“You know, they could easily have got twenty per cent more people a day into those ovens if it hadn’t have been for ridiculous Health and Safety regulations,” opined controversial historian Dan Frizzle, at the launch of his latest book. “Contrary to what conventional liberal history tries to tell us, it wasn’t the Red Army or the Anglo-American alliance that brought about the downfall of Nazi Germany, rather it was the pernicious influence of the liberal inspired health and safety culture which, incidentally, continues to blight Europe!” Despite the storm of controversy surrounding the book, Health and Safety Nazis: A Warning From History, Frizzle refuses to be budged from his contention that the ‘Final Solution’ could have been made truly final by as early as 1943 if only Germany had ditched restrictive safety legislation. “It was bloody ridiculous – they had restrictions on the number of people they could put in each gas chamber,” “I’ve spoken to guards who worked in those camps, and they’ve assured me that they could have gotten at least twenty additional people into those chambers for each session! Their throughput would have been increased by at least thirty per cent if it hadn’t been for those ludicrous health and safety restrictions,” he declared. “Apparently it was the same with the trains they used to transport prisoners to the camps – the cattle vans had a loading restriction of only forty people each! If it hadn’t been for that, they could have shipped far more in, using fewer trains!”

Ignoring the shouts of abuse and booing from both press and audience at the launch, Frizzle persisted with his startling historical thesis. “I also have evidence that they were only allowed to operate those ovens within a very restricted range of temperatures – apparently if they had got too hot, the working environment would have become too hazardous for the operators!” he shouted. “Have you any idea how this impacted on their efficiency? Even a two degree Celsius rise in temperature would have resulted in reduction of ten minutes in incineration times – they would have been able to complete an extra eight oven-loads a day!” Throughput, he contended, was further restricted by regulations on how close to the ovens operators could safely stand when loading and operating them, the hazardous areas demarcated with yellow and black hazard tape. “I’m only amazed that they managed to process as many millions of people as they did, having to work within such restrictive regulations,” he said, ducking missiles hurled at him by the audience. “I’ve no doubt that if they’d been able to wrap up the holocaust earlier, then they’d have been able to concentrate fully on their war effort, and would have cruised to victory in Europe by 1944!”

“I don’t know what’s more offensive – his contention that Nazi Germany actually had any legislation in place to protect people from harm, or this lunatic’s argument that a regime which systematically murdered eleven million people was rendered inefficient by them,” raged noted TV historian Professor Simon Smutt on a recent edition of Newsnight Review. “What on Earth is he going to claim in his next book – that Nazi equal opportunities legislation forced the Wehrmacht to enlist a quota of gay, bisexual and transgender soldiers, whose insistence on wearing high heels and mincing about undermined their fighting efficiency?” Not surprisingly, Frizzle is unimpressed by Professor Smutt’s comments, branding them homophobic. “Really, that sort of attitude is completely unacceptable,” he told reporters at the book launch. “For what it’s worth, at least one of Hitler’s closest advisers, Ernst Rohm, organiser of the Brown Shirts, was openly gay – and there’s no evidence that his organisation’s members’ racist thuggery and mindless violence was rendered inefficient by his sexuality.”

Nevertheless, according to Frizzle ‘political correctness’ did play a significant part in denuding the Third Reich’s efficiency. “During my research for this book I spoke to retired concentration camp guards from both Belsen and Dachau, who told me that they were forced to complete ethnicity monitoring forms for every batch of prisoners they put into the ovens or gas chambers,” the historian claims. “Unbelievable, I know. But they assured me that they had to keep records of exactly how many Jews, gypsies, Slavs, Poles and other ethnicities they put into each oven in order to comply with equality laws! It slowed up the queues for the ovens and chambers no end!” But it wasn’t just the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ which was hampered by excessive health and safety regulations, the controversial historian believes. “Their entire military effort was weighed down by the requirement to produce detailed risk assessments before any offensive,” he mused. “How else do you explain a brilliant commander like Rommel being bested in the desert by an overly cautious general like Montgomery? Obviously, his natural daring was blunted by safety concerns – Monty launched his offensive at El Alamein whilst Rommel was still filling in his risk assessment forms, catching him on the hop!”

Frizzle is at pains to emphasise that his book in no way endorses Nazism. “All I’m trying to do is show the part that this health and safety culture played in frustrating Nazi Germany’s war aims,” he explained to an increasingly angry mob at the book launch. “The point I’m making is that if it can destroy a regime as ruthless and efficient as the Third Reich, just imagine the damage it must be doing to our modern economies. We need to do something about it now, before we all go the way of Hitler!” Indeed, Frizzle fears that it might already be too late, laying the blame for the current economic recession firmly at the feet of excessive health and safety legislation. “Just look at which economies were hardest hit – those with the most restrictive health and safety legislation. It’s obvious: Greece and Spain, both elect socialist governments, the main purveyors of this evil, and their economies go down the pan! It’s the same with the UK – a Labour government at the time of the downturn – and just look at how things have worsened in the US since they installed that leftie Obama as President!” he raged. “By contrast, look at China – nobody there gives a toss about workers’ safety and their economy continues to grow! I just thank God we’ve got David Cameron in Number Ten now – he’s already talked about the need to cut back the restrictive legislation stifling our employers!”

His views have been welcomed by some on the right and representatives of the UK’s business community. “We’ve been saying for years that we need to repeal this country’s outmoded health and safety laws,” says Sir Henry Chubbie, a former chairman of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). “After all, it was all originally devised in the nineteenth century, to prevent workers from falling into the machinery in those new-fangled factories. Clearly, such concerns are now completely irrelevant, as we no longer have any manufacturing industry using such dangerous machinery in the UK.” Frizzle, meanwhile, is suing the owners of the venue of his book launch, after breaking an ankle when he tripped over a box left carelessly backstage whilst running from his enraged audience. “It was a clear breach of health and safety regulations,” a spokesperson for the historian told the press.