Growing Impact of the Leuchter Report in Germany

Munich's Institute of Contemporary History Seeks to Discredit Leuchter's Findings

by Mark Weber

Editor's introduction

Nowhere has the impact of the 1988 Leuchter Report been greater than in Germany, and understandably so. As one young German recently noted, if Holocaust revisionism wins widespread acceptance there, the impact will be felt not merely in the intellectual world; many people who currently hold positions of influence and power in German politics will be out of work, and those replacing them will have dramatically different views about the most fundamental social-political issues.

With stakes this high, the game is bound to get rough. When the first German-language edition of the Leuchter Report was published in late 1988 by Udo Walendy (as No. 36 in his series of magazine-format "Historical Facts" booklets), German authorities lost no time in suppressing it. Interestingly, though, the reason was not the Report itself, but rather the somewhat provocative commentary that accompanied Leuchter's text. Under German law, "scientific" writings are exempt from the ban that applies generally to otherwise politically incorrect works.
In fact, Germany's Ministry of Justice has in effect declared that the Leuchter Report cannot be prohibited because it is constitutionally protected as a "scholarly" work. In a letter dated March 13, 1990, a Ministry official wrote: More