stake on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome). Giordano Bruno knew too much and he had expressed his opinion publicly. The brutal actions of "Democratic Germany" reminds the world of Giordano Bruno's fate.   On Dec. 12, 2000 the German Supreme Court (BGH, Bundesgerichtshof, case nr. 1 StR 184/00) ruled that any information, differing from the German political holocaust version or from its general political dogma "threatens internal peace in the Bundes-republik", hence it constitutes a major crime in "Democratic Germany". Any person, whether living in Washington, Cape Town or Timbuktu will be hunted down, persecuted, arrested and indicted (when entering Germany) by the Bundesrepublik's persecution machinery, if they verbally or literally broadcast criticism against Jewry, the political holocaust-dogma and the German government. This madness is based on fear of the truth because post-war Germany was founded on allied propaganda lies which became constitutionally established. The results of this lie, siege mentality, has now resulted in a law involving the internet. Simplified it declares that everybody on our globe represents a potential criminal to the German system. I.e.: "A democratic American, sitting by his computer in Ohio writes and posts an article on the internet which displeases the German authorities, will be persecuted by the German system." Even though he is technically in no position to exclude Germans from being able to access his internet posting due invisible extending borders in the world-wide-web-system, he will be arrested when entering "Democratic Germany". Exception: If the author is of Jewish origin there is no fear of persecution or harassment. Until the 12th of December 2000 Germany restrained itself to the persecution of the free thinkers within its own borders. Now it is the world. This latest strike against universal human rights by the German system has reached a new peak of madness. It is a declaration of war against free thinking to everyone, anywhere in the world. "Adenauer [postwar Germany's first Chancellor] thought the Germans were a 'sick people'." (Die Welt, Nov. 30, 2000, page 3)

According to the Annual Reports of the 'German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution' (George Orwell could not have invented a more sinister title) the German persecution machinery prosecuted the following totals of citizens for expressing politically incorrect opinions in Germany:
Thought-crime offences 1994: Thought-crime offences 1995: Thought-crime offences 1996: Thought-crime offences 1997: Thought-crime offences 1998: Thought-crime offences 1999: Thought-crime offences 2000: Thought-crime offences 2001: Thought-crime offences 2002: Thought-crime offences 2003:	2,083 1,601 5,635 10,257 9,549 8698 13,863 8.874 9.807 9.295	innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims; innocent persecuted victims.
The figures are based on statistics provided by the Federal Criminal Office (BKA) (Source: http://www.verfassungsschutz.de)

 

Reproduced gratefully from:  

 

Read these fascinating articles on the Gnostic Liberation Front:

How Ernst Zundel Could Walk Free And Help Destroy The European Union

Return to the Dark Ages: Censorship is on the rise --Is it coming to America? Jared Taylor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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