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Benjamin Matthews of New York asks some pertinent questions, Sunday, April 22, 2007, about the Wannsee conference of January 1942  Above: March 2007. For some reason a long shallow pit has been dug in the forest at Sobibor, Poland; the age of the trees suggests it was dug years ago (Photo: David Irving) Hitler's role in the Final Solution, still disputed I KNOW you have talked about Wannsee before, but I was wondering about a few things. First of all, the list of Jews that Heydrich produced for the conference: According to him, there were eleven million Jews living in Europe. That is quite obviously a rounded estimate, but I believe it is probably accurate, since Heydrich (and Eichmann) would not make serious mistakes that would put them off by even a few million. Also, how can one explain the listings for Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, and Turkey (all neutral countries) and the listing for England and Ireland? Why would the Nazis even care about Jews in countries they did not occupy or were allied with? Countries not even participating in the war? It seems like they were intent on rounding up every Jew in Europe, wherever they lived. What of Josef Buhler, Hans Frank's representative at the conference? He insisted that Jews in the General Government [of Poland] be taken care of first, and this led to the development of Operation Reinhard[t] under Globocnik. Do you believe there were gas chambers at Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor? I don't believe they existed for any purpose other than to kill people, and they were dismantled once they had completed their task by the end of 1943. I was also struck by the question of the half-Jews and those Jews in mixed marriages. Did they not choose to discuss this at a later time, defer it perhaps until the war was over? I thought maybe the Schlegelberger document you mention on your site may in fact be about the Mischlinge, rather than "full Jews". I could be wrong, of course. I do not think you can divorce Nazi actions from ideology. The Nazis believed wholeheartedly in a global Jewish conspiracy. How better to thwart this conspiracy than to murder every Jew who could be a part of it? The Nazis were always fearful of this pernicious Jewish plot, which they believed was described by the Protocols of Zion. What do you think would have happened to the Jews if the Nazis had won the war? They certainly would have no use for them anymore. They would have turned to the Slavs as the primary laborers. Maybe too speculative, but I am curious. I am eagerly awaiting your Himmler book. I am reading your Goebbels book now.
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Our dossiers 
David Irving