The denier argument from science and engineering is the most technical-sounding of the denier strategies and the one that has attracted readers who are otherwise uninterested in the political content of denial. It rests on a series of technical claims: that the gas chambers as described could not have functioned, that Zyklon B could not have killed in the quantities and at the speed described, that the cremation capacity of the camps was insufficient for the death toll, that the forensic record at the camp sites does not support the historical case. The arguments have a particular appeal because they look like science.
The technical claims have been examined by professional engineers, chemists, and historians in detail. The Leuchter Report, which was the founding document of the technical-denial school, was examined and refuted in the early 1990s. The forensic work at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been carried out by Polish, German, American and Israeli teams over four decades. The cremation capacity of the camps has been calculated against the surviving documentation of the SS construction office at Auschwitz. The technical case for what happened in the gas chambers and what was done with the bodies is not contested in the engineering literature; it is contested in the denier literature, by people without standing in the relevant fields.
The arguments addressed in this section
The Logistics of Murdering Six Million Were Impossible is the broadest form of the argument and rests on intuitive estimates of railway capacity, manpower, and processing time that are intended to make the figure look implausible. The actual logistical record of the Holocaust has been studied in detail, including by the railway historian Alfred C. Mierzejewski, and the figure is not in fact logistically implausible.
Zyklon B Could Not Have Worked as Described is the chemical form of the technical argument and has been the subject of more denier-published material than any other technical question. The chemistry of hydrogen cyanide, its lethal concentration, its action on human victims and on cyanide-resistant blue stains in masonry has been examined in the professional literature. The chemistry rules out the denier position, not the historians’.
Cremation Capacity Was Insufficient for Six Million rests on a particular reading of the SS construction office records at Auschwitz and on the rated capacity of the Topf and Sons crematoria. The actual operation of the crematoria, including the practice of multi-body cremations, the use of pyres in addition to crematoria, and the burning at other camps, has been documented and the capacity claim does not survive the documentation.
Forensic Examination Has Not Produced Sufficient Evidence rests on a misreading of the forensic record, in particular the Markiewicz report and the Polish forensic work at the Birkenau gas chamber sites. The forensic work has produced evidence; the deniers’ position depends on dismissing the evidence by setting an evidentiary standard the deniers do not apply to their own claims.
The Gas Chamber Engineering is Physically Implausible is the most-cited specific technical claim and is associated with the work of Fred Leuchter and Germar Rudolf. The Leuchter Report was examined and refuted in the early 1990s; Rudolf’s subsequent work has been examined in court and rejected. The architectural and chemical evidence for the function of the chambers is detailed and well documented.
Each of the pages below addresses one denier claim and the historians’ answer to it. Read together, they show that the technical-engineering case for Holocaust denial is not an engineering case. It is a polemic that uses the vocabulary of engineering to give itself the standing it does not otherwise have.