29. Why did they use this instead of a gas more suitable for mass extermination?


Ernst Zündel
replies to Q/A # 29:

Good question. Food for thought. Here we are offering a very technical answer, of interest only to those with a solid scientific background. We include this elaborate response to round out the picture of the absurdity of the Zyklon-B claim, with the understanding that the lay person might not have the background to judge the text below.

This answer comes from Germar Rudolf, a German scientist born after the war, now forced into political exile because he claimed that science does not lie. Rudolf is as fine a scientist as Europe can produce. Here is what Rudolf had to say:

The SS in Auschwitz did not use ANY gas for mass extermination. The question: ". . . which gas would have been more suitable for mass executions, other than Zyklon-B, is not one to be answered scientifically since there are no experiences with mass executions by poison gas.

Theoretically the Germans could have chosen between N2, CO2, CO, COCl2 (phosgene), Cl2, HCN, Tabun, Sarin, Diesel engine exhausts, gasoline engine exhausts, producer gas, coke gas, process gas and others.

As an intellectual exercise, let's look at some of these:

1. N2, Nitrogen

Nitrogen kills painlessly by asphyxiation (apart from the possibly psychologically painful effects of panic), for which it is necessary to replace at least 75% of the air in the hypothetical execution chamber, so that the required amount of gas per execution would be enormous. N2 is available in pressure bottles. For bottled gases it is relatively cheap, but in comparison with, for example, exhaust gases or producer gas, it is extremely expensive. Nobody would have used it, therefore, for mass executions.

An exception to this might have been if an air liquefaction plant had been nearby as a potential mass killing site, since 78% of the air is N2 and the latter is automatically separated from oxygen by the liquefaction process. This was, in fact, the case near the alleged mass killing site of the concentration camp of Auschwitz, where the I.G.-Farbenindustrie AG built such a plant to gain basic chemicals for their coal processing plants.

Theoretically, the SS would have had the opportunity of killing Jews by N2-suffocation simply by installing a N2-pipe from the I.G.-Farbenindustrie AG plant to the next camp, which was situated in Monowitz. This was not done, however. According to exterminationist theory, they foolishly chose a more clumsy and slow method. Does that make any sense?

2. CO2, Carbondioxid

Carbondioxid works like N2 by suffocation, but the physiological effect of high CO2-contents in air on the mucous membranes is very painful. CO2 would have been suitable only if delivered in a pressure bottled form like N2.

Similar to N2, huge amounts of CO2 would have been necessary to replace at least 20% of the air to get some lethal effects. Hence this gas would not have been chosen by the SS for mass executions.

3. CO, Carbonmonoxid

CO blocks the iron atom in haemoglobin so that the latter can no longer carry oxygen to the body cells. Pure CO is available in pressure bottles, but it is extremely expensive. It is certainly lethal in concentrations above 0,1 vol.-%, so that only a small amount of CO suffices to kill people.

Because there are other, extremely cheap, methods to gain CO in high concentrations, nobody would have used CO out of pressure bottles for mass executions. Allegations that CO out of pressure bottles was used for mass executions in Majdanek must therefore be dismissed as nonsensical.

The allegedly original bottle presented today to visitors is, in fact, a CO2 bottle, as the engraving at the bottle shows. It is a simple fraud perpetrated by the directors of the museum. (With credits to Carlos Mattagno of Italy to whom I owe thanks for this item.)

CO is easy to vent, since it does not adhere to surfaces and is not delivered on carriers like HCN.

4. COCl2, phosgene

Phosgene was a poison gas used by both sides in the First World War. It is available in pressure bottles, is extremely difficult to handle and is very poisonous and expensive. The SS guards would have been in great danger of life, had they tried to apply it. Therefore, nobody would have chosen to attempt mass murder with this gas.

5. Cl2, Chlorine

Chlorine is an irritant rather than a poison. In big concentrations it destroys the lungs and, therefore, can lead to suffocation. For this reason, it is not suitable for mass murder.

6. HCN, hydrogen cyanide

Hydrogen cyanide cuts off the oxygen supply of the body cells by blocking an oxygen transport enzyme in the cell membranes. HCN is available as a fluid adsorbed on different types of carriers so that it evaporates from the carrier in between some minutes up to a few hours, depending on the temperature and the convection of the surrounding air.

In the 30ies and 40ies it was produced in huge amounts and delivered throughout Europe and was therefore relatively cheap. (In the 40ies it consisted only partly of diatomaceous earth; the rest was mainly gypsum), HCN is certainly lethal to humans in concentrations above 0,03 vol.-%, so that only a small amount of HCN is enough to kill people.

For the SS Guards or for the Sonderkommandos allegedly working in the gas chambers, danger would have arisen by the remaining HCN in the air after the execution, depending on the capacity of the ventilation facility and time period between the end of the execution and when the crews entered the gas chamber. This is largely due to the long time the HCN needs to completely evaporate from the carrier and because HCN strongly adheres to all surfaces, especially to wet ones.

Only gas masks with special filters and especially designed protective clothing would have protected against these gas remainders.

7. Tabun, Sarin

These poison gases were invented by German chemists between WWI and WWII. They work extremely fast by blocking the synapsis of nerves. Even today there doesn't exist any effective protective measure against these gases, which are lethal in concentrations of 0,001 vol.-% or less.

Because every SS man, who would have tried to commit mass murder with this gas, would have been immediately killed as well, and probably the whole camp along with him, nobody would have dared to make even an attempt.

8. Diesel engine exhausts

Diesel engine exhausts are a very poor source of CO. Only with extensive technical knowledge and some engineering equipment would it have been possible to commit mass murder with this extremely slowly working weapon: the SS men would have had to wait at least two hours for the last victim to die.

Since the SS was well aware of the fact that much better, faster-working sources of CO were easily available, eyewitness accounts of Diesel engine exhausts for mass killings in the concentration camps of Treblinka, Belsec or Sobibor are fraudulent. (Cp. F.P. Berg, in: Ernst Gauss (ed.), op. cit.; Germar Rudolf, "Zur Kritik an 'Wahrheit und Auschwitzlüge'" in: Vrij Historisch Onderzoek (ed.), "Kardinalfragen zur Zeitgeschichte", Vrij Historisch Onderzoek, Berchem 1996).

9. gasoline engine exhausts

Gasoline engines produce gases in their exhaust, which can easily reach up to 7 vol.-% CO so that they would have been suitable to commit mass murder. Nevertheless, only a very small minority of "witnesses" mentions the use of gasoline.

10. producer gas

Producer gas devices produce a gas mixture out of wood or coke, air and water which has a CO content of up to 35 vol.-%. These devices were installed in some hundred thousand vehicles throughout the German occupied Europe because of general lack of fuel due to the petrol blockade of the Allies.

As F.P Berg has shown (op. cit.), everybody in the German government was well aware of these extremely easy-to-handle, extraordinary cheap devices producing highly lethal poison gas, especially the transport experts, whose duty it was to replace all their Diesel and gasoline fuel devices step by step by producer gas devices. These are the very same persons allegedly in charge of the deportation and execution of the Jews. And these slide rule "murderers", it is alleged, chose Diesel engine exhausts for the mass murder of Jews, the least cost- and time-efficient killing method avaiable to them? Nonsense.

11. coke gas

By making coke out of coal, a gas evolves called coke gas. It consists mainly out of CO (up to 30%), Hydrogen, CO2 and H2O. Until the 50ies and 60ies it was delivered to the households for cooking and heating purpose (German: Stadtgas). It was extremely cheap and poisonous.

The KZ Majdanek for example, situated near the city of Lublin, was connected to the Lublin coke gas delivery system. Hence, the SS could have used this gas rather than anything else, had they wanted, or had they been ordered, to mass-murder Jews. But oddly, none of the allegations of mass executions by poison gas mentions this method. (Cp. Germar Rudolf and Ernst Gauss, in: E. Gauss (ed.), op. cit.)

12. process gas

Only a few kilometres from the concentration camp of Auschwitz, the German I.G.-Farbenindustrie AG had in the early 1940s built a coal gasification or liquefaction plant. In this plant, coal was modified by several chemical conversion steps into basic chemical compounds out of which oil, fuels and rubber could be produced. The first step of this process is the formation of process gas, which has a similar consistency as coke gas.

The I.G.-Farbenindustrie AG had in its direct neighbourhood a concentration camp called Monowitz which was attached to the Auschwitz concentration camp system, covering some 30 camps in the region of Upper Silesia and south-west Poland. If the SS would have searched for an easy way to kill millions of Jews, the "extermination centre" surely would have been built in or near Monowitz, with a direct access pipe to the process gas of the I.G. Farbenindustrie AG plant.

This was not done. Instead, the Germans foolishly chose Zyklon-B, the expensive, more difficult-to-handle killing method. Is that believable or likely?

After this review it should be clear that, had genocide been planned or carried out by the Germans as a matter of policy during WWII, CO would have been the gas of choice, either out of producer gas devices, coke gas or process gas productions, depending on which of the sources was the most easily available at the time and given the location because it was the cheapest and least dangerous for the alleged "gassers".

Naturally, CO would not have accelerated the execution process, since CO is not as poisonous as HCN. But regarding the fact that the alleged HCN gas chambers in Auschwitz had no device to accelerate the evaporation of the HCN from the carrier (e.g. by a hot air ventilation system like in the famous German "Kreislaufanlage"), an execution by pumping CO containing producer gas into a gas chamber would have killed the alleged victims surely equally as fast as Zyklon B - but safer for the handlers, less complicated and certainly cheaper. Surely, "the bottleneck in the extermination process" would have been the incineration of the bodies, not the gassing itself. A thousand people could have been killed in a matter of minutes, or an hour or two at the most, counting the entire operation from arrival at the camp to the final ventilation of the gas chamber.

Yet to burn the bodies of those thousand people would have taken "quite a long while." (quotations: part of Nizkor's answer to this question). And as C. Mattogno and F. Deana have shown, the furnaces actually installed in Auschwitz were never able to maintain the alleged amount of bodies produced by the alleged mass killings (cp. E. Gauss (ed.), op. cit.) - so here we have another proof that genocidal stories in places such as Auschwitz are nothing more than propaganda and fiction.

But even if it could be proven that genocidal maniacs plotted to kill the Jews en masse, CO would have been - for several sound reasons, six of which we list below - a FAR BETTER choice than the clumsy Zyklon-B:

In plain English and once and for all: the typhus epidemics of the Auschwitz camps endangered the extremely important production of the war industries of Upper Silesia - after the Ruhr area the second most important industrial area of wartime Germany. Therefore, the struggle against this permanent threat of an epidemic was of the highest importance, and for this reason, Zyklon-B was desperately needed in bigger amounts than the producing companies (DEGESCH, KORI) were ever able to deliver. When the Allies bombed one of the Zyklon-B producing factories, temporarily slowing down the Zyklon-B deliveries, urgent requests were sent to the concentration camp administration in Berlin with the dire warning that lack of sufficient Zyklon-B could CAUSE deaths to inmates by epidemics caused by lice.

Yet for trying to save lives - their own, their comrades', and their enemies - the Allies hanged people at Nuremberg!

October 1, 1996