I don't think there are many people who believe the Holocaust never happened. The Final Solution plans are well documented and after the Hell Germans went through during WW1 (basically having their country and culture burned to the ground by the Triple Entant - the people were willing to believe the Nazi propaganda and the Jews provided an easy scapegoat as after WW1 many Jewish-led revolutionary groups caused a bloody civil war right after the destruction of the Great War. At first, the Nazi leadership wanted to export all of the Jews in the Fatherland (German-speaking areas that once belong to the Kaiser) to Madagascar. Another idea they had was forced sterilization. Without trying to sound like a Nazi sympathizer, none of us (except the victims) will ever know the horrors Germany faced during and after the Great War. I like to compare the Nazis to ISIS. A group of extremists which were birthed from a life of bloody conflict, poverty, and a sense of oppression from external forces (Jews, Communists, Americans, etc.) the entire country basically had PTSD. I'm not a denier, nor am I a nazi sympathizer, I just think we should approach the Holocaust from a more empathetic and historical angle, rather than a black and white event that just happened one day because a bunch of Germans didn't like Jews. It was an event hundreds of years in the making, and finally came to a head when Hitler took power. I don't know how Germans can look back without feeling great shame, national pride is highly stigmatized there now. I think the narrative surrounding the holocaust is too focused on the plight of the Jewish people - not denying they suffered tremendously - but many many groups were marginalized and eradicated by the Nazis. I feel like the reason many people get so worked up over the holocaust is because it has taken a primarily Jewish focus, forgetting the other millions that were murdered - like homosexuals, mentally ill, the disabled, Russians, Poles, French, Scandinavians, etc. Well it looks like I've gone on a rant now (not much else to do on a Friday at work lol). Just to wrap up, I DO believe the holocaust happened. I think the narrative surrounding it is one too simplistic however that puts all of the blame on the German people because we (Western countries) deny the fact that we obliterated Germany in WW1, put the country into so much debt they JUST finished paying it off several decades later, and basically nurtured and unintentionally created an atmosphere where extremism flourished - much like modern day Iraq. I realize my post isn't really related to holocaust denial and more so the on the causes, but I feel we don't take a look at what led to the event, and prefer to focus on the actual atrocities. Simply knowing about what happened isn't enough to prevent another genocide - we must understand why it happened so we don't foster any more extremist environments.