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If 'WWII revisionism' means the idea that the Nazis weren't all that bad, or even Holocaust denial, then no. No, it is not.
I think it would help to avoid woolly euphemisms like 'WWII revisionism' and clearly state the thesis that is being considered. I do not think the public consensus that Nazi Germany was bad, that it committed hideous atrocities, and that it was right to destroy it is likely to change.
Holocaust Denial is receiving the most engagement at this moment than it ever has since it was formulated in the 1970s. By far. Yes it is going mainstream too.
Some of the keystone claims of the Holocaust narrative are plainly absurd and will be Revised as well. Many already have been Revised. It was claimed 4 million were killed in Auschwitz until the 1990s, when the death toll dropped to 1.1 million. It was claimed 2 million were killed in Majdanek at the Nuremberg Trial and the most recent estimates by the Majdanek Museum estimate the death toll from all prisoners from all causes was about 70,000. It was claimed 5 million Gentiles were killed in the Holocaust, but that has been Revised and acknowledged to have been a deceptive lie. The Holocaust has already been revised a lot and it has a long way to go.
One of the most infamous claims, that the Nazis manufactured bars of soap out of the fat of Jewish Holocaust victims, was Revised not too long ago and admitted to not have been true. The other salacious claim involving shower rooms stands today but it won't for that much longer. Holocaust Revisionism has entailed a steady stream of victories but it hasn't penetrated the public consciousness although it is clearly beginning to do so now.
I think when you're as fringe as Holocaust denial, even tiny increases in salience will be perceived, from the inside as significant. A jump from 0.01% to 0.02% is tiny, but still a doubling of interest.
Are we anywhere near the point where someone who isn't a conspiracy theorist or historical obsessive asks questions about the Holocaust? No. You mention a claim about the Nazis making soap out of victims - I've never heard of the idea that Nazis made soap from the bodies of murdered Jews, and I am, by normie standards, a WWII history nerd. (Simple test: I know what the Wannsee conference was. Most people do not.) I do not think that anyone near to what we might reasonably call the mainstream has heard of or cares about whether or not the bodies of Jews were turned into soap. As such, even if that's something widely believed and if there's been a change of mainstream academic opinion on it, I don't think it tells us anything about whether or not Holocaust denial is going mainstream.
Wait, really? They took us to one of the Holocaust museums as kids and the soap and lampshade stuff was front and center, right next to the pile o'shoes display and gold fillings. It's 100% in "top ten things everyone knows about the Holocaust."
Looking at the wiki article, five years after our trip there were still published arguments going "we've gotta stop claiming this because it gives the denierists ammunition!", suggesting that team soap was still firmly in control in the early 00s.
The more this stuff happens, the more I Nootice Signal's point about the revisionists forcing revisions that are never, ever acknowledged to have happened. The narrative just smoothly changes from one second to the next.
The wider Holocaust exhibition at the Struthof concentration camp in Alsace (which, unlike the rest of France was actually annexed by the Reich in WW2) didn't mention soap when I visited c. 1993 - and it had a detailed breakdown of the financial value of a dead Holocaust victim based on actual camp accounts (I didn't cross-check the signs against the original documents in the glass case, but anyone bilingual in French and German could have done).
The various Holocaust museums in Berlin didn't mention soap when I was there c. 2015.
I suspect this is a US/Europe thing.
In which direction? I l'm European and was bombarded with the soap / lampshade stories, and even Monty Python referenced the lampshades.
The impetus behind the Holocaust remembrance industry comes from American Jews. So I would expect Holocaust remembrance memes like the soap to be more prevalent in the US than they are in the places where it all actually happened.
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Can you point out where exactly the horror story touched you?
Sorry about the joke, but seriously, where exactly did you hear them or read about them? Do you remember?
I ask because I don't trust my own memories on this topic.
One time was from my history teacher (the soap / lampshade stuff).
I also remember being showed a film in one of the death camp museums, where the Nazis would throw people to get into an airtight van, and connect the exhaust to the passenger compartment. I don't know of this was officially deboonked, but since we're on the subject, it strikes me as an insanely inefficient method of execution.
Those are two instances that I clearly remember, but there was also the blur of documantaries, school trips, and books, that I can't vouch for.
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