David Irving

David Irving, because of his political leanings, he is popularly know as "Hitler's historian"

David John Cawdell Irving (born March 24, 1938) is one of the most accomplished and successful proponents of historical and Holocaust revisionism. Author of controversial works such as Hitler’s War and The Destruction of Dresden, Irving is a non-academic self-taught historian who from late 1960s to mid 1980s was a leading British author on World War II. In the mid 1980s he started openly associating with Neo-Nazi and extremist groups, and his reputation began to wane. In the late 1990s he sued the prominent Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for listing him as a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust; after a much publicized trial Irving lost and was found to be a Holocaust denier by the court.

Among the Holocaust deniers, Irving is perhaps the only one who for some time managed to keep up the reputation of a serious, if controversial, historian. Irving is considered an icon to many in the Holocaust denial camp, but after the Lipstadt trial verdict he has fought an increasingly lonely battle. He has since been barred from entering many countries.

Early life

Born in Essex, England, his father John Irving was a Commander in the Royal Navy, his mother Beryl an illustrator. During the Second World War his father was an officer aboard the Light Cruiser HMS Edinburgh, on May 2, 1942, while escorting Convoy QP11 in the Barents Sea, she was sunk by the German U-456. Irving’s father survived, but after the incident cut off all ties with his wife and their children.

Irving first gained his notoriety as a student of the Imperial College London, where he wrote for the student newspaper and served as the editor of the London University Carnival Committee’s journal, Carnival Times. Here Irving made allegations such as "the national press is owned by Jews", and contributed to a variety of extremist features, including racist cartoons, a defense of South African apartheid, and an appreciative look at Nazi Germany [1]; as a result Irving was removed from his editorial duties.

"The Destruction of Dresden"

Irving soon dropped out of college and went to Germany where he worked in a Thyssen steel works in the Ruhr and learned German. He then left Germany and moved to Franco's Spain where he worked as a clerk at an airbase near Madrid. Establishing contacts with Europe’s far-right, in 1962 he wrote a series of thirty-seven articles on the Allied bombing war, Wie Deutschlands Städte Starben, for the German right-wing journal Neue Illustrierte. These served as the basis for his first book The Destruction of Dresden, published in 1963. In it he examined the Allied bombing of Dresden during the final months of World War II. By the 1960s, a debate about the morality of the carpet bombing of German cities and civilian population had already begun, especially in the UK. Hence, the public was receptive to Irving's persuasively written book, illustrated with graphic pictures. The book became an international bestseller.

In the first edition of the book Irving's figures for deaths in Dresden (which he initially reported as estimated authoritatively at 135,000, and which he himself estimated at between 100,000 and 250,000) were an order of magnitude higher than anyone else's. Nonetheless, these figures became widely accepted and were repeated in many standard references and encyclopedias. Over the next three decades later editions of the book gradually modified that figure downwards to a range of 50,000-100,000, but during that time Irving also made a number of public statements indicating that 100,000 or more Germans had been killed. It was not until the hearing of Irving's libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt in 2000 that the figures were discredited. Today, the Dresden bombing casualty figures are estimated at about 40,000 dead.

Successful historian

After the Dresden book Irving continued writing revisionist history, In 1964 he wrote The Mare's Nest, an account of the German secret weapons projects and the Allied intelligence countermeasures against it, translated the Memoirs of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in 1965 and in 1967 published Accident. The Death of General Sikorski in which he accused Churchill of ordering the fatal air-crash of Polish leader Wladyslaw Sikorski. In the same year he published two more works The Virus House an account of the German nuclear programme and the The Destruction of Convoy PQ.17, in which he blamed the British convoy commander Captain Jack Broome for the catastrophic losses of the Convoy PQ-17. Amid much publicity Broome sued Irving for libel in October 1968 and in February 1970, after seventeen days of deliberation before London’s High Court, Broome won. Irving was forced to pay 40,000 British pounds in damages and the book was withdrawn from circulation.

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Irving with Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer in the late 1970s

After PQ-17 Irving shifted to writing biographies. Though Irving's works were generally ignored by academics, and often criticized as inaccurate when reviewed by specialists, his flow of language and a wealth of entertaining anecdotes led generalists to write favorable reviews in the popular press, and many of his works sold well. During this period Irving's credentials as a British historian of generally democratic views were only rarely challenged. Irving was particularly noted for his mastery of the voluminous and scattered German war records. During this time besides researching for his upcoming biographies, Irving also wrote a series in the Sunday Express describing RAF’s famous Dam Busters raid.

As a result of his Dresden book, by the late 1960s Irving was looked upon sympathetically by Germany's extreme right-wing which assisted him in contacting surviving members of Hitler’s inner circle. Many aging formerly mid and high ranked Nazis saw a potential friend in Irving and donated diaries and other material, enabling Irving to claim he was a serious historian, publishing original material. In 1972 he translated the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen and in 1973 published The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, a biography of Air Marshall Erhard Milch. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on Hitler's War and the War Path, his two part biography of Hitler, and The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

Revisionist

In 1977 Irving released his most notorious book Hitler's War, the first of his two part biography of Hitler. In it Irving tried to describe the war from “Hitler’s point of view”; he painted a complimentary picture of Hitler, portraying him as a rational, intelligent politician whose only goal was to increase Germany’s influence on the continent and its prosperity. Irving faulted the Allied leaders, most notably Churchill, for the eventual escalation of war. However, the most controversial claim of the book was that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust; instead, while not yet denying its existence, Irving claimed Himmler and his deputy Heydrich were its originators and architects. A year later in 1978 he released The War Path, the companion volume to Hitler's War covering events leading up to the war and written in a similar vein. Most serious historians picked the book apart, noting its numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations, but it sold well. However, with its publication, the prevalent view of Irving moved from that a controversial historian to that of a Nazi sympathizer and far-right propagandist.

Just months after the initial release of Hitler’s War in 1977, Irving published The Trail of the Fox, a revisionist biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. In it Irving attacked the members of the July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler, branding them as "traitors", "cowards" and "manipulators", while at the same time he uncritically presented Hitler and his associates and their subsequent revenge against the plotters, of whom Rommel was also a victim. Irving challenged the popular notion that Rommel was one of the leaders of the rebellion; he claimed that Rommel stayed loyal to Hitler until the end, and that the real blame for his forced suicide lay with Rommel's associates, who Irving accused of scheming against Rommel so they could save their own lives. Historians viewed the book as revisionist nonsense, but as with most Irving books up to that point it did well commercially, ending up as Irving's best selling book ever.

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By the early 1980s Irving was starting to be seen as a Nazi sympathizer.

In the 1980s as he researched for his three-part biography of Churchill, Irving started writing about topics other than Nazi Germany, but with far less success. In 1981 he released two books: The first was The War Between the Generals in which Irving made a tabloidesque account of the Allied High command, detailing the alleged infighting between the various generals and presenting saucy rumors about their private lives. The second book was Uprising! about the 1956 revolt in Hungary, which Irving mis-characterized as "primarily an anti-Jewish uprising" because he believed the Communist regime was controlled by Jews. Both books were panned in the reviews and subsequently sold poorly, but they did help enforce the public impression that Irving was not just a historian of Fascism, but a Fascist historian.

By the mid 1980s Irving fell into financial problems, had not had a successful book in years and he was behind schedule in writing his upcoming first volume of his Churchill series, the research for which had a financial strain on him. By the time he finished the manuscript in 1985 his reputation was so diminished that no serious publisher was willing to print his works, so it wasn’t until 1987 that the book got published as Churchill’s War by Veritas Publications, an Australian far-right publishing house. While Irving claimed he wanted to do for Churchill what he did to Hitler in Hitler’s war, in reality the book was an attempt at character assassination.

In it Irving accused Churchill of being a debauched alcoholic, a coward, a corrupt warmonger servile to the interests of "international Jewry". Irving also accused him of "selling out the British Empire" and "turning Britain against its natural ally, Germany". The book did poorly among the general public, historians by now ignored him, and the reviewers noted that Irving's once praised writing style had deteriorated and that for the most part it was an incomprehensible and tedious propaganda piece that read like it came straight out of Goebbels propaganda ministry. However, along with Hitlers War, Churchill’s War became a favorite in the Neo-Nazi and far-right communities, while in the former he exonerated their beloved Fuhrer, in the later he viciously attacked their hated enemy, Prime Minister Churchill, the man who stood up to Hitler.

In 1989 he published his biography of Hermann Göring; in it he highlighted the more positive features of the Nazi Reichsmarshall, although Irving did not openly endorse him. Irving tended to ignore Göring's role in the Holocaust and his theft of art treasures, and instead gave a wealth of information about Göring's jovial personality and brighter aspects, such as his outlawing of vivisection and promotion of reforestation. Irving miss-represented various incidents and documents as proof that Göring disapproved of the persecution of Jews and other Nazi crimes.

Holocaust denial and his libel suit

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By the 1990s, Irving, seen here holding a submachine gun in a bookstore, associated himself with radical Neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups

By the mid 1980s Irving began lecturing to far right wing groups such as the German Deutsche Volksunion, associated himself with the anti-Semitic Institute for Historical Review and began making statements which moved him from murky to clearly revisionist territory; for example, he denied that Nazis systematically exterminated Jews in gas chambers during World War II and claimed that The Diary of Anne Frank was mostly a post-war forgery by her surviving father. In 1988 he testified on behalf of defense at Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel's trial; here Irving enthusiastically supported self-styled “execution expert” Fred A. Leuchter's report that claimed that there is no evidence for the existence of gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Irving went as far as self-publishing Leuchter’s report in the UK and writing its foreword. In his 1991 revised edition of Hitler’s War he removed all references to death camps and holocaust. By November 1994, Irving spoke at an event sponsored by the Neo-Nazi Liberty Lobby, with the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke also in attendance.

In 1998 Irving launched a libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt, and her publisher Penguin Books, in her book Denying the Holocaust Lipstadt identified him as a Holocaust denier, falsifier, and bigot, and stated that because of his skillful manipulations and distortions of real documents, Irving was one of the most dangerous proponents of Holocaust denial. Though the author and publisher were American, Irving launched his suit in the United Kingdom, where the burden of proof is on the defendant, and not, as in most Western jurisdictions, on the plaintiff. Lipstadt and Penguin hired the respected British lawyer Anthony Julius and acclaimed Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans to present her case. Evans spent more than two years examining Irving's work, and amassed evidence of Irving's misrepresentations, including that Irving had knowingly used forged documents as a source.

Irving decided to represent himself during the trial, he ignored most of the evidence against him and instead decided to focus on what he said was his "right to free speech". In his closing statement Irving also claimed to be a victim of an international, mostly Jewish conspiracy for more than three decades. As he was finishing his deliberation, he apparently inadvertently referred to the judge as "Mein Führer" instead of the more usual "My Lord".

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Irving unsuccessfully represented himself and his work during the trial, the Court found that Lipstadt did not libel him when she called him a Holocaust denier in her book

Justice Charles Gray, the trial judge, praised Irving's "thorough and painstaking research into the archives" and commended his discovery and disclosure of many historical documents. He also noted Irving's intelligence and thorough knowledge of World War II history. However, he concluded that "Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

Thus Irving lost the suit, at a press conference after the judgment, Lipstadt, while agreeing that she was vindicated and that historical truth prevailed, added this, "There is no end to the fight against racism, anti-Semitism, against hatred," she said. Irving lost subsequent attempts at appeal, and in light of the evidence presented at the trial, a number of his works which had heretofore escaped serious scrutiny were shown to be irredeemably flawed, and Irving's reputation as a historian was destroyed. As the loser, he was also liable to pay the substantial costs of the trial, ruining him financially.

Most academic historians have little sympathy for Irving and his revisionist claims; during the trial prominent British historian Sir John Keegan stated "I continue to think it perverse of you to propose that Hitler could not have known until as late as October 1943 what was going on to the Jewish people." and later stated that Irving's view "defies common sense" and "defies reason." After the trial Keegan further elaborated on his view of Irving; he praised him for his understanding of Hitler's military strategy, and in an April 12, 2000 article in the Daily Telegraph he stated that Irving had an "all-consuming knowledge of a vast body of material" and "many of the qualities of the most creative historians", that his skill as an archivist could not be contested, that he was "certainly never dull." However, Keegan doubted that even Irving took himself and his claims seriously. [2]

Persona non grata

Early in September 2004, Michael Cullen, the Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand, announced that Irving would not be permitted to visit the country, where he had been invited by the National Press Club to give a series of lectures under the heading, "The Problems of Writing about World War II in a Free Society." The National Press Club had defended its invitation of Irving, saying that it amounted not to an endorsement of his views, but rather an opportunity to question him. The intended visit provoked an outcry among Jewish groups, who were not appeased by his promise not to speak about the Holocaust.

Irving had visited New Zealand twice before, in the 1980s. His intended 2004 visit was refused on the grounds that he had been convicted of offenses in another country (he was found guilty by a German court of violating laws prohibiting the denial of Nazi extermination of Jews), and that at various times he had been deported from, and/or refused entry to, Canada, the United States, Italy, and South Africa. He had also been banned from entering Australia since 1992, and had unsuccessfully fought four legal attempts to overturn the ban. "Mr Irving is not permitted to enter New Zealand under the Immigration Act because people who have been deported from another country are refused entry," government spokeswoman Katherine O'Sullivan had told the Press earlier.

Irving rejected the ban and attempted to board a Qantas flight for New Zealand from Los Angeles on 17 September 2004. He was not allowed onboard. "As far as I'm concerned, the legal battle now begins," he was quoted as saying.

Irving bibliography

The Destruction of Dresden (1963)
The Mare's Nest (1964)
The Virus House (1967)
The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 (1967)
Accident -- The Death of General Sikorski (1967)
The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe (1973), a biography of Erhard Milch
Hitler's War (1977), Hitler in wartime
The Trail of the Fox (1977), a biography of Erwin Rommel
The War Path (1978)
The War Between the Generals (1981)
Uprising! (1981),
Churchill's War (1987)
Göring (1989), biography of Hermann Göring
Goebbels - Mastermind of the "Third Reich" (1996)
Hitler's War (1991), revised edition, incorporating The War Path
Nuremberg: The Last Battle (1996)

Reference

Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah E. Lipstadt. ISBN 0452272742
Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial by Richard J. Evans. The author was a major witness at the trial. The book presents his research on the Dresden death count. ISBN 0465021530
The Holocaust on Trial by D. D. Guttenplan. ISBN 0393322920
The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial by Robert Jan Van Pelt. ISBN 0253340160
Denying History: Who Says Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It by Michael Shermer. ISBN 0520234693
The Hitler of History by John Lukacs. ISBN 0679446494

External links

"The World According to David Irving"] by Gerald Posner, The Sunday Observer (London), March 19, 2000

Holocaust Denial in England

Irving vs Penguin & Deborah Lipstadt Trial