Austin App

Austin Joseph App (1902 – 1984) was a German-American professor of medieval English literature who taught at the University of Scranton and La Salle University.[1] App defended Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II.[2] He is known for his work denying the Holocaust, and he has been called the first major American Holocaust denier.[3]

Austin Joseph App
Born
Austin Joseph App

(1902-10-29)October 29, 1902
Germany
Died1984
NationalityGerman-American
Occupationprofessor, Holocaust denier

In the 1950s, App often wrote articles for Conde McGinley's antisemitic journal Common Sense.[1]

In 1973 App laid out eight "axioms", or what he described as "incontrovertible assertions" about the Holocaust in his 1973 pamphlet The Six Million Swindle:

  1. Emigration, not extermination, was the Nazi Germany's plan for dealing with its "Jewish problem".
  2. No Jews were gassed in any German concentration camps (including Auschwitz).
  3. Jews who disappeared during the years of World War II and have not been accounted for did so in territories under Soviet, rather than German, control.
  4. The majority of Jews who were killed by the Nazis were people whom the Nazis had every right to execute as subversives, spies, and criminals.
  5. If the Holocaust claims had any truth, Israel would have opened its archives to historians.
  6. All evidence to support the figure of six million dead rests upon misquotes of Nazis and Nazi documents.
  7. It is incumbent upon the accusers to prove the six million figure.
  8. Jewish historians and other scholars have great discrepancies in their calculations of the number of victims. (App 1973, 1977).[1]

In February 1976, App published an article "The Sudeten-German Tragedy" in Reason magazine, where App criticised the post-World War II expulsion of the Sudeten Germans as "one of the worst mass atrocities in history."[4]

App also published A Straight Look at the Third Reich, a defense of Nazi Germany, and The Curse of Anti-Anti-Semitism, supporting the argument that the entire Jewish community is responsible for the death of Christ.[1] App's work inspired the Institute for Historical Review, a California Holocaust denial center founded in 1978.[5] App "inundated" magazines, newspapers and politicians with antisemitic letters complaining about the decision of Franklin D. Roosevelt to declare war on Germany and enter the Second World War. App argued that, without American help, the Axis Powers would have won the war. App blamed both Jews and Communists for Germany's postwar problems. However, few of these letters were ever published.

He worked to prioritize non-Jewish immigration from Austria and Germany to the United States instead of Holocaust survivors.

See also

References
  1. Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Austin J. App and Holocaust Denial. Holocaust denial as an international movement. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. pp. 153–55. ISBN 978-0-313-34539-5.
  2. Diana R. Grant (2003). Phyllis Gertenfield (ed.). Crimes of Hate: Selected Readings. Sage. p. 190. ISBN 978-0761929437.
  3. Knight, Peter (2003). Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 322. ISBN 978-1576078129.
  4. App, Austin J (February 1976). "The Sudeten-German Tragedy". Reason: 28–33.
  5. Holocaust denial
    • Carlos C. Huerta and Dafna Shiffman-Huerta "Holocaust Denial Literature: Its Place in Teaching the Holocaust", in Rochelle L. Millen. New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars, NYU Press, 1996, ISBN 0-8147-5540-2, p. 189.
    • "While denial of the Holocaust's very occurrence had emerged already during the early postwar period, it gained new prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. During this period denial attempted to leave the lunatic fringe and set out for the mainstream in both the United States and Europe, as figures such as Arthur Butz, Bradley Smith, and Robert Faurisson, together with organizations like the Institute for Historical Review, attempted to lend academic credibility to Holocaust Denial." Gavriel D. Rosenfeld "The politics of uniqueness: reflections on the recent polemical turn in Holocaust and genocide scholarship" in David Cesarani, Sarah Kavanaugh. Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies, Routledge, 2004, ISBN 0-415-27509-1, p. 376.
    • "In recent years, Holocaust denial has become a propaganda mainstay of organized racism. It is promulgated by racist groups and by organizations like the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), which publishes the scientific-looking Journal of Historical Review." Kathleen M. Blee. Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement, University of California Press, 2003, ISBN 0-520-24055-3, p. 92.
    • "The pseudo-scholarly guise of Holocaust deniers is epitomised by the Institute for Historical Review - established in the United States in the late 1970s - and its journal, the Journal of Historical Review, which have provided the core of the more contemporary Holocaust denial movement (Stern 1995)." Lydia Morris. Rights: Sociological Perspectives, Routledge (UK), 2006, ISBN 0-415-35522-2 p. 238 note 1.
    • "The chief organization promoting Holocaust denial is the Institute for Historical Review, a California organization founded in 1978 by Willis Carto, who also founded the extreme right-wing Liberty Lobby." Suzanne Pharr. Eyes Right!: Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, South End Press, 1995, ISBN 0-89608-523-6, p. 252.
    • "Denial is an international phenomena with deniers active across the globe. This is not an incidental occurrence, but rather is the result of organized international networking. Organizations such as the California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR) have played the pivotal role in this process by organizing regular international conferences since 1979 in America." Konrad Kwiet, Jürgen Matthäus. Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust, Praeger/Greenwood, 2004, ISBN 0-275-97466-9, p. 141.
    • "A growing number of white nationalist and white supremacy groups have adopted innocuous-sounding names such as the Euro-American Student Union, the Institute for Historical Review (a Holocaust denial group), ..." Carol M. Swain. The New White Nationalism in America: its challenge to integration, Cambridge University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-521-80886-3, p. 28.
    • "Since its inception in 1979, the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), a California-based Holocaust denial organization founded by Willis Carto of Liberty Lobby, has promoted the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Jews fabricated tales of their own genocide to manipulate the sympathies of the non-Jewish world." Antisemitism and Racism Country Reports: United States Archived June 28, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Stephen Roth Institute, 2000. Retrieved May 17, 2007.
    • "The IHR is the Holocaust denial group in Costa Mesa that attempts to rewrite the history of World War II in favor of the Axis powers and present nazism in a favorable light. The IHR is sponsored by Willis Carto who also leads the anti-Semitic and quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby." Russ Bellant, Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, South End Press, 1991, ISBN 0-89608-418-3, p. 43.
  • App, Austin Joseph (1973) The Six Million Swindle: Blackmailing the German People for Hard Marks with Fabricated Corpses. Takoma Park, Maryland: Boniface Press. New edition (1976) Takoma Park, Maryland: Boniface Press.
  • App, Austin Joseph (1977) German-American Voice for Truth and Justice: Autobiography. Takoma Park, Maryland: Boniface Press.
  • Irving, David John Cawdell (1977) Hitler's War. New York: Viking Press.
  • Lipstadt, Deborah E; Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory; New York: The Free Press, 1993 (at nizkor.org).
  • Lipstadt, Deborah E. (2005) History on Trial: My Day in Court with Holocaust Denier David Irving. New York: Ecco.
  • Evans, Richard J. (2001) Lying about Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial. New York: Basic Books.
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