Yeah, of course he published his response on HuffPo. Second rule of damage control: do it in front of a friendly audience so you can remind your allies who they're supposed to be rooting for:

Now I've achieved some blogosphere fame... for my hobby (unusual and disturbing to some, I realize) of collecting Second World War memorabilia associated with my German grandfather and my American great-uncle... I'm now in the bizarre and painful situation of having to deny accusations that I'm a Nazi...

I've never hidden my hobby, because there's nothing shameful in it... Precisely because it's so obvious that the Nazis were evil, I never realized that other people, including friends and colleagues, might wonder why I care about these things. Thousands of military history buffs collect war paraphernalia because we want to learn from the past. But I should have realized that images of the Second World War German military are hurtful to many. I deeply regret causing pain and offense with a handful of juvenile and tasteless postings I made on two websites that study Second World War artifacts... Other comments there might seem strange and even distasteful.

Four times he acknowledges that his obsession with the color and pageantry of Nazism might be "disturbing" or "painful" or "hurtful" or "distasteful." You can almost imagine the "let's make this go away" emails HRW sent him: "you have to make it clear that you understand why people might be upset by this." The classic non-apology apology.

I'm pretty sure those blase "other comments" allusions are to forum posts about his SS chic and his Iron Cross hoodie. Neither line up particularly well with his "I'm just a misunderstood historian" ethos. And per Israellycool, his Bambiesque "I never realized" shtick is the opposite of true:

Garlasco also blatantly lies in his response. His contentions... do not compare well with this comment to him by a fellow Nazi memorabilia aficionado on one of the forums (no longer accessible without a login): "I remember you asking about using a psydonym before your book was published." The pretense that he studies "Second World War artifacts" is [also] just that - a pretense - given that his focus is clearly on Nazi memorabilia.

I think Dave goes too far in talking about those objectively disprovable "I never suspected" fibs the same breath as Garlasco's weasely "Second World War artifacts" descriptions. The descriptions are merely intellectually dishonest. Yes he's obsessed with WWII memorabilia. But the type of WWII memorabilia he's obsessed with is the Nazi type. For all his great-uncle's service for America, Garlasco hasn't written a detailed 430 page tome on US badges.

And speaking of intellectual dishonesty: at no point does Garlasco provide any link to anybody. At first I thought he was just being impolite - I was nice enough to link to his gushing forum posts about swastika-engraved paraphernalia - but now I'm thinking there might have been a more deliberate purpose. If he linked to his critics then he'd have to answer their real arguments instead of the arguments he's made up in his head.

Nobody serious has accused Garlasco of being a Nazi, though I guess it's heartening to have him on the record denying it (baby steps!) The criticism is that someone obsessively fascinated by Nazism is suspicious in the context of repeated apologism for Hamas and demonization of Israel. It's not one or the other, it's the convergence of the two. I know that's the criticism because I wrote it up myself in that first post and then people sympathetically linked to it: