Clemson University -- response to a confused and slanderous letter from History News Network

Editor of the Clemson University Tiger:

Gord McFee of the Holocaust History Project finds it necessary to begin his comments on my “Eisenhower” ad by slandering me personally. I have “duped” the Tiger staff into running the ad. My goal is one of “deception, dishonest [sic] and duplicity.” My wish is that readers will “ask themselves the wrong question [who decides what the right question is—Gord McFee?].” My question is “dishonest” and I am “dishonest” and a “hypocrite” to boot.

Once Mr. McFee has purged himself, for the moment, of his personal animosity, he asks a perfectly reasonable question:

“Why would one expect Eisenhower to have discussed the gas chambers or the Holocaust? [the ad does not mention “Holocaust”]." Here I will suggest why I think he would have.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander of Allied forces on the Western front. By 1943 it was getting about that the Germans had weapons of mass destruction (gas chambers) in which they were murdering perhaps millions of civilians with a particularly lethal gas.

Would the Commander in Chief of one army, faced with an enemy army in possession of weapons of mass destruction, have no professional interest in the matter? Does that make sense to you? If it does, I believe you have every right to say so and to say it in print and I will not slander you but will respond in a reasonable manner.

I do not believe it likely that the commander of one army, hearing that the commander of his opposing army has weapons of mass destruction and is using them at that moment to murder millions(?) of civilians, would not express some interest in the matter. Could the “gas” be delivered against his own troops in the field? How would he know if he did not look into the matter? Could the gas be delivered over the great populations centers in Central Europe? Would he have no interest in the possibility of such a scenario?

I believe the question is a reasonable one to ask in a university setting. And I find it interesting, though not surprising, that not one academic has chosen to reply to the question in the pages of the Tiger.

Bradley R. Smith