Based on the Mauthausen information, Auschwitz should not have expected more than 100,000 annual deaths on a camp population of 200,000 when it started to build the four new crematoria in August 1942. However, such a death rate would mean mass murder of registered prisoners was taking place, as it was in Mauthausen in 1942. A more reasonable annual death rate would be 15 to 25% annually or 30,000 to 50,000 on a camp population of 200,000. Even this would mean the murder of many prisoners. An additional six ovens to the existing six Auschwitz ovens would easily have given the camp enough capacity to handle this many annual deaths. As noted earlier, the Gusen information shows that an oven had a capacity to incinerate 26 bodies per day. Thus 12 ovens had the capacity to dispose of 300 per day. Yet, as noted earlier, the Bauleitung had already begun to order an additional 15 ovens in October 1941. When added to the existing six ovens, there was more than enough capacity to handle the maximum number of deaths that could be expected in the absence of a massive extermination campaign. Even a 50% annual death rate of registered prisoners in Auschwitz on a camp population of 200,000 could have easily been handled by 21 ovens. Mattogno's argument was that the high death rate Auschwitz was experiencing during the typhus epidemic coupled with the expansion meant that the cremation capacity provided by an additional 46 ovens was justified. However, his argument assumes that the Bauleitung was expecting something on the order of 30,000 to 50,000 deaths per month from typhus as a result of this proposed expansion. In fact, the camp would not have been able to function under these circumstances and would most certainly be forced to close down with a continuous epidemic of this proportion.
