Letters to David Irving on this Website

David Hebden is puzzled about the figures contained in a recently discovered British decode about the Operation Reinhard camps, Thursday, October 9, 2003

More problems with the Höfle decode

JUST when we thought we had solved the decode problem to our satisfaction, another problem crops up.

The Korherr Report (see links below) lists evacuations from Bialystok separately from those of the General Government [of Poland]. Accordingly, the 1,274,166 evacuees (and the respective breakdowns into camp totals) recorded in the Höfle telegram shouldn't include those from the Bialystok district.

Which would suggest the attempt by Stephen Tyas and Peter Witte to the trace the deportees to Treblinka, for the last two weeks in December [1942], to Bialystok district is misconceived.

David Hebden

The Korherr Report: English translation | German, long text | German, short text

Richard Korherr wrote letter to Der Spiegel in July 1977 protesting against false interpretation of word Sonderbehandlung

More problems with the Höfle decode: The Korherr Report

Other letters by David Hebden on this website:

The source of Rudolf Höss's figures | and another

What Stalin told his generals of plans to attack Germany

 

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David Irving comments

I WISH I could have interviewed Dr Richard Korherr, Himmler's inspector of statistics. His letter to der Spiegel (on my website) suggests he was unaware of any lethal interpretations. That would make him very gullible.

Adolf Eichmann referred to his report obliquely in the original Eichmann papers I brought back from Argentina., though without naming him. I think the origin of the report was a request circulated by the Reichskanzlei at the end of 1942 to all Reich ministers for a statistical overview of the activities of their ministries in the first ten years of power, since January 1933, for Adolf Hitler to use in a speech on January 30, 1943.

There are traces of such requests and the internal ministerial paperwork involved in compiling such figures in the Erhard Milch files of the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (RLM) and the Albert Speer ministry, and no doubt elsewhere. In other words, the report was not just a grisly whim of Heinrich Himmler, a desire for an interim body count, but part of a larger statistical effort.

The Höfle telegram which the British appear to have intercepted would then be part of the underlying research for the report to Hitler.

The droll feature was, as I first pointed out in my 1977 Hitler's War, that the draft Korherr report was couched in language rather too transparent for Himmler's liking, and he ordered the phrase "der Sonderbehandlung zugeführt" (turned over to special treatment) to be softened to "channeled through to the East" for the Führer's benefit. That was surely an edit that deserved some honest and conscientious analysis: was it with, or without, Hitler's knowledge and compliance? Because that would answer the basic question which has caused historians such heartache since my book appeared: How much did Hitler himself know?