Me and the H-Bomb Part Two: The Gas Chamber of Samuel Crowell

By Chip Smith

PREFACE

In 2010, Nine-Banded Books will publish a newly and finally revised edition of Samuel Crowell's long-developed monograph, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes. In addition to the text of "Sherlock," the book will include a revised and updated restatement of Crowell's empirical research on German civil defense architecture (largely an expansion of his other major work, Bomb Shelters in Birkenau) as well as a new closing essay appraising a number of revisionist and counter-revisionist texts that have appeared over the last decade.

I mention this first by way of disclosure, but I will say up front that I feel a special obligation about this one. To state it plainly, I think Crowell's book is important. I think it will be read. And I am perhaps naively hopeful that it will be taken seriously by people -- even some few public intellectuals -- who are understandably skeptical of revisionist challenges to the consensus historiography regarding the Holocaust. I don't expect that an encounter with Samuel Crowell will change many minds, but I do think there is a real possibility that some readers will come away with an understanding that, as Crowell puts it, "the revisionist interpretation on the subject of mass gassing [is] possible, and since possible, a particularly unworthy candidate for censorship."

What follows, the second in a three-part series devoted to the Holocaust controversy, is my digressive introduction to Crowell's major theoretical work, The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes. Though I believe that Crowell's other contributions to the literature of revisionism are just as relevant, I have chosen to focus on Sherlock because its central argument is so shockingly novel, and so seldom engaged. I also think the argument will be vindicated, at least in broad form.I've been wrong before. Time will tell.

The third and final installment in this series (part one is here) will be broadly devoted to "Skepticism, Epistemology, and 'Belief in Belief'." In that post, I will respond to a number of points raised in reader commentary and correspondence. I will also revisit the curious case of Irène Némirovsky and Michel Epstein, with a few surprises.

My apologies for the delay.

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