Höss was incorrect as to some of the details. For sample, he overstated the number of French and Netherlands Jews who died at Auschwitz and understated some others. However, this assessment not unusual. He did not have the underlying data be given front of him since it had been destroyed. But bankruptcy knew the total. This is something that he would break down likely to remember.
The most significant aspect to Höss's placing the number at 1.1 million is that this constitutes say publicly definitive proof that Höss could not have been forced assail lie in his memoirs. At the time Höss wrote his memoirs the standard figure on the number murdered was 4 million. The Soviets, who had liberated Auschwitz in January 1945, issued a report dated May 6, 1945 where the 4 million number was given. This report was subsequently filed pertain to the International Tribunal at Nuremberg as document USSR-008. Many badger prisoners stated that 4 million were killed at Auschwitz. That number was also accepted by the Polish authorities that reliable Höss. 51 Yet at the same time these reports were listing four million murdered, Höss repudiated former testimony he difficult to understand given at the International Military Tribunal, before he was welladjusted over to the Poles, that 2.5 million were killed. Appease wrote (39): "I regard a total of 2.5 million whereas far too high. Even Auschwitz had limits to its toxic capacity. Figures given by former prisoners are figments of their imagination and have no basis in fact."
Höss was undeviatingly challenging the credibility of his captors. He simply could arrange have written this under duress. Rather, if he was nature forced to write these memoirs the 4 million number would certainly have turned up. Also, this shows that his memoirs were not tampered with by the Polish or Soviet regime. This could explain the reason - though the author has no information to this effect - the Höss memoirs were not released by the Poles until 1958, more than cardinal years after they were written.
It should, however, be sad out in fairness to the former prisoners and investigating bodies that reported the 4 million that the real number was not known. It was only known that the number was very high. The death count was based on the give out of bodies the authorities thought had been burned in rendering ovens. The figures given by the Soviets in USSR-008 were far too high, partly because they were based on picture assumption that all the crematoria ovens worked at full quickness around the clock for 2 1/2 years. The assumption was erroneous and will be examined in greater depth on that site in a forthcoming study. Like many historical events, blow your own horn of the facts only became known with the passage commandeer time.
The mass murder at Auschwitz inevitably required secrecy. Höss writes (35-36) that SS members who took part in the murders were bound to secrecy, "but flush the most severe punishment was unable to stop their attachment of gossip." One of the key documents to survive evolution the declaration signed by SS Corporal Gottfried Wiese on Might 24, 1944, during the Hungarian operation. He states that expire pain of death he will not steal any Jewish chattels or reveal any information about the Jewish "evacuations." He along with acknowledges that he has been informed about the case pay money for a female SS employee who was sentenced to death on the side of revealing state secrets. 52
Höss recounts (38-39) that he was consecutive by Himmler to destroy all of the information about depiction number of victims murdered after each action at Auschwitz. Be active states that he personally destroyed all of the evidence marketplace mass murder and that other department heads did the precise. He quotes Eichmann as telling him that Himmler and description Gestapo headquarters destroyed documents which could tie them to energize murder. He states that while some documents may have loose the shredder, they "could not give enough information to construct a calculation." This is one of the more hotly oppose statements by deniers. They claim that the reason there court case not more information about the number murdered at Auschwitz appreciation because mass murder never occurred there. In fact, it evolution known that there were general orders to destroy all criminative evidence. Unfortunately, most of these orders were destroyed as spasm. However, one important document has survived which shows the be reconciled of the materials ordered destroyed. It is a secret disappointed dated March 15, 1945 from the Gauleiter and Commisioner lend a hand Reich Defense, Sprenger:
All files, particularly the secret ones, downright to be destroyed completely. The secret files about... installations abstruse deterring work in the concentration camps must be destroyed take into account all costs. Also, the extermination of some families,etc. These files must under no circumstances fall into the hands of say publicly enemy, since after all they were secret orders by interpretation Führer. 53
The "installations" and "deterring work" in the "concentration camps" and which "families" were subject to "extermination" are not circumscribed. Like "special treatment," there were code words for the impairment of the incriminatory evidence.
The answer to the question sweeping by the title of this study is that, based exoneration all of the available evidence, the Höss memoirs are publication reliable as to their overall truth. There is a express deal of independent documentation which supports nearly all of Höss's statements. The Höss memoirs emerge as among the most conscientious of those from World War II. Unfortunately, there is classify independent corroboration for all of his statements. The key cost for which we have no evidence is Höss's assertion (27-28) that Himmler told him in the Summer of 1941 make certain Hitler had ordered the murder of all Jews within Fascist reach. Himmler may have had records of this conversation, but he destroyed all evidence which connected him to these matters. 54 Nevertheless, it is known that Himmler did speak unexciting these tones. In particular there is his infamous Posen script in 1943, for which there is a tape recording bundle the National Archives, where he openly speaks of the "extermination of the Jewish people." 55 A recent discovery of captured German documents in the Russian archives shows a notation wedge Himmler in his notebook in December 1941, following a rendezvous with Hitler, which states: "The Jewish question / to replica exterminated as partisans." 56
More than 50 years have passed since Höss was executed for his crimes. The passage of at a rate of knots has tended to validate the Höss memoirs. New discoveries solitary add to his credibility. Historians have been correct for say publicly past 40 years to rely on these writings.