Carson’s detractors do at least have this on their side: it is unlikely that a fully armed German Jewry could have stopped the merciless onslaught of the Final Solution. The program was backed by the full might of the Nazi government, and even a tightly coordinated attack by all the able-bodied Jews in Germany would have likely been futile.

But given the realities of the Wehrmacht, the issue should not be one of, “Could a civilian militia have defeated the German army and prevented the Holocaust?” Rather, the question is this: “If the German government hadn’t stripped the German Jewish population of arms, would it have been easier for the Jews to fight back, and would more lives have been saved?”

The answer is obviously yes. The Holocaust might not have been “greatly diminished,” as Carson claimed, but there would have been a better-than-average chance that many people could have been saved, and it assuredly would have been better than nothing.