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