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138-590: It is often applied to, though not limited to, trials relating to Holocaust denial in Germany. The criminal code ( Strafgesetzbuch ) Chapter 7 (Offences against public order), Paragraph 130 (Incitement to hatred) of the Federal Republic of Germany defines when a person is guilty of Volksverhetzung . Incitement of the People ( Volksverhetzung ) is defined by § 130 (Incitement to hatred) Section 1 of

276-525: A La Salle University medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier. App defended the Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II. He published numerous articles, letters, and books on Holocaust denial, quickly building a loyal following. App's work inspired the Institute for Historical Review , a California center founded in 1978 whose sole task

414-531: A " sovietization " of Central Europe. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation. A clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations. At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, with the transformation appearing as

552-480: A "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust". The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg was a witness for the prosecution at the 1985 trial. Zündel's conviction was overturned in an appeal on a legal technicality, leading to a second trial in 1988, in which he was again convicted. The 1988 trial included, as witnesses for

690-688: A "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still move west. The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961, called Republikflucht , totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population. In August 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall , effectively closing the loophole. With virtually non-existent conventional emigration, more than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration". About 10% were refugee migrants under

828-588: A French professor of literature at the University of Lyon , wrote two letters to Le Monde claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist. A colleague of Faurisson, Jean-Claude Pressac , who initially shared Faurisson's views, later became convinced of the Holocaust's evidence while investigating documents at Auschwitz in 1979. He published his conclusions along with much of

966-599: A Hitlerite-style regime may be impossible, but a replica might be produced in the future; the rehabilitation of Nazism, they concluded, required the discrediting of the Holocaust. Neo-fascism has likewise relied upon Holocaust denial as a means of rehabilitation. As a movement, modern Holocaust denial is associated with historical revisionism based on pseudoscientific evidence and fringe academic networks including intradiegetic pseudoscientific journals, conferences, and professional organizations (e.g. Journal of Historical Review , International Conference to Review

1104-610: A broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated that the new government's primary task would be to prepare elections. However, the 1946 Polish people's referendum (known as the "Three Times Yes" referendum) and the subsequent 1947 Polish parliamentary election did not meet democratic standards and were largely manipulated. The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to "the right of all peoples to choose

1242-488: A contingency plan that if defeat was imminent they would carry out the total destruction of German records. Historians have documented evidence that as Germany 's defeat became imminent and Nazi leaders realized they would most likely be captured and brought to trial, great effort was made to destroy all evidence of mass extermination. Heinrich Himmler instructed his camp commandants to destroy records, crematoria, and other signs of mass extermination. As one of many examples,

1380-577: A death sentence and execution. A number of other high ranking Bulgarian officials were also jailed. Stalin and Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi met in Moscow to orchestrate a show trial of Rákosi opponent László Rajk , who was thereafter executed. The preservation of the Soviet bloc relied on maintaining a sense of ideological unity that would entrench Moscow's influence in Eastern Europe as well as

1518-419: A distance. In addition to emigration restrictions, civil society, defined as a domain of political action outside the party's state control, was not allowed to firmly take root, with the possible exception of Poland in the 1980s . While the institutional design of the communist systems were based on the rejection of rule of law, the legal infrastructure was not immune to change reflecting decaying ideology and

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1656-482: A large-scale party programs to train personnel who would meet political requirements. Former members of the middle-class were officially discriminated against, though the state's need for their skills and certain opportunities to re-invent themselves as good Communist citizens did allow many to nonetheless achieve success. Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc viewed marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as

1794-710: A late September 1947 meeting of all communist parties in Szklarska Poręba , Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries during the run up to the Marshall Plan. In the former German capital Berlin, surrounded by Soviet-occupied Germany, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade on 24 June 1948, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin . The blockade

1932-561: A modification of Western " bourgeois democracy ". As a young communist was told in East Germany, "it's got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control". Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist–Leninist view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations. The Soviet Union also co-opted

2070-519: A paid ad from Bradley R Smith. It was quickly criticized, and the editor issued an apology, saying publishing the ad was a mistake. The German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte , starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier, Carlo Mattogno , as a serious historian. In a letter to the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized

2208-419: A potential threat because of the bases underlying Communist power therein. The suppression of dissidence and opposition was considered a central prerequisite to retain power, though the enormous expense at which the population in certain countries were kept under secret surveillance may not have been rational. Following a totalitarian initial phase, a post-totalitarian period followed the death of Stalin in which

2346-474: A protégé of Barnes, David Hoggan , published Der erzwungene Krieg ( The Forced War ) in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though Der erzwungene Krieg was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period. For example, Hoggan justified

2484-408: A public relations campaign against the western policy change and communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948 preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin. After disagreements between Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and

2622-595: A resolution adopted by the Duke University History Department, November 8, 1991, and reprinted in Duke Chronicle , November 13, 1991, in response to an advertisement produced by Bradley R Smith's Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust : That historians are constantly engaged in historical revision is certainly correct; however, what historians do is very different from this advertisement. Historical revision of major events ...

2760-570: A unified Soviet command structure. Beginning in 1964, Romania took a more independent course. While it did not repudiate either Comecon or the Warsaw Pact, it ceased to play a significant role in either. Nicolae Ceaușescu 's assumption of leadership one year later pushed Romania even further in the direction of separateness. Albania, which had become increasingly isolated under Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha following de-Stalinization , undergoing an Albanian–Soviet split in 1961, withdrew from

2898-559: A voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous "atomic Holocaust", "Babycaust", "Holocaust of abortion", "red Holocaust" or "biological Holocaust". Lawrence Douglas argues that denial was invented by the perpetrators and employed as a means of genocide. For example, trucks of Zyklon B were labeled with Red Cross symbols and victims were told that they would be " resettled ". Douglas also cites

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3036-459: A way that could not really be debated." Holocaust deniers have placed "Full page advertisements in college and university newspapers, including those of Brandeis University , Boston College , Pennsylvania State University , and Queens College . Some of these ads arguing that the Holocaust never happened ran without comment; others generated op-ed pieces by professors and students". On September 8, 2009, student newspaper The Harvard Crimson ran

3174-564: A world of democracy and peace". While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as a politically independent country. Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of inter-allied friction. In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta , Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Central Europe. Stalin eventually

3312-705: Is a constitutionally protected freedom of expression as per s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms . Keegstra appealed to the Alberta Court of Appeal . That court agreed with Keegstra, and he was acquitted. The Crown then appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada , which ruled by a 4–3 majority that promoting hatred could be justifiably restricted under s 1 of the Charter . The Supreme Court restored Keegstra's conviction. He

3450-528: Is banned in Germany. Offences contrary to § 130 of the Criminal Code committed abroad, whether by German nationals or foreigners, can be pursued as a domestic crime when they so act as if they had been committed within the country, affecting the public peace in Germany and violating the human dignity of German citizens. It is sufficient, for example, that criminal content on the Internet, for example in

3588-483: Is deemed influential in regenerating post-war European far-right ideas at a time of identity crisis in the 1950–1960s. His arguments formed the basis of numerous works of Holocaust denial that followed: "testimonies are not reliable, essentially coming from the mouth of Jews and communists", "atrocities committed in camps were the work of deportees [essentially the kapos ]", "disorganization occurred in Nazi camps following

3726-562: Is not concerned with the actuality of these events; rather, it concerns their historical interpretation – their causes and consequences generally. Lipstadt writes that modern Holocaust denial draws its inspiration from various sources, including a school of thought which used an established method to question government policies. In 1992, Donald L. Niewyk gave some examples of how legitimate historical revisionism—the re-examination of accepted history and its updating with newly discovered, more accurate, or less-biased information—may be applied to

3864-505: Is the denial of the Holocaust. The publication of Arthur Butz 's The Hoax of the Twentieth Century : The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry in 1976; and David Irving 's Hitler's War in 1977 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University . In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson ,

4002-556: The CDJC , and much of the huge trove of archives were then transferred to the CDJC after the trials and became the core of future Holocaust historiography. The Nuremberg trials were important historically, but the events were still very recent, television was in its infancy and not present, and there was little public impact. There were isolated moments of limited public awareness from Hollywood films such as The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) or

4140-756: The Centre for the Study of the Causes of the War , a German government-funded think tank whose sole purpose was to disseminate the official government position that Germany was the victim of Allied aggression in 1914 and that the Versailles Treaty was morally invalid. Headed by Major Alfred von Wegerer, a völkisch activist, the organization portrayed itself as a scholarly society, but historians later described it as "a clearinghouse for officially desirable views on

4278-592: The Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan , and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in Western Europe. The Comecon's role became ambiguous because Stalin preferred more direct links with other party chiefs than

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4416-704: The People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983, the Derg / People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1974, and the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 until the Ogaden War in 1977. Although not Marxist–Leninist , leadership of Ba'athist Syria officially regarded the country as part of the Socialist Bloc and established a close economic, military alliance with

4554-521: The Posen speeches as an example of denial while genocide was ongoing, with Himmler referring to the Holocaust as "an unnamed and never to be named page of glory". According to Douglas, the denial of mass murder using gas chambers recalls the Nazi efforts to persuade the victims that they were actually harmless showers. While the Second World War was still underway, the Nazis had already formed

4692-771: The Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949), the People's Republic of Azerbaijan (1945–1946) and the Republic of Mahabad (1946), as well as the Marxist–Leninist states straddling the Second and Third Worlds before the end of the Cold War: the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (from 1967), the People's Republic of the Congo (from 1969), the People's Republic of Benin , the People's Republic of Angola and People's Republic of Mozambique from 1975,

4830-748: The Soviet Union by the 1960s. Even though Yugoslavia was a socialist country, it was not a member of the Comecon or the Warsaw Pact. Parting with the USSR in 1948, Yugoslavia did not belong to the East, but it also did not belong to the West because of its socialist system and its status as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement . However, some sources consider Yugoslavia to be a member of

4968-695: The Soviet sphere of influence . Lithuania was added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. The Soviet Union had invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union , the Soviets liquidated

5106-646: The Soviets occupied the territories . In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union . From the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germany's Ostland (except for the Moldavian SSR ). Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front . In

5244-681: The Warsaw Pact was formed partly in response to NATO 's inclusion of West Germany and partly because the Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army units in Hungary. For 35 years, the Pact perpetuated the Stalinist concept of Soviet national security based on imperial expansion and control over satellite regimes in Eastern Europe. This Soviet formalization of their security relationships in

5382-564: The original current German § 130 . Although freedom of speech is mentioned by Article 5 of the Basic Law (Germany's constitution), said article basically protects any non-outlawed speech. Restrictions exist, e.g. against personal insults, use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations , or Volksverhetzung . For any hate speech to be punishable as Volksverhetzung , the law requires that said speech be "qualified for disturbing public peace" either by inciting "hatred against parts of

5520-515: The "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event...." British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in

5658-660: The 1930s, the Nazi government used this propaganda against the British, claiming allegations of concentration camps were malicious lies put forward by the British government, and historians Joachim Neander and Randal Marlin note that this story "encouraged later disbelief when early reports circulated about the Holocaust under Hitler". Victor Cavendish-Bentinck , chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee, noted that these reports were similar to "stories of employment of human corpses during

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5796-820: The 1961 Judgment at Nuremberg which had some newsreel footage of actual scenes from liberated Nazi concentration camps including scenes of piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits, which was considered exceptionally graphic for the time. Public awareness changed when the Eichmann trial riveted the world's attention fifteen years after Nuremberg. In 1961, the Israeli government captured Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor Gideon Hausner 's intentions were not only to demonstrate Eichmann's guilt personally but to present material about

5934-547: The American INS arrested him in Tennessee , US, on an immigration violations matter, and few days later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he tried to gain refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany and prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda. On February 15, 2007, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's Volksverhetzung law, which bans

6072-528: The American far-right activist Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust. The IHR's founding was inspired by Austin App , a La Salle professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier. The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within

6210-483: The Bloc were instructed to foster intra-leadership conflict and to transmit information against each other. This accompanied a continuous stream of accusations of "nationalistic deviations", "insufficient appreciation of the USSR's role", links with Tito and "espionage for Yugoslavia". This resulted in the persecution of many major party cadres, including those in East Germany. The first country to experience this approach

6348-472: The CODOH campus project. He said, "I don't want to spend time with adults anymore, I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled." "What I wanted to do was I wanted to set forth three or four ideas that students might be interested in, that might cause them to think about things or to have questions about things. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and to set it up in

6486-434: The Comecon's indirect sophistication; it played no significant role in the 1950s in economic planning. Initially, the Comecon served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods. In 1955,

6624-541: The Criminal Code: Whosoever, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace: shall be liable to imprisonment from three months to five years. On 21 January 2015, changes to the former text of § 130 Sections 2 and 5, with Section 6 becoming Section 7, took effect following European parliament amendments. At present these changes are not reflected in the English translation of § 130 as updated in

6762-538: The Eastern Bloc comprised Mongolia , Vietnam , Laos , Kampuchea , North Korea , South Yemen , Syria , and China . In the Americas , the countries aligned with the Soviet Union included Cuba from 1961 and for limited periods Nicaragua and Grenada . The term Eastern Bloc was often used interchangeably with the term Second World . This broadest usage of the term would include not only Maoist China and Cambodia , but also short-lived Soviet satellites such as

6900-500: The Eastern Bloc reflected Moscow's basic security policy principle that continued presence in East Central Europe was a foundation of its defense against the West. Through its institutional structures, the Pact also compensated in part for the absence of Joseph Stalin's personal leadership since his death in 1953. The Pact consolidated the other Bloc members' armies in which Soviet officers and security agents served under

7038-408: The Eastern Bloc, despite attempts by authorities to jam the airways. Under the state atheism of many Eastern Bloc nations, religion was actively suppressed. Since some of these states tied their ethnic heritage to their national churches, both the peoples and their churches were targeted by the Soviets. In 1949, the Soviet Union , Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia , Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded

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7176-838: The Eastern Bloc. Others consider Yugoslavia not to be a member after it broke with Soviet policy in the 1948 Tito–Stalin split . In 1922, the Russian SFSR , the Ukrainian SSR , the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Soviet Union . Soviet leader Joseph Stalin , who viewed

7314-732: The Eastern European countries into its sphere of influence by making reference to some cultural commonalities. Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Elimination of the bourgeoisie 's social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as "reforms" rather than socioeconomic transformations. Except for initially in Czechoslovakia, activities by political parties had to adhere to "Bloc politics", with parties eventually having to accept membership in an "antifascist bloc" obliging them to act only by mutual "consensus". The bloc system permitted

7452-406: The German government. This Allied intention to administer justice post-war was first announced in 1943 in the Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe and reiterated at the Yalta Conference and at Berlin in 1945. While the intention was not specifically to preserve the historical record of the Holocaust, some of the core documents required to prosecute the cases were provided to them by

7590-522: The Global Vision of the Holocaust , Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust ). The first person to openly write after the end of World War II that he doubted the reality of the Holocaust was French journalist Maurice Bardèche in his 1948 book Nuremberg ou la Terre promise ("Nuremberg or the Promised Land"). Viewed as "the father-figure of Holocaust denial", Bardèche introduced in his works many aspects of neo-fascist and Holocaust denial propaganda techniques and ideological structures; his work

7728-648: The Holocaust , is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims: The methodologies of Holocaust deniers are based on a predetermined conclusion that ignores overwhelming historical evidence to the contrary . Scholars use the term denial to describe the views and methodology of Holocaust deniers in order to distinguish them from legitimate historical revisionists , who challenge orthodox interpretations of history using established historical methodologies . Holocaust deniers generally do not accept denial as an appropriate description of their activities and use

7866-416: The Holocaust denial movement bases its approach on the predetermined idea that the Holocaust, as understood by mainstream historiography, did not occur. Sometimes referred to as " negationism ", from the French term négationnisme introduced by Henry Rousso , Holocaust deniers attempt to rewrite history by minimizing, denying, or simply ignoring essential facts. Koenraad Elst writes: Negationism means

8004-476: The Holocaust in 1969 in a book entitled The Myth of the Six Million , which was published by the Noontide Press , a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature. In 1964, Paul Rassinier published The Drama of the European Jews . Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was held in Buchenwald for having helped French Jews escape the Nazis), and modern-day deniers continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions

8142-437: The Internet. Historically, the Karlsbader Beschlüsse of the German Confederation under Austria and led by Metternich included democratic ideals as well as agitation for one, unified German state as Volksverhetzung . Similar laws exist around the world, for instance: Holocaust denial Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews , known as

8280-425: The Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took " judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944," judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that

8418-468: The Polish rejection of the Plan with a huge 5-year trade agreement, including $ 450 million in credit, 200,000 tons of grain, heavy machinery and factories. In July 1947, Stalin ordered these countries to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme, which has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post- World War II division of Europe. Thereafter, Stalin sought stronger control over other Eastern Bloc countries, abandoning

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8556-526: The Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting addressed the future structure of the "Polish region". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas . Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property. Initial Soviet occupations of the Baltic countries had occurred in mid-June 1940, when Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania , Estonia and Latvia , followed by

8694-460: The Second World War", the Allies made the Nazis the "scapegoat" for their own misdeeds. Barnes cited the French Holocaust denier Paul Rassinier , whom Barnes called a "distinguished French historian" who had exposed the "exaggerations of the atrocity stories". In a 1964 article, "Zionist Fraud", published in the American Mercury , Barnes wrote: "The courageous author [Rassinier] lays the chief blame for misrepresentation on those whom we must call

8832-503: The Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement". In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that contained a secret protocol that divided Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of

8970-454: The Soviet Union regarding Greece and Albania , a Tito–Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade. The split created two separate communist forces in Europe. A vehement campaign against Titoism was immediately started in the Eastern Bloc, describing agents of both the West and Tito in all places as engaging in subversive activity. Stalin ordered

9108-478: The Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly. Crucial departments such as those responsible for personnel, general police, secret police and youth were strictly Communist run. Moscow cadres distinguished "progressive forces" from "reactionary elements" and rendered both powerless. Such procedures were repeated until Communists had gained unlimited power and only politicians who were unconditionally supportive of Soviet policy remained. In June 1947, after

9246-414: The Soviet Union. Many states were accused by the Western Bloc of being in the Eastern Bloc when they were part of the Non-Aligned Movement . The most limited definition of the Eastern Bloc would only include the Warsaw Pact states and the Mongolian People's Republic as former satellite states most dominated by the Soviet Union. Cuba 's defiance of complete Soviet control was noteworthy enough that Cuba

9384-448: The Soviets had refused to negotiate a potential lightening of restrictions on German development, the United States announced the Marshall Plan , a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe. The Soviets rejected the Plan and took a hard-line position against the United States and non-communist European nations. However, Czechoslovakia

9522-433: The Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional. Zündel had a website, web-mastered by his wife Ingrid, which publicized his viewpoints. In January 2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, in which it was found to be contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act . The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003,

9660-504: The Warsaw Pact in 1968 following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia . In 1917, Russia restricted emigration by instituting passport controls and forbidding the exit of belligerent nationals. In 1922, after the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR , both the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR issued general rules for travel that foreclosed virtually all departures, making legal emigration impossible. Border controls thereafter strengthened such that, by 1928, even illegal departure

9798-407: The West and Tito. Despite the initial institutional design of communism implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Eastern Bloc, subsequent development varied across countries. In satellite states, after peace treaties were initially concluded, opposition was essentially liquidated, fundamental steps towards socialism were enforced, and Kremlin leaders sought to strengthen control therein. Right from

9936-420: The accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics argued that Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims and ignored information that contradicted his assertions; he nevertheless remains influential in Holocaust denial circles for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme that would be picked up in later years by other authors. Austin App ,

10074-587: The aftermath of World War II on the Soviet-Finnish border , the parties signed another peace treaty ceding to the Soviet Union in 1944, followed by a Soviet annexation of roughly the same eastern Finnish territories as those of the prior interim peace treaty as part of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic . From 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed

10212-455: The beginning, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies , capitalist parliamentary democracy (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. The resulting states aspired to total control of a political center backed by an extensive and active repressive apparatus, and a central role of Marxist–Leninist ideology. However,

10350-444: The bodies of the 25,000 mostly Latvian Jews whom Friedrich Jeckeln and the soldiers under his command had shot at Rumbula (near Riga ) in late 1941 were dug up and burned in 1943. Similar operations were undertaken at Belzec , Treblinka and other death camps. In occupied France , the situation with respect to preserving war records was not much better, partly as a result of French state secrecy rules dating back to well before

10488-603: The broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III , and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians,

10626-526: The conversion of the Cominform into an instrument to monitor and control the internal affairs of other Eastern Bloc parties. He also briefly considered converting the Cominform into an instrument for sentencing high-ranking deviators, but dropped the idea as impractical. Instead, a move to weaken communist party leaders through conflict was started. Soviet cadres in communist party and state positions in

10764-462: The core of the system, with their names becoming synonymous with raw power and the threat of violent retribution should an individual become active against the State. Several state police and secret police organizations enforced communist party rule, including the following: The press in the communist period was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party. Before

10902-594: The country's population who had accepted total obedience. Those who secured membership in this selective group received considerable rewards, such as access to special lower priced shops with a greater selection of high-quality domestic and/or foreign goods ( confections , alcohol , cigars , cameras , televisions , and the like), special schools, holiday facilities, homes, high-quality domestic and/or foreign-made furniture, works of art, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates so that police and others could identify these members from

11040-515: The defense, Fred A. Leuchter , David Irving and Robert Faurisson . The pseudo-scientific Leuchter report was presented as a defense document and was published in Canada in 1988 by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, and in Britain in 1989 by Irving's Focal Point Publishing. In both of his trials, Zündel was defended by Douglas Christie and Barbara Kulaszka . His conviction was overturned in 1992 when

11178-457: The denial of historical crimes against humanity . It is not a reinterpretation of known facts, but the denial of known facts. The term negationism has gained currency as the name of a movement to deny a specific crime against humanity, the Nazi genocide on the Jews in 1941–45, also known as the Holocaust (Greek: complete burning) or the Shoah (Hebrew: disaster). Negationism is mostly identified with

11316-448: The documentation of Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it. Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of Nazi concentration camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and made to bury the dead. The Nuremberg trials took place in Germany after the war in 1945–1946. The stated aim was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of

11454-689: The effort at re-writing history in such a way that the fact of the Holocaust is omitted. In "Secondary Anti-Semitism: From Hard-Core to Soft-Core Denial of the Shoah", Clemens Heni  [ de ] writes: Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008. In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published

11592-467: The entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record. The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage. Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story. Israelis had the opportunity to watch live television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast

11730-582: The euphemism revisionism instead. In some former Eastern Bloc countries, Holocaust deniers do not deny the mass murder of Jews but deny the participation of their own nationals in the Holocaust. Holocaust denial is considered a serious societal problem in many places where it occurs, and it is illegal in Canada, Israel, and many European countries . Holocaust deniers prefer to refer to their work as historical revisionism, and object to being referred to as " deniers ". Emory University professor Deborah Lipstadt has written that: "The deniers' selection of

11868-501: The first German defeats", "the high mortality is due to the 'weakening' of prisoners and epidemics", "only lice were gassed in Auschwitz ", etc. Harry Elmer Barnes , at one time a mainstream American historian, assumed a Holocaust-denial stance in his later years. Between World War I and World War II , Barnes was an anti-war writer and a leader of the historical revisionism movement. Starting in 1924, Barnes worked closely with

12006-551: The following day. In the immediate aftermath of the war, prior to the extensive documentation efforts by the Allied forces, a sense of disbelief caused many to deny the initial reports of the Holocaust. Compounding this disbelief was the memory of forged newspaper accounts of the German Corpse Factory , an anti-German atrocity propaganda campaign during WWI, which was widely known to be false by 1945. During

12144-579: The form of a HTML page, can be accessed from Germany. Hence, for example, the jurisdiction of German courts can be applied for offences of sedition ( Volksverhetzungsdelikte ) committed abroad. Such an example was the conviction of the Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel by the District Court of Mannheim in February 2007, who was convicted of inciting propaganda he had published from the US and Canada on

12282-495: The form of government under which they will live". The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections". At the beginning of the July–August 1945 Potsdam Conference after Germany's unconditional surrender, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from

12420-503: The former believing Soviet leader Stalin to be a "devil"-like tyrant leading a vile system. When warned of potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship over part of Europe, Roosevelt responded with a statement summarizing his rationale for relations with Stalin: "I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for

12558-717: The gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox , Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for breach of contract , anticipatory repudiation , libel , injurious denial of established fact , intentional infliction of emotional distress , and declaratory relief . On October 9, 1981, both parties in

12696-520: The gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $ 90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them. In

12834-600: The gas chambers in which they looked for remnants of the [chemical process engendered by Zyklon B]", and that "'Of course, I am against revisionists, but Fred Leuchter's 'study' of the Nazi gas ovens has to be given attention because one has to stay open to 'other' ideas." Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc , also known as the Communist Bloc ( Combloc ), the Socialist Bloc , and the Soviet Bloc ,

12972-530: The huge one billion Reichsmark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 Kristallnacht as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the Kristallnacht (in fact, 91 German Jews were murdered in the Kristallnacht ). Subsequently, Hoggan explicitly denied

13110-603: The incitement of hatred against a portion of the population and given the maximum sentence of five years in prison. In 1987, Bradley R. Smith, a former media director of the Institute for Historical Review, founded the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers. Bradley Smith took his message to college students—with little success. Smith referred to his tactics as

13248-680: The last war for the manufacture of fat which was a grotesque lie"; likewise, The Christian Century commented that "The parallel between this story and the 'corpse factory' atrocity tale of the First World War is too striking to be overlooked." Neander notes that "There can be no doubt that the reported commercial use of the corpses of the murdered Jews undermined the credibility of the news coming from Poland and delayed action that might have rescued many Jewish lives." The Neo-Nazi movement has been revitalized by Holocaust denial. Small but vocal numbers of Neo-Nazis realized that recreation of

13386-419: The late 1980s, Eastern Bloc radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Youth newspapers and magazines were owned by youth organizations affiliated with communist parties. The control of the media was exercised directly by the communist party itself, and by state censorship, which was also controlled by

13524-581: The liquidation of state administrations and replacement by Soviet cadres. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed and the official results fabricated, purporting pro-Soviet candidates' approval by 92.8 percent of the voters in Estonia, 97.6 percent in Latvia, and 99.2 percent in Lithuania. The fraudulently installed "people's assemblies" immediately declared each of

13662-506: The majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust. In 1980, the IHR promised a $ 50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the Los Angeles Times and others including The Jerusalem Post . The IHR wrote back, offering him $ 50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in

13800-575: The millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers. In 1984, James Keegstra , a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian Criminal Code for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews. Keegstra

13938-414: The name revisionist to describe themselves is indicative of their basic strategy of deceit and distortion and of their attempt to portray themselves as legitimate historians engaged in the traditional practice of illuminating the past." Scholars consider this misleading since the methods of Holocaust denial differ from those of legitimate historical revision. Legitimate historical revisionism is explained in

14076-574: The new National Office for Veterans and Victims of War ; however, the bureau then held them in secret, refusing to release copies later, even to the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC). In 1943, Isaac Schneersohn , anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in Grenoble which

14214-472: The occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 1942 never happened and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany. The British historian Ian Kershaw has argued that Nolte was operating on the borderlines of Holocaust denial with his implied claim that the "negative myth" of Nazi Germany

14352-572: The outbreak of the war." Following World War II, Barnes became convinced that allegations made against Germany and Japan , including the Holocaust, were wartime propaganda that had been used to justify the United States' involvement in World War II. Barnes claimed that there were two false claims made about World War II, namely that Germany started the war in 1939, and the Holocaust, which Barnes claimed did not happen. In his 1962 pamphlet, Revisionism and Brainwashing , Barnes claimed that there

14490-549: The parties entered into an interim peace treaty granting the Soviet Union a portion of the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory), and the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was established by merging the ceded territories with the KASSR . After a June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Bukovina , and the Hertsa region from Romania, the Soviets entered these areas, Romania caved to Soviet demands and

14628-525: The party. Media served as an important form of control over information and society. The dissemination and portrayal of knowledge were considered by authorities to be vital to communism's survival by stifling alternative concepts and critiques. Several state Communist Party newspapers were published, including: The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) served as the central agency for collection and distribution of internal and international news for all Soviet newspapers, radio and television stations. It

14766-405: The populace" or calling for "acts of violence or despotism against them", or by attacking "the human dignity of others by reviling, maliciously making contemptible or slandering parts of the populace". "Germany places strict limits on speech and expression when it comes to right-wing extremism" or anything reminiscent of Nazism. Hate speech on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity also

14904-517: The potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. There were various Allied plans for state order in Central Europe for post-war. While Joseph Stalin tried to get as many states under Soviet control as possible, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred a Central European Danube Confederation to counter these countries against Germany and Russia. Churchill's Soviet policy regarding Central Europe differed vastly from that of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt , with

15042-654: The power of the local Communist elites. The port city of Trieste was a particular focus after the Second World War. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste , founded in 1947 with the United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between

15180-401: The primary method of Communist rule shifted from mass terror to selective repression, along with ideological and sociopolitical strategies of legitimation and the securing of loyalty. Juries were replaced by a tribunal of professional judges and two lay assessors that were dependable party actors. The police deterred and contained opposition to party directives. The political police served as

15318-525: The prior appearance of democratic institutions. When it appeared that, in spite of heavy pressure, non-communist parties might receive in excess of 40% of the vote in the August 1947 Hungarian elections , repressions were instituted to liquidate any independent political forces. In that same month, annihilation of the opposition in Bulgaria began on the basis of continuing instructions by Soviet cadres. At

15456-593: The sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization with the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953. With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952, the Berlin city sector borders remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because of their administration by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, it effectively comprised

15594-516: The study of the Holocaust as new facts emerge to change the historical understanding of it: With the main features of the Holocaust clearly visible to all but the willfully blind, historians have turned their attention to aspects of the story for which the evidence is incomplete or ambiguous. These are not minor matters by any means, but turn on such issues as Hitler's role in the event, Jewish responses to persecution, and reactions by onlookers both inside and outside Nazi-controlled Europe. In contrast,

15732-413: The substitution of autonomous law. Initially, communist parties were small in all countries except Czechoslovakia, such that there existed an acute shortage of politically "trustworthy" persons for administration, police, and other professions. Thus, "politically unreliable" non-communists initially had to fill such roles. Those not obedient to communist authorities were ousted, while Moscow cadres started

15870-439: The swindlers of the crematoria, the Israeli politicians who derive billions of marks from nonexistent, mythical and imaginary cadavers, whose numbers have been reckoned in an unusually distorted and dishonest manner." Using Rassinier as his source, Barnes claimed that Germany was the victim of aggression in both 1914 and 1939 and that reports of the Holocaust were propaganda to justify a war of aggression against Germany. In 1961,

16008-731: The term " First World " referred to the Western Bloc and " Third World " referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former pre-1948 Soviet ally Yugoslavia , which was located in Europe. In Western Europe , the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon ( East Germany , Poland , Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Romania , Bulgaria , and Albania ). In Asia ,

16146-499: The three corresponding countries to be "Soviet Socialist Republics" and requested their "admission into Stalin 's Soviet Union". This formally resulted in the Soviet Union's annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in August 1940. The international community condemned this annexation of the three Baltic countries and deemed it illegal. In 1939, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Finland , subsequent to which

16284-691: The underlying evidence in his 1989 book, Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers . Henry Bienen , the former president of Northwestern University, has described Arthur Butz's view of the Holocaust as an "embarrassment to Northwestern". In 2006, sixty of Butz's colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty signed a censure describing Butz's Holocaust denial as "an affront to our humanity and our standards as scholars". The letter also called for Butz to "leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence". In 1978

16422-442: The vestiges of democratic institutions were never entirely destroyed, resulting in the façade of Western style institutions such as parliaments, which effectively just rubber-stamped decisions made by rulers, and constitutions, to which adherence by authorities was limited or non-existent. Parliaments were still elected, but their meetings occurred only a few days per year, only to legitimize politburo decisions, and so little attention

16560-619: The war aimed at protecting the French government and the state from embarrassing revelations, and partly to avoid culpability. For example, at Liberation , the Prefecture of Police destroyed nearly all of the massive archive of Jewish arrest and deportation. One of the earliest efforts to save historical record of the Holocaust occurred during the war, in France, where Drancy internment camp records were carefully preserved and turned over to

16698-414: The work of Holocaust deniers as superior to "mainstream scholars". Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany". In a 1994 interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Nolte stated "I cannot rule out the importance of the investigation of

16836-671: The work of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel. In his 1987 book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg ( The European Civil War ), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation". Nolte himself, though he has never denied

16974-528: Was Albania , where leader Enver Hoxha immediately changed course from favoring Yugoslavia to opposing it. In Poland , leader Władysław Gomułka , who had previously made pro-Yugoslav statements, was deposed as party secretary-general in early September 1948 and subsequently jailed. In Bulgaria , when it appeared that Traicho Kostov, who was not a Moscow cadre, was next in line for leadership, in June 1949, Stalin ordered Kostov's arrest, followed soon thereafter by

17112-464: Was a "lack of any serious opposition or concerted challenge to the atrocity stories and other modes of defamation of German national character and conduct". Barnes argued that there was "a failure to point out the atrocities of the Allies were more brutal, painful, mortal and numerous than the most extreme allegations made against the Germans". He claimed that in order to justify the "horrors and evils of

17250-634: Was caused, in part, by early local elections of October 1946 in which the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was rejected in favor of the Social Democratic Party, which had gained two and a half times more votes than the SED. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies. The Soviets mounted

17388-497: Was charged under s 281.2(2) of the Criminal Code (now s 319(2)), which provides that "Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" commits a criminal offense. He was convicted at trial before the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench . The court rejected the argument, advanced by Keegstra and his lawyer, Doug Christie , that promoting hatred

17526-421: Was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany. Stalin stated that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of eastern Poland they had already taken via invasion in 1939 with some exceptions , and wanted a pro-Soviet Polish government in power in what would remain of Poland. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on

17664-438: Was created by Jewish historians, his allegations of the domination of Holocaust scholarship by "biased" Jewish historians, and his statements that one should withhold judgment on Holocaust deniers, whom Nolte takes considerable pains to stress are not exclusively Germans or fascists. In Kershaw's opinion, Nolte is attempting to imply that perhaps Holocaust deniers are on to something. In a 1990 interview, Nolte implied that there

17802-526: Was eager to accept the US aid; the Polish government had a similar attitude, and this was of great concern to the Soviets. In one of the clearest signs of Soviet control over the region up to that point, the Czechoslovakian foreign minister, Jan Masaryk , was summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for considering joining the Marshall Plan. Polish Prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz was rewarded for

17940-523: Was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. However, in East Germany , taking advantage of the Inner German border between occupied zones, hundreds of thousands fled to West Germany, with figures totaling 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for

18078-444: Was effectively impossible. This later included internal passport controls , which when combined with individual city Propiska ("place of residence") permits, and internal freedom of movement restrictions often called the 101st kilometre , greatly restricted mobility within even small areas of the Soviet Union. After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, emigration out of the newly occupied countries, except under limited circumstances,

18216-401: Was fired from his teaching position shortly afterward. The Toronto-based photo retoucher Ernst Zündel operated a small-press called Samisdat Publishers , which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of Richard Verrall  – a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in R. v. Zundel and convicted under

18354-582: Was frequently infiltrated by Soviet intelligence and security agencies, such as the NKVD and GRU . TASS had affiliates in 14 Soviet republics, including the Lithuanian SSR , Latvian SSR , Estonian SSR , Moldavian SSR . Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR . Western countries invested heavily in powerful transmitters which enabled services such as the BBC , VOA and Radio Free Europe (RFE) to be heard in

18492-460: Was paid to them that some of those serving were actually dead, and officials would openly state that they would seat members who had lost elections. The first or General Secretary of the central committee in each communist party was the most powerful figure in each regime. The party over which the politburo held sway was not a mass party but, conforming with Leninist tradition, a smaller selective party of between three and fourteen percent of

18630-540: Was something to the Leuchter report : "If the revisionists [Holocaust deniers] and Leuchter among them have made it clear to the public that even 'Auschwitz' must be an object of scientific inquiry and controversy then they should be given credit for this. Even if it finally turned out that the number of victims was even greater and the procedures were even more horrific than has been assumed until now." In his 1993 book Streitpunkte ( Points of Contention ), Nolte praised

18768-541: Was sometimes excluded as a satellite state altogether, as it sometimes intervened in other Third World countries even when the Soviet Union opposed this. Post-1991 usage of the term "Eastern Bloc" may be more limited in referring to the states forming the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991) and Mongolia (1924–1991), which are no longer communist states. Sometimes they are more generally referred to as "the countries of Eastern Europe under communism", excluding Mongolia, but including Yugoslavia and Albania which had both split with

18906-460: Was the collective term for an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe , Asia , Africa , and Latin America that were aligned with the Soviet Union and existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism , in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc . The Eastern Bloc was often called the " Second World ", whereas

19044-414: Was under Italian occupation at the time in order to form a center de documentation . Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before liberation . Serious work began after the center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the CDJC. In 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower , Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize

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