Britain’s Rumour Factory
Origins of the Gas Chamber Story
An essay published in tribute to Prof. Robert Faurisson on his 88th birthday
25th January 2017
For more than thirty years, historians have been aware of once-secret
memoranda by senior British intelligence official Victor Cavendish-Bentinck in
which he casts doubt on the alleged use of homicidal gas chambers by
National Socialist Germany. Writing to Whitehall colleagues at the end of1
August 1943, Cavendish-Bentinck used dismissive language which today in
most European countries would undoubtedly see him prosecuted for
“Holocaust denial”.
During the trial of British historian David Irving’s libel action against Deborah
Lipstadt in 2000 (now dramatised in the Hollywood film Denial) some of
Cavendish-Bentinck’s remarks were raised by Irving as justification of his
claim that the gas chamber story originated as a propaganda lie. In his
judgment against Irving, Mr Justice Gray accepted the counter-arguments of
Lipstadt’s defence team. Their interpretation has since appeared in a book
by Prof. Sir Richard Evans, who was among Lipstadt’s defence witnesses.
Seventeen years on from the Irving-Lipstadt trial, it is now possible to access
a broader range of British documents, including intelligence material. In this
essay I shall attempt to clarify what these documents tell us about the role of
British propaganda and intelligence in relation to the initial allegations of
homicidal gassing by National Socialist Germany.
The conclusions can be briefly summarised:
• Britain’s Political Warfare Executive and its predecessor first deployed
stories of homicidal gassing as part of propaganda efforts in two areas
unconnected to treatment of Jews. Their objective was to spread
dissension and demoralisation among German soldiers and civilians, and
among Germany’s allies.
Walter Laqueur, ‘Hitler’s Holocaust’, Encounter, July 1980, pp 6-25; this article was a preview of1
the same author’s book The Terrible Secret (Boston: Little Brown, 1981)
• Partly because they knew of these earlier propagandist initiatives, Victor2
Cavendish-Bentinck and his British intelligence colleague Roger Allen
disbelieved later stories that homicidal gas chambers had been used to
murder Poles and Jews. They succeeded in having these allegations
removed from the draft of a joint Anglo-American Declaration on German
Crimes in Poland, published on 30th August 1943.
Part I: The first Revisionists?
In August 1943 Poland’s government-in-exile lobbied the British and
American governments to issue a public statement condemning “German
terror in Poland”. Moray McLaren – head of the Polish section of Britain’s
main propaganda body the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) – advised the
Foreign Office “in confidence that, from his contacts with the Poles, he has
recently gained the impression that they are becoming seriously worried lest
the Germans might shortly succeed in persuading Polish quislings to come
forward and even form some kind of puppet government. The present Polish
request may possibly have some connexion with such fears.”3
Moreover Britain’s own Special Operations Executive (SOE) responsible for
organising and supplying Polish underground fighters, reported that German
anti-partisan operations were increasingly successful in “affecting their work,
in that the cells of the underground resistance movement in the affected
areas are to a great extent liquidated, and materials delivered are liable to be
discovered. SOE would accordingly welcome any form of deterrent that could
be devised.”
In a footnote to his Encounter article (p 15), Laqueur writes that in an October 1979 letter to him,2
Cavendish-Bentinck “wrote that his pre-War experience of Germany had been limited, and that he
therefore disbelieved the atrocity stories in 1942-43. He added that when he visited Auschwitz in
late 1945 and reported to the Foreign Office that millions of people had been killed there, it was still
not believed in the Foreign Office.” This is Laqueur’s paraphrase: neither in his 1980 article nor his
1981 book does he quote the precise words of Cavendish-Bentinck’s letter, nor does he give any
reference for Cavendish-Bentinck’s claimed 1945 report to the FO from Auschwitz. In 1979-80 all
SOE and PWE papers would of course have been closed to researchers, and Cavendish-Bentinck
would still have felt bound by the Official Secrets Act, so it would not be surprising for him to have
given Laqueur a false rationalisation for his earlier scepticism.
Foreign Office minute by Denis Allen, 11th August 1943, FO 371/345513
Page of 2 18
Denis Allen of the Foreign Office’s Central Department (not to be confused
with the unrelated Roger Allen who also figures in this story) suggested that a
statement should be issued with “some indication that the actions being
carried out by the German authorities in Poland will in some measure be held
against Germany as a whole”. With the British Parliament in its summer
recess and Prime Minister Winston Churchill on his way to Quebec for a
secret summit with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, the most logical
opportunity would be for a joint Anglo-American statement (issued to the
press rather than to Parliament).
Allen’s department had prepared a draft statement which was discussed with
the Poles. This condemned the “brutality” of German anti-partisan operations
involving mass deportations in the Lublin area of southeastern Poland. The
draft statement (which made no reference to Jews and seemed to relate to
Polish civilians) alleged:
“Some children are killed on the spot, others are separated from their
parents and either sent to Germany to be brought up as Germans or
sold to German settlers or despatched with the women and old men to
concentration camps, where they are now being systematically put to
death in gas chambers.
“His Majesty’s Government re-affirm their resolve to punish the
instigators and actual perpetrators of these crimes. They further
declare that, so long as such atrocities continue to be committed by
the representatives and in the name of Germany, they must be taken
into account against the time of the final settlement with Germany.
Meanwhile the war against Germany will be prosecuted with the
utmost vigour until the barbarous Hitlerite tyranny has been finally
overthrown.”
By 27th August this draft had been agreed with the Americans and was
planned for release three days later: a copy was handed to the Soviets.
However at this eleventh hour the intelligence side of Whitehall stepped in.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had evolved shortly before the war
and stood between the political and military “consumers” of intelligence, and
the organisations responsible for obtaining it, including MI6, MI5 and GC&CS
(known today as GCHQ). One former JIC chairman describes its role as the
“final arbiter of intelligence”. In a phrase which might equally well apply4
today to historians, its wartime chairman and secretary wrote that the JIC had
Sir Percy Cradock, Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World4
(London: John Murray, 2002), p 261
Page of 3 18
an important task in ensuring that information and sources were assessed
with critical impartiality:
“…[I]n the Political Departments, e.g. the Foreign Office and Colonial
Office, the officials who receive, collate and assess information are
also responsible for formulating policy. This is not necessarily a bad
thing, but the system does possess a serious weakness. One who is
concerned in devising and recommending policy, and in assisting in its
execution is likely, however objective he may try to be, to interpret the
intelligence he receives in the light of the policy he is pursuing. To
correct this possible weakness, it is clearly desirable that some quite
objective check be placed on all intelligence received. …We believe
that no Department, however experienced and well staffed, has
anything to lose by bringing the intelligence directly available to it to
the anvil of discussion and appreciation among other workers in the
same field.”5
During the war years the JIC was headed by Victor Cavendish-Bentinck,6
who was also in charge of the Services Liaison Department at the Foreign
Office, where his right-hand man was Roger Allen, a pre-war barrister.7
(Since its creation in July 1942, Roger Allen had also served as Joint
Secretary to the War Cabinet’s Committee on the Treatment of War
Criminals. ) Rather belatedly on 27th August, with the draft statement almost8
ready for release, Roger Allen raised the alarm, pointing out that the
statement seemed to be mainly based on an “aide-mémoire” supplied by the
Polish government-in-exile. While he accepted that with regard to
deportations of Polish civilians “the general picture painted is pretty true to
life”, he warned Cavendish-Bentinck:
“On the other hand, it is of course extremely difficult, if not impossible,
for us to check up on specific instances or matters of detail. For this
reason I feel a little unhappy about the statement, to be issued on the
authority of His Majesty’s Government, that Poles ‘are now being
systematically put to death in gas chambers’.”
Victor Cavendish-Bentinck and Denis Capel-Dunn, The Intelligence Machine: Report to the Joint5
Intelligence Sub-Committee, 10th January 1945, CAB 163/6
His most senior military intelligence colleague Kenneth Strong later wrote of Cavendish-Bentinck:6
“He had the scepticism that any good Intelligence officer needs, and a mental alertness which
usually put him that vital step ahead of the other members of his committee.” Maj. Gen. Sir
Kenneth Strong, Men of Intelligence (London: Cassell, 1970), p 118.
Roger Allen should not be confused with his namesake Denis Allen, mentioned above.7
FO 1093/3378
Page of 4 18
The “gas chambers” reference seemed to be based on two references in the
Polish aide-mémoire’s appendix, both supposedly drawn from telegrams sent
from Poland on 17th July 1943.
The first telegram stated, in relation to deportees sent to the Majdanek camp:
“Commander-in-Chief armed forces Lublin district informed me that he
had evidence that some of these people are being murdered in gas
cells there.”
By “commander-in-chief” this telegram presumably meant the district
commander of the Polish underground army. The second telegram stated:
“It has been ascertained that on July 2nd and 5th 2 transports made of
women, children, and old men, consisting of 30 wagons each, have
been liquidated in gas cells.”
Roger Allen pointed out to Cavendish-Bentinck:
“It will be observed that the first of these reports gives no indication of
the date of the occurrence, or the number of people concerned; the
second is silent as to the place and the source.
“It is true that there have been references to the use of gas chambers
in other reports; but these references have usually, if not always, been
equally vague, and since they have concerned the extermination of
Jews, have usually emanated from Jewish sources.
“Personally, I have never really understood the advantage of the gas
chamber over the simpler machine gun, or the equally simple
starvation method. These stories may or may not be true, but in any
event I submit we are putting out a statement on evidence which is far
from conclusive, and which we have no means of assessing.
However, you may not consider this of sufficient importance to warrant
any action.”9
Cavendish-Bentinck wasted no time in passing this analysis on later that day
to the Foreign Office top brass, adding his own sceptical note:
“In my opinion it is incorrect to describe Polish information regarding
German atrocities as ‘trustworthy’. The Poles, and to a far greater
extent the Jews, tend to exaggerate German atrocities in order to
stoke us up. They seem to have succeeded.
“Mr Allen and myself have both followed German atrocities quite
closely. I do not believe that there is any evidence which would be
accepted in a Law Court that Polish children have been killed on the
spot by Germans when their parents were being deported to work in
Roger Allen to Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, 27th August 1943, FO 371/345519
Page of 5 18
Germany, nor that Polish children have been sold to German settlers.
As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe
that there is any evidence that this has been done. There have been
many stories to this effect, and we have played them up in PWE
rumours without believing that they had any foundation. At any rate
there is far less evidence than exists for the mass murder of Polish
officers by the Russians at Katyn. On the other hand we do know that
the Germans are out to destroy Jews of any age unless they are fit for
manual labour.
“I think that we weaken our case against the Germans by publicly
giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no evidence.
These mass executions in gas chambers remind me of the stories of
employment of human corpses during the last war for the manufacture
of fat, which was a grotesque lie and led to the true stories of German
atrocities being brushed aside as being mere propaganda.
“I am very sad to see that we must needs ape the Russians and talk
about ‘Hitlerite’ instead of ‘German’.”
Cavendish-Bentinck added a handwritten note to William Strang, who as an
Assistant Under-Secretary was joint-third in the Foreign Office hierarchy:
“I daresay that my minute is too late to be of use but I feel certain that
we are making a mistake in publicly giving credence to this gas
chambers story.”10
In fact he was not too late: Cavendish-Bentinck and Allen became in effect
the first successful Holocaust revisionists. Central Department’s first
response was: “it seems too late to make substantial changes. But we could
telegraph to Washington and Moscow.”
At 9.05 p.m. that evening a “Most Immediate” telegram was despatched
(marked “of particular secrecy and should be retained by the authorised
recipient and not passed on”):
“On further reflection we are not convinced that evidence regarding
use of gas chambers is substantial enough to justify inclusion in a
public declaration …and would prefer if United States Government
agree, that sentence in question should end at ‘concentration camps’.
“Please telegraph United States Government’s views urgently.”11
Victor Cavendish-Bentinck to William Strang, 27th August 1943, FO 371/3455110
Foreign Office to Washington, Telegram No. 5741, 27th August 1943, FO 371/3455111
Page of 6 18
Similar telegrams were sent to the Prime Ministers of the Dominions
(Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) retracting the earlier
reference to “gas chambers”.
The Americans agreed to the changes. Secretary of State Cordell Hull duly
notified his Ambassador in Moscow:
“At the suggestion of the British Government which says there is
insufficient evidence to justify the statement regarding execution in gas
chambers, it has been agreed to eliminate the last phrase.”12
The words “where they are now being systematically put to death in gas
chambers” were removed from the statement before it was published
simultaneously in London and Washington.13
David Irving’s critics have sought to interpret this episode in their own way.
Prof. Sir Richard Evans writes in his account of the Irving-Lipstadt libel trial:
“There was no evidence here or anywhere else, indeed, that the British
Political Warfare Executive had invented the story of the gas
chambers: they had on the contrary received a report from people with
contacts in Central Europe about them. Nor was there any evidence
that the Foreign Office considered reports of gassings to be a lie; they
were simply unsure about them. Moreover, their real doubts related to
claims that Poles were being gassed. Even Cavendish-Bentinck
agreed that the Germans were ‘out to destroy the Jews of any age
unless they are fit for manual labour.’”14
Even when Prof. Evans wrote this fifteen years ago, it was clear that
Cavendish-Bentinck had been sceptical about the existence of homicidal gas
chambers, rather than (as Prof. Evans suggests) merely doubting that they
had been used to gas Poles in addition to Jews. As for the role of PWE, the
Cavendish-Bentinck minute suggests that they had (at least at some stage)
exaggerated (if not actually invented) gas chamber stories. For confirmation
of this, we must turn to the PWE’s own files from earlier in the war.
Cordell Hull (Secretary of State) to William Harrison Standley (U.S. Ambassador, Moscow), 30th12
August 1943, Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers, 1943, General, Vol. 1
(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963), pp 416-417
‘German Crimes in Poland: A British Warning’, The Times, 30th August 1943, p 413
Richard Evans, Lying About Hitler (New York: Basic Books, 2002), p 13114
Page of 7 18
Part II: Whispers of Gas
In his judgment against David Irving in 2002, Mr Justice Gray ignored or
misinterpreted Cavendish-Bentinck’s words. Gray wrote:
“As to whether the British disbelieved the [gas chambers] story, the
only evidence to which Irving was able to point was the note made by
Cavendish-Bentinck that there was no evidence to support the claim.
That appears to me to be far cry from disbelieving the story.”15
As shown above, Cavendish-Bentinck had gone much further than pointing
out the absence of evidence. He had compared these latest “atrocity stories”
to a “grotesque lie” perpetrated against Germany during the First World War,
and had suggested to a senior colleague that Britain should not be “publicly
giving credence to this gas chambers story”. How on earth could Mr Justice
Gray interpret this as meaning anything else but that Cavendish-Bentinck (at
any rate in August 1943) disbelieved the story!
Mr Justice Gray’s judgment went on:
“As to whether British Intelligence made propaganda use of the story,
the evidence produced by Irving extended no further than second-
hand accounts of BBC broadcasts about the gassing. There was no
indication that British intelligence played any part in these broadcasts.
In my judgment the evidence does not support the claim made by
Irving.”
In fairness to the judge, it is only now becoming possible to trace the detailed
history of British propaganda and homicidal gassing stories. Part of the
problem is that in the early years of the Second World War, Britain’s
propaganda machinery was a tangle of bureaucratic and factional infighting.
A year before the outbreak of war, an official Department of Propaganda in
Enemy Countries was set up at Electra House, the London headquarters of
the Cable & Wireless telegraph company. Around the same time MI6 created
Section D (based at St Ermin’s Hotel near St James’s Park) to study and
prepare methods of unconventional warfare, including propaganda.16
In July 1940 Section D became part of the new Special Operations Executive,
which for a while took over Electra House’s operations as part of its own
propaganda section known as SO1, based after November 1940 at Woburn
Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstadt [2000] EWHC QB 115 (11th April, 2000)15
M.R.D. Foot, SOE in France (Abingdon: Frank Cass, 2004), p 416
Page of 8 18
Abbey, a country house in Bedfordshire. Continuing internal disputes led to
the new Political Warfare Executive (PWE) being created in August 1941,
under Foreign Office control. While PWE handled enemy countries,
propaganda at home and in Allied countries was supposedly the domain of
the Ministry of Information.17
The documentary record showing British propagandists’ promotion of
homicidal gassing stories runs from December 1940 (under SO1) to March
1942 (under PWE). In this period the gassing stories did not relate to Jews or
Poles, but Cavendish-Bentinck would have suspected that the Jewish and
Polish lobbies had picked up the story and put their own spin on it, in a case
of what would later be termed “blowback”, defined as follows by intelligence
historian Mark Lowenthal:
“The main controversy raised by propaganda activities is that of
blowback. The CIA is precluded from undertaking any intelligence
activities within the United States. However, a story could be planted
in a media outlet overseas that will also be reported in the United
States. That is blowback. This risk is probably higher today with
global twenty-four-hour news agencies and the World Wide Web than
it was during the early days of the cold war. Thus, inadvertently, a
CIA-planted story that is false can be reported in a U.S. media outlet.
In such a case, does the CIA have a responsibility to inform the U.S.
media outlet of the true nature of the story? Would doing so
compromise the original operation? If such notification should not be
given at the time, should it be given afterward?”18
One of the most secret parts of SO1/PWE work involved the propagation of
rumours, known as “sibs” from the Latin verb sibilare (to whisper), by an
Underground Propaganda (UP) Committee. This dated back to the Electra
House days in 1940 shortly before the creation of SOE, and continued
through the various bureaucratic changes.
From August 1941 the UP Committee was chaired by David Bowes-Lyon,
younger brother of the then Queen (and uncle of the present Queen Elizabeth
II) – he was also a cousin of Victor Cavendish-Bentinck. He later
summarised the purpose of sibs in a “Most Secret” paper for senior
bureaucrats:
Nicholas Rankin, A Genius for Deception: How Cunning Helped the British Win Two World Wars17
(Oxford University Press, 2009), p 280; Eunan O’Halpin, ‘“Hitler’s Irish Hideout” – A Case Study of
SOE’s black propaganda battles’, in Mark Seaman (ed.), Special Operations Executive: A new
instrument of war (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp 201-202
Mark Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Los Angeles: CQ Press, 2015) pp 241-24218
Page of 9 18
“The object of propaganda rumours is… to induce alarm, despondency
and bewilderment among the enemies, and hope and confidence
among the friends, to whose ears it comes. If a rumour appears likely
to cheer our enemies for the time, it is calculated to carry with it the
germ of ultimate and grave disappointment for them.
“Rumours vary immensely in their degree of credibility, the wideness of
their diffusion and the type of audience for which they are designed;
but they have these factors in common, that they are intended for
verbal repetition through all sorts of channels, and that they are
expected to induce a certain frame of mind in the general public, not
necessarily to deceive the well-informed.”
The UP Committee (which included representatives from PWE, SOE, MI6
and the Ministry of Economic Warfare), was responsible in the first instance
for deciding on suitable rumours, which would then be cleared through the
Foreign Office or JIC:
“Dissemination of those rumours finally approved is the function of
SOE. For this purpose whispering organisations have been set up in
neutral countries and in unoccupied France.
“Lines have also been established by which rumours can be passed to
SOE’s collaborators in Germany, and directives on oral propaganda to
an organisation in Northern Italy.
“It should be emphasised that the method of dissemination is
essentially oral, and this is the most difficult form of propaganda for
enemy security services to deal with.
“Rumours are not deliberately placed in the Press and Radio in
Europe, though they have from time to time appeared in the
newspapers or broadcasts, having been picked up by correspondents
or commentators.
“In the USA, however, a news agency controlled by SOE has been
used to place them in the Press of the American continent; but here
again the newspapers were quite unaware that the material was in any
way inspired.
“Rumours are therefore the most covert of all forms of propaganda.
Although the enemy may suspect that a certain rumour has been
started by the British Government, they can never prove it. Even if
they succeed in capturing an agent engaged in spreading whispers,
there will be no written evidence against him, and should they extort a
confession from him, nothing is easier than for the British Government
to deny the whole story.
“In fact, although more than 2,000 rumours have been disseminated in
the last year, we have no evidence thet the enemy have ever traced
Page of 10 18
any of them back to a British whispering organisation. Those that
have been denied or otherwise referred to have, as far as we know,
been attributed to other sources.”19
Alongside Bowes-Lyon other members of the UP Committee included Sir
Hanns Vischer (a Swiss-born former missionary and MI6 officer since the
First World War); Sir Reginald Hoare (Cavendish-Bentinck’s brother-in-law, a
veteran diplomat and member of the Hoares Bank family); Leonard Ingrams
(financier, pioneer aviator and father of Private Eye founder Richard Ingrams);
and SOE representative Alec Peterson (an influential teacher, headmaster
and educationalist who later created the International Baccalaureate
system).20
On 3rd December 1940 a sib was launched via SOE “that the Superintendent
of the Bethel Institute for Incurables had been sent to Dachau for refusing to
permit the inmates to be put in lethal chambers. Within two weeks it was
reported that this rumour was circulating in Switzerland and, on the 19th
December, that the Vatican had issued a decree condemning the killing of
physical or mental deficients. The rumour has appeared in intercepted
letters, and last Sunday the Sunday Express carried the story that 100,000
mental deficients had been executed.”21
The Bethel Institution was a well-known Protestant charitable hospital for the
mentally ill and epileptics. In fact its director – Protestant theologian Friedrich
von Bodelschwingh – was not sent to Dachau or any other camp. He
survived the war and died in 1946.22
The main purpose of this sib was to stir up hostility between the Churches
and the National Socialist Govenment over the issue of eugenics and
euthanasia. SO1’s French specialist Prof. Denis Brogan (a Cambridge
political scientist) was said to have “extremely fine Catholic contacts” in
various countries, and “Catholic channels for rumours” were also discussed23
with Douglas Woodruff, the influential editor of the Catholic journal The
Tablet. At this very early stage the gassing rumour was restricted to24
David Bowes-Lyon to David Stephens (PWE Secretary), 1st February 1942, FO 898/7019
Ibid.20
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 23.1.41, HS 8/21621
‘Obituary: Pastor von Bodelschwingh’, Manchester Guardian, 18th January 1946, p 322
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 12.12.40, HS 8/21623
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 30.1.41, HS 8/21624
Page of 11 18
“incurables” – it was a story about euthanasia rather than political or racially
motivated executions.
A few months later SOE reported with satisfaction that this sib had been
picked up by Vatican Radio. Moreover Elizabeth Wiskemann – a Swiss-
based, Anglo-German journalist, historian and MI6 operative – had acquired
“fresh evidence supplied by Austrian-born Swiss who had just returned from
visiting Vienna to the effect that all elderly people in Vienna were in terror.”25
Among other euthanasia sibs (first circulated in November 1940) was a
“rumour that doctors in military hospitals in France have been instructed to
make death easy for incapacitated soldiers and airmen”. Extra bite was given
to this sib by the suggestion (intended to promote inter-service resentment)
that in the case of infantry the loss of one limb would amount to incapacity,
leading to euthanasia, whereas this “was not to be considered incapacity in
the case of Air Force or SS troops”.26
Intercepted letters from Swiss civilians during August 1941 showed that they
were innocently passing on versions of the gas chamber story. One wrote:
“Somebody from Bern who was in Germany said, the new bombs from
England were awful, they break half a street to pieces, and
somewhere in a shelter, people were all on the ceiling smashed like
flies, it was terrible, and so very many were ill with their nerves as they
had not room for them in the hospitals, and with some which were not
get better, they just open the gas and kill them, like the heavy
wounded too…”
A separate letter gave another variant inspired by the same sib:
“The severely wounded Germans are apparently just gassed! We
have heard several stories about this and from people coming back
from the country.”27
While most sibs originated from PWE, the success of this gas chamber
rumour led to a War Office suggestion passed to Cavendish-Bentinck’s JIC in
November 1941. They had heard it from their military attaché in Berne, Col.
H.A. Cartwright (who was in fact an MI6 officer) as “a story which, with some
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 3.4.41, HS 8/21625
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 3.9.41, HS 8/21826
Ibid.27
Page of 12 18
variations, has been circulating freely in Berne, and has come in from various
quite independent informants always from apparently reliable sources.”28
In this version of the rumour:
“Guards and superintendents of trains containing wounded German soldiers
from the Eastern Front are ordered at certain places to put on their gas
masks. The trains then enter a tunnel where they remain for upwards of half
an hour. On leaving the tunnel all the wounded soldiers are dead. Severely
wounded soldiers are disposed of in the same manner in so-called
emergency hospitals, of which there are many.”
Cartwright had added:
“The Guard who furnished this information is stated to have been on duty on
one of the trains in which wounded soldiers were ‘gassed’. He was sworn to
secrecy under penalty of death, but stated he could no longer withhold his
secret from the outer world by reason of his conscience, and wanted the
German public to learn the fate of their wounded soldiers.”29
The Inter-Services Security Board (through which PWE and others cleared
their rumours in case they inadvertently clashed with other British secret
operations) had raised no objection, and added: “We recommend this rumour
also as useful propaganda.”
This recommendation might have proved significant in the longer term. The
difference between a rumour/sib and propaganda is of course that the former
(as with “black” propaganda) was intended to be untraceable to British
sources.
During 1941 SOE “disseminated a rumour that the Germans had ordered 500
mobile crematorium units from the Ford works in Cologne and Antwerp to be
ready by the Spring”. This sib came back in the form of a story circulating in
France that “the German army has crematory ovens installed in lorries and
cremate all their own dead. …This enables the Germans to fix a figure for
their losses at whatever they please, and leave no evidence to controvert
them.” Later an intercepted Swiss letter showed a variant of this rumour,30
that the Germans “burn their dead in travelling crematoria and keep their
S.N. Shoosmith, JIC Memorandum, ‘Rumours of a Military Nature Intended to Mystify and28
Mislead the Enemy’, 3rd November 1941, CAB 81/105
Ibid.29
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 2.7.41, HS 8/21730
Page of 13 18
losses carefully concealed until the campaign is ended. In this way members
of the family wait and hope for the best.”31
It might be relevant that during the summer of 1941 a rumour campaign was
launched against I.G. Farben, the giant German pharmaceutical and chemical
conglomerate. The first hints of this suggest that the campaign was first32
designed for the Ministry of Economic Warfare to cause financial problems for
the company in neutral countries, by for example adulterating samples of its
products so as to undermine Farben’s reputation. By September 1941 it33
was reported with satisfaction that anti-Farben stories were widely believed in
France:
“There is now a conviction throughout the country that the Germans
are attempting to ruin the health of the French people by sending back
French sick and wounded prisoners inoculated by the Germans with
the bacilli of disease, while there have been rumours of the flooding of
the French market with German drugs producing certain forms of
debility.”34
It is unclear whether this campaign was in any way connected to later
allegations that I.G. Farben’s pesticide Zyklon B was used for homicidal
gassings.
Some versions of the Farben rumours combined them with stories intended to
spread panic about typhus, and an interesting variant was added by
suggesting that typhus had become so bad that Jewish physicians had been
called up for service as army medics. The implication of this sib was that35
ordinary Germans (and citizens of German-occupied countries) would react
badly to the idea of Jewish doctors: this is drawn out further in a later sib:
“It is not only because of the plague danger that German doctors on
the East front always wear surgical masks in the wards. So many of
them are Jews now that there used to be trouble when the wounded
were able to see their faces.”36
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 1.10.41, HS 8/21831
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 9.7.41, HS 8/21732
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 16.7.41, HS 8/21733
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 24.9.41, HS 8/21834
SO2 Executive Committee, Progress Report for Week Ending 29.10.41, HS 8/21835
Sib R/867, Minutes of U.P. Committee Meeting, 5th December 1941, FO 898/6936
Page of 14 18
In November 1941 the Underground Propaganda Committee approved a sib
which cunningly linked euthanasia by gassing to typhus and defeatism:
“These stories about gassing the wounded on the East Front are due
to a misunderstanding. The Gas Vans and Trains are used only for
plague cases and are really merciful since the poor fellows would have
no chance anyhow.”37
Meanwhile a fantastically gruesome sib hinted at mass murder and
industrialised cannibalism:
“The Germans are rounding up healthy Russian prisoners and
transferring them in batches of a thousand at a time to a prison camp
near Kiev. It may be a coincidence that cans of something called
‘Russian beef’ are already being exported from a factory near Kiev to
the most hard hit parts in the Ruhr.”38
Later that month a note from the War Office Deputy Director of Operations,
Col. John Sinclair (who became Chief of MI6 from 1953 to 1956) to David
Bowes-Lyon approved the UP Committee’s new development of the gas
chamber story:
“The Germans need every hospital they have got for their own
wounded, so foreign workers who fall seriously sick are just sent to the
gas-chamber.”39
This was later given a further twist:
“Foreign workers should not go to Germany because they are
transferred to occupied Poland or blitzed districts, gassed if unfit,
sterilised, cheated of their wages, or liable to be treated as
hostages.”40
As the situation on the Eastern Front worsened, the SOE Executive
Committee noted:
“We have now arrived at a situation where it is virtually impossible to
distinguish between ‘come-backs’ on certain of our rumour campaigns
and genuine reports from enemy and occupied territory. We have, for
Sib R/729, Minutes of U.P. Committee Meeting, 14th November 1941, FO 898/6937
Sib R/724, Ibid.38
Sib R/773, Minutes of U.P. Committee Meeting, 21st November 1941, FO 898/69. This gas39
chamber rumour was sent to Cavendish-Bentinck’s JIC for consideration at their meeting on 25th
November 1941, see note by the JIC Secretary, Lt. Col. Stephen Shoosmith, headed ‘Rumours of
a Military Nature Intended to Mystify and Mislead the Enemy’, CAB 81/105
Minutes of U.P. Committee Meeting, 5th December 1941, FO 898/6940
Page of 15 18
instance, for the last four months been keeping up a steady campaign
on the subject of Fleck Typhus on the Eastern Front. This at first met
with no noticeable reaction, but the number of reports has steadily
grown, until the prevalence of this disease is now an accepted fact. It
seems probable that the reports now refer to genuine outbreaks, but
the rumour campaign can claim credit for putting into the minds of the
German people an exaggerated idea of its seriousness.”41
It is perhaps significant that SOE’s leaders here register the point that – in the
case of typhus – propaganda rumours had become fact. Had he been aware
of genuine use of homicidal gas chambers, Cavendish-Bentinck could have
made a similar point in August 1943: but he didn’t.
In fact when the Daily Mirror on 23rd March 1942 reported euthanasia by
gassing in a report filed by its Lisbon correspondent, it was highlighted by
SOE as a “come-back” of one of their sibs, rather than a potentially true story.
The Mirror report read:
“Through the widow of one of the men concerned, I learn that 300
Germans wounded in hospital at Dresden were quietly disposed of
with gas as they were unlikely to be of further use to the Reichswehr.
All had lost limbs or arms on the Eastern front, or had appalling body
injuries.”42
Conclusion
I have catalogued these very early references to homicidal gassings because
they indicate that Victor Cavendish-Bentinck believed he had good reason, in
August 1943, to disbelieve stories about mass murders of Poles and Jews in
gas chambers. It is of course illegal in many European countries to express
such a view today.
As opposed to the growing tide of historical revisionism, orthodox or
“exterminationist” historians now suggest that the homicidal gassing of Jews
began in February and March 1942, and maintain that the first homicidal
gassings of Soviet and Polish prisoners in Auschwitz took place in August-
SOE Executive Committee, Progress Report of SOE for week ending 17.12.41, HS 8/21941
SOE Executive Committee, Progress Report of SOE for week ending 25.3.42, HS 8/220; David42
Walker, ‘Germans gas 300 of their wounded’, Daily Mirror, 23rd March 1942, p 1. The journalist
David Walker had been an MI6 asset since 1938: he later revealed some carefully selected
highlights of wartime secret work in his memoirs Lunch With a Stranger (London: Allan Wingate,
1957) and Adventure in Diamonds (London: Evans Brothers, 1955).
Page of 16 18
September 1941. Yet SOE were putting out a rumour or “sib” about the43
gassing of “incurables” (i.e. euthanasia by gas chamber) in December 1940,
and an extension of this rumour to encompass gassing of severely wounded
soldiers was already current by the summer of 1941 – i.e. before the very first
alleged gassings of prisoners at Auschwitz.
Revisionists accept that a euthanasia programme began in Germany at the
start of the war (using lethal injections) but it was abandoned in August 1941
on Adolf Hitler’s orders due to the scale of religious opposition, especially
from the Catholic Bishop von Galen of Münster. The alleged use of gas
chambers in this euthanasia programme has been seen by revisionists as an
attempt to bolster Holocaust myths. British propagandists’ invention of a44
“lethal chamber” aspect to euthanasia could in this context be seen as the
basis for later accretions of myth.
With so many gaps in the documentary record, we might never know
precisely how these stories were built up. What we can say is that existing
SOE and PWE records fatally undermine one of Prof. Richard Evans’
arguments against David Irving. As noted above, Evans wrote:
“There was no evidence here or anywhere else, indeed, that the British
Political Warfare Executive had invented the story of the gas
chambers.”
In fact PWE/SOE certainly did invent stories about homicidal gassings – the
inventions were circulated long before any such gassings are now alleged to
have taken place.
ANDY RITCHIE, London, January 2017
andy_ritchie@yahoo.com
Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London: Vintage, 2011), p 18543
Robert Faurisson, ‘A Challenge to David Irving’ in The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1984,44
pp 289-305
Page of 17 18
Principal Characters
(Sir) Denis Allen (1910-1987), New Zealand-born career Foreign Office official; in
1943 was number two to Frank Roberts in the Central Department, which then
covered Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Spain and Portugal;
British Ambassador to Turkey, 1963-1967; swapped jobs with his namesake below
to become the FO’s Deputy Under-Secretary for Middle East and Africa, 1967-69.
(Sir) Roger Allen (1909-1972), barrister recruited to Foreign Office during Second
World War; liaison between FO and intelligence, in connection with the Joint
Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), both during and after the
war. Also served as Joint Secretary of the War Cabinet Committee on Treatment of
War Criminals, set up in July 1942. British Ambassador to Turkey, 1967-69 after
swapping jobs with Sir Denis Allen.
(Sir) David Bowes-Lyon (1902-1961), Political Warfare Executive officer and
chairman of the Underground Propaganda Committee which developed “sibs” or
rumours of homicidal gas chambers. Younger brother of King George VI’s Queen
Elizabeth, and uncle of today’s Queen Elizabeth II.
(Sir) Victor Cavendish-Bentinck (1897-1990), career diplomat 1919-1947; chairman,
Joint Intelligence Committee, 1939-45; British Ambassador to Poland, 1945-47;
once tipped to become Chief of MI6, but following a divorce scandal resigned from
the Diplomatic Service and began a business career; late in life succeeded to the
title Duke of Portland in 1980; known to friends and colleagues as Bill
Col. Henry Cartwright (1887-1957), MI6 officer; military attaché in Berne,
Switzerland, 1939-45; passed a version of the “gas chamber” rumour to the JIC via
the War Office in November 1941
Moray McLaren (1901-1971), head of PWE’s Polish section. Scottish journalist and
author; biographer of Sir Walter Scott. Worked for the BBC, 1928-1940; first
Programme Director for Scotland, 1933-35.
Maj. Gen. Stephen Shoosmith (1900-1956), served as JIC Secretary (with rank of
Lt. Col.) in 1941; in this capacity he circulated to Cavendish-Bentinck and his JIC
colleagues the rumours (or “sibs”) devised by black propagandists, mostly
originating with PWE. Later Principal Staff Officer to Field Marshal Montgomery,
Deputy Supreme Allied Commander, Allied Powers, Europe, 1954-56.
David Esdaile Walker (1907-1968), Oxford-educated journalist and MI6 asset; Daily
Mirror and Reuters foreign correspondent, 1936-52; later with the News Chronicle.
Used by MI6 and SOE to circulate “sibs”.
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