re: Nazi Heinrich Himmler switches between man and monster in newly discovered diary

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of how people 'just can't even' if someone dares question the official story (for anything).

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I didn't read it as questioning the official story, but reacting to the odd mundanity of the journal.

The truth doesn't fear the light.

I'd have to read the actual "diary" to really know what to think.

Does it at any point contain passages where he rambles on with his personal thoughts, theories, or feelings? Or is it simply an accounting of what he did or needed to do and the date and time?

Because if it is the latter, what they have is really more of a planner and it isn't surprising that he didn't discuss his feelings on his biggest speeches or the success or failure of the biggest tests or new phases of the extermination plan.

But if it is the former, and he does indeed in other passages remark at length about his motivations for other actions, his worldviews, his hopes and fears, etc. then, although I have never doubted the holocaust before, I would need to think about it all again with more skepticism.

That said, this really sounds more like a Daytimer than a diary.

I don't like people to know what I'm thinking.

Gotta keep 'em guessing

Damn. Some of you are some crazy motherfrickers

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I believe Rudolph Hess

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Hess was the Reichfuhrer (second to Hitler) who crashed in Scotland on some crazy peace mission (at least that was the cover story) - he feigned being crazy during the Nuremburg trials and ultimately outlived all of his prominent peers - living many years as the sole occupant (sort of the "Last Nazi") of Spandau Prison and ultimately "killed himself" in Spandau's garden at the age of 93.

You're thinking Rudolf Hoss. Close. The Poles hung him in 1947.

Hoss' quite matter of fact affidavit reads:

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I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish) from Holland, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

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4 days before his execution, he stated, in writing:

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My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done.

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I'll take all the free ammo I can get!

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Do you think that, knowing that the jig was up, he was simply trying to save his own skin by making a last ditch bid to be seen as someone seeking peace (and then as a crazy person) before his inevitable trial?

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His flight was in May 1941 - I'm not sure how he would have concluded the jig was up. He did dodge the death penalty because he left before most of the crimes against humanity happened and there was little surviving evidence of his fingerprints on anything "death" worthy. So, maybe he was playing 5D interdimensional chess or whatever.

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I'm not sure how he would have concluded the jig was up.

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He was supposedly the most rational and undogmatic member of the government. It's possible that he realized at that point that a cross-channel invasion was impossible and that Germany would soon either be invaded by the USSR or forced to preemptively invade the USSR and thus face a 2-front war they couldn't win. At the outset of the war, Germany had fewer tanks than the French and never shifted to full war production. They weren't the all-conquering juggernaut they've been made out to be, and a rational top insider may have realized the futility of it.

That, or, as some posit, some elements of the British government were legitimately seeking a peace at that time and Hess's flight was part of a said peace negotiation, which was foiled by Churchill.

Are you back to trying to lay claim to the worst poster throne? Valiant effort here.