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Old November 20th, 2020 #1
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Default British Intelligence Sceptical of Gassing Story

BRITISH INTELLIGENCE SCEPTICAL OF GASSING STORY



British Psychological Warfare Executive, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck

In August 1943 the head of the British Psychological Warfare Executive (P.W.E), Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, sent a secret telegram from the Foreign Office to Washington and Moscow saying, “On further reflection we are not convinced that evidence regarding use of gas chambers is substantial enough to justify inclusion in a public declaration…,” with an “urgent reply” requested. A copy of this message is kept in the Public Record Office, dated 27 August 1943. On the next day a copy of this telegram was sent to the governments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. That seems like a fairly definite policy statement. A letter by Cavendish-Bentinck complained that “The Poles, and to a far larger extent the Jews, tend to exaggerate German atrocities in order to stir us up,” and explained:

Quote:
As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe that there is any evidence that this has been done. There have been many stories to this effect, and we have played them up in P.W.E. rumours without believing that they had any foundation. At any rate there is far less evidence than exists for the mass murder of Polish officers by the Russians at Katyn.”

“I think that we weaken our case against the Germans by publicly giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no evidence. These mass executions in gas chambers remind me of the story of rendering of human corpses during the last war for the manufacture of fat, which was a grotesque lie…


Victor Cavendish-Bentinck telegram, PRO, FO 371/3455, Cavendish-Bentinck, minute, 27 August 1943
As a result of this statement, the telegram was sent off from the Foreign Office to Washington the same day, copied to Moscow, requesting that no allusion be made to “gas chambers”.

Cavendish-Bentinck added a handwritten note to William Strang, who as an Assistant Under-Secretary was joint-third in the Foreign Office hierarchy: “I daresay that my minute is too late to be of use but I feel certain that we are making a mistake in publicly giving credence to this gas chambers story.”

In other words, as David Irving rightly observed: “As late as August 1943 the head of the PWE [Psychological Warfare Executive] minuted the Cabinet secretly that despite the stories they were putting out, there was not the slightest evidence that such contraptions existed.” This attitude changed in 1944, when British Intelligence finally came to believe its own atrocity propaganda, as it was recycled back to them through the chaos and fury of war.

THE ORIGIN OF THE GAS CHAMBER STORY

Britain’s Political Warfare Executive and its predecessor first deployed stories of homicidal gassing as part of propaganda efforts in two areas unconnected to treatment of Jews. Their objective was to spread dissension and demoralisation among German soldiers and civilians, and among Germany’s allies.

The documentary record showing British propagandists’ promotion of homicidal gassing stories runs from December 1940 (under SO1) to March 1942 (under PWE). In this period the gassing stories did not relate to Jews or Poles. British intelligence official Victor Cavendish-Bentinck discounting later claims of gassings suspected that the Jewish and Polish lobbies had picked up on the rumours that British intelligence had been disseminating and put their own spin on it, in a case of what would later be termed “blowback”, defined as follows by intelligence historian Mark Lowenthal:

Quote:
The main controversy raised by propaganda activities is that of blowback. The CIA is precluded from undertaking any intelligence activities within the United States. However, a story could be planted in a media outlet overseas that will also be reported in the United States. That is blowback.”

Britains Rumour Factory: Origins of the Gas Chamber Story
Blowback: The First Reports

The first reports emanate from Polish Jewish underground newspapers in the winter and spring of 1942. The first claim of mass gassing pertaining to Jewish people that received wide circulation was contained in the so-called Bund Report, which was smuggled to the Polish government-in-exile, located in London, in the third week of May 1942. The report contained two gassing rumors: the first that a special automobile (a gas chamber) was being used to gas 90 persons at one time. The second rumor pertains to actions in Warsaw: it is said that Jews were being experimented upon with poison gases.

The Bund Report, in turn, appears to be a composite of at least two documents that had come from Warsaw during the spring of 1942. The first of these was an underground communication from the Jewish Labor Bund, in Warsaw, dated March 16, 1942, which described German activities in western Poland as follows: In a number of villages the Jews were put to death by gas poisoning. They were herded in a horrible way into hermetically sealed trucks transformed into gas chambers, in groups of fifty, entire families, completely nude …. This report further alleged that “gas poisoning” was being carried out in Lodz. The second document that contributed to the Bund Report was a lead article in Der Veker, April 30, 1942, at a time of internecine struggle between Jewish resisters and collaborators in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Two of the members of the Polish National Council-in-exile were Jewish: Zygielbojm and Szwarcbart, and they could be expected to be particularly interested in what was being alleged about their coreligionists several hundred miles away under German military occupation, and in spreading these allegations as a means of getting support for their people. The Bund Report was thus extensively publicized in the media. On June 24, 1942, the Bund Report was summarized on the BBC. The following day, the Daily Telegraph ran a major story on the report, with two headlines of note: “Germans Murder 700,000 in Poland,” and “Travelling Gas Chambers.” On the 26th, Zygielbojm delivered a broadcast over the BBC, summarizing the Bund Report in Yiddish, and hence obviously directed to the Jewish population in Poland. Within a week, the BBC had made an arrangement with the Polish National Council giving the BBC priority in the reporting of all future atrocity stories. By July 16, 1942, the allegations of gassing were repeated in the News Review, here with the claim that the Germans were preparing “large gas stations” where the Polish Jewish population would be murdered.

The BBC had already begun to play a major role in recycling these rumors back to their point of origin in Poland. These broadcasts in effect created a feedback loop that repeated and gave authority to Polish rumours, which were then reinjected back into Poland, where they multiplied and burgeoned.

The Gas Chambers of Sherlock Holmes by Samuel Crowell

Origins, development and decline of the “gas chamber” propaganda lie

By Carlo Mattogno


http://www.cwporter.com/mattogno60.htm


https://holocaustdeprogrammingcourse.com/
 
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