Episode Details

I’m reposting my March 6, 2015 interview with Thomas Goodrich, along with a rough transcript, to accompany the new Alan Sabrosky interview, which will be posted shortly. -KB

Thomas Goodrich, author of Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944—1947, argues that the REAL “holocaust” of World War II was not the Nazi killing of 6 million (or was it .6 million) Jews, but the deliberate and militarily useless Allied mass murder of millions German and Japanese civilians by firebombing; the murder of more than a million German POWs who were either slaughtered by the “take no prisoners” Allies or deliberately starved to death; the Morgenthau plan to kill tens of millions of Germans (which was partially implemented, then withdrawn); and the mass rape (often followed by the murder) of millions of German women by Russian and, yes, American soldiers. (That’s why your great-uncle or grandpa would never talk about the war.)

Maybe it’s time to convert Holocaust museums to “Anti-German Holocaust” museums?

Transcript

We're going to talk this hour about a very controversial topic, which is World War II revisionism. People talk about Holocaust revisionism. But personally, I think Holocaust revisionism is kind of limiting in that World War II was a lot bigger than any one Holocaust. The official narrative of the Nazi killings of various groups may need to be reread and adjusted. But there's a whole lot about World War II that we're not hearing in the dominant narrative that we get in our schools and in our media. Obviously, the victors always write history. And in this case, I think they've mythologized history to try to make it look like World War II was "the good war."

But there are all sorts of aspects that don't really fit the narrative. And one of those aspects is the horrific treatment of Germans by the victors. There were not only things like the starvation by General Eisenhower of many hundreds of thousands of German prisoners of war, but the even worse atrocities committed on the Eastern Front.

My guest this hour, Tom Goodrich, has written a book called Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, which is quite hard to read. It's every bit as horrific a list of atrocities as you're ever going to get from somebody cataloging "Nazi atrocities." And Tom might make the case that, in fact, if you were going to have a balancing of the atrocities in World War II, it might actually be the Allies who would be the masters of atrocities.

It's a fascinating book, and it's certainly telling a side of the story that doesn't get told much. So let's hear about it from the author himself. Welcome, Tom Goodrich. How are you?

Hi, I'm very good. Thanks for having me, Kevin.

Well, it's good to have you, Tom. Your book, Hellstorm—I found it really hard to read. And the thing is, I can't just dismiss it and say, oh, well, Tom Goodrich is some kind of Nazi sympathizer, and he's probably distorting things. Because I've heard about this stuff before. I mean, it's not like the orthodox historians haven't heard of this. I heard about it when I had a slightly unorthodox political science professor at the University of Wisconsin who talked about these out-of-control atrocities on the Eastern Front towards the close of World War II. How did you find out about this and end up writing a book about it?

Well, first of all, I want to say thank you to that college professor of yours who had the guts to say such things in a classroom, a college classroom here in Marxist America, because I hope he still has his job, or I hope at least he had a chance to retire with his pension intact.

Well, he did. Back in those days, I think things were better.  You could get away with telling these unpleasant truths. Today, tak