Why did Hoess claim that he had ordered the death of 2.5 million people, when we know it was not true?
In his memoirs, written in his own hand after his Nuremberg conviction, Hoess explains that the figure was provided him by Adolf Eichmann, and he revised the figure downward to 1.1 million. In his testimony before the tribunal, Hoess stated that he had made no exact notes as the figures of the number of those victims because he was forbidden to make them. He further stated that only Adolf Eichmann recorded the figures, and that Eichmann had told him that more than two million Jews had been destroyed.
