AAARGH
This House, on the occasion
of the reunion in London of 1,000 refugees from the Holocaust"
is appalled by the allegation by Nazi protagonist and longtime
Hitler apologist David Irving that "the infamous gas chambers...did
not exist."
House of Commons motion, 20 June 19891
Introduction
Since the 1970s, publications dealing with Holocaust denial throughout
the world can be divided into two kinds: the first, vulgar, unsophisticated
antisemitic propaganda, and the second, books and articles written
in an academic style, with a research methodology, primary sources,
"scientific findings" and a complete set of claims.2 Those belonging to the latter group, such
as Robert Faurisson and Arthur Butz, do not deny that the Jews
fell victim to Nazi persecution and that a large number of them
died during the war in the concentration camps, mainly as a result
of epidemics and maltreatment. They do, however, deny the existence
of a systematic, industrial plan of organized destruction which
resulted in the death of six million Jews.3
By the late 1980s/early 1990s David Irving had become one of the
most prominent representatives of this stream of Holocaust denial.
Unlike other authors in this school whose primary interest in
World War II was the attempt to distort or deny the Holocaust,
Irving came to the question of the destruction of the Jews as
part of his revisionist writing on World War II, which he began
to publish as early as the 1960s. He argued mainly against Hitler's
demonic image during what he described as "years of intense
wartime propaganda and emotive postwar historiography."4 However, up until the late 1980s Irving refrained
from explicitly denying the extermination itself.
This article will focus on the transition from a revisionist approach,
which presents a historical picture different from the one commonly
accepted in World War II and Holocaust scholarship, to the adoption
of views which question the uniqueness, and indeed the very historical
veracity, of the Holocaust. It will attempt to determine when
and under what circumstances this transition occurred and whether
the ideas adopted by Irving in the late 1980s were immanent in
his general historical concept and early historical writings.
Hitler's War
Irving's involvement in the discussion of the Final Solution began
only at the end of the 1970s, after he had published Hitler's
War, his most successful book.5 The aim
of the book, according to Irving, was to describe the war from
Hitler's point of view, "through Hitler's eyes, from behind
his desk."6 In order to understand the
link between Hitler's War and Holocaust denial adopted
by Irving ten years later, one should concentrate on Irving's
portrayal of Hitler, which Martin Broszat labelled "the strategy
of de-demonization."7 The image of Hitler
In Hitler's War, as well as in the War Path, published
by Irving a year later, is totally different from that of the
fanatic dictator portrayed by historians such as Allen Bullock,
Karl Dietrich Bracher and Eberhard Jackel. In Irving's book, Hitler
is depicted as a realistic, fair-minded leader, who strove to
restore Germany's political status as a dominant power in Europe.
As a solution to Germany's rapid population growth, he sought
to acquire new territories in the East, a goal also motivated
by a genuine fear of Bolshevist expansion and by a desire to "mark
the ultimate frontier between Asia and the West." Hitler
believed that the annexation of new territories in the East was
not fundamentally different from the colonialism of other European
powers, notably Britain. Moreover, he had no aggressive intentions
in the West; on the contrary, he sought to reach an agreement
with Britain and was willing to accept painful compromises, and
even harsh terms, in order to maintain peace in Europe.8
So, what about the Holocaust, the Final Solution? How does the
image of a rational Hitler mesh with his obsessive war against
the Jewish people and his decision to exterminate European Jewry.
Irving resolved this complex question by claiming that Hitler
never gave any order to exterminate the Jews, either the Jews
of Russia or the Jews of Europe. Through his anti-Semitic speeches
in the 1930s, admits Irving, Hitler created an atmosphere of hatred
toward the Jews. Moreover, "his speeches, though never explicit,
left a clear impression that 'liquidate' was what he meant."9 However, Irving claimed that Hitler did not
cross the line between propaganda and reality. The instructions
that he gave were to evacuate the Jews eastward, first to Poland
and then to the territories occupied in the USSR. He intended
to postpone the solution of the Jewish problem until the postwar
era.10 Thus, "having removed the appalling
crime of the deliberate systematic murder of six million Jews,
Hitler could be viewed in a much more objective and clinical way,"
said Irving in an interview to The Guardian.11
It should be noted that in Hitler's War Irving did not
deny that the Jews were systematically exterminated, first by
squads, later by mobile gas-trucks and eventually in the death
camps.12 The extermination, claimed Irving,
began as a consequence of local decisions made by "fanatical
Gauleiters in the East who were interpreting with brutal thoroughness
Hitler's decree that the Jews must 'finally disappear from Europe'."13 These decisions received the support of
Heydrich who, according to Irving, was the true initiator of the
Final Solution, and eventually of Himmler, without the approval
or even knowledge of Hitler.14 In The
War Path, Irving claimed that the distinction between Hitler's
more moderate attitude toward the "Jewish problem" and
that of fanatic high-ranking Nazi officials was determined before
the war. Once Hitler had seized power in 1933, he paid only lip-service
to antisemitism and refrained from any involvement with the anti-Jewish
policy, which was escalated by Nazi fanatics. Brutal measures,
such as Kristallnacht were perpetrated without Hitler's
approval and even against his will.15 Disregard
of Hitler's will in relation to the Jewish question became even
more blatant during the war. Irving alleged that on 30 November
1941, Hitler instructed Himmler that there was to be "no
liquidation of the Jews."16 Himmler,
together with the SS and the party principals, violated this order
as "he had disregarded Hitler's veto on the liquidation of
the Jews all along."17
How was it possible that the Jews were exterminated without the
approval or even knowledge of the Fuhrer? Irving offers
as explanation the theory of the weak dictator: "Hitler was
probably the weakest leader Germany has known in this century."
The war was his only concern, "[he was] unable to oversee
all the functions of his executives acting within the confines
of his far-flung empire," and Germany became a "Fuhrer-Staat
without a Fuhrer."18
Between Revisionism and Holocaust Denial
Irving's thesis of Hitler's character and policy, and especially
his involvement in the Final Solution, provoked severe criticism
from historians, such as Bullock, Jackel, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Martin
Gilbert, Gerald Fleming and Martin Broszat. They showed that he
omitted important evidence and that he misused, manipulated and
even altered documents to support his theory.19
However, not only distinguished historians, but Holocaust deniers
too were critical. This should be especially explained, in order
to understand Irving's transition from revisionism to Holocaust
denial and his later influence on this line of thought.
In September 1983 Irving was invited to lecture at the International
Revisionist Conference, organized by the Institute for Historical
Review (IHR) in California which, since the early 1980s, has been
the principal international forum for Holocaust denial.20
During the conference, as well as in articles published in its
wake, major Holocaust deniers such as Robert Faurisson expressed
ambivalence toward Irving. On the one hand, they felt solidarity
since he was under attack for expressi "revisionist"
ideas." This attitude affected far-reaching decisions such
as preventing or censoring publications containing harsh criticism
of Irving.21
On the other hand, the fact that Irving did not accept their claim
that millions of Jews were not systematically exterminated, provoked
vehement attacks from deniers. Faurisson expressed his amazement
that a serious historian such as Irving had raised an illogical
claim that millions of Jew were killed without Hitler's knowledge.
Irving, wrote Faurisson, did not find any orders to exterminate
the Jews, because no such operation was ever planned and implemented.
Irving who was known to his readers as "a master historian
of World War II" must devote himself to investigating Nazi
policy toward the Jews more thoroughly22
Like Holocaust denial writers, in the 1980s extreme rightists
and neo-Nazis were also ambivalent toward Irving. Irving's attitude
toward Hitler as a fair-minded leader, as well as his "balanced"
approach toward the role of Germany in the outbreak of World War
II and its atrocities, indeed made him popular in these circles.23 By the late 1970s and early 1980s Irving
was invited by extreme right-wing societies in Germany, among
them the Gesellschaft fur Frei Publizistik (GFP), to deliver
lectures, which were reproduced by German far right publications
such as Deutsche National-Zeitung and Nation Europa.24 In contrast to their attitude toward mainstream
German scholars, Irving was praised as one of the few reliable
and unprejudiced historians. "When will our own historians
begin to search for the truth," wrote Der Freiwillige,
the journal of Waffen SS veterans, in late 1979, after a talk
given by Irving to ex-servicemen in Stuttgart.25
Nonetheless, the fact that he refrained from denying the Holocaust
provoked criticism among leading neo-Nazi activists.26
It is reasonable to assume that the unique status which Irving
acquired already at the beginning of the 1980s among wide circles
of the extreme right was influenced by his evident success as
a writer. His books were published by respectable publishers and
he gained worldwide publicity when Hitler's War appeared.
In addition, Irving's thesis in regard to the question of Hitler's
role in the destruction of European Jewry stimulated, as Ian Kershaw
wrote, the ongoing debate in West Germany about the genesis of
the Final Solution. This debate divided the historians of National
Socialism into two camps: the so-called "intentionalist approach"
and the "functionalist," or "structuralist,"
one."27
It should be noted that some of Irving's basic arguments in Hitler's
War in regard to the Final Solution were not essentially different
from those raised already in the 1970s by ardent German "structuralists,"
who claimed that the extermination of the Jews in the occupied
territories was an ad hoc improvisation when all other solutions
had failed, and that Hitler did not direct, and was not even involved
in, the actual planning of the Final Solution, which developed
a dynamic of its own.28
Nevertheless, there was a fundamental difference between Irving's
attempt to whitewash Hitler's knowledge of the Final Solution
and even to prove his objection to the annihilation concept, and
the German "structuralists." They claimed that even
if Hitler did not issue an executive order to exterminate the
Jews, his wish to destroy the Jewish people, and hence his principled
support of the implementation of the Final Solution, was clear
to his subordinates.29 Extreme rightists
were impressed by the fact that in contrast to eccentric neo-Nazi
and Holocaust denial writers, Irving's thesis, although widely
criticized, was part of the historians debate on the genesis of
the Final Solution.30 Moreover, even some
of his strongest critics, such as Martin Broszat, agreed that
he had "managed to produce a number of remarkable and hitherto
unknown documents" on the National Socialist period."31
Crossing the Line
Until 1988 Irving refrained from supporting the deniers' outlook
explicitly. The event which caused him to cross the line and join
the deniers' camp was the publication of The Leuchter Report.
Fred Leuchter, who claimed to be a specialist in constructing
and installing execution apparatus in US prisons, was hired by
the Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel to be an expert witness
at his trial.32 Before the trial, with Zundel's
financial assistance, Leuchter traveled to Poland where he visited
Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek and illegally collected "forensic
samples" for chemical analysis. In his published findings,
he claimed that the facilities in these camps were not capable
of mass annihilation.33 The allegation that
the gas chambers in Nazi concentration camps in general and in
Auschwitz in particular were used only for disinfection purposes
was not new, having been raised already a few years after the
war by one of the first European Holocaust deniers, the French
fascist Maurice Bardèche,34 and from
then on it appeared in numerous Holocaust denial publications.
For Holocaust denial writers, however, Leuchter's report was significant.
It was introduced as a major breakthrough for those who were "seeking
the truth"; now their claim had allegedly been proved scientifically.35 "For myself, shown this evidence for
the first time when called as an expert witness at the Zundel
trial in Toronto in April 1988, the laboratory reports were shattering.
There could be no doubts as to their integrity," wrote Irving
in his introduction to The Leuchter Report, which was published
in the United Kingdom by Irving's publishing house Focal Point
Publications.36
Irving's thesis was complete. When working on Hitler's
War he had found no proof that Hitler knew about the Final
Solution; now he attributed this to the fact that no systematic
operation to exterminate European Jewry had ever been planned
or implemented. "Too many hundreds of millions of honest
intelligent people have been duped by a wellñfinanced and
brilliantly successful postwar publicity campaign," wrote
Irving.37 In the new edition of Hitler's
War, all references to the extermination camps were removed.38
Thirty years after he had begun working as an "independent
historian," as he frequently described himself, presenting
revisionist concepts in regard to World War II, and ten years
after he had published his most popular book Hitler's War,
he no longer refrained from explicitly denying the systematic
annihilation of the Jewish people.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Irving concluded his thesis on
the fate of the Jewish people during the war. While denying the
existence of homicidal gas chambers, he claimed that there was
sufficient evidence to prove the mass murder of Jews by firing
squads in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. Following
his basic thesis in Hitler's War, Irving has continued
to emphasize that Himmler and Heydrich knew of and approved the
executions in the East, while Hitler remained in ignorance. The
mass shootings as well as maltreatment, disease, air raids and
hunger caused hundreds of thousands of Jewish causalities, he
asserted.39
On October 1992 Irving chose to present his completed thesis at
the eleventh conference of the IHR. A year before he announced
that he had succeeded in acquiring the typescript of Eichmann's
monologues, transcribed in the 1950s by the Flemish Nazi journalist
Willem Sassens.40 In his lecture to the
IHR, as well as in other statements that he made in 1992, he refuted
reports worldwide that reading Eichmann's monologues had
changed his revisionist views on the Holocaust, as well as about
Hitler's role in the atrocities committed against the Jews.41 Eichmann's memoirs, claimed Irving,
were an important confirmation of the true distinction that should
be made between the "legend of the gas chambers" and
"certain My-Lai-type atrocities" by German troops, mainly
in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union. Eichmann admitted
he had witnessed executions and cruel actions against the Jewish
population. Moreover he even maintained that "some prisoners"
were by exhaust fumes, but that "this kind of experiment"
was rapidly abandoned. Nevertheless, while he failed to mention
the gas chambers, even in his "vivid description of his visit
to Auschwitz," he did not hesitate to depict the disposal
of bodies in open pits by fire; thus, claimed Irving, had the
Germans used gas chambers, Eichmann would undoubtedly have referred
to them. Moreover, for Eichmann, claimed Irving, the words "Final
Solution" meant only the evacuation of European Jews to Madagascar,
"where they couldnít bother any of their neighbors
and where none of their neighbors could bother them" -- which
for Irving "would have been an ideal solution to the perennial
world tragedy."42
Between History and Ideology
Since the Zundel trial and the publication
of The Leuchter Report, Irving has been identified both
by his opponents and his supporters as one of the main spokesmen
of Holocaust denial. However, analyzing the theses of his various
books on the war leads to the conclusion that joining the deniers
did not constitute a fundamental change in Irving's historical
outlook and weltanschauung, into which Holocaust denial had been
well integrated. Revisionist concepts have been elaborated by
Irving in the course of his 30 years as an "independent historian."
The buds, however, can be found already in his early writings,
having stemmed from the extreme right views he adopted when he
was still a young man.43 Holocaust denial
was the missing link which made it possible for him to complete
his general thesis in regard to the genesis and the course of
World War II.
Two recurring, interrelated motifs in his books constitute the
foundation of his historical viewpoint. The first, raised initially
by American isolationists after the war, is the assertion that
the suffering inflicted by the Germans was not essentially different
from that perpetrated by the Allies.44 Over
the years this has become a central component of Nazi apologetics,
and was incorporated also by the extreme right in Britain.45 The alleged genocidal policy toward Germany
was described by Irving as early as 1963 in his first book The
Destruction of Dresden. While exagerating considerably the
number of casualties, Irving claimed that the brutality of the
Allies against the German population was unnecessarily vicious
and unjustified.46
Another recurring motif in Irving's books, as well as in
his articles and lectures, is the claim that the British leadership,
and especially Churchill, was responsible for the outbreak of
World War II. Here again the influence on Irving's writings
of such first World War II revisionists, as David Leslie Hoggan,
Harry Elmer Barnes and Frederick J.P. Veale, is evident.47
Adopting their historical approach, Irving claimed that British
leaders could have prevented the war had they accepted Germanyí
reasonable peace proposals: The decision to enter the war was
against the essential interests of the British; its main consequence
was the decline of Britain as a world power.48
These two motifs were central in Hitler's War. Hitler,
the fair-minded leader, tried to reach an agreement with Britain;
when he failed, he devoted all his time and energy to the victory
of the German army. On the other hand, Churchill, described by
Irving as an irresponsible and ruthless leader, led Britain consciously
into an unnecessary war. He wantonly destroyed all hope of peace
by deliberately launching RAF bombing raids in the heart of Germany
-- although he himself behaved in a cowardly manner during the
blitz on London.49
Denial of the gas chambers, which actually meant denial of the
systematic machinery of destruction, was intended to reinforce
Irving's claims in regard to the relativism of German atrocities.
By adopting the Holocaust denial concept he could argue that German
violence against the civilian population, including local killings
and atrocities against the Jews, was not morally different from
Allied atrocities. Denial of the Final Solution removed not only
from Hitler but from the whole Nazi regime the Satanic label which
had created a clear distinction between Nazi Germany and the Allies.
So while it is true that until the end of 1980s Irving refrained
from denying the Holocaust explicitly, the conceptual foundations
were laid years before, originating in the desire to change the
widely-accepted Satanic image of Nazi Germany.
Moreover although Irving's identification with Holocaust
denial was announced publicly only in 1988, it is clear that this
admission was not a dramatic turnabout, rather the end of a prolonged
process. Irving's attraction to these ideas as the missing
link in his historical concept was visible already in his first
public meeting with deniers at the 1983 International Revisionist
Conference (see above). Shortly after the conference two observers
from two totally opposite school of thought, Robert Faurisson
and the historian Gerald Fleming, pointed out that Irving deliberately
used in his lecture conditional words and phrases which indicated
his doubt as to whether the Holocaust had occurred.50
Moreover, when relating to the death camps, Irving said, "We
do know in the meantime that Dachau is a legend, that everything
that people found in Dachau was in fact installed there by the
Americans"; as to Auschwitz and other extermination camps,
the question "about the actual goings-on inside" was
left open by him "as a matter of controversy."51
It is also significant that in contrast to Hitler's War,
at the 1983 International Revisionist Conference Irving refrained
from mentioning the role of Himmler and Heydrich in the Jewish
liquidations, which indicated that he tended to accept the deniersí
claim that the Nazi leadership did not initiate global destructive
measures against the Jewish people. "I would say I am satisfied
in my own mind that in various locations Nazi criminals, acting
probably without direct orders from above [emphasis added],
did carry out liquidations of groups of people including Jews,
gypsies, homosexuals, mentally incurable people and the rest."52
Blaming the Jews
Already in Hitler's War Irving implied that Hitler's
harsh instructions in regard to the evacuation of the Jews eastwards
stemmed from his confidence that the Jews would be one of Germany's
most determined and dangerous enemies in the forthcoming war.
Irving claimed that Hitler's determination to forestall
this danger was considerably influenced by a letter from Chaim
Weizmann to Neville Chamberlain, published in The Times
in September 1939. Weizmann's proclamation that the Jews
would stand by the democracies against Nazi Germany, was considered
by Hitler as "a Jewish declaration of war."53
The allegation that world Jewry had declared war on Germany and
had forced other nations to join, in revenge for Germany's
anti-Jewish policy, originated in extreme right-wing and Nazi
propaganda before the war. After the war it was raised both in
Europe and in the United States by Nazi apologists and revisionists,
as well as by Holocaust deniers. In 1974, a few years before Hitler's
War, it was brought up again by Richard Harwood (aka Richard
Verrall), a leading extreme right activist in Britain, in his
well-known and influential Holocaust denial pamphlet Did Six
Million Really Die?54
By attaching disproportionate importance to Weizmann's
statement,55 Irving tried to reason that
Hitler's hostility toward the Jews stemmed from a deep
and not unrealistic fear, based on an actual threat made by the
Jews prior to the war. Accordingly, Irving led the reader to speculate
that if the Jewish leader had not "declared war" on
Germany, Hitler would not have adopted harsh measures against
the Jews, such as the deportations, which were escalated later
by his subordinates to annihilation. Years after he had raised
his concept of "Weizmann's provocation," Irving
elaborated this thesis -- or possibly revealed thoughts
that at the end of the 1970s he had preferred not to disclose.
In 1992, at the eleventh conference of the IHR, he used Eichmann's
memoirs to imply that as part of its strategic plan, the Zionist
movement soughtto motivate the Nazis to adopt an extremist policy
against the Jewish population.56 The alleged
causal link between Weizmann's declaration and "preventive"
measures taken by Hitler was adopted in the late 1980s by the
German historian Ernst Nolte,57 as well
as by Nazi apologists and Holocaust deniers.58
Another significant example of the link made by Irving between
world Jewry's alleged threat of war against Germany and
Hitler's decision to escalate the anti-Jewish measures,
was Hitler's meeting with the Hungarian regent Mikllos
Horty in April 1943. Irving could not disregard the murderous
language that Hitler used in that meeting concerning the fate
of the Jews; however, he claimed that Hitler was deeply influenced
by the Allied bombing of German cities. Documents and target maps
found at bomb sites, Irving wrote, proved that British aircrews
were instructed to aim only at residential areas, convincing Hitler
that this was mainly the Jewsí retaliation.59
Again, the fact that Irving refrained from any comment, left the
impression that Hitler's belief might have been realistic.60 It should be noted that years before the
publication of Hitler's War, Irving had already raised
the possibility that Jewish pressure had been one of the main
factors behind the Allied decision to bomb and devastate German
cities. In 1961, during his research "into the causation
of the bombing of Dresden," Irving wrote provocative letters
concerning alleged Jewish involvement in this operation to the
curator of the Wiener Library. Based on dubious German testimony,
he requested confirmation of the claim that the World Jewish Congress
had demanded the liquidation of Dresden in reprisal for the crushing
of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the destruction of the ghetto."61
Irving denies unequivocally the allegation that he is an antisemite.62 However, his antisemitic attitude, and especially
his strong belief in a Jewish conspiracy ("our traditional
enemies"63) in general, and its role
in the "myth of the Holocaust" in particular, are well
reflected in some of his books, articles and speeches.64
Irving's book Uprising, about the 1956 Hungarian
uprising, can serve as an example of his antisemitic outlook.
In this book, described by the historian Bela Vago as an "anti
Jewish historic forgery,"65 Irving
claimed that the testimonies and documents he had found proved
undoubtedly that the Hungarian uprising was not directed against
the Soviet Union and the communist system, but against what the
rebels perceived as Jewish domination of Hungary.66
The "Jewish conspiracy notion," the "myth of the
Holocaust" and the revisionist theories presented by Irving
over the years, were integrated into a complete thesis: Contrary
to British global interests, Churchill, paid and influenced by
the Jews,67 refused any compromise with
Germany. The Holocaust myth was inflated by British intelligence
to serve as a "moral alibi" for Churchill's disastrous
decision to confront Germany to the bitter end.68
To conclude in Irving's own words, in a speech he made
at Dresden's Palace of Culture in February 1990:
The Holocaust suffered by the Germans in Dresden was real. The one against the Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz is complete fiction.69
* This article is the
elaboration of a paper delivered at the international conference
"The Dynamics of Antisemitism in the Second Half of the 20th
Century," organized by the Vidal Sasson International Center
for the Study of Antisemitism. I am indebted to Mr. Mike Whine,
CST, London, for his invaluable assistance. The study was supported
by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture.
1 Quoted in Philip Rubenstein, "The Leuchter Report in the United Kingdom," in Shelly Shapiro (ed.), The Truth Prevails (New York, 1990), p. 89.
2. Deborah E. Lipstadt,
Denying the Holocaust (New York, 1993), p. 24;
Sarah Rembiszewski, The Final Lie, (Tel Aviv, 1996); Limor
Yagil, Holocaust Denial in France, (Tel Aviv, 1994)
pp. 61-72 ; Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, p.
24.
3Although providing different figures, most of the leading deniers claim that several hundred thousand Jews died during the Holocaust -- see Rembiszewski, The Final Lie, pp. 39-44; Yagil, Holocaust Denial in France, pp. 35, 51; Arthur Butz, the leading Holocaust denier in the US, estimated that as many as one million Jews died -- Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, p. 124.
4. David Irving, Hitler's War (New York, 1977), p. xvii.
5. Ibid. The book was published simultaneously in Canada.
6. Ibid. p. xvi. Irving used the same phrase in The War Path (London 1987), p. ix. He claimed that describing the "events from behind the Fuhrer's desk" led him to adopt a previously untried technique -- cf. D.C. Watt's harsh criticism of The War Path, Daily Telegraph, 20 June 1978 and J.P. Taylor's relatively favorable criticism, Observer, 18 June, 1978.
7. Martin Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," Yad Vashem Studies 13 (1979), p. 80.
8. Irving, Hitler's War, pp. xv, xvi, 7, 31, 34; Irving, The War Path, pp. xiv, xviii, 54-67.
9. Irving, Hitler's War, p. xiii.
10. Ibid., pp. xiv, 269-71, 329-32; Irving, The War Path, p. xvi.
12. Irving, Hitler's War, pp. 325-27, 329-30, 390-3. In his introduction to The War Path, p. xvi, Irving refers again to Auschwitz as a liquidation camp.
13. Irving, Hitler's War, p. 332. Referring to the period 1933-39 in The War Path, p. xv, Irving claims that after Hitler seized power in 1933, he paid only lip-service to antisemitism as part of his creed and it was the "Nazi gangsters under him [who] continued to ride to hounds" "
14. Irving, Hitler's War, pp. xiv, 326-32, 392-3, 503-4, 576 .
15. Irving, The War Path, pp. xv, 163-6.
16. Irving, Hitler's War, p. 332. Hitler's alleged prohibition of Jewish liquidation was based on a note in Himmler's pocket telephone book, according to which, on 30 November 1941 Himmler telephoned Heydrich in Prague from Hitler's bunker at the Wolf's Lair. The note of his conversation with Heydrich read: "Judentransport aus Berlin. Keine Liquidierung." Many of Irving's critics pointed out that Irving misused the document to support his thesis. While Himmler's note referred merely to a single transport from Germany, it was presented by Irving as clear proof that Hitler forbade the liquidation of the Jews -- Charles W. Sydnor, Jr., "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War," in M.R. Marrus (ed. ), The Nazi Holocaust (London, 1989), p. 35; Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," pp. 103-6.
17. Irving, Hitler's War, p. 576; see also pp. xiv-xv, 326-7, 330-2, 391-3, 503-5, 601-2..
18. Irving, Hitler's War, pp. xii-xv.
19. Sydnor, "The Selling of Adolf Hitler, pp. 21-51; John Lukacs, The Hitler of History (New York, 1997), p. 179; Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," pp. 73-125; Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the Final Solution (Jerusalem, 1987; in Hebrew), pp. ix, p. 21, note 19, pp. 46-7; Guardian, 16 June 1977. Hitler's War was not the first book by Irving to provoke severe accusations of falsification. When he published his first book The Destruction of Dresden (London, 1963), he was accused of exaggerating considerably the number of dead at Dresden. And indeed, three years later he admitted having given a false number, claiming that he had been deceived. Now the figure he gave was 25,000 instead of 135,000, Evening Standard, 28 October 1967. Years later, however, he did not hesitate to repeat his exaggerated figures -- The Destruction of Dresden (London 1985); The Journal of Historical Review (January/February 1993), p. 10. Two of his books: Accident: The Death of General Sikorski (London, 1968), in which he claims that the death of General Vladislav Sikorski, prime minister of the Polish Government-in-Exile, in an aircraft crash, was engineered by Churchill; and The Destruction of Convoy PQ17, in which he blamed a Royal Navy commander for the sinking of the convoy (London, 1968), were subjected to legal proceedings. In both cases it was proved that Irving mor misinterpreted documents and evidence -- Sydnor, "The Selling of Adolf Hitler, p. 24, note 10; Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," p. 77, note. 9.
20. The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) was founded in 1979 by Willis A. Carto, head of the extreme right and antisemitic organization Liberty Lobby. During the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s the IHR sponsored annual conferences which became the main forum for Holocaust deniers worldwide. The lectures delivered at these conferences were published in the IHR journal The Journal for Historical Review (JHR). From the outset, the IHR suffered from internal dissension, mainly between Carto and senior IHR staffers. The latter described Carto as a dictator who did not refrain from censoring articles. See, for example, letter of Keith Stimely, the JHR editor, to "editorial advisors, contributors, and friends of JHR," 25 February 1985 , The Archive of the Stephen Roth Institute, TAU, David Irving Files C02, (hereafter, Irving Files). In September 1993 the IHR editorial staff and the board of directors voted to terminate IHR's association with Carto, which led to litigation -- see Anti-Defamation League, Embattled Bigots: A Split in the Ranks of the Holocaust Denial Movement (New York, 1994).
21. Journal of Historical Review. 2-4 (Winter 1984), p. 303; It was probably Carto who decided to censor Faurisson's article against Irving as well as to prevent publication of other articles -- Stimely to "editorial advisors, contributors and friends of JHR," 25, February 1985; Stimely to Arthur Butz, Robert Faurisson, James J. Martin, Mark Weber, Wayne Lutton, Fritz Berg, Tom Marcellus, 29 December 1983, Irving Files.
22. Journal of Historical Review , 2-4 (Winter 1984), p. 302; Stimely to Faurisson, 9 September 1983, "Guidelines for 'A Challenge to David Irvingí," Irving Files.
23. See, for example, League Review (of the League of St. George), 17 December 1977.
24. Patterns of Prejudice 2 (1982), pp. 35-8; see also Searchlight 24 (May 1977); New Statesman, 7 July 1978.
25. Patterns of Prejudice 2 (1982), p. 38.
27. Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship (London, 1993), p. 82.
28. See, for example, Hans Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz (Oxford/Cambridge, 1991), pp. 224-53; Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," pp. 73-125.
29. Broszat claimed that the annihilation of the Jews was "improvised" rather than triggered by a single secret order, that it was a "way out" of a blind alley that evolved into a comprehensive program. He assumed that Hitler had "contented himself with verbal authorizations," Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," pp. 98-102, 110. Mommsen went much further than Broszat in claiming that no direct order, either written or verbal, in regard to the Final Solution was ever issued by Hitler. Moreover he claimed that when Hitler was "confronted with the actual consequences of the destruction of the Jews he reacted in exactly the same way as his subordinates, by attempting not to be aware of the facts or suppressing his knowledge" -- Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz, pp. 238-9, 251, 348, note 149; see also Lukacs, The Hitler of History, p. 178.
30. See, for example, Prospectus for the JHR special issue on David Irving, submitted, probably, by Keith Stimely [Autumn 1983].
31. Broszat, "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solutioní," pp.75-6. Despite his severe criticism of Irving's methods, Broszat maintained that had it not been for Irving's unreserved acquittal of Hitler, Irving's thesis would have been welcomed as a necessary contribution to the historical polemic in Germany, p.81. Mommsen in his well-known article on the Final Solution, "The Realization of the Unthinkable," was much less critical of Irving than Broszat, even using Hitler's War as a source for some of his arguments regarding Hitler's allegedly loose connection to the actual implementation of the Final Solution. See Mommsen, From Weimar to Auschwitz, pp. 232 , note 21;. p. 234, note 32; p. 235 note. 46, p. 239 note.66. See also favorable statements by well-known scholars such as John Keegan and Gordon Craig about Irving's contribution to the historiography of National Socialism and World War II, New York Times, 26 June 1999; New York Review of Books, 19 September 1996; The New Republic, 21 October 1996.
32. Ernst Zundel, "Holocaust, Zundel Trial Update," Irving Files. Leuchter's claims to be a chief engineer specializing in gas chambers, proved to be fraudulent -- Shapiro, Introduction, The Truth Prevails, pp. 1-28.
33. The Leuchter Report (London, 1989); Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, pp. 162-3.
34. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, p. 50.
35. Zundel, "Holocaust, Zundel Trial Update."
36. Irving's introduction to The Leuchter Report; see also Rubenstein, "The Leuchter Report in the United Kingdom," p. 87.
37.Irving's introduction to The Leuchter Report. Similar texts can be found in various pamphlets and letters circulated by Irving in the wake of his "revelation" on the "myth of the gas chambers ñ see, for example, his arrogant letter to M.P Hugh Dykes, 30 June 1989.
38. In 1992 a Munich court convicted Irving of claiming publicly that the gas chambers in Auschwitz were a lie and that no more than one million Jews perished in World War II, Times, 16 May 1992; Guardian, 6 May 1992; Siegener Zeitung, 6 May 1992; see also Verfassungsschutzbericht 1990, p. 116.
39. Daily Telegraph, 19 March 1990.
40. It seems that there were 67 transcripts, one for each tape recording. The prosecution in the Eichmann trial succeeded in getting most of them, but only one transcript and a few pages with Eichmann's corrections and notes were accepted by the judges -- see Jacob Robinson, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight (Jerusalem 1966; in Hebrew) pp. 108-9, 278-9, notes. 52-54. In 1980 the monologues, edited by a former Nuremburg defense attorney Rudolf Aschenauer, were published by the extreme right publication, Druffel Verlag, under the title "Ich, Adolf Eichmann." Irving claimed that in contrast to the edited manuscript, he based his arguments on the verbatim transcriptions -- see David Irving, "The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers, "Journal of Historical Review (March/April 1993), pp. 16-19; see also IHR Newsletters 85 (February 1992), pp. 2-3.
41. Observer, 12 January, 1992; Sunday Telegraph, 19 January 1992; IHR Newsletter 85 (February 1992); Spotlight, 10 February, 1992.
42. Irving, "The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers," Journal of Historical Review (March/April 1993), pp. 14-25; see also his statements in the Munich court in 1992, Times, 16 May 1992; Guardian, 6 May 1992.
43. Some of Irving's basic historical and political concepts, as well as his racist and antisemitic beliefs, appeared in his article "Battle for Europe" published in the student paper Carnival Times in May 1959. In the wake of the controversy his first articles provoked, he described himself as a "mild fascist" -- Daily Mail, 1 May 1959. Irving's ideological motives and his political aspirations culminated at the beginning of the 1980s in the establishment of the Focus Policy Group as the nucleus of a new ultra-right movement -- Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London, 1991(, p. 167.
44. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, p.43; Harry E. Barnes, "The Court Historians Versus Revisionism," in The Barnes Trilogy (Torrance, 1979), p. 14; Barnes, "Blasting the Historical Blackout," The Barnes Trilogy, p. 33; Barnes, "Revisionism and Brainwashing," The Barnes Trilogy, pp. 37.
45. See, for example, League Review, 17 December 1977.
46. David Irving, The Destruction of Dresden -- see note 19.
47. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, p. 68-9; Lucy S. Dawidowicz, "Lies about the Holocaust," Commentary (December 1980), pp. 31-3; Barnes, "Blasting the Historical Blackout," p. 18; Barnes, "Revisionism and Brainwashing," pp. 5, 47.
48. See note 8; Theodore J. Oí Keefe, "Irving On Churchill," Journal of Historical Review 4 (Winter 1986), pp. 499-504.
49. Oí Keefe, "Irving on Churchill," pp.502-3; David Irving, "On Contemporary History and Historiography," Journal of Historical Review 2-4 (Winter 1984), pp. 274-83.
50. Irving, "On Contemporary History and Historiography," pp. 274-83; Jewish Chronicle, 25 November 1983; unpublished section from Robert Faurisson's "A Challenge to David Irving" (censored by W. Carto), Irving Files. In his reply to Fleming, Jewish Chronicle, 23 December 1983, Irving claimed that he did not deny the annihilation of "many millions of Jews"; however, the conditional phrases that he used made it clear that he doubted the veracity of the Holocaust.
51. Irving, "On Contemporary History and Historiography," p. 282...
54. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, pp. 36-7, 110, 111; Pierre Vidal-Naquet, The Assassins of Memory , (Tel Aviv, 1991; in Hebrew), pp. 103-7; Richard Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last (London, n.d.), p. 4; Pierre Birnbaum, Anti-Semitism in France (Oxford, 1992), pp. 267-8.
55. On the misrepresentation of Weizman's statement, see Richard J. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow (Tel Aviv, 1991; in Hebrew), p.50..
56. Irving, "The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers," p. 19.
57. Evans, In Hitler's Shadow, pp. 42, 50-1; Lukacs, The Hitler of History, p. 180; interview with Ernst Nolte Der Spiegel, 3 October 1994.
58. The allegation that the Jews were the first to declare war on Germany was made, for example, in 1995 in Freiheitliche Jahrbuch by Austrian political scientist Warner Pfeifenberger -- Anti-Semitism Worldwide 1995/6 (Tel Aviv , 1996). German Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf made a similar claim in 1994 -- Rembiszewski, The Holocaust Lie, p. 42.
60. In the years that followed, Irving suggested other "Jewish provocations" that had instigated the Nazis to escalate their anti-Jewish policy," for example, Theodore Kaufman's book Germany Must Perish," which allegedly motivated the Nazis to force the Jewish population to wear the yellow star -- Irving, "The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers," p. 19.
61. David Irving to C.C. Aronsfeld, 26 May 1961; C.C. Aronsfeld to David Irving, 26 May 1961; R. Dolinsky to David Irving, 29 September 1961; C.C. Aronsfeld to David Irving, 6 October 1961, Irving Files.
62. See, for example, his letter to the Australian Jewish News, 29 September 1992.
63. David Irving, "The Suppressed Eichmann and Goebbels Papers," p. 18; "The David Irving Fighting Fund," 8 December 1995.
64. See note 43; also his interview with LíEspresso, 26 July 1992, in which he said that "the problem of the Jews is that I am a historian that cannot be corrupted, that I cannot be either bought or intimidated"; Journal of Historical Review ( March/April 1993), pp. 14-25; Journal of Historical Review (Winter 1984), 263-4; and his interview with Spotlight 10 (February 1992), in which he predicted a new wave of antisemitism because the Jews "have exploited people with the gas chamber legend."
65. Bela Vago, "An Anti-Jewish Distortion of History," Soviet Jewish Affairs 3 (1981), pp. 68-72.
66. Irving's allegations about Hungarian Jewish domination has appeared in extreme right antisemitic propaganda. See, for example, "State and Jewish Terror," distributed by Stormfront-List, 21 April 1998; see also Irving's statements in the case of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry against Frederick Toben concerning the role of the Jewish people in the Bolshevik Revolution and "in running the satellite nations in the Soviet empire," Irving Files.
67. Oí Keefe, "Irving on Churchill, pp. 498-504.
68. Irving's introduction to The Leuchter Report.
69. M.Schmidt, (London,
1993), p. 208; Irving's publications were displayed by
neo-Nazis in Dresden on the 50th anniversary of the Allied bombings
-- "Kleine Anfrage der Abgeordneten Ulla Jelpke und der Gruppe
der PDS," Deutscher Bundestag 13, Wahlperiode, 24 March 1995.
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