Wilhelm Stäglich

Wilhelm Stäglich (born 11 November, 1916; died 5 April, 2006) was a World War II Luftwaffe officer, later a financial judge in Hamburg, and a prominent Holocaust denier.

In 1974 a disciplinary hearing was enacted against Stäglich, then a financial judge, owing to his membership of the far-right NPD party and his incessant publications in far-right magazines; the result was a forced early retirement with a reduced pension for five years.

In 1979 the Tübingen-based Grabert published Stäglich's book "Der Auschwitz-Mythos - Legende oder Wirklichkeit" ("The Auschwitz Myth - Legend or Reality"), in which he denied the existence of gas chambers in the Nazi concentration camps and death camps, and claimed that all documents relating to the Holocaust were forgeries. As early as 1980 this book was seized nationwide on the order of the state court of Stuttgart, and in 1982 it was placed on a list of materials that may not be distributed to young readers, following a decision by Germany's Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons. The decision to confiscate the book was upheld by the Federal Court of Justice in 1983. Following this, the University of Göttingen enacted proceedings against Stäglich in order to formally disaccredit the doctoral degree he had earned there in 1951.

Eckhard Jesse, a German political scientist and authority on radical politics, has defended the publication of the book "The Auschwitz Myth". Stäglich, he says, was stripped of his doctoral title because it was deemed to be undeserved, following a law dating from 1939. "Even those who see his work as anti-Semitic - and here comes the warning - must question this decision for two reasons. Firstly it is patronising to the public, who are assumed to lack judgement, hardly evidence of liberality; second, the far-right sees the decision as an affirmation, and outsiders might also believe, that there 'must be something' to Stäglich's arguments. You get the impression an example is being made [of Stäglich] ."

Stäglich appeared together with Jürgen Rieger as a speaker at a far-right event organised to commemorate the Holocaust denier Thies Christophersen, who died in 1997.

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:"Much of this article is translated from the German wikipedia article of March 2nd 2007"