THE HOLOCAUST was certainly one of the most consequential events of the past 100 years. But the truth of that event is far different than commonly portrayed. Since the mid-1970s, it has come under sustained attack by a group of individuals known as Holocaust revisionists-to the point where, today, the story lies in ruins. Virtually every aspect of the standard account, we now realize, has serious and irreconcilable flaws. As a result, the actual Jewish death toll is far below the claimed figure of 6 million-likely in the range of half a million.

And yet, despite this intense and highly successful revisionist work, the orthodox version continues to dominate in the Western world. To fully understand this striking situation, we need to go back to the beginnings-to the origins of the conventional Holocaust story. And this takes us to Nuremberg.

Immediately after World War Two, the Allies initiated an extensive series of war-crimes trials against the Nazi hierarchy. The most famous of these occurred at Nuremberg, and the single most important trial was known as the International Military Tribunal, or IMT. Running for roughly one year, it tried 24 leading Nazis, including such major figures as Herman Göring and Martin Bormann. But the most interesting men on trial were two with a special connection to the "Jewish Question" Alfred Rosenberg and Julius Streicher. The case against them, and their personal testimony, examined for the first time nearly all major aspects of the Holocaust story: the "extermination" thesis, the gas chambers, the gas vans, the shootings in the East, and the "6 million."

The truth of the Holocaust has been badly distorted for decades by the powers that be. Here we have the rare opportunity to hear firsthand from two prominent figures in Nazi Germany. Their voices, and their verbatim transcripts from the IMT, lend some much-needed clarity to the situation.