Jump to content

David Irving: Difference between revisions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Content deleted Content added
Olop4444 (talk | contribs)
grammar, punctuation
Tags: Visual edit Mobile edit Mobile web edit
 
Line 1: Line 1:
{{short description|British author and Holocaust denier}}
{{otheruses}}
{{verylong}}
{{Other uses}}
{{pp|small=yes}}

{{good article}}
{{Infobox Person
{{Use British English|date=April 2013}}
| name = David Irving
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2023}}
| image = David_Irving.jpg
{{Infobox writer
| image_size = 215px
| caption =
| embed =
| honorific_prefix =
| birth_name = David John Cawdell Irving
| name = David Irving
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=yes|1938|03|24}}
| honorific_suffix =
| birth_place = Essex, England
| image = David Irving 1 (cropped).jpg
| death_date =
| death_place =
| image_size =
| caption = Irving in 2012
| death_cause =
| home town =
| pseudonym =
| birth_name =
| nationality = British
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=y|1938|03|24}}
| residence = London, United Kingdom
| birth_place = [[Hutton, Essex|Hutton]], [[Essex]], England
| occupation = Writer
| death_date =
| known_for = [[Holocaust denial]] and negationist historical writing
| death_place =
| spouse = Pilar Irving (nee Stuyck), divorced 1981 (1) Bente Hogh (common law relationship) (2)
| partner =
| resting_place =
| children = 5
| occupation = {{hlist|Author}}
| language = {{hlist|English|German}}
| parents = John James Cawdell Irving & Beryl Irving
| relatives = Two brothers
| nationality =
| education = [[Brentwood School, Essex]]
| signature =
| alma_mater = {{plainlist|
| website = [http://www.fpp.co.uk fpp.co.uk]
* [[Imperial College London]]
| footnotes =
* [[University College London]]
}}
| period =
| genre = <!-- or: | genres = -->
| subject = <!-- or: | subjects = -->
| movement =
| notable_works = {{plainlist|
* ''[[The Destruction of Dresden]]''
* ''[[The Mare's Nest]]''
* ''[[Hitler's War]]''
}}
| spouse = {{marriage|María del Pilar Stuyck|1961|1981|end=divorce}}
| partner = Bente Hogh (since 1992)
| children = 5
| relatives =
| awards =
| signature =
| signature_alt =
| years_active = 1962–present
| module =
| website = <!-- {{URL|example.org}} -->
}}
}}
'''David John Cawdell Irving''' (born 24 March 1938) is an English author <!--NOTE: The consensus from talk page discussions has been that modern reliable sources generally do not state that David Irving is a "historian" and as a result the term "author" is used. Please do not change this without first obtaining consensus on the article's talk page --> who has written on the military and political history of [[World War II]], especially [[Nazi Germany]]. He was found to be a [[Holocaust denier]] in a UK court in 2000 as a result of a failed libel case.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hare |first1=Ivan |last2=Weinstein |first2=James |name-list-style=amp|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F6d08lrIYNQC&pg=PA553 |page=553 |title=Extreme Speech and Democracy |location=Oxford|publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-0199601790}}</ref>
'''David John Cawdell Irving''' (born 24 March 1938) is a [[United Kingdom|British]] writer<ref name="DI_author">Not an historian:
*"In 1969, after David Irving's support for [[Rolf Hochhuth]], the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, The [[Daily Telegraph]] issued a memo to all its correspondents. 'It is incorrect,' it said, 'to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.'" Ingrams, Richard. [http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece. Irving was the author of his own downfall], ''[[The Independent]]'', 25 February 2006.
*"It may seem an absurd semantic dispute to deny the appellation of 'historian' to someone who has written two dozen books or more about historical subjects. But if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as ‘historical writer’ instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it in order to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian’s primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian." Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books, [http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/evidence/evans006.asp Expert Witness Report by [[Richard J. Evans]] FBA, Professor of Modern History, [[University of Cambridge]]], 2000, Chapter 6.
*"State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: 'He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history.'" Traynor, Ian. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html Irving jailed for denying Holocaust], ''[[The Guardian]]'', 21 February 2006.
*"...Irving has never examined and interpreted facts for the simple reason that he is not a historian. He twists or suppresses evidence to fit a foregone conclusion &mdash; the opposite of what any reputable historian does." Taylor, Charles. [http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/05/23/irving/index4.html Evil takes the stand], ''[[Salon.com]]'', 24 May 2001. Retrieved 30 May 2007.
</ref> specializing in the [[military history]] of [[World War II]]. His interpretations of the [[Nazi Germany]] have proved highly controversial due to allegations of undue sympathy for the Third Reich and [[antisemitism]], and because of his involvement in the [[Holocaust denial]] movement. He has an extensive history of associating with [[far right]] and [[Neo-Nazism|neo-Nazi]] causes, famously seconding [[British Union of Fascists]] founder [[Oswald Moseley]] in a debate at [[University College London]] on immigration during his student days. He is the author of 30 books, including ''The Destruction of Dresden'' (1963), ''Hitler's War'' (1977), ''Uprising!'' (1981), ''Churchill's War'' (1987), and ''Goebbels — Mastermind of the Third Reich'' (1996).


Irving's works include ''[[The Destruction of Dresden]]'' (1963), ''[[Hitler's War]]'' (1977), ''Churchill's War'' (1987) and ''Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich'' (1996). In his works, he argued that [[Adolf Hitler]] did not know of the [[Final Solution|extermination of Jews]], or, if he did, he opposed it.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2001|p=101}}.</ref> Though Irving's [[Historical negationism|negationist]] claims and views of [[German war crimes#World War II|German war crimes in World War II]] (and Hitler's responsibility for them) were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents, which he held closely but stated were fully supportive of his conclusions.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|pp=91, 277, 278}}</ref> His 1964 book ''[[The Mare's Nest]]'' about Germany's [[V-weapons]] campaign of 1944–45 was praised for its deep research but criticised for minimising [[Forced labour under German rule during World War II|Nazi slave labour programmes]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Neufeld |first=Michael J. |title=Remembering the Space Age |publisher=Government Printing Office |year=2009 |isbn=9780160867118 |editor-last=Dick |editor-first=Steven J. |chapter=Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War |page=81}}</ref>
Irving's reputation as an [[historian]] was widely<!--The consensus, arrived at after a great deal of discussion, is that "discredited" is an accurate and widely documented term for Irving (see the twenty-four references using the term "discredited" in footnote 1), therefore it is not an NPOV violation to describe Irving as such. Please DO NOT change this until such time as consensus on the talk page dictates otherwise. PLEASE SEE TALK PAGE about fact tag/refimprovesect tag--> discredited<ref name=discredited>Discredited:
*Taylor, Matthew, ''The Guardian'', [http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,2179842,00.html "Discredited Irving plans comeback tour"], 29 September 2007.
*"One of Britain's most prominent speakers on Muslim issues is today exposed as a supporter of David Irving... Bukhari contacted the discredited historian, sentenced this year to three years in an Austrian prison for Holocaust denial, after reading his website." Doward, Jamie. [http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1951773,00.html "Muslim leader sent funds to Irving"], ''The Guardian'', 19 November 2006.
*"David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz." Traynor, Ian. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html "Irving jailed for denying Holocaust"], ''The Guardian'', 21 February 2006.
*"Conclusion on meaning 2.15 (vi): that Irving is discredited as an historian." [[s:David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/II|David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/II]].
*"DAVID Irving, the discredited revisionist historian and most outspoken British Holocaust denier, has added further fuel to the controversy over his early release from an Austrian jail by recanting his court statement of regret over his views." Crichton, Torcuil. "Holocaust denier reneges on regret", ''[[The Sunday Herald]]'', 24 December 2006.
*"Discredited British author David Irving spoke in front of some 250 people at a small theatre on Szabadság tér last Monday." Hodgson, Robert. [http://www.budapesttimes.hu/?do=article&id=2273 "Holocaust denier David Irving draws a friendly crowd in Budapest"], ''The Budapest Times'', 19 March 2007.
*"An account of the 2000 - 2001 libel trial in the high court of the now discredited historian David Irving, which formed the backdrop for his recent conviction in Vienna for denying the Holocaust." [http://bbc.ask-adders.com/program-details/David+Irving%3A+The+London+Trial/20060226170000/ Program Details - David Irving: The London Trial 2006-02-26 17:00:00], ''[[BBC Radio 4]].''
*"Yet Irving, a discredited right-wing historian, was described by a High Court judge after a long libel trial as a racist anti-semite who denied the Holocaust." Edwards, Rob. "Anti-green activist in links with Nazi writer; Revealed: campaigner", ''The Sunday Herald'', 5 May 2002.
*"'The sentence against Irving confirms that he and his views are discredited, but as a general rule I don’t think that this is the way this should be dealt with,' said Antony Lerman, director of the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research. 'It is better to combat denial by education and using good speech to drive out bad speech.'" Gruber, Ruth Ellen. [http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/28480/edition_id/541/format/html/displaystory.html "Jail sentence for Holocaust denier spurs debate on free speech"], ''[[j.]]'', 24 February 2006.
*"Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. She is the author of two books about the Holocaust. Her book ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'' led to the 2000 court case in which she defeated and discredited Holocaust denier David Irving." [http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/understanding/justice.html Understanding Auschwitz Today], Task of Justice & Danger of Holocaust Deniers, ''[[Public Broadcasting Service]]''.
*"After the discredited British historian David Irving was sentenced to a three-year jail term in Austria as a penalty for denying the Holocaust, the liberal conscience of western Europe has squirmed and agonised." Glover, Gillian. [http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1087&id=277732006 "Irving gets just what he wanted - his name in the headlines"], ''[[The Scotsman]]'', 23 February 2006.
*"...is a disciple of discredited historian and Holocaust denier David Irving." [[David Horowitz|Horowitz, David]]. ''The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America'', Regnery Publishing, 2006, ISBN 0895260034, p. 175.
*"If the case for competence applies to those who lack specialist knowledge, it applies even further to those who have been discredited as incompetent. For example, why ought we include David Irving in a debate aiming to establish the truth about the Holocaust, after a court has found that he manipulates and misinterprets history?" Long, Graham. ''Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism'', Imprint Academic, 2004, ISBN 1845400046, p. 80.
*"Ironically, Julius is also a celebrated solicitor famous for his defence of Schuchard's colleague, Deborah Lipstadt, against the suit for of libel brought by the discredited historian David Irving brought when Lipstadt accused him of denying the Holocaust." [http://www.york.ac.uk/admin/presspr/pressreleases/tseliot.htm "T S Eliot's anti-Semitism hotly debated as scholars argue over new evidence"], [[University of York]], Communications Office, 5 February 2003.
*"Irving, a discredited historian, has insisted that Jews at Auschwitz were not gassed." "Irving vows to continue denial", Breaking News, ''[[Jewish Telegraphic Agency]]'', 7 February 2007.
*"David Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was on Monday night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz." [http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=264817&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ "Historian jailed for denying Holocaust"], ''[[Mail & Guardian]]'', 21 February 2006.
*"Irving, a discredited historian, has insisted that Jews at Auschwitz were not gassed." [http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=13464 "Irving Vows To Continue Denial"], ''[[The Jewish Week]]'', 29 December 2006.
*"The two best-known present-day Holocaust deniers are the discredited historian David Irving, jailed last year in Austria for the offence, and the Iranian President [[Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]], who wants Israel wiped off the map." Wills, Clair. " Ben Kiely and the 'Holocaust denial'", ''[[Irish Independent]]'', 10 March 2007.
*"[Irving] claimed that Lipstadt's book accuses him of falsifying historical facts in order to support his theory that the Holocaust never happened. This of course discredited his reputation as a historian. .. On 11 April, High Court judge Charles Gray ruled against Irving, concluding that he indeed qualified as a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite and that as such he has distorted history in order to defend his hero, Adolf Hitler." Wyden, Peter. ''The Hitler Virus: the Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler'', Arcade Publishing, 2001, ISBN 1559705329, p. 164.
*"Now that holocaust denier David Irving has been discredited, what is the future of history?" Kustow, Michael. [http://web.archive.org/web/20070416193052/http://www.redpepper.org.uk/cularch/xirving.html "History after Irving"], ''[[Red Pepper (magazine)|Red Pepper]]'', June, 2000.
*"In Britain, which does not have a Holocaust denial law, Irving had already been thoroughly discredited when he unsuccessfully sued historian Deborah Lipstadt in 1998 for describing him as a Holocaust denier." Callamard, Agnès. "Debate: can we say what we want?", ''[[Le Monde diplomatique]]'', April, 2007.
*"Holocaust denier and discredited British historian David Irving, for example, asserts. .. that Auschwitz gas chambers were constructed after World War II." [http://www.psych.org/pnews/01-02-02/hate.html "Hate-Group Web Sites Target Children, Teens"], ''Psychiatric News'', [[American Psychiatric Association]], 2 February 2001.
*"Holocaust denier: An Austrian court hears discredited British historian David Irving's appeal against his jail sentence for denying the Nazi genocide of the Jews.", [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6183173.stm "The world this week"], ''[[BBC News]]'', 20 December 2006.
*"DISCREDITED British historian David Irving began serving three years in an Austrian prison yesterday for denying the Holocaust, a crime in the country where Hitler was born." Schofield, Matthew. [http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/02/21/1140284069021.html?from=rss "Controversial Nazi apologist backs down, but still jailed for three years"], ''[[The Age]]'', 22 February 2006.
</ref> after he brought an unsuccessful [[libel]] case against American historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]] and [[Penguin Books]] in 1996. During the trial, an English court found that Irving was an "active Holocaust denier," as well as an antisemite and [[Racism|racist]], and that he "associates with [[Far right|right-wing extremists]] who promote neo-Nazism."<ref name=Guardianruling/> The judge also ruled that Irving had "for his own [[Ideology|ideological]] reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."<ref name=Guardianruling>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/irving/article/0,,181049,00.html "The ruling against David Irving"], excerpts from High Court Judge Charles Gray's ruling, ''The Guardian'', 11 April 2000.</ref><ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/709128.stm "Hitler historian loses libel case"], BBC News, 11 April 2000.</ref>


By the late 1980s, Irving had placed himself outside the mainstream of the study of history, and had begun to turn from {{"'}}soft-core' to 'hard-core' Holocaust denial", possibly influenced by the 1988 trial of Holocaust denier [[Ernst Zündel]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=119–23}}</ref> That trial, and his reading of the [[pseudoscientific]]<ref group=Note>[[Leuchter Report]] dismissed as pseudoscientific:
On a visit to Austria, Irving was apprehended, tried and convicted of "glorifying and identifying with the German [[Nazi Party]]", which is a crime in Austria under the [[Verbotsgesetz]] law. He served a [[prison sentence]] from February to December 2006 on the charges.
*"Leuchter and Rudolf have published pseudoscientific reports purporting to show that chemical residues present in the gas chambers of [[Auschwitz-Birkenau]] are incompatible with homicidal gassings." {{cite web |last=Green |first=Richard J. |url=http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/blue/ |title=Leuchter, Rudolf, and the Iron Blues |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080517043351/http://www.holocaust-history.org/auschwitz/chemistry/blue/ |archive-date=17 May 2008 |access-date=11 September 2008}}
*"The Leuchter Report, a pseudo-scientific document which allegedly proves that Zyklon B was not used to exterminate human beings, was translated into Arabic and sold at the International Book Fair in Cairo in January 2001." {{cite book |last=Roth |first=Stephen |title=Antisemitism Worldwide, 2000/1 |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=2002 |page=228}}
*"The turning point came in 1989, when Irving launched Fred Leuchter's pseudo-scientific Leuchter Report, which made the spurious claim that the absence of cyanide residues in the walls of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other camps proved that they could not have functioned as mass extermination centres." {{cite book |last1=Brinks |first1=Jan Herman |last2=Timms |first2=Edward |last3=Rock |first3=Stella |title=Nationalist Myths and Modern Media |publisher=[[I.B. Tauris]] |year=2006 |page=72}}
*"The Leuchter report, was, indeed, an amateurish report produced by a man with no expertise, either historical or forensic." {{cite book |last=Hirsh |first=David |title=Law Against Genocide |publisher=Routledge Cavendish |year=2003 |page=134}}
*"Another common tactic of the deniers is to engage in historical inquiries that on the surface appear legitimate but upon close examination prove to be based on pseudo-science. One prominent example was the investigation of the Auschwitz gas chambers by [[Fred Leuchter]] [...] Detailed study of the 'Leuchter Report' revealed that it was based on erroneous assumptions (cyanide does not penetrate deeply into concrete). It also emerged that Leuchter had falsified his credentials and overstated his expertise. Despite this, his report is still cited by deniers." {{cite book |last1=Cull |first1=Nicholas John |last2=Culbert |first2=David Holbrook |last3=Welch |first3=David |title=Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present |publisher=ABC-CLIO |year=2003 |page=168}}
*"...{{nbsp}}the institute relied primarily on the talents of a California-based publicist named Bradley Smith who packaged and promoted Leuchter's discredited material as if it were the very essence of 'scientific research' or at least a tenable 'point of view', intrinsically worthy of inclusion in the academic agenda{{nbsp}}..." {{cite book |last=Churchill |first=Ward |title=A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present |publisher=City Lights Books |year=1997 |page=24}}
*"After the trial, both Irving and Zündel published the results of Leuchter's trial research as ''The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth,'' despite the fact that the court rejected both the report and Leuchter's testimony.{{nbsp}}... The discredited report is popular in the Holocaust denial movement and one edition features a foreword by Irving." {{cite book |last1=Gerstenfeld |first1=Phyllis B. |last2=Grant |first2=Diana R. |title=Crimes of Hate: Selected Readings |publisher=SAGE |year=2003 |page=201}}
*"Leuchter's report contained a considerable amount of scientific, or, as it turned out, pseudo-scientific analysis of chemical residues on the gas chamber walls and similar matters. It was quickly discredited, not least on the basis of Leuchter's failure adequately to defend his findings on the witness stand." {{cite book |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |title=David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial |edition=electronic |url=http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/330c.html |url-status=dead |chapter=The 1991 Edition of ''Hitler's War'' |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314040112/http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/330c.html |archive-date=14 March 2016 |at=Section 3.3c, Paragraph 13 |access-date=12 September 2008}}</ref> [[Leuchter report]], led him to openly espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=van Pelt|first1=Robert Jan |title=The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial|date=2002|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington, Indiana|isbn=0-253-34016-0|page=[https://archive.org/details/caseforauschwitz00pelt/page/15 15]|edition=First|url=https://archive.org/details/caseforauschwitz00pelt/page/15}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2001|p=125}}.</ref>

Irving's reputation as a [[historian]] was further discredited<ref group=Note>Irving is discredited as a historian in a number of sources:
*"Conclusion on meaning 2.15 (vi): that Irving is discredited as a historian." [[s:David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/II|''David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt'']] [2000] EWHC QB 115 (11 April 2000).
*"Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. She is the author of two books about the Holocaust. Her book ''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'' led to the 2000 court case in which she defeated and discredited Holocaust denier David Irving." {{cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/understanding/justice.html |title= Task of Justice & Danger of Holocaust Deniers |work= Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State – Understanding Auschwitz Today |publisher= [[PBS]] }}
*"If the case for competence applies to those who lack specialist knowledge, it applies even further to those who have been discredited as incompetent. For example, why ought we include David Irving in a debate aiming to establish the truth about the Holocaust, after a court has found that he manipulates and misinterprets history?" {{cite book |last= Long |first= Graham |title= Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism |publisher= Imprint Academic |year= 2004 |isbn= 1-84540-004-6 |page=80}}
* "[Irving] claimed that Lipstadt's book accuses him of falsifying historical facts in order to support his theory that the Holocaust never happened. This of course discredited his reputation as a historian&nbsp;... On 11 April, High Court judge Charles Gray ruled against Irving, concluding that he indeed qualified as a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite and that as such he has distorted history in order to defend his hero, Adolf Hitler." {{Harvnb|Wyden|2001|p=164}}.
*"In Britain, which does not have a Holocaust denial law, Irving had already been thoroughly discredited when he unsuccessfully sued historian Deborah Lipstadt in 2000 for describing him as a Holocaust denier." {{cite magazine |last= Callamard |first= Agnès |title= Debate: can we say what we want? |magazine= [[Le Monde diplomatique]] |date=April 2007}}</ref> in 2000, when, in the course of an [[Irving v Penguin Books Ltd|unsuccessful libel case]] he filed against the American historian [[Deborah Lipstadt]] and [[Penguin Books]], High Court Judge [[Charles Gray (judge)|Charles Gray]] determined in his ruling that Irving willfully misrepresented historical evidence to promote Holocaust denial and [[whitewashing (censorship)|whitewash]] the Nazis, a view shared by many prominent historians.<ref group="Note">Shown to have misrepresented historical evidence:
* "In 1969, after David Irving's support for [[Rolf Hochhuth]], the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' issued a memo to all its correspondents. 'It is incorrect', it said, 'to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.{{'"}} {{cite news|url=http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece|title=Irving was the author of his own downfall|last=Ingrams|first=Richard|date=25 February 2006|work=[[The Independent]]|access-date=27 March 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071220125920/http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece|archive-date=20 December 2007|url-status=dead|location=London}}
* "It may seem an absurd semantic dispute to deny the appellation of 'historian' to someone who has written two dozen books or more about historical subjects. But if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as 'historical writer' instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian's primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian." ''Irving v Lipstadt'' and ''Irving v Penguin Books'', [http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html expert witness report] by {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131206151336/http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html |date=6 December 2013 }} [[Richard J. Evans]] FBA, Professor of Modern History, [[University of Cambridge]], 2000, Chapter 6.
* "State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: 'He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history.{{'"}} {{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html|title=Irving jailed for denying Holocaust|last=Traynor|first=Ian|date=21 February 2006|work=The Guardian|access-date=27 March 2010|location=London}}
* "Irving has never examined and interpreted facts for the simple reason that he is not a historian. He twists or suppresses evidence to fit a foregone conclusion—the opposite of what any reputable historian does." {{cite web|url=http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/05/23/irving/index4.html|title=Evil takes the stand|last=Taylor|first=Charles|date=24 May 2001|work=[[Salon (website)|Salon]]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012175133/http://archive.salon.com/books/feature/2001/05/23/irving/index4.html|archive-date=12 October 2007|url-status=dead|access-date=30 May 2007}}
* [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]]: "But I don't regard him as an historian. I don't think he has any historical sense. He is a propagandist who uses efficiently collected and arranged material to support a propagandist line." Cited in {{harvnb|Evans|2002|p=261}}; and {{cite magazine |author-link=Michael Shermer |first=Michael |last=Shermer |url=http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-05-03/ |title=''Enigma'': The Faustian Bargain of David Irving |magazine=[[Skeptical Inquirer]] |date=3 May 2005}}</ref> The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, [[antisemite]] and [[racist]],<ref name="Guardian ruling">{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/irving/article/0,,181049,00.html |title= The ruling against David Irving |work=The Guardian |date= 11 April 2000|location=London|access-date=27 March 2010}}</ref> who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".<ref name="Guardian ruling" /><ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/709128.stm |title= Hitler historian loses libel case |work=BBC News |date= 11 April 2000 |access-date=2 January 2010}}</ref> In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of [[Responsibility for the Holocaust#Adolf Hitler|Hitler's role in the Holocaust]] to depict Hitler in a favourable light.


==Early life==
==Early life==
David Irving and his twin brother Nicholas<ref name="Guttenplan 41">{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=41}}.</ref> were born six months before the start of the [[Sudetendeutsches Freikorps#Undeclared German–Czechoslovak War|undeclared German–Czechoslovak War]], as [[Nazi Germany]] moved towards its opening of [[World War II]]. The family lived in [[Hutton, Essex|Hutton]], near [[Brentwood, Essex|Brentwood]], [[Essex]], England. They had a brother, John,<ref>"Irving, John N B (mother Newington)" in Register of Births for Hampstead Registration District, vol. 1a (1930), p. 803</ref> and a sister, Jennifer.<ref>"Irving, Jennifer C (mother Newington)" in Register of Births for Billericay Registration District, vol. 4a (1935), p. 878</ref> Their father, John James Cawdell Irving (1898–1967), was a career naval officer and a commander in the [[Royal Navy]]. Their mother, Beryl Irving (''née'' Newington), was an illustrator and a writer of children's books.<ref name="Craig">{{cite news|last=Craig|first=Olga|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511495/David-what-on-earth-would-Mother-think.html|title=David, what on earth would Mother think?|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|date=26 February 2006|access-date=2 September 2011|url-access=registration|url-status=bot: unknown|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110805023947/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511495/David-what-on-earth-would-Mother-think.html|archive-date=5 August 2011}}</ref>
Irving, along with his twin brother,<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', p. 41.</ref> was born in Hutton, near [[Brentwood, Essex]], England. His father, John James Cawdell Irving, was a commander in the [[Royal Navy]], and his mother, Beryl, an illustrator (Beryl Irene Newington was born at St. Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, on 24 October 1896, the daughter of Captain Charles Newington, formerly of the Indian Army, and his wife Frances (née Dolman)). During the Second World War, Irving's father was an officer aboard the light cruiser [[HMS Edinburgh (C16)|HMS ''Edinburgh'']]. On 2 May 1942, while escorting [[Arctic convoys of World War II#1942|Convoy QP-11]] in the [[Barents Sea]], the ship was sunk by the German [[U-boat]] U-456. Irving's father survived, but severed all links with his wife and their children after the incident.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', p. 40.</ref> Irving described his childhood in an interview with the American writer [[Ron Rosenbaum]] as: "Unlike the Americans, we English suffered great deprivations...we went through childhood with no toys. We had no kind of childhood at all. We were living on an island that was crowded with other people's armies".<ref name=autogenerated5>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 227</ref> Irving went on to claim to Rosenbaum that his [[Historical revisionism (negationism)|negationist]] views about [[World War II]] dated to his childhood, particularly due to his objections to the way [[Adolf Hitler]] was portrayed in the British media during the war.<ref name=autogenerated5 /> Irving asserted that his "sceptical" views about the Third Reich were due to his doubts to the cartoonist caricature of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders that appeared in the British press during the war.<ref name=autogenerated5 />


During World War II, Irving's father was an officer aboard the light cruiser [[HMS Edinburgh (C16)|HMS ''Edinburgh'']]. On 30 April 1942, while escorting [[Convoy QP 11]] in the [[Barents Sea]], the ship was badly damaged by the [[German submarine U-456]]. Two days later, the ship was attacked by the German destroyers {{ship|German destroyer Z7|Hermann Schoemann||2}}, {{ship|German destroyer|Z24||2}} and {{ship|German destroyer|Z25||2}}, and now beyond recovery was abandoned and scuttled by a torpedo from [[HMS Foresight (H68)|HMS ''Foresight'']]. Irving's father survived but severed all links with his wife and children after the incident.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=40}}.</ref>
==Student years==
After completing [[Advanced Level (UK)|A-levels]] at [[Brentwood School (Brentwood, England)|Brentwood School]], Irving briefly studied physics (though never graduated, due to financial reasons<ref>Gutterplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton page 41</ref>) at [[Imperial College London]]. He gained notoriety by writing for ''Felix'', the [[student newspaper]], and in 1959 served as editor of the [[University of London]] Carnival Committee's journal, ''Carnival Times''. His time as editor was controversial because Irving wrote an article calling Hitler the "greatest unifying force Europe has known since [[Charlemagne]]", though Irving deflected criticism by characterizing the ''Carnival Times'' as "[[satire|satirical]]".<ref>Wyden, Peter'' The Hitler Virus: The Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler'', New York: Arcade Publishing, 2001 page 159</ref> Covering the controversy regarding his editorship of ''The Carnival Times'', Irving was asked by a ''[[Daily Mail]]'' reporter about his political views. In the 1 May 1959 edition of the ''Daily Mail'', Irving is quoted as having replied: "You can call me a mild fascist if you like. I have just come back from [Francisco Franco's] Madrid...I returned through Germany and visited Hitler's eyrie at Berchtesgaden. I regard it as a shrine."<ref>{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving File
| work =
| publisher = Anti-Defamation League
|month=June | year=1996
| url = http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/2753_121352.asp
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-16}}</ref> Irving has denounced that article as libellous and the "handiwork of an imaginative ''Daily Mail'' journalist".<ref>[http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/PQ17Libel/Parker240269.html Real History and the 1942 North Russian Convoys]</ref>
He also stated he was [[Euroscepticism in the United Kingdom|against the formation]] of what is now the [[European Union]]. He later studied for a degree in [[political economy]] at [[University College London]],<ref>[http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/PQ17Libel/Background220170.html Real History and the 1942 North Russian Convoys<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> which he dropped out of after two years. During his time at university, he seconded British Union of Fascists founder Oswald Mosley in a debate on [[Commonwealth of Nations|Commonwealth]] immigration, and was [[Heckler|heckled]].<ref>http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/08/03/images/Mosley_at_UCL.gif</ref>


Irving described his childhood in an interview with the American writer [[Ron Rosenbaum]] as: "Unlike the Americans, we English suffered great deprivations ... we went through childhood with no toys. We had no kind of childhood at all. We were living on an island that was crowded with other people's armies".<ref name="Rosenbaum 227">{{Harvnb|Rosenbaum|1999|p=227}}.</ref> According to his brother, Nicholas, David has been a provocateur and prankster since his youth. Nicholas Irving has said that "David used to run toward bombed out houses shouting 'Heil Hitler!{{'"}}, a statement which Irving denies.<ref name="Craig"/>
According to the [[Anti-Defamation League]], Irving also supported [[South Africa under apartheid|apartheid in South Africa]], racist cartoons, and wrote appreciatively of Nazi Germany.<ref>[http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=Irving ADL profile]</ref>


Irving went on to say to Rosenbaum that his [[Holocaust denial|negationist]] views about World War II dated to his childhood, particularly due to his objections to the way [[Adolf Hitler]] was portrayed in the British media during the war.<ref name="Rosenbaum 227" /> Irving asserted that his sceptical views about the Third Reich were rooted in his doubts about the cartoonist caricatures of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders published in the British wartime press.<ref name="Rosenbaum 227" />
==''The Destruction of Dresden''==
Sometime after serving in 1959 as editor of the University of London Carnival Committee's journal, Irving left for [[West Germany]], where he worked as a steelworker in a [[ThyssenKrupp|Thyssen]] steel works in the [[Ruhr]] area and learned [[German language|German]]. He then moved to [[Spain]], where he worked as a clerk at an air base. During his time in Spain, Irving married his first wife, a Spanish woman with whom he had five children. In 1962, he wrote a series of 37 articles on the [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] [[Strategic bombing during World War II|bombing campaign]], ''Wie Deutschlands Städte starben'' (''How Germany's Cities Died''), for the German boulevard journal ''Neue Illustrierte''. These were the basis of his first book, ''The Destruction of Dresden'' (1963), in which he examined the Allied [[Bombing of Dresden in World War II|bombing of Dresden]] in February 1945. By the 1960s, a debate about the morality of the [[carpet bombing]] of German cities and civilian population had already begun, especially in the United Kingdom. There was consequently considerable interest in Irving's book, which was illustrated with graphic pictures, and it became an international [[bestseller]].


==Student years==
In the first edition, Irving's estimates for deaths in [[Dresden]] were between 100,000 and 250,000 — notably higher than most previously published figures.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001 pages 225-226</ref> These figures became authoritative and widely accepted in many standard reference works. In later editions of the book over the next three decades, he gradually adjusted the figure downwards to 50,000-100,000.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001 page 43</ref> According to the evidence introduced by [[Richard J. Evans]] at the libel trial of [[Deborah Lipstadt]] in 2000, Irving based his estimates of the dead of Dresden on the word of one individual who provided no supporting documentation, used forged documents, and described one witness who was a [[urologist]] as Dresden's Deputy Chief Medical Officer. The doctor has since complained about being misidentified by Irving, and further, was only reporting rumours about the death toll.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001 page 225</ref> Today, casualties at Dresden are estimated as most likely 25,000-35,000 dead, and probably towards the lower end of that range.<ref>Evans, Lying about Hitler, Pg. 170</ref>
[[File:David Irving at Brentwood 1955.jpg|thumb|Irving in 1955]]


After completing [[Advanced Level (UK)|A levels]] at [[Brentwood School (Brentwood, England)|Brentwood School]], Irving studied for a physics degree at [[Imperial College London]], leaving after the first year. He did not complete the course because of financial constraints.<ref name="Guttenplan 41" /><ref name="ShermerGrobman2009p281">{{Harvnb|Shermer|Grobman|2009|p=281}}.</ref>
==1963 burglary of Irving's apartment ==
By November 1963, Irving was in England when he called the [[London Metropolitan Police]] with suspicions he had been the victim of a burglary, perpetrated by three men who had gained access to his [[Mayfair]] apartment claiming to be [[General Post Office (United Kingdom)|General Post Office]] (GPO) engineers. [[Gerry Gable]] was subsequently arrested and held at [[Hornsey]] police station, where on 14 January 1964, along with Manny Carpel and another, Gable admitted breaking in with intent to steal private papers. At the trial, counsel for the defence claimed that this was no ordinary crime, telling the court, "they hoped to find material they could take to [[Special Branch]]". The case was reported in the ''[[Daily Telegraph]]'', 17 January 1964 and other newspapers.<ref>[http://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/bulletin/issues/kslb28.htm#searchlight "Searchlight" & the State]</ref> Irving considered this incident important, and in his video 'Ich komme wieder' he describes this as the first indication he had that he was under attack for some reason.<ref>[https://pro4.abac.com/focalp/aim/misc_tapes/ David Irving's World of Real History.]</ref> Gable was a former member of the [[British Communist Party]], and would later run ''[[Searchlight (magazine)|Searchlight]]'', a magazine devoted to anti-fascist activities. In a letter from Gable to [[London Weekend Television]] in May 1977, he would later boast of his "top level [[security service]] sources".<ref>[http://www.fpp.co.uk/docs/people/Gable/OxfordStudent0500.html Fighting the Holocaust deniers]</ref>


Irving later studied for two years toward a degree in [[Economics]] in the department of [[Political Economy]] at [[University College London]].<ref name=IrvingPQ17libel>{{cite web |url=http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/PQ17Libel/Background220170.html |title=David Irving: Information for Counsel on my Background |publisher=Fpp.co.uk |access-date=2 September 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110818105540/http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/PQ17Libel/Background220170.html |archive-date=18 August 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> He again had to drop out due to lack of funds.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=11}}</ref><ref name="adl profile">{{cite web|title = David Irving: Propagandists' Poster Boy|publisher = [[Anti-Defamation League]]|year = 2005|url = http://www.adl.org/holocaust/irving.asp|access-date =18 April 2007 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070405134246/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/irving.asp |archive-date =5 April 2007 }}</ref> During this period at university, he participated in a debate on [[Commonwealth of Nations|Commonwealth]] immigration, seconding [[British Union of Fascists]] founder [[Oswald Mosley|Sir Oswald Mosley]].<ref>{{cite news |author=Staff |url=http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/08/03/images/Mosley_at_UCL.gif |title=Mosley packs them in |newspaper=[[Pi (magazine)|Pi]] |date=2 February 1961 |access-date=26 January 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330175348/http://www.fpp.co.uk/online/08/03/images/Mosley_at_UCL.gif |archive-date=30 March 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
==Historian==
[[Image:David irving.jpg|thumb|right|Irving at [[The National Archives]], 2003]]
After the success of the Dresden book, Irving continued writing, including some works of [[Historical revisionism (political)|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 (edited by Walter Görlitz); and in 1967 published ''Accident: The Death of General Sikorski''. In the latter book, Irving claimed that the plane crash which killed [[Polish government in exile]] leader General [[Władysław Sikorski]] in 1943 was really an assassination ordered by [[Winston Churchill]], so as to enable Churchill to "betray" Poland to the [[Soviet Union]]. Irving's book inspired the highly controversial 1967 play ''Soldiers'' by his friend, the German playwright [[Rolf Hochhuth]], where Hochhuth depicts Churchill ordering the “assassination” of General Sikorski. Also in 1967, he published two more works: ''The Virus House,'' an account of the [[German nuclear energy project]], and ''The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17,'' in which he blamed the British escort group commander, Commander [[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 17 days of deliberation before London's High Court, Broome won. Irving was forced to pay £40,000 in damages, and the book was withdrawn from circulation.


===''Carnival Times'' article===
<!-- moved for better flow and timeline organization -->
Irving's time as an editor of the ''Carnival Times'', a student [[rag mag]] of the [[University of London]] Carnival Committee, became controversial in 1959 when he added a "secret supplement" to the magazine.<ref>[http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.html?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=irving Extremism in America: David Irving] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171230115529/http://archive.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.html?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=irving |date=30 December 2017 }} [[Anti-Defamation League]]</ref><ref name=Waterhouse/> This supplement contained an article in which he called Hitler the "greatest unifying force Europe has known since [[Charlemagne]]". Although Irving deflected criticism by characterising the ''Carnival Times'' as "[[satire|satirical]]",<ref>{{Harvnb|Wyden|2001|p=159}},</ref> he also stated that "[[Treaty of Rome|the formation of a European Union]] is interpreted as building a group of superior peoples, and the Jews have always viewed with suspicion the emergence of any 'master-race' (other than their own, of course)".<ref name="50 Years On: David Irving, Apartheid and ULU">{{cite web |last=Lay |first=Kat |url=http://www.london-student.net/2009/05/26/50-years-on-david-irving-apartheid-and-ulu/ |title=50 years on: David Irving, Apartheid and ULU |publisher=London Student |date=26 May 2009 |access-date=21 August 2010 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091130160544/http://www.london-student.net/2009/05/26/50-years-on-david-irving-apartheid-and-ulu/ |archive-date=30 November 2009}}</ref> Opponents also viewed a cartoon included in the supplement as racist and criticised another article in which Irving wrote that the British press was owned by Jews.<ref>{{cite book|first=Stephen E.|last=Atkins|year=2009|title=Holocaust Denial as an International Movement|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M9Uj6u6b-ZIC&q=david+irving+racist+cartoon+carnival+times&pg=PA119|location=Walport, Connecticut; London, England|publisher=Praeger|page=119|isbn=978-0-313-34538-8}}</ref> Volunteers were later recruited to remove and destroy the supplements before the magazine's distribution.<ref name="50 Years On: David Irving, Apartheid and ULU"/> Irving has said that the criticism is "probably justifiable" and has described his motivation in producing the controversial secret issue of ''Carnival Times'' as being to prevent the ''Carnival'' from making a profit that would be passed on to a South African group which he considered a "subversive organisation".<ref name=IrvingPQ17libel/><ref>{{cite web |url=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/saxon/SaxonServlet?style=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/saxon/EAD/yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&source=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/fedora/get/mssa:ms.1500/EAD&big=y&adv=&query=South%20African%20Apartheid%20Collection%20&filter=&hitPageStart=1&sortFields=&view=c01_8 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100708174040/http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/saxon/SaxonServlet?style=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/saxon/EAD/yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&source=http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/fedora/get/mssa:ms.1500/EAD&big=y&adv=&query=South%20African%20Apartheid%20Collection%20&filter=&hitPageStart=1&sortFields=&view=c01_8 |url-status=dead |archive-date=8 July 2010 |title=International Pressure Groups |publisher=Drs.library.yale.edu:8083 |access-date=2 September 2011 }}</ref>
After ''PQ-17'', Irving largely shifted to writing [[biography|biographies]]. In 1968, Irving published ''Breach of Security'', an account of German reading of messages to and from the British Embassy in Berlin before 1939 with an introduction by the British historian D.C. Watt. As a result of Irving's success with ''Dresden'', but prior to the conclusion of the Broome trial, members of Germany's extreme right wing assisted him in contacting surviving members of Hitler's inner circle. In an interview with the American journalist [[Ron Rosenbaum]], Irving claimed to have developed sympathies towards them (referring to them as "the Magic Circle").<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 pages 227-229</ref> Many aging former mid- and high-ranked Nazis saw a potential friend in Irving and donated diaries and other material. Irving described his historical work to Rosenbaum as an act of "stone-cleaning" of Hitler, in which he cleared off the "slime" that he felt had been unjustly applied to Hitler's reputation.<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 pages 232</ref> In 1971, he translated the memoirs of General [[Reinhard Gehlen]], and in 1973 published ''The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe'', a biography of Luftwaffe Marshal [[Erhard Milch]]. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on ''[[Hitler's War]]'' and the ''War Path'', his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler; ''The Trail of the Fox,'' a biography of Field Marshal [[Erwin Rommel]]; and a series in the ''[[Sunday Express]]'' describing the [[Royal Air Force]]'s famous [[Operation Chastise|Dam Busters]] raid.


==''The Destruction of Dresden''==
In 1975, in his introduction to ''Hitler und seine Feldherren'', the German edition of ''Hitler's War'', Irving attacked the diary of [[Anne Frank]] as a forgery, claiming falsely that a New York court had ruled that the diary was really the work of an American scriptwriter [[Meyer Levin]] "in collaboration with the girl's father".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 232.</ref> In fact, Levin had been commissioned by [[Otto Frank]] to serve as his American literary agent in 1952, whom Frank had then fired and turned over the literary rights to ''The Diary of Anne Frank'' to [[Kermit Bloomgarden]].<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 231.</ref> Bloomgraden produced a successful play version of the diary in 1955, leading Levin to sue over alleged plagiarism of his unproduced theatrical version of ''The Diary of Anne Frank''.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 231.</ref> In 1959, a court ruled against Levin, leading him to appeal; the case was settled out of court in 1963.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 231.</ref> Lipstadt argued in 1993 book ''Denying the Holocaust'' that those like Irving who claim that Levin was the real author of ''The Diary of Anne Frank'' are engaging in a willful misrepresentation of the facts.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 231.</ref>
{{Main article|The Destruction of Dresden|Bombing of Dresden in World War II}}


Irving tried to join the [[Royal Air Force]] but was deemed to be medically unfit.<ref>{{cite web|title=Profile: David Irving|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4449948.stm|website=BBC|author=Andrew Walker|date=20 February 2006}}</ref>
Description of Irving as a historian, rather than a historical author, is controversial, with some publications continuing to refer to him as a "historian"<ref name="DI_historian">e.g. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/irving/ The Guardian]</ref> or "disgraced historian,"<ref name=DIdisgraced>Philippe Naughton and agencies in Vienna. [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2049360,00.html "Irving jailed for three years, despite Holocaust U-turn"], ''[[The Times]],'' 20 February 2006.</ref> while others insist he is not a historian, and have adopted alternatives such as "author" or "historic writer."<ref name="DI_author"/> The military historian [[John Keegan]] has praised Irving for his "extraordinary ability to describe and analyse Hitler's conduct of military operations, which was his main occupation during the [[Second World War]]."<ref>The trial of David Irving &mdash; and my part in his downfall, by John Keegan, Defence Editor, Daily Telegraph (UK) ISSUE 1783 Wednesday 12 April 2000</ref> Donald Cameron Watt, [[Emeritus Professor]] of Modern History at the [[London School of Economics]], wrote that he admires some of Irving's work as a historian, though he rejects his conclusions about the Holocaust.<ref name=HistoryNeeds>"History needs David Irvings" by Donald Cameron Watt, The Evening Standard, 11 April 2000.</ref> At the libel proceedings against Irving, Watt declined Irving's request to testify, appearing only after a [[subpoena]] was ordered.<ref name=dd>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial''. 2001, page 128.</ref> He testified that Irving had written a "very, very effective piece of historical scholarship" in the 1960s, which was unrelated to his controversial work; he also suggested that Irving was "not in the top class" of military historians.<ref name=dd />


After serving in 1959 as editor of the University of London Carnival Committee's journal, instead of doing [[national service]], Irving left for West Germany, where he worked as a steelworker in a [[Thyssen AG]] steel works in the [[Ruhr]] area and learned the [[German language]]. He then moved to Spain, where he worked as a clerk at an air base.<ref name="Craig"/>
==Revisionism==
===''Hitler's War''===
{{ambox
| type = style
| text = '''This section needs [[Wikipedia:Section#Subdivisions in general|subsections]].'''<br><small>Please format the article according to the guidelines laid out at [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)]].</small>
}}


By 1962, Irving was engaged to write a series of 37 articles on the [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] [[Strategic bombing during World War II|bombing campaign]], ''Und Deutschlands Städte starben nicht'' ("And Germany's Cities Did Not Die"), for the German [[boulevard journalism|boulevard journal]] ''Neue Illustrierte''. These were the basis for his first book, ''[[The Destruction of Dresden]]'' (1963), in which he examined the Allied [[Bombing of Dresden in World War II|bombing of Dresden]] in February 1945. By the 1960s, a debate about the morality of the [[carpet bombing]] of German cities and civilian population had already begun, especially in the United Kingdom. There was consequently considerable interest in Irving's book, which was illustrated with graphic pictures, and it became an international [[best-seller]].<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Packer |first=George |title=Embers |magazine=The New Yorker |date=1 February 2010 |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/02/01/embers-2| access-date=2 January 2020}}<!--for the best-seĺler fact, not the illustrations--></ref>
In 1977 Irving published ''[[Hitler's War]]'', the first of his two-part biography of [[Adolf Hitler]]. ''Hitler's War'' had been first published in [[German language|German]] as ''Hitler und seine Feldherren'' (''Hitler and his Field Command'') in 1975.<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 178">Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'' New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 178</ref> In ''Hitler's War'', Irving tried to describe the war from "Hitler's point of view". He portrayed Hitler as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent. For instance, Irving's book faulted the Allied leaders, most notably [[Winston Churchill]], for the eventual escalation of war, and claimed that the [[Operation Barbarossa|German invasion of the Soviet Union]] in 1941 was a "[[preventive war]]" forced on Hitler to avert an alleged impending Soviet attack (supported by some, notably Soviet [[GRU]] defector [[Victor Suvorov]], and others; see ''[[Icebreaker (Suvorov)|Icebreaker]]''). Irving commented that in light of the "preventive war" that he felt Hitler was forced to wage, the [[Commissar Order|''Kommissarbefehl'']] was merely something that Stalin forced on Hitler.<ref>Evans, Richard ''In Hitler's Shadow'' New York: Pantheon Books, 1989 page 166. </ref> He also claimed that Hitler had no knowledge of [[the Holocaust]]; while not denying its occurrence, Irving claimed that [[Heinrich Himmler]] and his deputy [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were its originators and architects. Irving made much of the lack of any written order from Hitler ordering the Holocaust, and for decades afterward offered to pay £1000 to anyone who could find such an order. In addition, citing the work of such historians as [[Harry Elmer Barnes]], [[David Hoggan]], and Frederick J.P. Veale, Irving argued that Britain was primarily responsible for the [[World War II#War breaks out|outbreak of war]] in 1939.<ref>{{cite web
| last = Stauber
| first = Roni
| authorlink = Roni Stauber
| coauthors =
| title = From Revisionism to Holocaust Denial David Irving as A Case Study
| work =
| publisher =
|month=
| url = http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/irving.htm l
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-18}}</ref> In a footnote in ''Hitler’s War'', Irving first introduced the thesis later popularized in the 1980s by [[Ernst Nolte]] that because [[Chaim Weizmann]] wrote a letter to [[Neville Chamberlain]] on September 3, 1939 pledging the support of the Jewish Agency to the Allied war effort, that this constituted a “Jewish declaration of war” against Germany, thus justifying German “interment” of European Jews.<ref name="Lipstadt page 111">Lipstadt,Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 111</ref> A major law-suit that arose in 1975 from the German edition of ''Hitler's War'' when the firm of Ulstein-Verlag removed the passages from ''Hitler und seine Feldherren'' claiming Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust without Irving's permission, leading him to sue Ulstein-Verlag over abridging his book<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 178"/>.


In the first edition, Irving's estimates for deaths in [[Dresden]] were between 100,000 and 250,000 – notably higher than most previously published figures.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|pp=225–226}}.</ref> These figures became widely accepted in many standard reference works. In later editions of the book over the next three decades, he gradually adjusted the figure downwards to 50,000–100,000.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=43}}.</ref> According to [[Richard J. Evans]] at the 2000 libel trial that Irving brought against [[Deborah Lipstadt]], Irving based his estimates of the dead of Dresden on the word of one individual who provided no supporting documentation, used a document forged by the Nazis, and described one witness who was a [[urologist]] as Dresden's Deputy Chief Medical Officer. The doctor later complained about being misidentified by Irving, and further, that he, the doctor, was only repeating rumours about the death toll.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=225}}.</ref> According to an investigation by Dresden City Council in 2008, casualties at Dresden were estimated as 22,700–25,000 dead.<ref>Seeking to establish a definitive casualty figure, an independent investigation (commissioned by the Dresden city council), ended in 2010 drawing a conclusion that a maximum of 25,000 people were killed, of which 22,700 deaths have been positively identified—20,100 named and a further 2,600 unnamed ({{Citation|date=10 January 2008 |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna26977893 |title=Report: Dresden bombing deaths overestimated |work=NBC News}}; {{in lang|de}} {{Citation |date=15 April 2010 |url=http://www.sz-online.de/Nachrichten/Freital/?etag=15.04.2010 |title=Mindestzahl der Dresdner Bombenopfer nach oben korrigiert (lowest number of Dresden raids casualties corrected upwards|newspaper=[[Sächsische Zeitung]]}} {{subscription required}}).</ref>
====Reactions and criticisms====
Reaction to ''Hitler’s War'' was polarized. Various historians such as [[Gitta Sereny]], [[Martin Broszat]], [[Lucy Dawidowicz]], Gerard Fleming, Charles W. Sydnor and [[Eberhard Jäckel]] wrote either articles or books rebutting what they considered to be erroneous information in ''Hitler’s War''. Sereny writing in the ''Sunday Times'' called Irving's work as "closer to theology or mythology" than history while Broszat labeled Irving a "Hitler partisan wearing blinkers".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah [[Denying the Holocaust]], New York: Free Press, 1993 page 161</ref> In an article published in the ''Sunday Times'' under the title “The £1, 000 Question” on July 10, 1977, Sereny and the journalist Lewis Chester examined Irving’s sources and found significant differences from what Irving published in ''Hitler's War''.<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. page 46">Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 46</ref> In particular, while interviewing one of Irving's primary informants, [[Otto Günsche]], the latter stated that "one must assume that he [Hitler] did know" about the Holocaust<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. page 46"/>


Irving had based his numbers on what purported to be ''Tagesbefehl 47'' ("Daily Order 47", TB 47), a document promulgated by Nazi Propaganda Minister [[Joseph Goebbels]], and on claims made after the war by a former Dresden Nazi functionary, [[Hans Voigt]], without verifying them against official sources available in Dresden. Irving's estimates and sources were first disputed by [[Walter Weidauer]], Mayor of Dresden 1946–1958, in his own account of the Dresden bombing. When it was later confirmed that the TB 47 used was a forgery, Irving published a letter to the editor in ''[[The Times]]'' on 7 July 1966 retracting his estimates, writing that he had "no interest in promoting or perpetuating false legends". In 1977, the real document TB 47 was located in Dresden by Götz Bergander.<ref>{{harvnb|Evans|2001|pages=148–184}}</ref><ref>{{citation|first=Walter|last= Weidauer|title=Inferno Dresden. Über Lügen und Legenden um die Aktion "Donnerschlag."|publisher= Dietz Verlag|year=1965|isbn= 3-320-00818-8|pages=6,132}}</ref><ref>{{citation|title=A German Catastrophe?: German Historians and the Allied Bombings, 1945–2010|series=UvA Proefschriften Seris|first=Bas |last=Von Benda-Beckmann|publisher=Amsterdam University Press|year= 2010|isbn=978-9056296537|page=150}}</ref>
While some historians like [[John Keegan]] and [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]]—though disputing Irving's claim that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust—praised the book as well-written and well-researched,<ref name="Gutterplan, D.D page 45">Gutterplan, D.D. The Holocaust on Trial, New York: W.W. Norton 2001 page 45</ref> other historians were more hostile (though Trevor-Roper was strongly critical of Irving's repeating the "stale and exploded libel" about Churchill ordering the "assassination" of General Sikorski<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 page 173.</ref>). Keegan wrote that ''Hitler's War'' was "Irving's greatest achievement...indispensable to anyone seeking to the understand the war in the round"<ref name="Gutterplan, D.D page 45"/>.


Despite acknowledging that the copy of "TB 47" he had used was inaccurate, Irving argued during the late 1980s and 1990s that the death toll at Dresden was much higher than the accepted estimates: in several speeches during this period, he said that 100,000 or more people had been killed in the bombing of Dresden. In some of the speeches Irving also argued or implied that the raid was comparable to the Nazis' killing of Jews.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2001|pp=179–191}}.</ref>
====Hugh Trevor-Roper====
Trevor-Roper's praise was more much circumspect. Trevor-Roper commended Irving's "indefatigable, scholarly industry" and that "I have enjoyed reading his long work from beginning to end", but went to note that the many of the conclusions Irving drew were not supported by the evidence.<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 20' Gutterplan, D.D. The Holocaust on Trial, New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 45</ref> Trevor-Roper objected to Irving's argument that because one entry from [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s phone log from the 30th of November 1941 ordering Heydrich to ensure that one train transport of German Jews to [[Latvia]] not to be executed on arrival proved that Hitler was opposed to genocide.<ref name="Pelt page 20">Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 20</ref> Trevor-Roper argued that the message concerned only the people aboard that particular train and was not about all the Jews in Europe<ref name="Pelt page 20"/>. Trevor-Roper noted the contradiction in Irving's argument, based on the assumption that it was Hitler who ordered Himmler to spare the people aboard that train and the claim that Hitler was unaware in the fall of 1941 that the SS were rounding up German and Czech Jews to be sent to be shot in Eastern Europe (the first gassings via [[gas van]]s started on December 8, 1941)<ref name="Pelt page 20"/> Trevor-Roper commented about Irving's claim that Hitler was unaware of the mass murders of Jews carried out by the SS while at the same time intervening to save Jewish lives that: "One does not veto an action unless one thinks that it is otherwise likely to occur"<ref name="Pelt page 20"/>. Finally, Trevor-Roper complained about Irving's "consistent bias" for Hitler and that "Mr. Irving's sympathies can hardly be doubted".<ref>Evans, Richard Lying about Hitler, New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 41</ref>


===1963 burglary of Irving's flat===
====Alan Bullock====
In November 1963, Irving called the [[Metropolitan Police]] with suspicions he had been the victim of a burglary by three men who had gained access to his Hornsey flat in London by claiming to be [[General Post Office]] engineers. [[Anti-fascism|Anti-fascist]] activist [[Gerry Gable]] was convicted in January 1964, along with Manny Carpel. They were fined £20 each.<ref>{{cite book|last=Copsey|first=Nigel|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gxgxDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT194|title=Anti-Fascism in Britain|publisher=Routledge|year=2016|page=194|isbn=9781317397618}}</ref>
The British historian [[Alan Bullock]] writing in ''The New York Review of Books'' on May 26, 1977 dismissed Irving's depiction of Hitler as a leader too busy with the war to notice the Holocaust as contrary to all of the historical evidence.<ref name="adl.org">{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving: Propagandists' Poster Boy
| work =
| publisher = Anti-Defamation League
|month=
| url = http://www.adl.org/Holocaust/irving.asp
| format =
| doi = 2001
| accessdate = 2008-12-18}}</ref>


====John Lukacs====
==Subsequent works==
{{See also|Broome v Cassell & Co Ltd}}
[[John Lukacs]] in a very unfavourable book review in the 19 August 1977 edition of ''[[National Review]]'' called ''Hitler’s War'' a worthless book while [[Walter Laqueur]] when reviewing ''Hitler’s War'' in the ''The New York Times Book Review'' of 3 April 1977 accused Irving of selective use of the historical record in Hitler's favour.<ref name="adl.org"/>. Laqueur argued that ''Hitler's War'' read more like a legal brief written by a defense lawyer who was attempting to exonerate Hitler before the judgement of history, than a historical work.<ref name="adl.org"/>.


After the success of the Dresden book, Irving continued writing, including some works of [[Historical negationism|negationist history]], although his 1964 work ''[[The Mare's Nest]]'' – an account of the German [[V-weapons]] programme and the Allied intelligence countermeasures against it – was widely praised when published and continues to be well regarded. [[Michael J. Neufeld]] of the Smithsonian's [[National Air and Space Museum]] has described ''The Mare's Nest'' as "the most complete account on both Allied and German sides of the V-weapons campaign in the last two years of the war."<ref>{{cite book|last=Neufeld|first=Michael J|chapter=Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War|editor-last=Dick|editor-first=Steven J|title=Remembering the Space Age|publisher=Government Printing Office|year=2009|isbn=9780160867118}}</ref>
Lukacs called Irving an "amateur historian" whose determination to defend Hitler had resulted in an "appalling" book.<ref name=autogenerated9>Lukacs, John "Caveat Lector" pages 946-950 from ''National Review'', Volume XXIX, Issue # 32, 19 August 1977, page 946</ref> Lukacs complimented Irving's industry in tracking down hundreds of people who knew Hitler, but went on to note personal recollections are not always the best historical source, and that Irving manufactured battles; for instance, crediting Field Marshal [[Ferdinand Schörner]] with a victory in April 1945 against the [[Red Army]] for the control of [[Ostrava]], a battle which did not, in fact, take place.<ref name=autogenerated8>Lukacs, John "Caveat Lector" pages 946-950 from ''National Review'', Volume XXIX, Issue # 32, 19 August 1977, page 947</ref> Lukacs took issue with Irving's language, which he described as conveying moral judgements that were not supported by the facts.<ref name=autogenerated8 /> Lukacs was very critical of Irving's claims that Poland had planned to invade Germany in 1939 and likewise, that the [[Soviet Union]] was on the verge of attacking the ''Reich'' in 1941, in both cases justifying German "preventative wars" against those states.<ref name=autogenerated8 />


[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-13774, Adolf Hitler.jpg|left|upright|thumb|Irving once said he works to remove the "slime" applied to the reputation of [[Adolf Hitler]] (pictured).<ref name="Rosenbaum 232">{{Harvnb|Rosenbaum|1999|p=232}}.</ref>]]
====Bradley Smith====
In a review published in the ''German Studies Review'', the American historian Bradley Smith noted that Irving had uncovered some new documents and was correct in arguing against those Germans who sought to place all of the blame for the Holocaust onto Hitler, but went on to note that Irving’s determination to tell World War II from Hitler’s point of view had apparently led him to totally identify himself with Hitler.<ref name="autogenerated2">Smith, Bradley “Two Alibies for the Inhumanities: A. R. Butz, "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century" and David Irving, "Hitler's War"” pages 327-335 from ''German Studies Review'', Volume 1, Issue # 3. October 1978</ref> Smith noted it was often impossible to tell where Hitler’s views ended and where Irving's began.<ref name="autogenerated2" />


Irving translated the ''Memoirs'' of Field Marshal [[Wilhelm Keitel]] in 1965 (edited by Walter Görlitz) and in 1967 published ''Accident: The Death of General Sikorski''. In the latter book, Irving claimed that the plane crash which killed [[Polish government in exile]] leader General [[Władysław Sikorski]] in 1943 was really an assassination ordered by [[Winston Churchill]], so as to enable Churchill to betray Poland to the [[Soviet Union]]. Irving's book inspired the highly controversial 1967 play ''[[Soldiers (play)|Soldiers]]'' by his friend, the German playwright [[Rolf Hochhuth]], where Hochhuth depicts Churchill ordering the assassination of General Sikorski.
====Martin Broszat====
In an article first published in the ''Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte'' journal in 1977, [[Martin Broszat]] wrote that: "He [Irving] is too eager to accept authenticity for objectivity, is overly hasty in interpreting superficial diagnoses and often seems insufficiently interested in complex historical interconnections and in structural problems that transcend the mere recording of historical facts, but are essential for their evaluation".<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch pages 392-393.</ref> Broszat argued that in writing ''Hitler's War'', Irving was too concerned with the "antechamber aspects" of Hitler's headquarters, and accused Irving of distorting historical facts in Hitler's favor.<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch pages 393 & 413-419</ref> Broszat complained that Irving was focused too much on military events at the expense of the broader political context of the war, and that he had offered false interpretations such as accepting at face value the Nazi claim that the [[Action T4]] "euthanasia" program was launched in September 1939 to free up hospital spaces for wounded German soldiers, when in fact the program was launched in January 1939.<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch page 394.</ref>


Also in 1967, Irving published two more works: ''The Virus House'', an account of the [[German nuclear energy project]] for which Irving conducted many interviews,<ref name="Virus House research"/> and ''The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17,'' in which he blamed British escort group commander Commander [[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 a 17-day-trial before London's [[High Court of Justice|High Court]], Broome won. Irving was forced to pay £40,000 in damages, and the book was withdrawn from circulation.
In particular, Broszat criticized Irving's claim that because of one telephone note written by Himmler stating "No liquidation" in regards to a train transport of German Jews passing through [[Berlin]] to [[Riga]] (whom the SS intended to have all shot upon arrival) on 30 November 1941 that this proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen.<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch pages 413-415</ref> Broszat argued that this was not proof that Hitler had given any such order to Himmler to stop the killings of Jews, but rather that the comment "No liquidation" referred only to that particular train, and was mostly likely related to concerns about questions American reporters were asking about the fate of German Jews being sent to Eastern Europe.<ref name="Broszat pages 414-415">Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch pages 414-415</ref> Broszat questioned whatever Hitler had given Himmler any order about the train, given that the phone call Himmler made from the ''[[Wolfsschanze]]'' to Heydrich in Prague took place at about 11: 30 A.M., and the records show that Hitler did not get up until about 2: 00 P.M on November 30, 1941<ref name="Broszat pages 414-415"/>.


After ''PQ-17'', Irving largely shifted to writing biographies. In 1968, he published ''Breach of Security'', an account of German reading of messages to and from the British Embassy in Berlin before 1939 with an introduction by the British historian [[Donald Cameron Watt]]. As a result of Irving's success with ''Dresden'', members of Germany's extreme right wing assisted him in contacting surviving members of Hitler's inner circle. In an interview with the American journalist [[Ron Rosenbaum]], Irving claimed to have developed sympathies towards them.<ref>{{Harvnb|Rosenbaum|1999|pp=227–229}}.</ref> Many ageing former mid- and high-ranked Nazis saw a potential friend in Irving and donated diaries and other material. Irving described his historical work to Rosenbaum as an act of "stone-cleaning" of Hitler, in which he cleared off the "slime" that he felt had been unjustly applied to Hitler's reputation.<ref name="Rosenbaum 232" />
Likewise, Broszat criticized Irving for accepting the "fantastic" claims of the SS ''[[Obergruppenführer]]'' [[Karl Wolff]] that he did not know about the Holocaust (Irving's argument was that if Wolff did not know about the Holocaust, how could Hitler have known), despite the fact that Wolff was convicted of war crimes in 1963 on the basis of documentary evidence implicating him in the Holocaust.<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch pages 420-421</ref> Broszat accused Irving of seeking to generate a highly misleading impression of a conference between Hitler and the Hungarian Regent, Admiral [[Miklós Horthy]] in April 1943 by re-arranging the words to make Hitler appear less brutally anti-Semitic then what the original notes showed.<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch pages 427-428.</ref> Along the same lines, Broszat maintained that the picture of World War Two drawn by Irving was done in a such way to engage in moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states, leading to Hitler's "fanatical, destructive will to annihilate" being downgraded to being "...no longer an exceptional phenomenon".<ref>Broszat, Martin "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 390-429 from ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch page 395.</ref> The criticism by Broszat was considered to be especially damaging to Irving because Broszat had based his critique largely by examining the same primary sources Irving had used for ''Hitler's War''.


In 1969, during a visit to Germany, Irving met [[Robert Kempner]], one of the American prosecutors at the [[Nuremberg trials]].<ref name="Lipstadt 293">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|2005|p=293}}.</ref> Irving asked Kempner if the "official record of the Nuremberg Trials was falsified", and told him that he was planning to go to Washington, D.C., to compare the sound recordings of Luftwaffe Field-Marshal [[Erhard Milch]]'s March 1946 evidence with the subsequently published texts to find proof that evidence given at Nuremberg was "tampered with and manipulated".<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|2005|pp=293–294}}.</ref> Upon his return to the United States, Kempner wrote to [[J. Edgar Hoover]], the director of the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]], that Irving expressed many "anti-American and anti-Jewish statements".<ref name="Lipstadt 293" />
====Charles Sydnor====
Another equally scathing review was published by the American historian Charles Sydnor who argued that ''Hitler's War'' was marred by Irving's efforts to present Hitler in the most favorable light possible.<ref>Syndor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 172-173.</ref> Sydnor commented that Irving wrongly and bizarrely presented SS massacres in Poland in September 1939 as the legitimate response to the British rejection of Hitler's peace offer of October 1939 , and that Irving seemed to imply that Hitler's anti-Semitism was justified by the Anglo-American strategic bombing offensive against German cities.<ref>Syndor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 page 173.</ref> Sydnor noted numerous errors in ''Hitler's War'' such as Irving's claim that [[Andreas Hofer]] was shot by the French in 1923 for opposing the French occupation of the [[Ruhr]] (Irving probably had [[Albert Leo Schlageter]] in mind), and that the 1945 film ''Kolberg'', which dealt with the theme of a [[Prussia]]n fortress besieged by the French in 1806 was set in the [[Seven Years' War]].<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 178.</ref>


In 1971, Irving translated the memoirs of General [[Reinhard Gehlen]], and in 1973 published ''The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe'', a biography of Field Marshal Milch. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on ''[[Hitler's War]]'' and ''The War Path'', his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler; ''The Trail of the Fox,'' a biography of Field Marshal [[Erwin Rommel]]; and a series in the ''[[Sunday Express]]'' describing the [[Royal Air Force]]'s famous [[Operation Chastise|Dam Busters]] raid. In 1975, in his introduction to ''Hitler und seine Feldherren'', the German edition of ''Hitler's War'', Irving attacked [[The Diary of a Young Girl|Anne Frank's diary]] as a forgery, claiming falsely that a New York court had ruled that the diary was really the work of American scriptwriter [[Meyer Levin]] "in collaboration with the girl's father".<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=232}}.</ref>
Syndor was highly critical of Irving's unreferenced statement that the Jews who fought in the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] of 1943 were well supplied with weapons from Germany's allies.<ref>Syndor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 179.</ref> In the same light, concerning Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust prior to October 1943, Syndor commented that Hitler had received a SS report in November 1942 which contained a mention of 363,211 Russian Jews executed by the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' between August-November 1942.<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 182-183.</ref> Similarly, Syndor charged Irving with misquotation such as having Hitler say on 25 October 1941 "...with the Jews too I've found myself remaining inactive", thereby implying that Hitler wanted to be "inactive" against the Jews for the rest of the war, when the documents show Hitler's remarks to be "Even with regard to the Jews I've found myself remaining inactive", and that Hitler's remark was referring to the past when Hitler was criticizing himself for his past "inactivity" against the Jews.<ref>Syndor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 184.</ref>


==Revisionism==
Likewise, Sydnor argued that Irving's statement that all previous Hitler biographies were compromised by their hostility towards ''der Führer'' is not supported by an examination of said biographies.<ref>Syndor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 175-176.</ref> Syndor remarked that Irving's statement that the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' were in charge in the [[Extermination camp|death camps]] seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust as the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps.<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 page 176.</ref> Moreover, Syndnor noted that Irving falsely claimed that the ''Einsatzgruppen'' operating in Poland in 1939 were under the authority of SS General [[Udo von Woyrsch]], when in fact the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were divided into two groups, one of which reported to Heydrich and another to [[Theodor Eicke]] (General Woyrsch commanded a group reporting to Heydrich).<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 176-177.</ref>


===''Hitler's War''===
Continuing on the theme of the ''Einsatzgruppen'', Syndor criticized Irving for his statement that the [[Babi Yar]] massacre of September 1941 was the first massacre carried out by the ''Einsatzgruppen'' in 1941, when in fact the ''Einsatzgruppen'' had been staging massacres of Soviet Jews since the beginning of [[Operation Barbarossa]] in June 1941.<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 186</ref> Syndor charged Irving with offering a false interpretation of Hitler's reaction to [[Konrad Morgen]]'s report of October 1944 about widespread corruption in the SS as marking Hitler's moral outrage to the Holocaust; Syndor asserted that Hitler's outrage had nothing to do with the murder of the Jews, and everything to do with the revelation of SS corruption.<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 pages 189-190.</ref> Concerning Irving's claim that General [[Friedrich Olbricht]] was engaged in an [[orgy]] on the night of 20 July 1944 in reaction to the news of Hitler's apparent assassination, Syndor noted that Irving does not explain how General Olbricht could have been engaged in directing a ''putsch'' at the [[Bendlerblock]] on the night of 20 July while at the same time engaging in an orgy at his home.<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 page 193.</ref> Finally, Syndnor argued that Irving's account of the final days of Hitler appeared to comprise little more than a rehashing of [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]]'s 1947 book, ''The Last Days of Hitler'', only with Hitler as an object of sympathy, rather than scorn.<ref>Syndnor, Charles "The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979 page 196.</ref>
{{main|Hitler's War}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-C16768A, Hans Heinrich Lammers.jpg|thumb|200px|In ''Hitler's War'', Irving used a 1942 memorandum by [[Hans Lammers]] (pictured), the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, to the Justice Minister, saying: "The Führer has repeatedly pronounced that he wants the solution of the Jewish Question put off until after the war is over."]]
In 1977, Irving published ''[[Hitler's War]]'', the first of his two-part biography of [[Adolf Hitler]]. Irving's intention in ''Hitler's War'' was to clean away the "years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument" to reveal the real Hitler, whose reputation Irving argued had been slandered by historians.<ref name="Craig 72">{{Harvnb|Craig|1982|p=72}}.</ref> In ''Hitler's War'', Irving tried to "view the situation as far as possible through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk".<ref name="Craig 72" /> He portrayed Hitler as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent, and who was constantly let down by incompetent or treasonous subordinates.<ref name="Craig 72" /> Irving's book faulted the Allied leaders, especially [[Winston Churchill]], for the eventual escalation of war, and argued that the [[Operation Barbarossa|German invasion of the Soviet Union]] in 1941 was a "[[preventive war]]" forced on Hitler to avert an impending Soviet attack.<ref name="Evans 1989 166">{{Harvnb|Evans|1989|p=166 n. 20}}.</ref> Irving also argued that Hitler had no knowledge of [[the Holocaust]]: while not denying its occurrence, he argued that SS leader [[Heinrich Himmler]] and his deputy [[Reinhard Heydrich]] were its originators and architects. Irving made much of the lack of any written order from Hitler ordering the Holocaust; he offered to pay £1,000 to anyone who could find such an order.<ref name="Guttenplan 46">{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=46}}.</ref> {{as of|2019}}, his offer still stood.<ref>{{cite web|title=Letters to David Irving on this Website|url=http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/controversies/Reward.html|access-date=15 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191225122202/http://fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/docs/controversies/Reward.html|archive-date=25 December 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref>


In ''Hitler's War'', Irving quoted a 1942 memorandum by [[Hans Lammers]], the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, to the Reich Justice Minister [[Franz Schlegelberger]], saying: "the Führer has repeatedly pronounced that he wants the solution of the [[Jewish Question]] put off until after the war is over". Irving took this as proof that Hitler ordered against the extermination of the Jews.<ref name="Evans 2002 89">{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=89}}</ref> He falsely claimed that "no other historians have quoted this document, possibly finding its content hard to reconcile with their obsessively held views" about Hitler's responsibility for the Holocaust.<ref name="Evans 2002 89"/> However, the interpretation of the document is not as simple as Irving made it out to be in his book.<ref name=Evans1>{{cite web|title=Evans: David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial|website=Holocaust Denial on Trial|url=https://www.hdot.org/evans/}}</ref> The memorandum has no date and no signature on it, although historians estimate that it was issued at some point between 1941 and 1942 by looking at the other documents where the memorandum is located. They have concluded that the memorandum was more than likely from late 1941 when Hitler was still advocating the expulsion of the Jews, rather than later when he advocated their extermination.<ref name=Evans1 />
====Lucy Dawidowicz====
Dawidowicz in her 1981 book ''The Holocaust and Historians'' called Irving an apologist for the Third Reich with minimal scholarly standards.<ref name="nizkor.org">{{cite web
| last = Lucy
| first = Dawidowicz
| authorlink = Lucy Dawidowicz
| coauthors =
| title = "This Wicked Man Hitler" Dawidowicz on David Irving
| work =
| publisher = Nizkor Project
|month=
| url = http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/dawidowicz/dawidowicz-on-irving.html
| format =
| doi = 1999
| accessdate = 2008-12-18}}</ref> Dawidowicz wrote that she believed that the term revisionist was inappropriate for Irving because revisionism is a legitimate historical method whereas Irving was not entitled to call himself a historian, revisonist or otherwise, and only deserved the label apologist<ref name="nizkor.org"/>. Dawidowicz maintained that the “No liquidation” message in Himmler’s phone log refers not to the German Jews being deported to be shot in Riga, but rather to a Dr. Jekelius, whom Himmler believed to the son of Soviet Foreign Commissar [[Vyacheslav Molotov]], who was also travelling on that train, and whom Himmler wanted to see arrested, but not executed.<ref name="nizkor.org"/> Because of the controversy ''Hitler’s War'' generated, it was a best-seller in 1977.


Critical reaction to ''Hitler's War'' was generally negative. Reviewers took issue with Irving's factual claims as well as his conclusions. For example, American historian [[Charles W. Sydnor Jr.]] noted numerous errors, such as Irving's unreferenced statement that the Jews who fought in the [[Warsaw Ghetto Uprising]] of 1943 were well supplied with weapons from Germany's allies.<ref>{{Harvnb|Sydnor|1979| p=179}}</ref> Sydnor pointed out that Hitler had received an SS report in November 1942 which contained a mention of 363,211 Russian Jews executed by the ''[[Einsatzgruppen]]'' between August and November 1942.<ref>{{Harvnb|Sydnor|1979| pp=182–183}}</ref> Sydnor remarked that Irving's statement that the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were in charge in the [[Extermination camp|death camps]] seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust, as the ''Einsatzgruppen'' were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps.<ref>{{Harvnb|Sydnor|1979 |p=176}}</ref>
===Continuing negationist studies: Irving's work of the late 1970s-early 1980s===
Just months after the initial release of ''Hitler's War'', Irving published ''The Trail of the Fox'', a biography of [[Generalfeldmarschall|Field Marshal]] [[Erwin Rommel]]. In it, Irving attacked the members of the [[July 20 Plot]] to assassinate Hitler, branding them "traitors", "cowards", and "manipulators", and uncritically presented Hitler and his government's subsequent revenge against the plotters, of which Rommel was also a victim. Irving painted the men and women involved in the plot in the blackest of colours, and argued that their fate after 20 July was fully deserved. Irving challenged the popular notion that Rommel was one of the leaders of the rebellion: Rommel stayed loyal to Hitler until the end, Irving claimed, and the real blame for his forced suicide lay with his associates, who schemed against him so they could save their own lives and because they were jealous of Rommel's medals. In particular, Irving accused Rommel's friend and Chief of Staff General [[Hans Speidel]] of framing Rommel in the attempted coup. One reviewer of ''The Trail of the Fox'' noted that Irving celebrated German victories in North Africa with more gusto than one would expect from a British author, and that Irving had an evident dislike for the "criminals" Colonel [[Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg|Claus von Stauffenberg]], General [[Ludwig Beck]] and [[Carl Friedrich Goerdeler]].<ref>{{cite web
| last = Dunn
| first = J.R
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving Jailed in Austria
| work =
| publisher = American Thinker
|month=February | year=2006
| url = http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/02/david_irving_jailed_in_austria.html
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-20}}</ref>
The British historian [[David Pryce-Jones]] in a book review of ''The Trail of the Fox'' in the 12 November 1977 edition of ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' accused Irving of mindlessly taking everything Hitler had to say at face value.<ref name="adl.org"/>.


===Irving's work in the late 1970s and early 1980s===
In 1978, Irving released ''The War Path'', the companion volume to ''Hitler's War'' which covered events leading up to the war and which was written from a similar point of view. Again, professional historians such as D.C. Watt noted numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Despite the criticism, the book sold well, as did all of Irving's books to that date. The financial success of his books enabled Irving to buy a home in the prestigious [[Mayfair]] district of London, own a [[Rolls-Royce (car)|Rolls-Royce]] car, and to enjoy a very affluent lifestyle.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 52</ref> In addition, Irving, despite being married, became increasing open with his affairs with other women, all of which were detailed in his self-published diary.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 51</ref> Irving's affairs were to cause his first marriage to end in divorce in 1981. In 1982, Irving began a common-law relationship with a Danish model, Bente Hogh.
Months after the release of ''Hitler's War'', Irving published ''The Trail of the Fox'', a biography of [[Generalfeldmarschall|Field Marshal]] [[Erwin Rommel]]. In it, Irving attacked the members of the [[20 July Plot]] to assassinate Hitler, branding them "traitors", "cowards", and "manipulators", and uncritically presented Hitler and his government's subsequent revenge against the plotters, of which Rommel was also a victim. In particular, Irving accused Rommel's friend and Chief of Staff General [[Hans Speidel]] of framing Rommel in the attempted coup. The British historian [[David Pryce-Jones]] in a book review of ''The Trail of the Fox'' in the edition of 12 November 1977 of ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' accused Irving of taking everything Hitler had to say at face value.<ref>{{cite news|last=Pryce-Jones|first=David|title=With Apologies to Adolf Hitler|newspaper=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/20/archives/with-apologies-to-adolf-hitler-hitler.html|date=20 November 1977}}{{subscription required}}</ref><ref name="adl profile"/>


In 1978, Irving released ''The War Path'', the companion volume to ''Hitler's War'' which covered events leading up to the war and which was written from a similar point of view. Again, professional historians such as [[Donald Cameron Watt]] noted numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Despite the criticism, the book sold well, as did all of Irving's books up to that date. The success of his books enabled Irving to buy a home in the prestigious [[Mayfair]] district of London, own a [[Rolls-Royce]] car and enjoy an affluent lifestyle.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=52}}.</ref> In addition, Irving, despite being married, became increasingly open about his affairs with other women, all of which were detailed in his self-published diary.<ref name="Guttenplan 51">{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=51}}.</ref> Irving's affairs caused his first marriage to end in divorce in 1981.
<!-- entire Keegan paragraph moved to the trial portion -->
In the 1980s Irving started researching and writing about topics other than Nazi Germany, but with less success. He began his research on his three-part biography of [[Winston Churchill]]. In [[1981]], he published two books. The first was ''The War Between the Generals'', in which Irving offered an account of the Allied High Command on the Western Front in 1944-45, detailing the heated conflicts Irving alleges occurred between the various generals of the various countries and presenting rumours about their private lives. The second book was ''Uprising!'', about the [[1956 Hungarian Revolution|1956 revolt in Hungary]], which Irving characterized as "primarily an anti-Jewish uprising", supposedly because the [[Communism|Communist]] regime was itself controlled by Jews. Irving’s depiction of [[Hungary]]’s Communist regime as a Jewish dictatorship oppressing [[Gentiles]] sparked charges of [[anti-Semitism]].<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 47</ref> In addition, there were complaints that Irving had grossly exaggerated the number of people of Jewish origin in the Communist regime and had ignored the fact that Hungarian Communists who did have a Jewish background like [[Mátyás Rákosi]] and [[Ernő Gerő]] had totally repudiated [[Judaism]] and sometimes expressed anti-Semitic attitudes themselves.<ref>Ascherson, Neal "A Bucketful of Slime" from ''[[The Observer]]'', 29 March 1981</ref> Critics such as [[Neal Ascherson]] and [[Kai Bird]] took issue with some of Irving’s language that seemed to evoke anti-Semitic imagery such as his remark that Rákosi possessed “the tact of a kosher butcher”.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 47</ref>


In the 1980s, Irving started researching and writing about topics other than Nazi Germany, but with less success. He began his research on his three-part biography of [[Winston Churchill]]. After publication Irving's work on Churchill received at least one bad review from Professor [[David Cannadine]] (then of the [[University of London]]):
===Hitler Diaries===
In 1983, Irving played a major role in the [[Hitler Diaries]] controversy. Irving had long been an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia, and in October 1982 purchased eight-hundred pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to discover that many of the documents were forgeries.<ref name="Evans page 19">Evans, Richard Lying about Hitler, New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 19</ref> Irving was an early proponent of the argument that the diaries were a forgery, and went so far as to crash the press conference held by [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] at the [[Hamburg]] offices of ''[[Der Stern]]'' magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine (Trevor-Roper had called the press conference to announce his withdrawal of his endorsement, arguably rendering Irving's attack on him irrelevant).<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 48</ref> Irving's performance at the ''[[Der Stern]]'' press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news and the next day Irving appeared on ''Today'' television show as a featured guest.<ref>Harris, Robert ''Selling Hitler: The Story Of The Hitler Diaries'' London: Faber and Faber, 1986 pages 320-323</ref> Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because the diaries come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia that Irving had purchased his collection from in 1982<ref name="Evans page 19"/>. At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving announced "I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here".<ref>Evans, Richard ''Lying about Hitler'', New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 19</ref> Irving was proud of the "trail of chaos" he had caused at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and in particular took a great deal of pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his criticism of Irving's methods and conclusions.<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 22</ref> Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries such as diary entry for July 20, 1944 which would have been unlikely given that Hitler’s right hand been badly burned by the bomb planted in his headquarters by Colonel [[Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg|Stauffenberg]] earlier that day.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''History on Trial'', New York: Harper Collins, 2005 page 19</ref>


{{blockquote|It has received almost no attention from historians or reviewers ... It is easy to see why ... full of excesses, inconsistencies and omissions ... seems completely unaware of recent work done on the subject ... It is not merely that the arguments in this book are so perversely tendentious and irresponsibly sensationalist. It is also that it is written in a tone which is at best casually journalistic and at worst quite exceptionally offensive. The text is littered with errors from beginning to end.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/ |title=David Irving: Britain's Holocaust "revisionist" |publisher=Nizkor.org |access-date=2 September 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110812023313/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/ |archive-date=12 August 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}
However, a week later on 2 May, Irving reversed himself and claimed the diaries were genuine; at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler’s physician Dr. [[Theodor Morell]].<ref name="Pelt page 22">Pelt, Robert Jan van The Case for Auschwitz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 22</ref> [[Robert Harris (novelist)|Robert Harris]] in his book ''Selling Hitler'' suggested that an additional reason for Irving's change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving's claim in ''Hitler's War'' that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust.<ref>Harris, Robert ''Selling Hitler: The Story Of The Hitler Diaries'' pages 338-339</ref> Subsequently Irving reversed himself again when the diaries were revealed as a forgery. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call the diaries a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call the diaries genuine<ref name="Pelt page 22"/>. In his later accounts of his role in the Hitler Diaries matter, Irving has always mentioned his role as proponent of the theory that the diaries were fake, while ignoring his change of opinion about their authenticity.


In 1981, he published two books. The first was ''The War Between the Generals'', in which Irving offered an account of the Allied High Command on the Western Front in 1944–45, detailing the heated conflicts Irving alleges occurred between the various generals of the various countries and presenting rumours about their private lives. The second book was ''Uprising!'', about the [[1956 Hungarian Revolution|1956 revolt in Hungary]], which Irving characterised as "primarily an anti-Jewish uprising", supposedly because the Communist regime was itself controlled by Jews. Irving's depiction of Hungary's Communist regime as a Jewish dictatorship oppressing [[Gentiles]] sparked charges of [[antisemitism]].<ref name="Guttenplan 47">{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=47}}.</ref> In addition, there were complaints that Irving had grossly exaggerated the number of people of Jewish origin in the Communist regime and had ignored the fact that [[Hungarian people|Hungarian]] Communists who did have a Jewish background like [[Mátyás Rákosi]] and [[Ernő Gerő]] had totally repudiated Judaism and sometimes expressed antisemitic attitudes themselves.<ref name="observer 1981"/> Critics such as [[Neal Ascherson]] and [[Kai Bird]] took issue with some of Irving's language that seemed to evoke antisemitic imagery, such as his remark that Rákosi possessed "the tact of a [[kosher]] butcher".<ref name="Guttenplan 47" />
===Churchill===
By the mid-1980s, Irving had not had a successful book in years, and was behind schedule in writing the first volume of his Churchill series, the research for which had strained his finances<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 56 </ref>. By the time he finished the manuscript in 1985, his reputation was greatly diminished,{{Fact|date=March 2007}} so it was not until 1987 that the book was published as ''Churchill's War, Volume I''. In it, Irving writes a revisionist portrayal of Churchill—a debauched [[alcoholic]], a coward, an unabashed racist, and a corrupt warmonger servile to the interests of "international Jewry".{{Fact|date=March 2007}} Irving also accused Churchill of "selling out the [[British Empire]]" and "turning Britain against its natural ally, Germany".


In 1982, Irving described himself as an "untrained historian" and argued that his lack of academic qualifications did not mean that he could not be considered a historian. He listed [[Pliny the Elder]] and [[Tacitus]] as examples of historians without university training.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=11–12}}</ref>
===Ernst Nolte===

In 1986, Irving was one of the few [[English language]] authors to endorse the controversial thesis of the German philosopher [[Ernst Nolte]] who, in a 1986 article named ''Die Vergangenheit, die nicht vergehen will'' ("The Past That Does Not Want To Go Away"), claimed that because the President of the [[World Zionist Organization]] [[Chaim Weizmann]] wrote a letter to the British Prime Minister [[Neville Chamberlain]] pledging the full support of his organization to the British war effort on 3 September 1939, that this constituted a “Jewish declaration of war” against Germany, and thus the German government was fully justified in “interning” the Jews of Europe in [[concentration camp]]s<ref name="Lipstadt page 111"/>. Nolte in his turn, had received his notion of Weizmann's letter to Chamberlain as a "Jewish declaration of war" from Irving, who had first introduced this theory in ''Hitler's War''.<ref>Lipstadt,Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 pages 111 & 213</ref> Nolte commented that since Irving had made that point in ''Hitler's War'', he felt that proved that the point was historically valid<ref name="Lipstadt page 111"/>. Many other historians attacked Nolte’s argument (and those, like Irving, who supported Nolte’s views) as misleading, intentionally or not, and as coming very close to justifying the Holocaust. Nolte in his turn has been a great admirer of Irving and has often cited Irving’s work in his writings.<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'' New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 229; Evans, Richard J. ''In Hitler's Shadow'' New York: Pantheon Books, 1989 pages 166-167</ref>
===Hitler Diaries===
In 1983, ''[[Stern (magazine)|Stern]]'', a weekly German news magazine, purchased 61 volumes of [[Hitler Diaries|Hitler's supposed diaries]] for [[Deutsche Mark|DM]] 9 million and published excerpts from them. Irving played a major role in exposing the Hitler Diaries as a hoax. In October 1982 Irving had purchased from the same source as ''Stern'''s 1983 purchase, 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to conclude that many of the documents were forgeries.<ref name="Evans 2001 19">{{Harvnb|Evans|2001|p=19}}.</ref> Irving was amongst the first to identify the diaries as forgeries, and to draw media attention. He went so far as to crash the press conference held by [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] at the [[Hamburg]] offices of ''Stern'' magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=48}}.</ref> Irving's performance at the ''Stern'' press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news: the next day, Irving appeared on the ''Today'' television show as a featured guest.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harris|1986|pp=320–323}}.</ref> Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because they had come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia from whom Irving had purchased his collection in 1982.<ref name="Evans 2001 19" /> At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving said, "I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here".<ref name="Evans 2001 19" /> Irving was proud to have detected and denounced the hoax material and of the "trail of chaos" he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and took pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his sloppy work, in not detecting the hoax, and past criticism of Irving's methods and conclusions.<ref name="Pelt 22">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=22}}.</ref> Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries, such as a diary entry for 20 July 1944, which would have been unlikely given that Hitler's right hand had been badly burned by [[20 July plot|the bomb planted in his headquarters]] by Colonel [[Claus von Stauffenberg]] earlier that day.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|2005|p=19}}.</ref>


A week later, on 2 May, Irving asserted that many of the diary documents appeared to be genuine: at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler's physician [[Theodor Morell]].<ref name="Pelt 22" /> [[Robert Harris (novelist)|Robert Harris]], in his book ''Selling Hitler'', suggested that an additional reason for Irving's change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving's claim in ''Hitler's War'' that Hitler had no knowledge of it.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harris|1986|pp=338–339}}.</ref> Subsequently, Irving conformed when the diaries were declared a forgery by consensus. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.<ref name="Pelt 22" />
===Göring===
In 1989, Irving published his biography of [[Hermann Göring]], in which he largely portrayed the [[Reichsmarschall]] as an overweight drug addict largely concerned with his own wealth and personal pleasures rather than his duties within the Third Reich. Irving downplayed Göring's role in the Holocaust, describing instead Göring's jovial personality and offering a wealth of lesser-known facts about his life. Irving also recounts various incidents and produces documents as evidence that Göring disapproved of the persecution of Jews and other Nazi crimes.


===Goebbels===
===Other books===
By the mid-1980s, Irving had not had a successful book for some years and was behind schedule in writing the first volume of his Churchill series, the research for which had strained his finances.<ref name="Guttenplan 56">{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=56}}.</ref> He finished the manuscript in 1985, and the book was published in 1987, as ''Churchill's War, The Struggle for Power''.
In 1992, Irving signed a contract with [[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] for a biography of [[Joseph Goebbels]] entitled ''Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich''. Following charges that Irving had selectively "edited" a recently discovered complete edition of Goebbels's diaries in [[Moscow]], Macmillan cancelled the book deal.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 55</ref> The decision by ''[[Sunday Times]]'' (who had brought the rights to serialized extracts from the diaries before Macmillan published them) in July 1992 to hire Irving as a translator of the Goebbels's diary was a controversial one with many historians such as Peter Pulzer arguing that Irving because of his views about the Third Reich was not the best man to do that job.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 180">Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 180</ref> [[Andrew Neil]], the editor of the ''Sunday Times'' called Irving "reprehensible", but defended hiring Irving because he was only a "transcribing technician".<ref name="Lipstadt page 180">Lipstadt, Deborah Denying the Holocaust, New York: Free Press, 1993 page 180</ref> Pulzer argued that it absurd to describe Irving as a "mere technician" translating the diaries from German into English, asserting that a translator working on a "set of documents others had not seen, you took on the whole man"<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 180"/>. During his time in Moscow, Irving was given access to two microfiche plates containing 90 pages of previously unknown pages of Goebbels diaries<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 180"/>. Though Irving was only supposed to translate the diaries, he stole the plates, smuggled them out of Russia, and copied them without permission<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 180"/>. Concern has been expressed by historians such as Deborah Lipstadt that Irving may have destroyed or damaged the plates, thereby depriving of the world of knowledge of what was on those plates<ref name="Lipstadt page 180"/>.


In 1989, Irving published his biography of [[Hermann Göring]].<ref>{{cite web|title=HITLER'S GOOD RIGHT ARM|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/28/books/hitler-s-good-right-arm.html|newspaper=The New York Times|first=Peter|last=Hoffmann|date=28 May 1989}}</ref>
In 1995, the [[St. Martin's Press]] of New York City agreed to publish the Goebbels biography.<ref name="autogenerated1">Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 56</ref> By this time, Irving's financial state was such that he very much needed this book deal to be completed in order to pay down the massive arrears on his mortgage.<ref name="autogenerated1" /> In March 1996, following widespread protests over allegations of antisemitism in ''Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich'', St. Martin's cancelled the contract, and left Irving in a situation where he was desperate for both publicity and the need to re-establish his reputation as a historian.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' pages 56-57</ref>


==Holocaust denial==
==Holocaust denial==
===Drift towards Holocaust denial===
===Movement towards Holocaust denial===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R99621, Heinrich Himmler.jpg|thumb|200px|A note in ''Reichsführer-SS'' [[Heinrich Himmler]]'s telephone log on 30 November 1941 stating "no liquidation" was later used by Irving as his central argument in trying to prove that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust.]]
Over the years, Irving's stance on the Holocaust has changed significantly. Until 1988, when he started to espouse [[Holocaust denial]] openly, Irving never sought to deny the reality of the Holocaust and for this reason many Holocaust deniers were ambivalent about him. They admired Irving for the pro-Nazi slant in his work and the fact that he possessed a degree of mainstream credibility that they lacked, but were annoyed that he did not openly deny the Holocaust. In 1980, [[Lucy Dawidowicz]] noted through ''Hitler's War'' was strongly sympathetic to the Third Reich, that because Irving argued that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust as opposed to the denying the Holocaust, that his book was not part of the "anti-Semitic canon".<ref>Dawidowicz, Lucy "Lies About the Holocaust" pages 31-37 from ''Commentary'', Volume 70, Issue # 6, page 35</ref> Typical of the ambiguity felt by them was a letter written in 1984 by the French Holocaust denier [[Robert Faurisson]] in the ''Journal of Historical Review'', the official journal of the [[Institute for Historical Review]] (I.H.R). In an open letter entitled "A Challenge to David Irving", Faurisson praised Irving as a historian but criticised him for maintaining that the Holocaust had taken place, and challenged him to take up the cause of Holocaust denial.<ref name="http">{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving File
| work =
| publisher = ADL
|date=7 November
| url = http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=Irving


Over the years, Irving's stance on the Holocaust has changed significantly. Since at least the 1970s, he has either questioned or denied Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust and whether or not the Nazis had a plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-07-25 }}</ref> It has been alleged by the Anti-Defamation League that the original draft of Faurisson's open letter was more critical of Irving, but [[Willis Carto]] persuaded Faurisson to tone down the criticism, lest it alienate Irving (who had spoken at a conference sponsored by the I.H.R. in September 1983) from the I.H.R.<ref>{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving File
| work =
| publisher =
|date=
| url = http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=Irving
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-11}}</ref> It is not known what Irving’s response to Faurisson’s letter was.<ref>{{cite web
| last =
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving File
| work =
| publisher =
|date=
| url = http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=Irving
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-11}}</ref>


Irving always denied Hitler was antisemitic, even before he openly denied the Holocaust.<ref name="Evans 2002 50">{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=50}}</ref> Irving claimed Hitler only used antisemitism as a political platform, and that after he came to power in 1933 he lost interest in it, while Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis continued to espouse antisemitism.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=50–51}}</ref> In 1977 on a BBC1 television programme, he said that Hitler "became a statesman and then a soldier ... and the Jewish problem was a nuisance to him, an embarrassment."<ref name=Evans51>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=51}}</ref> In 1983, Irving summarised his views about Hitler and the Jews when he said that "probably the biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich, certainly when the war broke out, was Adolf Hitler. He was the one who was doing everything he could to prevent things nasty happening to them."<ref name=Evans51 /> In the same year, he further declared about Hitler and the mass killing of Jews, "There is a whole chain of evidence from 1938 right through to October 1943, possibly even later, indicating that Hitler was completely in the dark about anything that may have been going on."<ref name=Evans51 /> Irving boasted that he had not been disproved.<ref name=Evans51 />
Until 1988, Irving seemed torn between a desire to be taken seriously as a historian and a desire to associate with those he seemed to share an ideological affinity with. In the first edition of ''Hitler's War'', Irving footnotes, "I cannot accept the view… [that] there exists no document signed by Hitler, Himmler or Heydrich speaking of the extermination of the Jews." In 1982, Irving made an attempt to unify all of the various neo-Nazi groups in Britain into one party called Focus, in which he would play a leading role.<ref name=autogenerated3>Evans, Richard ''In Hitler's Shadow'', New York: Pantheon Books, 1989 page 166</ref> Irving described himself as a "moderate fascist" who through his leadership of Focus would become the future fascist Prime Minister of Britain.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161">Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 161</ref> The effort failed due to fiscal problems.<ref name=autogenerated3 /> One of the main writers for Irving's magazine ''Focal Point'' in the 1980s was [[John Tyndall (politician)|John Tyndall]], the leader of the [[British National Party]].<ref name=autogenerated3 /> At the time, Irving told the ''Oxford Mail'' of having "links at a low level" with the [[British National Front|National Front]].<ref name=autogenerated3 /> Irving described ''Spotlight'', the main journal of the [[Liberty Lobby]] as "an excellent fortnightly paper."<ref name=autogenerated3 /> At the same time, Irving put a copy of Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of 30 January 1939, promising the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" if "Jewish financiers" started another world war, onto his wall.<ref>Evans, Richard ''In Hitler's Shadow'', New York: Pantheon Books, 1989 page 167</ref>


In his first edition of ''Hitler's War'' in 1977, Irving argued that Hitler was against the killings of the Jews in the East. He claimed that Hitler even ordered a stop to the extermination of Jews in November 1941; British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper noted that this admission blatantly contradicted Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant about what was happening to Jews in Eastern Europe.<ref name=trial1>{{cite web|title=EVANS: DAVID IRVING, HITLER AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL|url=https://www.hdot.org/evans/|website=Holocaust Denial on Trial}}</ref> On 30 November 1941, Heinrich Himmler went to the [[Wolf's Lair]] for a private conference with Hitler and during it the fate of some Berlin Jews was mentioned. At 1.30 pm, Himmler was instructed to tell [[Reinhard Heydrich]] that the Jews were not to be liquidated. Irving falsely claimed that Himmler telephoned SS General [[Oswald Pohl]], the overall chief of the concentration camp system, with the order: "Jews are to stay where they are" (Himmler actually referred to "administrative leaders of the SS" needing to stay where they were).<ref name=trial1 /> Irving argued that "No liquidation" (''Keine Liquidierung'') was "incontrovertible evidence" that Hitler ordered that no Jews were to be killed.<ref name=trial1 /> However, although the telephone log is genuine, it provides no evidence that Hitler was involved at all, only that Himmler contacted Heydrich and there is no evidence that Hitler and Himmler were in contact before the phone call.<ref name=trial1 /> This is an example of Irving's manipulation of documents since there was no general order to stop the killing of Jews.<ref name=trial1 /> Historian [[Eberhard Jäckel]] wrote that Irving "only ever sees and collects what fits his story, and even now he will not let himself be dissuaded from understanding what he wants to by the phrase 'postponement of the Jewish question'."<ref name=trial1 />
A major theme of Irving's writings since the 1980s was his belief that it had been a great blunder on the part of Britain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that ever since then and as a result of that decision, Britain had slipped into an unstoppable decline.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> Irving also took the view that [[Rudolf Hess]] should be awarded the [[Nobel Peace Prize]] for his flight to Britain in 1941, and that Hitler often tried to help the Jews of Europe.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> At an IHR conference in September 1983, Irving proclaimed Hitler to be the "biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 162">Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 162</ref> In a June 1992 interview with the ''Daily Telegraph'', Irving stated his belief that "Marriage is a detour" that prevents men from getting ahead in life, and praised Hitler for understanding this.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> In the same interview, Irving claimed to have heard from Hitler's naval adjutant that the ''Führer'' had told him that he could not marry because Germany was "his pride".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> Irving then claimed to have asked the naval adjutant when Hitler made that remark, and upon hearing that the date was March 24, 1938, Irving stated in response "Herr Admiral, at that moment I was being born".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah pages 161-162">Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 pages 161-162</ref> Irving used this alleged incident to argue that there was some sort of mystical connection between him and Hitler.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah pages 161-162"/>


In June 1977, British television host [[David Frost]] aired a debate. During the debate, Irving argued that there was no evidence Hitler even knew about the Holocaust. Frost asked Irving whether or not he thought Hitler was evil, he replied, "He was as evil as [[Winston Churchill|Churchill]], as evil as [[Franklin D. Roosevelt|Roosevelt]], as evil as [[Harry S. Truman|Truman]]".<ref name="Evans 2002 50"/>
By the mid-1980s, Irving associated himself with the Holocaust-denying [[Institute for Historical Review]]<!-- I don't care if God says the IHR is anti-semitic; they are openly Holocaust-denying and that's what's significant here-->, began giving lectures to groups such as the far-right German [[Deutsche Volksunion]], and publicly denied that the Nazis systematically exterminated Jews in gas chambers during World War II.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 8</ref> Irving was a frequent speaker for the DVU in the 1980s and the early 1990s, but the relationship ended in 1993 apparently because of concerns by the DVU that Irving’s espousal of Holocaust Denial might lead to the DVU being banned.<ref name="http"/> He also alleged that parts of ''[[The Diary of a Young Girl|The Diary of Anne Frank]]'' might have been forged by her surviving father.


From 1988, Irving started to espouse [[Holocaust denial]] openly: he had previously not denied the Holocaust outright, and for this reason many Holocaust deniers were ambivalent about him.<ref name="Pelt 21">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=21}}.</ref> They admired Irving for the pro-Nazi slant in his work and the fact that he possessed a degree of mainstream credibility that they lacked, but were annoyed that he did not openly deny the Holocaust.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=153–154}}</ref> In 1980, [[Lucy Dawidowicz]] noted that, although ''Hitler's War'' was strongly sympathetic to the Third Reich, because Irving argued that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust as opposed to denying the Holocaust happened at all, his book was not part of the "anti-Semitic canon".<ref>{{Harvnb|Dawidowicz|1980|p=35}}</ref> In 1980, Irving received an invitation to speak at a Holocaust-denial conference, which he refused on the grounds that his appearance there would damage his reputation.<ref name="Pelt 21" /> In a letter, Irving stated his reasons for his refusal as: "This is pure ''[[Realpolitik]]'' on my part. I am already dangerously exposed, and I cannot take the chance of being caught in flak meant for others!"<ref name="Pelt 21" /> Though Irving refused at this time to appear at conferences sponsored by the Holocaust-denying [[Institute for Historical Review]] (IHR), he did grant the institute the right to distribute his books in the United States.<ref name="Pelt 21" /> [[Robert Jan van Pelt]] suggests that the major reason for Irving wishing to keep his distance from Holocaust deniers in the early 1980s was his desire to found his own political party called Focus.<ref name="Pelt 21" />
===The Zündel trial===
In January 1988, Irving travelled to [[Toronto]], [[Canada]] to assist [[Doug Christie (lawyer)|Douglas Christie]], the defence lawyer for [[Ernst Zündel]] at his second trial for denying the Holocaust.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> Working closely with [[Robert Faurisson]], who was also assisting the defence, Irving contacted Warden Bill Armontrout of the Missouri State Penitentiary who recommended that Irving and Faurisson get into touch with [[Fred A. Leuchter]], a self-proclaimed execution expert living in [[Boston]].<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 162"/> Irving and Faurission then flew to Boston to meet with Leuchter, who agreed to lend his alleged technical expertise on the behalf of Zündel's defense.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> Irving argued that an alleged expert on gassings like Leuchter could prove that the Holocaust was a “myth”<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 161"/> After work on the second Zündel trial, Irving declared based on his exposure to Zündel's and Leuchter’s theories that he was now conducting a “one-man intifada” against the idea that there had been a Holocaust.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah Denying the Holocaust, New York: Free Press, 1993 page 179</ref> Subsequently, Irving claimed to the American journalist [[DD Guttenplan|D.D. Guttenplan]] in a 1999 interview that Zündel had convinced him that the Holocaust had not occurred.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'' page 54</ref>


In a footnote in the first edition of ''Hitler's War'', Irving writes, "I cannot accept the view ... [that] there exists no document signed by Hitler, Himmler or [[Reinhard Heydrich|Heydrich]] speaking of the extermination of the Jews".<ref>{{cite web|title=David Irving: a study in incompetency and dishonesty|url=https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/irving-david/irving-incompetent.shtml|website=The Holocaust History Project|author=Eugene Holman|date=7 January 2007}}</ref> In 1982, Irving temporarily stopped writing and made an attempt to unify all of the various far-right splinter groups in Britain into one party called Focus, in which he would play a leading role.<ref name="Evans 1989 166" /> Irving described himself as a "moderate fascist" and spoke of plans to become [[Prime Minister of the United Kingdom]],<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=161}}.</ref> but his efforts to move into politics, which he regarded at the time as very important, failed due to fiscal problems.<ref name="Evans 1989 166" /> Irving told the ''[[Oxford Mail]]'' of having "links at a low level" with the [[National Front (UK)|National Front]] (NF).<ref name="Evans 1989 166" /> Irving described ''[[The Spotlight]]'', the main journal of the [[Liberty Lobby]], as "an excellent fortnightly paper".<ref name="Evans 1989 166" /> At the same time, Irving put a copy of Hitler's "[[Prophecy Speech]]" of 30 January 1939, promising the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" if "Jewish financiers" started another world war, onto his wall.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|1989|p=167}}.</ref>
In the 1988 Zündel trial, Irving repeated and defended his claim from ''Hitler's War'' that until October 1943 Hitler knew nothing about the actual implementation of the [[Final Solution]]. He also expressed his evolving belief that the Final Solution involved "[[war crimes|atrocities]]", not systematic murder:
<blockquote>I don't think there was any overall ''Reich'' policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was.<ref>[http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/35irving.html The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel &mdash; 1988: David Irving]</ref><!--this might upset some folks, so I'm stating this for the record: this is included to provide balance, since Irving's entry is included in the category of anti-semitism; --></blockquote>
As to what evidence further led Irving to believe that the Holocaust never occurred, he cited the [[Leuchter report]] by self-styled execution expert [[Fred A. Leuchter]], which claimed there was no evidence for the existence of homicidal [[gas chamber]]s at the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]]. In [[Errol Morris]]' 1999 documentary about Leuchter, ''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.'', Irving said, "The big point [of the Leuchter report]: there is no significant residue of [[cyanide]] in the brickwork. That's what converted me. When I read that in the report in the courtroom in Toronto, I became a hard-core disbeliever."<ref>[http://errolmorris.com/film/mrd_transcript.html Mr. Death: Transcript]</ref> In addition, Irving was influenced to embrace Holocaust denial by the American historian [[Arno J. Mayer]]’s 1988 book ''Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?'', which did not deny the Holocaust, but claimed that most of those who died at Auschwitz were killed by disease; Irving saw in Mayer's book an apparent confirmation of Leuchter's and Zündel's theories about no mass murder at Auschwitz.<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 pages 47-48</ref>


Following the failure of Focus, in September 1983, Irving for the first time attended a conference of the IHR.<ref name="Pelt 21" /> Van Pelt has argued that, with the failure of Irving's political career, he felt freer to associate with Holocaust deniers.<ref name="Pelt 21" /> At the conference, Irving did not deny the Holocaust, but did appear happy to share the stage with [[Robert Faurisson]] and Judge [[Wilhelm Stäglich]], and claimed to be impressed with the pseudoscientific allegations of neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Friedrich "Fritz" Berg that [[mass murder]] using [[Diesel fuel|diesel gas fumes]] at the [[Operation Reinhard]] death camps was impossible.<ref>{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|pp=22–23}}.</ref> At that conference, Irving repeated his claims that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust because he was "so busy being a soldier".<ref name="Pelt 23">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=23}}.</ref> In a speech at that conference, Irving stated: "Isn't it right for [[Israel|Tel Aviv]] to claim now that David Irving is talking nonsense and ''of course'' Adolf Hitler must have known about what was going in Auschwitz and Treblinka, and then in the same breath to claim that, ''of course'' our beloved [[Menachem Begin|Mr. Begin]] didn't know what was going on in [[Sabra and Shatila massacre|Sabra and Chatilla]]".<ref name="Pelt 23" /> During the same speech, Irving proclaimed Hitler to be the "biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 162">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=162}}.</ref> In the same speech, Irving stated that he operated in such a way as to bring himself maximum publicity. Irving stated that: "I have at home... a filing cabinet full of documents which I don't issue all at once. I keep them: I issue them a bit at a time. When I think my name hasn't been in the newspapers for several weeks, well, then I ring them up and I phone them and I say: 'What about this one, then?{{'"}}<ref name="Pelt 23" />
After the trial, Irving published <!--''self-published'' makes little sense here, anyway, it was published-->Leuchter's report as ''Auschwitz The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report'' in the United Kingdom in 1989 and wrote its foreword.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 179">Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 page 179</ref> Leuchter's book had been first published in the United States in 1988 as ''The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdenek''.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 page 260</ref> In his foreword to the British edition of Leuchter's book, Irving wrote that "Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 179"/> The alleged swindle was the [[Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany|reparations]] money totating 3 billion DM paid by the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel between 1952-1966 for the ''Holocaust''. Irving described the reparations as being "essentially in atonement for the 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz", which Irving called a "myth" that would "not die easily".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 179"/> In his foreword, Irving praised the “scrupulous methods” and “integrity” of Leuchter.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press, 1993 page 179</ref>


A major theme of Irving's writings from the 1980s was his belief that it had been a great blunder on the part of Britain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that ever since then and as a result of that decision, Britain had slipped into an unstoppable decline.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> Irving also took the view that Hitler often tried to help the Jews of Europe.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> In a June 1992 interview with ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'', Irving claimed to have heard from Hitler's naval adjutant that the ''Führer'' had told him that he could not marry because Germany was "his bride".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> Irving then claimed to have asked the naval adjutant when Hitler made that remark, and upon hearing that the date was 24 March 1938, Irving stated in response "Herr Admiral, at that moment I was being born". Irving used this alleged incident to argue that there was some sort of mystical connection between himself and Hitler.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161-162">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|pp=161–162}}.</ref>
For writing the foreword to ''Auschwitz The End of the Line'', on June 20, 1989 Irving together with Leuchter was condemned in a [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] motion as "Hitler's heirs".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 pages 179-180</ref> The motion went on to describe Irving as a "Nazi propagandist and longtime Hitler apologist" and ''Auschwitz The End of the Line'' as a "fascist publication".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 page 180</ref>


In a 1986 speech in Australia, Irving argued that photographs of Holocaust survivors and dead taken in early 1945 by Allied soldiers were proof that the Allies were responsible for the Holocaust, not the Germans.<ref name="Pelt 40">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=40}}.</ref> Irving claimed that the Holocaust was not the work of Nazi leaders, but rather of "nameless criminals",<ref name="Pelt 40" /> and claimed that "these men [who killed the Jews] acted on their own impulse, their own initiative, within the general atmosphere of brutality created by the Second World War, in which of course Allied bombings played a part."<ref name="Pelt 40" /> In another 1986 speech, this time in [[Atlanta]], Irving claimed that "historians have a blindness when it comes to the Holocaust because like [[Tay–Sachs disease]] it is a Jewish disease which causes blindness".<ref name=s32>{{Harvnb|Stern|1993 |p=32}}</ref> In 1986, he told reporters in Brisbane, Australia, without explaining how the Allied bombing raids on Germany had made non-Germans to be antisemitic that:
In a pamphlet Irving published in London on June 23, 1989 Irving made the "epochal announcement" that there was no mass murder via gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 48</ref> Irving labeled the gas chambers at Auschwitz a "hoax", and writing in the third person declared that he "has placed himself [Irving] at the head of a growing band of historians, worldwide, who are now sceptical of the claim that at Auschwitz and other camps were 'factories of death', in which millions of innocent people were systematically gassed to death".<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 48</ref> Boasting of his role in criticizing the Hitler diaries as a forgery in 1983, Irving wrote "now he [Irving] is saying the same thing about the infamous 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek. They did not exist – ever – except perhaps as the brainchild of Britain's brilliant wartime Psychological Warfare Executive".<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 48</ref> Finally, Irving claimed "the survivors of Auschwitz are themselves testimony to the absence of an extermination programme".<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 48</ref> Echoing the criticism of the House of Commons, on May 14, 1990 a leader in ''[[The Times]]'' described Irving as a "man for whom Hitler is something of a hero and almost everything of an innocent and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 page 180</ref>
{{blockquote|the Jews were the victims of a large number of rather run-of-the-mill criminal elements which exist in Central Europe. Not just Germans, but Austrians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, feeding on the endemic antisemitism of the era and encouraged by the brutalization which war brought about anyway. These people had seen the bombing raids begin. They'd lost probably women, wives and children in the bombing raids. And they wanted to take revenge on someone. So when Hitler ordered the expulsion, as he did – there's no doubt that Hitler ordered the expulsion measures – these people took it out on the person that they could.<ref name="Evans 2002 134">{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=134}}</ref>}}


By the mid-1980s, Irving associated himself with the IHR, began giving lectures to groups such as the far-right German [[Deutsche Volksunion]] (DVU), and publicly denied that the Nazis systematically exterminated Jews in gas chambers during World War II.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 8">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=8}}.</ref> Irving in his revised edition of ''Hitler's War'' in 1991 removed all mentions of "gas chambers" and the word "Holocaust". He defended the revisions by stating, "You won't find the Holocaust mentioned in one line, not even in a footnote, why should [you]. If something didn't happen, then you don't even dignify it with a footnote."<ref>{{cite web|title=Gas chamber claims impossible, says Irving|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/jan/13/uk.irving|newspaper=The Guardian|date=13 January 2000|first=Vikram|last=Dodd}}</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=54}}</ref>
===The Holocaust denial lecture circuit===
In the early 1990s, Irving was a frequent visitor to [[Germany]], where he spoke at neo-Nazi rallies.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 8">Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 page 8</ref> The chief themes of Irving's German speeches were that the Allies and Axis states were equally culpable for war crimes, that the decision of [[Neville Chamberlain]] to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that of [[Winston Churchill]] to continue the war in 1940 had been great mistakes that set Britain on a path of decline, and the Holocaust was just a "propaganda exercise".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 8"/> Irving's self-proclaimed mission was to guide "promising young men" in Germany in the "right direction" (Irving has often stated his belief that women exist for a "certain task", namely reproduction, and should be "subservient to men"; leading as Deborah Lipstadt noted to a lack of interest in guiding young German women in the "right direction").<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 8"/> As a foreigner, Irving was a popular figure with German neo-Nazis, who liked to hear praise and support from abroad.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 8"/>


Irving was present at a memorial service for [[Hans-Ulrich Rudel]] in January 1983 after the latter's death, organised by the DVU and its leader [[Gerhard Frey (politician)|Gerhard Frey]], delivering a speech,<ref>{{cite news |date=9 January 1983|title=Big crowd commemorates death of Nazi pilot|url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1983/01/09/Big-crowd-commemorates-death-of-Nazi-pilot/7256410936400/|work=[[United Press International]]|access-date=27 November 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Gedenkveranstaltung für Hans Ulrich Rudel, 1983|trans-title=Memorial service for Hans Ulrich Rudel, 1983|url=https://www.sz-photo.de/?16607724099100603390&EVENT=POPUP&WINDOW=WGWINe4704873e01b6fac8cb1c19fdf7143a9&AJXUID=0.7987179042092476&MEDIANUMBER=00325558&MEDIAITEMS=667e82876af943c49f10de114a6d270cc7811f83&OMG=fde34952c756&PAGING_SCOPE_4=29&MEDIAGROUP_SCOPE=1|language=de|work=[[Sueddeutsche Zeitung]]|access-date=28 November 2018 }}</ref> and was given the Hans-Ulrich-Rudel-Award by Frey in June 1985.<ref>{{cite web |title=Funke: David Irving, Holocaust denial, and his connections to right wing extremists and neo-national socialism (neo-nazism) in Germany|url=https://www.hdot.org/funke/|work=[[Emory University]]|access-date=27 November 2018 }}</ref> Irving was a frequent speaker for the DVU in the 1980s and the early 1990s, but the relationship ended in 1993 apparently because of concerns by the DVU that Irving's espousal of Holocaust denial might lead to the DVU being banned.<ref name="adl profile"/>
In January 1990, Irving gave a speech in [[Moers]] where he asserted that only 30, 000 people died at Auschwitz between 1940-45, all of natural causes, which was equal – so Irving claimed – to the typical death toll from one Bomber Command raid on German cities.<ref name="Pelt page 55">Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 55</ref> Furthermore, Irving claimed that there were no gas chambers at that death camp.<ref name="Pelt page 55"/> In that speech, Irving averred : "I say the following thing: there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. There have been only mock-ups built by the Poles in the years after the war".<ref name="Pelt page 55"/> On April 21, 1990 Irving repeated the same speech in [[Munich]], which led to his conviction for Holocaust denial in Munich on July 11, 1991.<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van The Case for Auschwitz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 55</ref> The court fined Irving DM&nbsp;7,000.<ref name="Pelt page 55"/> Irving appealed the judgement, and received a fine of DM&nbsp;10,000 for repeating the same remarks in the courtroom on May 5, 1992.<ref name="Pelt page 55"/> During his appeal in 1992, Irving called upon those present in the Munich courtroom to “fight a battle for the German people and put an end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told against this country for fifty years”.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 179"/> Irving went on to call the Auschwitz death camp a “tourist attraction” whose origins Irving claimed went back to an “ingenious plan” devised by the British Psychological Warfare Executive in 1942 to spread anti-German propaganda that it was the policy of the German state to be “using ‘gas chambers’ to kill millions of Jews and other undesirables”.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 179"/> Following his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving was banned from visiting Germany.<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''Denying the Holocaust'', New York: Free Press 1993 page 221</ref>.


In 1986, Irving visited Toronto, where he was met at an airport by Holocaust denier [[Ernst Zündel]].<ref name="Pelt 41">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=41}}.</ref> According to Zündel, Irving "thought I was 'Revisionist-Neo-Nazi-Rambo-Kook!{{'"}}, and asked Zündel to stay away from him.<ref name="Pelt 41" /> Zündel and his supporters obliged Irving by staying away from his lecture tour, which consequently attracted little media attention, and was considered by Irving to be a failure.<ref name="Pelt 41" /> Afterwards, Zündel sent Irving a long letter in which he offered to draw publicity to Irving, and so ensure that his future speaking tours would be a success.<ref name="Pelt 41"/> As a result, Irving and Zündel became friends, and Irving agreed in late 1987 to testify for Zündel at his second trial for denying the Holocaust.<ref>{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=42}}.</ref> In addition, the publication in 1987 of the book ''Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945'' by [[Ernst Nolte]], in which Nolte flirted with Holocaust denial as a serious argument, encouraged Irving to become more open in associating with Zündel.<ref name="Pelt 41" />
Expanding upon his thesis in ''Hitler's War'' about the lack of a written ''Führer'' order for the Holocaust, Irving argued in the 1990s that the absence of such an order meant that there was no Holocaust.<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 233.</ref> In a speech delivered in Toronto in November 1990 Irving claimed that Holocaust survivors had manufactured memories of their suffering because “there’s money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it.”<ref name="http"/> During the same 1990 speech in Toronto, Irving claimed that "more people died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy's motor car in Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chamber of Auschwitz".<ref name="Pelt page 57">Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 57</ref> In that speech, Irving used the metaphor of a cruise ship named Holocaust, which Irving claimed had "...luxury wall to wall fitted carpets and a crew of thousands… marine terminals established in now virtually every capital in the world, disguised as Holocaust memorial museums".<ref name="Pelt page 57"/> Irving went on to assert that the "ship" was due for rough sailing because recently the Soviet government had allowed historians access to "the index cards of all the people who passed through the gates of Auschwitz", and claimed that this would lead to "a lot of people [who] are not claiming to be Auschwitz survivors anymore" (Irving's statement about the index cards was incorrect; what the Soviet government had made available in 1990 were the death books of Auschwitz, recording the weekly death tolls).<ref name="Pelt page 57"/> Irving claimed on the basis of what he misleadingly called the index books that, "Because the experts can look at a tattoo and say 'Oh yes, 181, 219 that means you entered Auschwitz in March 1943" and he warned Auschwitz survivors "If you want to go and have a tattoo put on your arm, as a lot of them do, I am afraid to say, and claim subsequently that you were in Auschwitz, you have to make sure a) that it fits in with the month you said you went to Auschwitz and b) it is not a number which anyone used before".<ref name="Pelt page 57"/>
[[File:David Irving appearing on "After Dark", 28 May 1988.jpg|right|thumb|David Irving appearing on the TV show ''[[After Dark (TV series)|After Dark]]'' in 1988, [[After Dark (TV programme)#"Winston Churchill"|discussing Winston Churchill]].]]
In 1988, Irving argued that the Nazi state was not responsible for the extermination of the Jews in places like Minsk, Kiev and Riga because according to him they were carried out for the most part by "individual gangsters and criminals".<ref name="Evans 2002 134"/>


In 1989, Irving during a speech told an audience that "there is not one shower bath in any of the concentration or slave labour camps that turns out to have been some kind of gas chamber."<ref name="Evans 2002 133">{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=133}}</ref> He described Jewish Holocaust survivors as "liars, psychiatric cases and extortionists."<ref>{{Harvnb|Schweitzer|Perry|2005|p=185}}</ref> In 1990, Irving said on 5 March that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that "30,000 people at the most were murdered in Auschwitz ... that's about as many as we Englishmen killed in a single night in Hamburg." He reiterated his claim that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz on 5 March 1990 to an audience in Germany:
In his 1991 revised edition of ''Hitler's War'' he had removed all references to [[death camp]]s and the Holocaust. In a speech given in [[Hamburg]] in 1991, Irving stated that in two years time "...this myth of mass murders of Jews in the death factories of Auschwitz, Majanek and Treblinka...which in fact never took place" will be disproved ([[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz]], [[Majdanek]], and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] were all well known [[Extermination camp|''Vernichtungslager'']]).<ref name=autogenerated6>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 222</ref> Two days later, Irving repeated the same speech in [[Halle, Saxony-Anhalt|Halle]] before a group of neo-Nazis, and praised [[Rudolf Hess]] as "that great German martyr, Rudolf Hess."<ref name=autogenerated6 /> At another 1991 speech, this time in Canada, Irving called the Holocaust a "hoax", and again predicted that by 1993 the "hoax" would have been "exposed".<ref name="Pelt page 57"/> In that speech, Irving declared, "Gradually the word is getting around Germany. Two years from now too, the German historians will accept that we are right. They will accept that for fifty years they have believed a lie".<ref name="Pelt page 57"/> During that speech, Irving expressed his contempt and hatred for Holocaust survivors by proclaiming that:<blockquote>”Ridicule alone isn’t enough, you’ve got to be tasteless about it. You’ve got to say things like “More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.” Now you think that’s tasteless, what about this? I’m forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it’s called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and other liars, A-S-S-H-O-L-E-S. Can’t get more tasteless than that, but you’ve got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.”<ref>{{cite web
{{blockquote|There were no gas chambers in Auschwitz, there were only dummies which were built by the Poles in the postwar years, just as the Americans build the dummies in Dachau ... these things in Auschwitz, and probably also in Majdanek, Treblinka, and in other so-called extermination camps in the East are all just dummies.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=133–134}}</ref>}}
| last =
During the same speech, he said, "I and, increasingly, other historians ... are saying, the Holocaust, the gas chamber establishments in Auschwitz did not exist."<ref name="Evans 2002 134"/> Later on in the same year, Irving told an audience in Toronto, "The gas chambers that are shown to the tourists in Auschwitz are fakes."<ref name="Evans 2002 134"/>
| first =
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving:Propagandists' Poster Boy
| work =
| publisher = Anti-Defamation League
|year=2001
| url = http://www.adl.org/Holocaust/irving.asp
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-17 }}</ref></blockquote>


Irving denied that the Nazis gassed any Jews or other people, with the exception of admitting that a small number of people were gassed during experiments.<ref name="Evans 2002 133"/>
In November 1992, Irving was to be a featured speaker at a world [[anti_zionism|anti-Zionist]] congress in Stockholm that was cancelled by the Swedish government.<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 8"/> Also scheduled to attend were fellow Holocaust-deniers [[Robert Faurisson]] and [[Fred A. Leuchter]], [[Nation of Islam]]-leader [[Louis Farrakhan]], together with representatives of the militant Palestinian group [[Hamas]], the Lebanese militant Shiite group [[Hezbollah]], and the right-wing Russian antisemitic group [[Pamyat]].<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 8"/> In a 1994 speech, Irving lamented that his predictions of 1991 had failed to occur, and complained of the persistence of belief in the "rotting corpse" of the "profitable legend" of the Holocaust.<ref name="Pelt page 57"/>


In 1990, Irving told an audience in Canada that "particularly when there's money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it" there would be people claiming to be eyewitnesses to gas chambers or extermination camps.<ref name="Evans 2002 141">{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=141}}</ref> He continued:
In October 2007 Irving threatened to sue ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]'' for describing him as a "Holocaust denier". ''The Jewish Chronicle'' responded by printing their solicitor's name and address on its front page.<ref> JC Reporters, [http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?AId=56166&ATypeId=1&search=true2&srchstr=david%20irving&srchtxt=1&srchhead=1&srchauthor=1&srchsandp=1&scsrch=0 David Irving: Call me a denier and I'll sue the JC], ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]'', [[2007-11-18]], Retrieved on [[2007-12-24]].</ref>


{{blockquote|And the only way to overcome this appalling pseudo-religious atmosphere that surrounds the whole of this immense tragedy called World War II is to treat these little legends with the ridicule and bad taste that they deserve. Ridicule isn't enough, you've got to be tasteless about it. You've got to say things: "More women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz." You think that's tasteless? What about this: I'm forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try to kid people that they were in these concentration camps. It's called "The Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust, and Other Lies" – "A.S.S.H.O.L.E.S." Can't get more tasteless than that. But you've got to be tasteless because these people deserve all our contempt, and in fact they deserve the contempt of the real Jewish community and the people, whatever their class and colour, who did suffer.<ref name="Evans 2002 141"/>}}
==Racism and antisemitism ==
Irving has expressed racist and antisemitic sentiments, both publicly and privately. Irving has often expressed his belief in the theory of a sinister Jewish conspiracy ruling the world, and that the belief in the reality of Holocaust was manufactured as part of the same alleged conspiracy.<ref name="Gutterplan, D.D page 51">Gutterplan, D.D. The Holocaust on Trial, New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 51</ref> Irving uses the label "traditional enemies of the truth" to describe Jews, and in a 1963 article about a speech by Sir [[Oswald Mosley]] wrote that "Yellow Star did not make a showing"<ref name="Gutterplan, D.D page 51"/>. In 1992, Irving stated that "...the Jews are very foolish not abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time" and claimed he "foresees a new wave of antisemitism" the world over due to Jewish "exploitation of the Holocaust myth"<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 180"/>. During an interview with the American writer [[Ron Rosenbaum]], Irving stated his belief that Jews were his "traditional enemy".<ref>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 234</ref>


In 1991, Irving espoused an antisemitic conspiracy theory when he stated that the Jews "dragged us into two world wars and now, for equally mysterious reasons, they're trying to drag us into the [[Yugoslav Wars|Balkans]]."<ref name="Evans 2002 147">{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=147}}</ref>
Several of these racist statements were cited by the judge's decision in Irving's lawsuit against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt.<ref name="vs">[[s:David Irving vs Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt|David Irving vs Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt]]</ref> For instance, in his diary entry for 17 September 1994, Irving wrote about a ditty he composed for his young daughter "when halfbreed children are wheeled past":


In 1995, when Irving was confronted with a Holocaust survivor, he repeated the same claim and asked, "How much money have you made from that piece of ink on your arm, which may indeed be real tattooed ink? Yes. Half a million dollars, three-quarters of a million for you alone?"<ref name="Evans 2002 141"/>
<blockquote>
I am a Baby [[Aryan]]<br>
Not Jewish or [[Sectarian]]<br>
I have no plans to marry an<br>
[[Great ape|Ape]] or [[Rastafarian]].
</blockquote><!--this was in the judge's decision, as were the below-->


On 6 October 1995, Irving told an audience in Tampa, Florida, that he agreed with the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that the Jews "had it coming for them".<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|p=146}}</ref> He continued:
[[Christopher Hitchens]] writes that after having dinner in his New York apartment, Irving sang the rhyme to his daughter once they were alone in the building's elevator.<ref>[[Christopher Hitchens|Hitchens, Christopher]]. "Churchill Take a Fall", ''[[The Atlantic Monthly]]'', April 2002.</ref> In one interview cited in the lawsuit, Irving also stated that he would be "willing to put [his] signature" to the "fact" that "a great deal of control over the world is exercised by Jews".<ref name="vs" />


{{blockquote|What these people don't understand ... is that they are generating antisemitism by their behaviour, and they can't understand it. They wonder where the antisemitism comes from and it comes from themselves, from their behaviour ... I said to this man from Colindale, this leader of the Jewish community in Freeport, Louisiana, I said ... "You are disliked, you people. You have been disliked for three thousand years. You have been disliked so much that you have been hounded from country to country, from pogrom to purge, from purge back to pogrom, and yet you never asked yourselves why you're disliked. That's the difference between you and me. It never occurs to you to look into the mirror and say, why am I disliked? What is it that the rest of humanity doesn't like about the Jewish people, to such an extent that they repeatedly put us through the grinder?" And he went berserk. He said "Are you trying to say that we are responsible for Auschwitz? Ourselves?" And I said, "Well the short answer is yes. The short answer I have to say is yes ... If you had behaved differently over the intervening three thousand years, the Germans would have gone about their business and not have found it necessary to go around doing whatever they did to you."<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=146–147}}</ref>}}
And from a speech in 1992, given to the [[Clarendon Club]]:


Thus, according to Irving, the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves.<ref name="Evans 2002 147"/>
<blockquote>
I am not anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport, or a station or a seaport, and I see a coloured family there -- the black father, the black wife and the black children. I think it is just as handsome a spectacle as the English family, or the French family, or the German family, or the South African family, or whatever. I think that is the way that God planned it and that is the way it should be. When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy (and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy).


===Ernst Zündel trial===
But now we have women reading our news to us.
[[File:Ernst Zundel.jpg|thumb|Ernst Zündel, whom Irving met in 1986 and became good friends with and collaborated with to distribute Holocaust denial]]
In January 1988, Irving travelled to Toronto, Ontario, to assist [[Doug Christie (lawyer)|Douglas Christie]], the defence lawyer for [[Ernst Zündel]] at his [[R v Zundel|second trial]] for denying the Holocaust.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> Working closely with [[Robert Faurisson]], who was also assisting the defence, Irving contacted Warden Bill Armontrout of the Missouri State Penitentiary who recommended that Irving and Faurisson get into touch with [[Fred A. Leuchter]], a self-described execution expert living in Boston.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 162" /> Irving and Faurisson then flew to Boston to meet with Leuchter, who agreed to lend his alleged technical expertise on the behalf of Zündel's defence.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> Irving argued that an alleged expert on gassings like Leuchter could prove that the Holocaust was a "myth".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> After work on the second Zündel trial, Irving declared that based on his exposure to Zündel's and Leuchter's theories that he was now conducting a "one-man ''[[wikt:intifada|intifada]]''" against the idea that there had been a Holocaust.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=179}}.</ref> Subsequently, Irving claimed to the American journalist [[D. D. Guttenplan]] in a 1999 interview that Zündel had convinced him that the Holocaust had not occurred.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=54}}.</ref>
In the 1988 Zündel trial, Irving repeated and defended his claim from ''Hitler's War'' that until October 1943 Hitler knew nothing about the actual implementation of the [[Final Solution]]. He also expressed his evolving belief that the Final Solution involved "[[war crimes|atrocities]]", not systematic murder: "I don't think there was any overall ''Reich'' policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was."<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/35irving.html |title=The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel – 1988 |chapter=David Irving |publisher=[[Institute for Historical Review]] |access-date=28 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220429002625/http://www.ihr.org/books/kulaszka/35irving.html |archive-date=29 April 2022 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{unreliable source?|reason=IHR is a Holocaust denial organisation|date=December 2022}} Similarly, Irving disputed the common held view among historians that the [[Wannsee Conference]] meeting on 20 January 1942 was when the extermination of Jews in the near future or later was discussed, he argued:
{{blockquote|Several of the participants in the Wannsee Conference subsequently testified in later criminal proceedings that ... none of them had an idea that at that conference there had been a discussion of liquidation of Jews ... There is no explicit reference to extermination of the Jews of Europe in the Wannsee Conference, not in any of the other documents in that file.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=135–136}}</ref>}}


Between 22 and 26 April 1988, Irving testified for Zündel, endorsing [[Richard Verrall|Richard Harwood]]'s book ''[[Did Six Million Really Die?]]'' as "over ninety percent&nbsp;... factually accurate".<ref name="Pelt 44">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=44}}.</ref>
If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose, it would be very interesting.


As to what evidence further led Irving to believe that the Holocaust never occurred, he cited ''The [[Leuchter report]]'' by Fred A. Leuchter, which claimed there was no evidence for the existence of homicidal [[gas chamber]]s at the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]]. Irving said in a 1999 documentary about Leuchter: "The big point [of the Leuchter report]: there is no significant residue of [[cyanide]] in the brickwork. That's what converted me. When I read that in the report in the courtroom in Toronto, I became a hard-core disbeliever".<ref>''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.''.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=December 2022}} In addition, Irving was influenced to embrace Holocaust denial by the American historian [[Arno J. Mayer]]'s 1988 book ''Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?'', which did not deny the Holocaust, but claimed that most of those who died at Auschwitz were killed by disease: Irving saw in Mayer's book an apparent confirmation of Leuchter's and Zündel's theories about no mass murder at Auschwitz.<ref>{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|pp=47–48}}.</ref>
For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the [[BBC]] should have a [[Black tie|dinner-jacket]]ed gentleman reading the important news to us, following by a lady reading all the less important news, followed by [[Trevor McDonald]] giving us all the latest news about the muggings and the drug busts...<ref>[http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/speech190992.html David Irving's Talk to the Clarendon Club]</ref>
</blockquote>


After the trial, Irving published Leuchter's report as ''Auschwitz, The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report'' in the United Kingdom in 1989 and wrote its foreword.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> Leuchter's book had been first published in Canada by Zündel's [[Samisdat Publishers]] in 1988 as ''The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=260}}.</ref> In his foreword to the British edition of Leuchter's book, Irving wrote that "Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> The alleged swindle was the [[Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany|reparations]] money totalling 3 billion DM paid by the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel between 1952 and 1966 for the Holocaust. Irving described the reparations as being "essentially in atonement for the 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz", which Irving called a "myth" that would "not die easily".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> In his foreword, Irving praised the "scrupulous methods" and "integrity" of Leuchter.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" />
In 2007, ''[[The Guardian]]'' reported that Irving said, "The Jews are the architects of their own misfortune, but that is the short version A–Z. Between A–Z there are then 24 other characters in intervening steps".<ref>Taylor, Matthew. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,,2179841,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront "Discredited Irving plans comeback tour." ''[[Guardian Unlimited]]''. 29 September 2007. 15 January 2008.</ref>


For publishing and writing the foreword to ''Auschwitz The End of the Line'', on 20 June 1989, Irving together with Leuchter was condemned in an [[Early Day Motion]] of the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] as "Hitler's heirs".<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|pp=179–180}}.</ref> The motion went on to describe Irving as a "Nazi propagandist and longtime Hitler apologist" and ''Auschwitz The End of the Line'' as a "fascist publication".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180" /> In the Motion, the House stated that they were "appalled by [the Holocaust denial of] Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist David Irving".<ref name=s32/> In response to the House of Commons motion, Irving in a press statement challenged the MPs who voted to condemn him, writing that: "I will enter the 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz and you and your friends may lob in [[Zyklon B]] in accordance with the well known procedures and conditions. I guarantee that you won't be satisfied with the results!"<ref name="Brinks, Jan Hermann page 107">Brinks, Jan Hermann. ''Children of a New Fatherland'', London: I.B. Tauris, 2000, p. 107.</ref>
==Libel suit==
{{wikisource|David Irving v. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt}}
In November 1994, Irving had his first encounter with [[Deborah Lipstadt]] at [[DeKalb College]] in [[Atlanta]], where Lipstadt was lecturing on Holocaust denial.<ref name="Gutterplan, page 39">Gutterplan, ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 39</ref> Irving stormed into the lecture hall, did his best to disrupt Lipstadt's lecture by challenging her to a debate, waved about a large amount of money in his hands, and announced he had $1,000 to give right here and now to the first person who could find a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust.<ref name="Gutterplan, page 39"/> Lipstadt ignored Irving, despite his repeated attempts to draw her into a debate.<ref name="Gutterplan, pages 39-40">Gutterplan, ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 pages 39-40</ref> After Lipstadt's lecture had ended, Irving announced that Lipstadt's refusal to debate him or produce a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust despite his promise to pay $1,000 on the spot proved that her criticism of him in ''Denying the Holocaust'' was invalid, and he proceeded to hand out free copies of his Göring biography to Lipstadt's students.<ref name="Gutterplan, pages 39-40"/>


In a pamphlet Irving published in London on 23 June 1989, he made the "epochal announcement" that there was no mass murder in the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.<ref name="Pelt 48">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=48}}.</ref> Irving labelled the gas chambers at Auschwitz a "hoax", and writing in the third person declared that he "has placed himself [Irving] at the head of a growing band of historians, worldwide, who are now sceptical of the claim that at Auschwitz and other camps were 'factories of death', in which millions of innocent people were systematically gassed to death".<ref name="Pelt 48" /> Boasting of his role in criticising the Hitler diaries as a forgery in 1983, Irving wrote "now he [Irving] is saying the same thing about the infamous 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek. They did not exist – ever – except perhaps as the brainchild of Britain's brilliant wartime Psychological Warfare Executive".<ref name="Pelt 48" /> Finally, Irving claimed "the survivors of Auschwitz are themselves testimony to the absence of an extermination programme".<ref name="Pelt 48" /> Echoing the criticism of the House of Commons, a leader in ''[[The Times]]'' on 14 May 1990 described Irving as a "man for whom Hitler is something of a hero and almost everything of an innocent and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180" />
On September 5, 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against Lipstadt and her British publisher Penguin Books for publishing a British edition of Lipstadt's book, ''Denying the Holocaust'', which had first been published in the United States in 1993.<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van ''The Case for Auschwitz'', Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 63</ref> At the same time, Irving also sued [[Gitta Sereny]] for libel for an article she had written about him entitled "Spin Time for Hitler" in ''The Observer'' newspaper on April 21, 1996.<ref>Evans, Richard ''Lying About Hitler'', New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 27; Sereny, Gitta "Spin Time for Hitler" page 1 from ''The Observer'', April 21, 1996</ref> As of 2008, [[Gitta Sereny#David Irving libel case|the claim]] has yet to be heard in a court. In letters of October 25 and October 28, 1997 Irving threatened to sue [[John Lukacs]] for libel if he published his book, ''The Hitler of History'' without removing certain passages highly critical of Irving's work.<ref name="Evans, Richard page 27">Evans, Richard ''Lying About Hitler'', New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 27</ref> The American edition of ''The Hitler of History'' was published in 1997 with the alleged libelous passages included, but because of Irving's legal threats, no British edition of ''The Hitler of History'' was published until 2001<ref name="Evans, Richard page 27"/>. As a result of the threat of legal action by Irving, when the British edition of ''The Hitler of History'' was finally published in 2001 the passages containing the criticism of Irving’s historical methods were expunged by the publisher.<ref>{{cite web
| last = Adams
| first = Tim
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Memories are made of this
| work =
| publisher = Observer
|date=February 24, 2002
| url = http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/feb/24/historybooks.features
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-21}}</ref><ref>{{cite blog
| last = Lipstadt
| first = Deborah
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Search: 2007-01-01 to 2008-01-01
| work = Deborah Lipstadt’s Blog
| publisher = Blogspot
| year = 2007
| url = http://lipstadt.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2007-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2008-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=50
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-21}}</ref>
Although Irving in his letter of October 25, 1997 informed Lukacs's American publisher that he considered ''The Hitler of History'' to be libelous, he did not see fit to cross the Atlantic to launch a libel suit in the [[United States]], perhaps because American libel law does not favor the claimant the same way British libel law does and perhaps he already had two libel suites in his hands.


===Holocaust denial lecture circuit===
In her book, ''Denying the Holocaust'', Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier, falsifier, and bigot, and said that he manipulated and distorted real documents. Irving claimed to have been libeled under the grounds that Lipstadt had called him a Holocaust denier when in his opinion there was no Holocaust to deny as well as suggestions that Irving had falsified evidence or deliberately misinterpreted it. Though the author was American, Irving filed his suit in the English High Court, where the [[burden of proof]] in libel cases is on the defendant, unlike the U.S. where the burden is on the plaintiff. He was able to file the lawsuit in the UK because the book was published there (before 1996, if Irving had wished to sue Lipstadt, he would have had to launch his legal action in an American court; British libel law applies only to alleged acts of libel committed in Britain). As explained by the trial judge, [[Charles Gray (British judge)|Mr Justice Gray]]:
[[File:Auschwitz I gas chamber memorial.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Interior of the gas chamber of Auschwitz I camp. In a 1990 speech, Irving stated: "I say the following thing: there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. There have been only mock-ups built by the Poles in the years after the war."<ref name="Pelt 55" />]]
<blockquote>4.7 ... the burden of proving the defence of justification rests upon the publishers. Defamatory words are presumed under English law to be untrue. It is not incumbent on defendants to prove the truth of every detail of the defamatory words published: what has to be proved is the substantial truth of the defamatory imputations published about the claimant. As it is sometimes expressed, what must be proved is the truth of the sting of the defamatory charges made.</blockquote> Irving approached Penguin and offered to drop them from his lawsuit if they would pull the book from publication in the UK, deny all of Lipstadt's conclusions and make a charitable donation in the name of Irving's daughter (who is disabled); he made clear he would not settle the lawsuit with Professor Lipstadt if Penguin settled with him. The publisher rejected his terms and the case went to trial.<ref>{{cite book
| last = Guttenplan
| first = D.D.
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = The Holocaust on Trial
| publisher = W.W. Norton & Company
| year = 2001
| location = New York
| pages = 103–4
| url =
| doi =
| id =
| isbn = 0-39302044-4}}</ref>


In the early 1990s, Irving was a frequent visitor to Germany, where he spoke at neo-Nazi rallies.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 8" /> The chief themes of Irving's German speeches were that the Allies and Axis states were equally culpable for war crimes, that the decision of [[Neville Chamberlain]] to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that of [[Winston Churchill]] to continue the war in 1940, had been great mistakes that set Britain on a path of decline, and the Holocaust was just a "propaganda exercise".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 8" /> In June 1990, Irving visited [[East Germany]] on a well-publicized tour entitled "An Englishman Fights for the Honour of the Germans", on which he accused the Allies of having used "forged documents" to "humiliate" the German people.<ref name="Brinks, Jan Hermann page 107"/> Irving's self-proclaimed mission was to guide "promising young men" in Germany in the "right direction" (Irving has often stated his belief that women exist for a "certain task, which is producing us [men]", and should be "subservient to men": leading, in Lipstadt's view, to a lack of interest on Irving's part in guiding young German women in the "right direction").<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 16">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=16}}.</ref> German nationalists found Irving, as a non-German Holocaust denier, to be particularly credible.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 16" />
===Defence===
Lipstadt and Penguin hired the British solicitor [[Anthony Julius]] to present her case and they briefed the libel barrister, [[Richard Rampton]] [[Queen's Counsel|QC]]. They also retained Professor [[Richard J. Evans]], historian and Professor of Modern History at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]], as an expert witness. Also working as an assistant expert witnesses was the American Holocaust historian [[Christopher Browning]], the German historian [[Peter Longerich]] and the Dutch architectural expert [[Robert Jan van Pelt]]. Van Pelt wrote a report attesting to the fact that the death camps were designed, built and used for the purpose of mass killing while Browning testified for the reality of the Holocaust. Longerich testified about Irving's links to neo-Nazi groups in Britain, the United States, France, Australia, Germany and Austria.


In January 1990, Irving gave a speech in [[Moers]] where he asserted that only 30,000 people died at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, all of natural causes, which was equal—so he claimed—to the typical death toll from one Bomber Command raid on German cities.<ref name="Pelt 55">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=55}}.</ref> Irving claimed that there were no gas chambers at the death camp, stating that the existing remains were "mock-ups built by the Poles".<ref name="Pelt 55" /> On 21 April 1990, Irving repeated the same speech in [[Munich]], which led to his conviction for Holocaust denial in Munich on 11 July 1991. The court fined Irving DM 7,000 (equivalent to €{{#expr:({{Inflation|DE|7000|1991|r=2}} / 1.95583) round 2}}<!--1.95583 is the precise DM/€ conversion factor fixed in 2001--> in {{Inflation/year|DE}}{{Inflation/fn|DE}}). Irving appealed against the judgement, and received a fine of DM 10,000 (€{{#expr:({{Inflation|DE|10000|1991|r=2}} / 1.95583) round 2}} in {{Inflation/year|DE}}) for repeating the same remarks in the courtroom on 5 May 1992.<ref name="Pelt 55" /> During his appeal in 1992, Irving called upon those present in the Munich courtroom to "fight a battle for the German people and put an end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told against this country for fifty years".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> Irving went on to call the Auschwitz death camp a "tourist attraction" whose origins Irving claimed went back to an "ingenious plan" devised by the British Psychological Warfare Executive in 1942 to spread anti-German propaganda that it was the policy of the German state to be "using 'gas chambers' to kill millions of Jews and other undesirables".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> During the same speech, Irving denounced the judge as a "[[senile]], alcoholic cretin".<ref name="Shermer Grobman 50">{{Harvnb|Shermer|Grobman|2002|p=50}}.</ref> Following his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving was banned from visiting Germany.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=221}}.</ref>
Evans and his two assistants spent more than two years examining Irving's work, while gathering evidence to support the claim that Irving had misrepresented evidence to support his prejudices. Evans suggested that in his view, Irving had knowingly used forged documents as sources, and that for this reason, Irving could not be regarded as a historian. Evans' report was the most comprehensive, in-depth examination of Irving's work:
<blockquote>"Not one of <nowiki>[Irving's]</nowiki> books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian".<ref>[http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/evidence/evans006.asp Holocaust Denial On Trial]</ref></blockquote> Evans later described in 2001 to the Canadian columnist [[Robert Fulford]] his impression of Irving after being cross-examined by him as: "He [Irving] was a bit like a dim student who didn't listen. If he didn't get the answer he wanted, he just repeated the question."<ref name="robertfulford.com">{{cite web
| last = Fulford
| first = Robert
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = David Irving: The Libel Trial Re-Examined
| work =
| publisher = The National Post
|date=January 30 2001
| url = http://www.robertfulford.com/DavidIrving.html
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-12-14 }}</ref>


[[File:Auschwitz Birkenau German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1940-1945)-107820.jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.2|Inside a barracks in [[Auschwitz II Birkenau]]. In 1992 during his appeal for his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving called Auschwitz a "tourist attraction".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179"/>]]
Longerich testified to the meaning of the often euphemistic language used by German officials during the war regarding the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, and argued that from 1941 onwards, the term “resettlement in the East” was a metaphor for deportation to the death camps.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 236</ref> During his exchanges with Irving, Longerich insisted quite firmly that the term “resettlement” was only a euphemism for extermination and nothing more, and used the [[Posen speech]] given by Himmler in October 1943 as a proof of the genocidal policy of the German state.<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. pages 236-238">Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 pages 236-238</ref> Irving by contrast argued for a literal interpretation of the phrase “resettlement in the East”<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. pages 236-238"/>.


Expanding upon his thesis in ''Hitler's War'' about the lack of a written ''Führer'' order for the Holocaust, Irving argued in the 1990s that the absence of such an order meant that there was no Holocaust.<ref name="Rosenbaum 233">{{Harvnb|Rosenbaum|1999|p=233}}.</ref> In a speech delivered in Toronto in November 1990 Irving claimed that Holocaust survivors had manufactured memories of their suffering because "there's money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it".<ref name="adl profile"/> In that speech, Irving used the metaphor of a cruise ship named Holocaust, which Irving claimed had "luxury wall to wall fitted carpets and a crew of thousands ... marine terminals established in now virtually every capital in the world, disguised as Holocaust memorial museums".<ref name="Pelt 57" /> Irving went on to assert that the "ship" was due for rough sailing because recently the [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] government had allowed historians access to "the index cards of all the people who passed through the gates of Auschwitz", and claimed that this would lead to "a lot of people [who] are not claiming to be Auschwitz survivors anymore" (Irving's statement about the index cards was incorrect: what the Soviet government had made available in 1990 were the death books of Auschwitz, recording the weekly death tolls).<ref name="Pelt 57" /> Irving claimed on the basis of what he called the index books that, "Because the experts can look at a tattoo and say 'Oh yes, 181, 219 that means you entered Auschwitz in March 1943{{'"}} and he warned Auschwitz survivors "If you want to go and have a tattoo put on your arm, as a lot of them do, I am afraid to say, and claim subsequently that you were in Auschwitz, you have to make sure a) that it fits in with the month you said you went to Auschwitz and b) it is not a number which anyone used before".<ref name="Pelt 57" />
During his testimony and a cross-examination by Irving, Browning countered Irving’s suggestion that the last chapter of the Holocaust has yet to be written (implying there were grounds for doubting the reality of the Holocaust) by replying: "We are still discovering things about the Roman Empire. There is no last chapter in history."<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. page 210">Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 210</ref> Browning countered Irving’s argument that the lack of a written ''Führer'' order proves the alleged non-occurrence of the Holocaust by arguing that although no such order was ever written down, Hitler had almost certainly made statements to his leading subordinates indicating his wishes in regards to the Jews of Europe during the war, thus rendering the need for a written order irrelevant.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 211</ref> Browning testified that several leading experts on Nazi Germany believe that there was no written ''Führer'' order for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, but no historian doubts the reality of the Holocaust.<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. page 212">Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 212</ref> Browning went on to assert that Irving was attempting to falsely equate doubts about the existence of a written ''Führer'' order with doubts about the Holocaust<ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. page 212"/>. Browning used to support his thesis the example of Hitler’s secret speech to his ''Gauleiters'' on December 12, 1941, in which Hitler strongly alluded to genocide as the “Final Solution”.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 pages 212-213</ref> Browning testified that the [[Madagascar Plan]] of 1940-41 was "fantastic" and "bizarre", but countered Irving's suggestion that this proves the alleged impossibility of the Holocaust by stating: "...I do think they took it seriously. It is fantastic, but of course, Auschwitz is fantastic, too".<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 pages 211-212</ref> Browning testified that the Madagascar Plan was not "Hitler's pipe dream" as Irving claimed, and that: <blockquote>"I would not call it a pipe dream, because I think, if England had surrendered, they would have tried to do it. They would have to tried to implement it just as they tried to implement the Lublin reservation plan [Browning was referring to the [[Nisko Plan]] here] and just as they tried and succeeded in implementing the death camp plans"</blockquote>Browning categorically rejected Irving’s claim that there was no reliable statistical information on the size of the pre-war Jewish population in Europe or on the killing processes, and argued that the only reason historians debate whether five or six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust is due to a lack of access to archives in the former Soviet Union.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 page 213</ref> Likewise, Browning argued that it is possible to become soaked in human blood after shooting people at close range based on his research for his 1992 book ''Ordinary Men'', and dismissed Irving’s argument that accounts of German personnel being soaked in blood were improbable because it is not possible to have a blood splattered uniform after shooting people at close range.<ref>Guttenplan, D.D. ''The Holocaust on Trial'', New York: W.W. Norton, 2001 pages 213-214</ref> Browning responded to Irving's claim that because Browning had done work for the [[Yad Vashem]] center in [[Jerusalem]] that made him an "Israeli agent" and thereby compromised his scholarly abilities by stating:
<blockquote>"If that was the case, then since I had been at the [US} Holocaust Museum, I would also have been an agent of the American government, and since I have received scholarships in Germany, I would be an agent of the German government, so I must be a very duplicitous fellow to be able to follow these regimes"</blockquote> Irving seemed anxious for Browning’s approval, and Browning later recalled that Irving behaved like the two of them were on "a joint journey of exploration and discovery."<ref name="robertfulford.com"/><ref name="Guttenplan, D.D. page 210"/>


On 17 January 1991, Irving told a reporter from ''[[The Jewish Chronicle]]'' that "The Jews are very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time".<ref name=s33>{{Harnvb|Stern|1993|p=33}}</ref> Irving went on to say that he believed antisemitism will increase all over the world because "the Jews have exploited people with the gas chamber legend" and that "In ten years, Israel will cease to exist and the Jews will have to return to Europe".<ref name=s33/> In his 1991 revised edition of ''Hitler's War'', he had removed all references to [[death camp]]s and the Holocaust. In a speech given in [[Hamburg]] in 1991, Irving stated that in two years' time "this myth of mass murders of Jews in the death factories of Auschwitz, [[Majdanek]] and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] ... which in fact never took place" will be disproved (Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka were all well established as being [[extermination camp]]s).<ref name="Rosenbaum 222">{{Harvnb|Rosenbaum|1999|p=222}}.</ref> Two days later, Irving repeated the same speech in [[Halle, Saxony-Anhalt|Halle]] before a group of neo-Nazis, and praised [[Rudolf Hess]] as "that great German martyr, Rudolf Hess".<ref name="Rosenbaum 222" /> At another 1991 speech, this time in Canada, Irving called the Holocaust a "hoax", and again predicted that by 1993 the "hoax" would have been "exposed".<ref name="Pelt 57" /> In that speech, Irving declared, "Gradually the word is getting around Germany. Two years from now too, the German historians will accept that we are right. They will accept that for fifty years they have believed a lie".<ref name="Pelt 57">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=57}}.</ref> During that speech given in October 1991, Irving expressed his contempt and hatred for Holocaust survivors by proclaiming that:
===Claimant===
In the trial, Irving represented himself. He called the American [[Kevin B. MacDonald]], an [[evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychologist]], to testify on his behalf. Irving also subpoenaed the diplomatic historian D.C. Watt and the military historian [[John Keegan]] to testify in his case against Lipstadt; both men had refused an earlier offer to testify for Irving on their own and appeared to be very reluctant on the stand. Rather than focus on the defence's evidence against him, or on whether or not Lipstadt had defamed him, Irving seemed to focus mainly on his "right to [[free speech]]". In his closing statement, Irving claimed to have been a victim of an international, mostly Jewish, conspiracy for more than three decades. At one point on 15 March 2000, during the course of Irving's closing argument, he referred to the Judge as 'Mein Führer' (page 193 of the transcript). <!-- Interesting. So what, is he insane? Or was he mocking the court -->


{{blockquote|Ridicule alone isn't enough, you've got to be tasteless about it. You've got to say things like "More women died on the back seat of [[Ted Kennedy|Edward Kennedy]]'s car at [[Chappaquiddick incident|Chappaquiddick]] than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz." Now you think that's tasteless, what about this? I'm forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it's called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, "ASSHOLs". Can't get more tasteless than that, but you've got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.}}
===Ruling===
[[Image:Irving trial02.jpg|thumb|Irving unsuccessfully represented himself and his work during the trial. The Court found that Lipstadt did not libel Irving when she called him a Holocaust denier in her book.]]


In another 1991 speech, this time in [[Regina, Saskatchewan|Regina]], Irving called the Holocaust "a major fraud... There were no gas chambers. They were fakes and frauds".<ref>{{Harvnb|Stern|1993|p=48}}</ref>
In presenting his ruling, Mr. Justice Gray concluded<ref>Paragraph 13.167</ref> that he found the following claims against Irving to be '[[substantial truth|substantially true]]':
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>


In November 1992, Irving was to be a featured speaker at a world [[anti zionism|anti-Zionist]] congress in [[Stockholm]] that was cancelled by the Swedish government.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 8" /> Also scheduled to attend were fellow Holocaust-deniers [[Robert Faurisson]] and [[Fred A. Leuchter]], and [[Louis Farrakhan]], together with representatives of the militant Palestinian group [[Hamas]], the [[Lebanon|Lebanese]] militant [[Shiite]] group [[Hezbollah]], and the right-wing Russian antisemitic group [[Pamyat]].<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 8" /> In a 1993 speech, Irving claimed that there had been only 100,000 Jewish deaths at Auschwitz, "but not from gas chambers. They died from epidemics".<ref name="Pelt 56">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=56}}.</ref> Irving went on to claim that most of the Jewish deaths during World War II had been caused by Allied bombing.<ref name="Pelt 56" /> Irving claimed that "The concentration camp inmates arrived in Berlin or [[Leipzig]] or in [[Dresden]] just in time for the [[RAF]] bombers to set fire to those cities. Nobody knows how many Jews died in those air raids".<ref name="Pelt 56" />
Irving lost subsequent attempts at appeal, the appeal finally being rejected by [[Stephen Sedley|Lord Justice Sedley]].


In a 1994 speech, Irving lamented that his predictions of 1991 had failed to occur, and complained of the persistence of belief in the "rotting corpse" of the "profitable legend" of the Holocaust.<ref name="Pelt 57" /> In another 1994 speech, Irving claimed that there was no German policy of genocide of Jews, and that only 600,000 Jews died in concentration camps in World War II, all due to either Allied bombing or disease.<ref name="Shermer Grobman 50" /> At the same time, Irving started to appear more frequently at the annual conferences hosted by the IHR.<ref name="Shermer Grobman 49-50">{{Harvnb|Shermer|Grobman|2002|pp=49–50}}.</ref> In a 1995 speech, Irving claimed that the Holocaust was a myth invented by a "world-wide Jewish cabal" to serve their own ends.<ref>{{Harvnb|Shermer|Grobman|2002|p=51}}.</ref> Irving also spoke on other topics at the IHR gatherings. A frequent theme was the claim that [[Winston Churchill]] had advance knowledge of the [[Imperial Japan|Japanese]] plans to attack [[Pearl Harbor]], and refused to warn the Americans, in order to bring the United States into World War II.<ref>{{Harvnb|Shermer|Grobman|2002|p=56}}.</ref> In 1995 he stated that, "We revisionists, say that gas chambers didn't exist and that the 'factories of death' didn't exist."<ref name="Evans 2002 133"/> In 1999, Irving said during a television interview, "I'm a gas chamber denier. I'm a denier that they killed hundreds of thousands of people in gas chambers, yes."<ref name="Evans 2002 133"/>
A 2001 episode of [[PBS]]'s ''[[NOVA (TV series)|NOVA]]'' (titled "Holocaust on Trial") focused on the case, and showed re-enactments of events in the courtroom. Irving was played by British actor [[John Castle]].


At the same time, Irving maintained an ambivalent attitude to Holocaust denial depending on his audience. In a 1993 letter, Irving lashed out against his former friend Zündel, writing that: "In April 1988 I unhesitatingly agreed to aid your defence as a witness in Toronto. ''I would not make the same mistake again''. As a penalty for having defended you then, and for having continued to aid you since, my life has come under a gradually mounting attack: I find myself the worldwide victim of mass demonstrations, violence, vituperation and persecution" (emphasis in the original). Irving went on to claim his life had been wonderful until Zündel had got him involved in the Holocaust denial movement: van Pelt argues that Irving was just trying to shift responsibility for his actions in his letter.<ref name="Pelt 56"/> In an interview with Australian radio in July 1995, Irving claimed that at least four million Jews died in World War II, though he argued that this was due to terrible sanitary conditions inside the concentration camps as opposed to a deliberate policy of genocide in the death camps.<ref name="Shermer Grobman 50" /> Irving's statement led to a very public spat with his former ally Faurisson, who insisted that no Jews were killed in the Holocaust.<ref name="Pelt 56" /> In 1995, Irving stated in another speech that "I have to take off my hat to my adversaries and the strategies they have employed—the marketing of the very word Holocaust: I half expected to see a little [[Trademark symbol|TM]] after it".<ref name="Shermer Grobman 50" /> Likewise, depending on his audience, during the 1990s Irving either used the absence of a written {{lang|de|Führerbefehl}} (Führer order) for the "Final Solution" to argue that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust, or claimed that the absence of a written order meant there was no Holocaust at all.<ref name="Shermer Grobman 49-50" />
===Aftermath===
Not only did Irving lose the case, but in light of the evidence presented at the trial a number of his works that had previously escaped serious scrutiny were brought to public attention. He was also liable to pay all of the substantial costs of the trial, which ruined him financially and subsequently forced him into [[bankruptcy]] in 2002.


==Racism and antisemitism==
==Criticism by historians==
Although Irving denies being a racist,<ref>{{cite web|title=Irving taught his nine-month-old daughter racist ditty, libel trial told|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/feb/03/irving|website=The Guardian|date=3 February 2000}}</ref> he has expressed [[racism|racist]] and antisemitic sentiments, both publicly and privately.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hdot.org/judge/|title=Trial Judgement: Mr Justice Gray}}</ref> Irving has often expressed his belief in the conspiracy theory of [[Zionist Occupation Government conspiracy theory|Jews secretly ruling the world]], and that the belief in the reality of the Holocaust was manufactured as part of the same alleged conspiracy.<ref name="Guttenplan 51" /> Irving used the label "traditional enemies of the truth" to describe Jews, and in a 1963 article about a speech by Sir [[Oswald Mosley]] wrote that the "Yellow Star did not make a showing".<ref name="Guttenplan 51" /> In 1992, Irving stated that "the Jews are very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time" and claimed he "foresees a new wave of antisemitism" the world over due to Jewish "exploitation of the Holocaust myth".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180" /> During an interview with the American writer [[Ron Rosenbaum]], Irving restated his belief that Jews were his "traditional enemy".<ref>{{Harvnb|Rosenbaum|1999|p=234}}.</ref> In one interview cited in the libel lawsuit, Irving also stated that he would be "willing to put [his] signature" to the "fact" that "a great deal of control over the world is exercised by Jews".<ref name="vs">Interview for ''This Week'', 28 November 1991. pp. 7–8. Cited by [[s:David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt/IX|''David Irving v. Penguin Books and Sarah Lipstadt''. IX: JUSTIFICATION: THE ALLEGATION THAT IRVING IS AN ANTI-SEMITE AND A RACIST]].</ref>


After Irving was sacked by ''The Sunday Times'' to help them with their serialisation of the Goebbels diaries, he described a group of protesters outside of his apartment as, "All the scum of humanity stand outside. The homosexuals, the gypsies, the lesbians, the Jews, the criminals, the Communists..."<ref>{{cite web|title=So what turned David Irving into an apologist for racism and genocide?|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-so-what-turned-david-irving-into-an-apologist-for-racism-and-genocide-6108385.html|website=[[The Independent]]|first=Dominic|last=Lawson|author-link=Dominic Lawson|date=24 February 2004}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=David Irving: A Political Self-Portrait|url=https://www.hdot.org/david-irving-a-political-self-portrait/|website=Holocaust Denial on Trial|date=3 May 2016|quote=Der ganze Pöbel, der ganze Abschaum der Menschheit steht draußen. Die Homosexuellen, die Zigeuner, die Lesben, die Juden, die Verbrecher, die Kommunisten, die Linksradikalen, die Chaoten, die ganze Kommune steht da und mußte hinter Stahlbarrikaden zurückgehalten werden zwei Tage lang.'] [Videocassette 210, 'David Irving: "Ich komme wieder", ca. 1994', 26m 56s–26m 81s.]}}</ref>
Irving was once highly regarded for his expert knowledge of German military archives. Much of his scholarship was disputed by historians to the point that his standing as a historian was challenged from his earliest publications.<ref name="DI_author"> In 1969, after David Irving's support for [[Rolf Hochhuth]], the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' issued a memo to all its correspondents. It said: "It is incorrect to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author." Ingram, Richard. [http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece. "Irving was the author of his own downfall"], ''The Independent'', 25 February 2006. The same point was made during Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books: "It may seem an absurd semantic dispute to deny the appellation of ‘historian’ to someone who has written two dozen books or more about historical subjects. But if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as ‘historical writer’ instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it in order to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian’s primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian." Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books, [http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/evidence/evans006.asp "Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans FBA, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge"], 2000, Chapter 6. During Irving's criminal trial in Austria, State Prosecutor Michael Klackl said: "He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history." Traynor, Ian. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html "Irving jailed for denying Holocaust"], ''The Guardian'', 21 February 2006.</ref> Contentious in large part for advancing interpretations of the war considered favourable to the German side and for association with far-right groups that advanced these views, by 1988 he began advocating the view that the Holocaust did not take place as a systematic and deliberate genocide, and quickly grew to be one of the most prominent advocates of Holocaust denial, costing him what scholarly reputation he had outside those circles.


Several of these statements were cited by the judge's decision in Irving's lawsuit against [[Irving v Penguin Books Ltd|Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt]],<ref name="vs" /> leading the judge to conclude that Irving "had on many occasions spoken in terms which are plainly racist."<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/709517.stm "Judge: Why Irving had to lose"], [[BBC News]], 11 April 2000.</ref> One example brought was his diary entry for 17 September 1994, in which Irving wrote about a ditty he composed for his young daughter "when [[half-breed]] children are wheeled past":
===Reaction to Irving's work (1960-1970s)===


{{poemquote|
In a review of 1977, the British historian [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] wrote that "no praise can be too high for his [Irving's] indefatigable, scholarly industry".<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 22">Lipstadt, Deborah ''History on Trial'', New York: Harper Collins, 2005 page 22</ref> Trevor-Roper followed up his praise by expressing severe doubts about Irving's methodology. Trevor-Roper argued that :"He [Irving] seizes on a small, but dubious particle of 'evidence'; builds upon it, by private interpretation, a large general conclusion; and then overlooks or re-interprets the more substantial evidence and probability against it. Since this defective method is invariably used to excuse Hitler or the Nazis and to damage their opponents, we may reasonably speak of a consistent bias, unconsciously distorting the evidence".<ref>Pelt, Robert Jan van The Case for Auschwitz, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002 page 20</ref> Finally, Trevor-Roper commented: "When a historian relies mainly on primary sources, which we can not easily check, he challenges our confidence and forces us to ask critical questions. How reliable is his historical method? How sound is his judgment? We ask these questions particularly of a man like Mr. Irving, who makes a virtue of - almost a profession - of using arcane sources to affront established opinions".<ref>Lipstadt, Deborah ''History on Trial'', New York: Harper Collins, 2005 page 22; Evans, Richard Lying about Hitler, New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 10</ref> Trevor-Roper ended by writing "He may read his manuscript diaries correctly. But we can never be quite sure, and when he is at most original, we likely to be least sure".<ref> Evans, Richard Lying about Hitler, New York: Basic Books, 2001 page 10</ref>
I am a Baby [[Aryan]]
Not Jewish or [[Sectarian]]
I have no plans to marry an
[[List of ethnic slurs|Ape]] or [[Rastafari movement|Rastafarian]].}}


[[Christopher Hitchens]] wrote that Irving sang the rhyme to Hitchens's wife, Carol Blue, and daughter, Antonia, in the elevator following drinks in the family's Washington apartment.<ref>[[Christopher Hitchens|Hitchens, Christopher]]. [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-may-20-bk-144-story.html "The Strange Case of David Irving"], ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'', 20 May 2001. Reprinted in Hitchens, Christopher. ''Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays'', [[Nation Books]], 2004, p. 261. {{ISBN|978-1-56025-580-2}}</ref>
The British historian [[A. J. P. Taylor]] called Irving in 1978 an author of "unrivaled industry' and "good scholarship" regarding research in the archives<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 22"/>. However, Taylor criticized Irving’s double standard with historical judgements, using as an example Irving’s claim that the lack of a written ''Führer'' order proves that Hitler did not know about the Holocaust while at the same time claiming that the lack of a written order “proved” that Churchill ordered the “murder” of General Sikorski (In ''Accident'', Irving claimed that there was a written order for Sikorski's "murder", but that Churchill had it destoyed). The British historian [[Paul Addison]] in 1979 described Irving as a "colossus of research", but criticized him for his view of "Churchill as wicked as Hitler" and "a schoolboy in judgment"<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 22"/>. In a book review published in the ''[[Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung]]'' on June 18, 1979, the German historian [[Andreas Hillgruber]] for the most part offered a highly unfavorable judgment of Irving’s work.<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 236">Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 236</ref> Despite his criticism, Hillgruber ended his review with the comment that Irving’s work “amounts to an indubitable and in no way small merit of Irving”<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 236"/>.


==''Persona non grata''==
===Reactions to Irving (1980s-1990s)===
[[File:Irving.Wien-trial.jpg|thumb|Irving during his trial in Austria with a copy of his book ''Hitler's War'']]
{{ambox
After Irving denied the Holocaust in two speeches given in Austria in 1989, the Austrian government issued an arrest warrant for him and barred him from entering the country.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html |title=Irving jailed for denying Holocaust |publisher=The Guardian<! |access-date=20 September 2009|location=London|first=Ian|last=Traynor|date=21 February 2006}}</ref> In early 1992, a German court found him guilty of Holocaust denial under the ''Auschwitzlüge'' section of the law against ''[[Volksverhetzung]]'' (a failed appeal by Irving would see the fine rise from 10,000 DM to 30,000 DM), and he was subsequently barred from entering Germany.<ref>{{Harvnb|Evans|2002|pp=27–28}}</ref><ref name="adl profile"/> Other governments followed suit, including Italy and Canada,<ref>Duff, Oliver. [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article346741.ece " David Irving: An anti-Semitic racist who has suffered financial ruin"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070422204331/http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article346741.ece |date=22 April 2007 }}, ''The Independent'', 21 February 2006.</ref> where he was arrested in November 1992 and deported to the United Kingdom.<ref name="adl profile"/> In an administrative hearing surrounding those events, he was found by the hearing office to have engaged in a "total fabrication" in telling a story of an exit from and return to Canada which would, for technical reasons, have made the original deportation order invalid. He was also barred from entering Australia in 1992, a ban he made five unsuccessful attempts to overturn.<ref>[http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/stories/s96976.htm "Holocaust denier to try another visit to Australia"]. ''The World Today''.</ref>
| type = style
| text = '''This section needs [[Wikipedia:Section#Subdivisions in general|subsections]].'''<br><small>Please format the article according to the guidelines laid out at [[Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)]].</small>
}}
In a review of Irving's 1988 book ''Churchill's War'', [[David Cannadine]] criticised Irving's "double standard on evidence", accusing Irving of "demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans (as when he sought to show that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust), while relying on circumstantial evidence to condemn the British (as in his account of the Allied [[bombing of Dresden]])."<ref name="skeptics">[http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/skeptics.html Taking a Holocaust Skeptic Seriously]</ref>


[[File:Irving.1992.jpg|thumb|left|upright|David Irving being [[deportation|deported]] from Canada, 1992]]
Writing in 1989 about Irving’s Göring biography, the German-Canadian historian Peter Hoffmann declared:<blockquote>
In 1992, Irving signed a contract with [[Macmillan Publishers]] for his biography of [[Joseph Goebbels]] titled ''Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Jews attack publisher of Irving book: Protesters to demand company abandons plan to print Goebbels biography by historian working on diaries|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/jews-attack-publisher-of-irving-book-protesters-to-demand-company-abandons-plan-to-print-goebbels-1531572.html|newspaper=The Independent|first=Rosie|last=Waterhouse|date=6 July 1992}}</ref> Following charges that Irving had selectively "edited" a recently discovered complete edition of [[Goebbels Diaries|Goebbels's diaries]] in Moscow, Macmillan cancelled the book deal.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=55}}.</ref> The decision by ''[[The Sunday Times]]'' (who had bought the rights to serialised extracts from the diaries before Macmillan published them) in July 1992 to hire Irving as a translator of Goebbels's diary was criticised by Austrian-British historian [[Peter G. J. Pulzer]], who argued that Irving, because of his views about the Third Reich, was not the best man for the job.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=180}}.</ref> [[Andrew Neil]], the editor of ''The Sunday Times'', called Irving "reprehensible", but defended hiring him because he was only a "transcribing technician", which others criticised as a poor description of translation work.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180" />
“Mr. Irving’s constant references to archives, diaries and letters, and the overwhelming amount of detail in his work, suggest objectivity. In fact they put a screen behind which a very different agenda is transacted…Mr. Irving is a great obfuscator…Distortions affect every important aspect of this book to the point of obfuscation…It is unfortunate that Mr Irving wastes his extraordinary talents as a researcher and writer on trivializing the greatest crimes in German history, on manipulating historical sources and on highlighting the theatrics of the Nazi era”<ref name="Evans, Richard page 17">Evans, Richard ''Telling Lies about Hitler'', London: Verso, 2002 page 17</ref></blockquote> Hoffman went to write that though Irving had at one time played a useful role in the historical profession by making outrageous assertions that at least had the benefit of inspiring historians to undertake research to rebut him, the time for that had now passed, and that Irving was simply irrelevant to the study of the Third Reich<ref name="Evans, Richard page 17"/>.


On 27 April 1993, Irving was ordered to attend court to be examined on charges relating to the ''[[Loi Gayssot]]'' in France, making it an offence to question the existence or size of the category of crimes against humanity. The law does not extend to [[extradition]], and Irving refused to travel to France.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/Global/Vendetta.html |title=Global Vendetta |first=David |last=Irving |publisher=Focal Point |access-date=2 September 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110903060945/http://www.fpp.co.uk/bookchapters/Global/Vendetta.html |archive-date=3 September 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><!-- Unreliable source (obviously), but exceptionally allowed in an about-self fashion --> Then, in February 1994, Irving spent 10 days of a three-month sentence in London's [[Pentonville prison]] for [[contempt of court]] following a legal wrangling over publishing rights.<ref>{{Cite web |date=12 February 1994 |title=Far-right author sentenced to jail for contempt of court |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/farright-author-sentenced-to-jail-for-contempt-of-court-1393498.html |access-date=6 November 2023 |website=The Independent |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=David Irving |url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/david-irving |access-date=6 November 2023 |website=Southern Poverty Law Center |language=en}}</ref>
In a [[Feuilleton|''feuilleton'']] published in the ''Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung'' on October 18, 1989 the German historian [[Rainer Zitelmann]] praised Irving for having “struck a nerve” with his provocative style and aggressive assertions.<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 181">Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 181</ref> Zitelmann found much to be praised about Irving’s claim that the lack of a written ''Führer'' order for the Holocaust suggests that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust, and argued that if that was true, then historians should stop holding the Holocaust against Hitler<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 181"/>. Zitelmann ended his article with the claim that “Irving must not be ignored. He has weaknesses [but he is] one of the best knowers of sources…[and has] contributed much to research”<ref name="Lukacs, John 1997, page 181"/>. The British historian [[John Charmley]] commented that "Irving's sources, unlike the conclusions which he draws from them, are usually sound" and that Irving "has been unjustly ignored"<ref name="Lipstadt, Deborah page 22"/>.


In 1995, [[St. Martin's Press]] of New York City agreed to publish the Goebbels biography: but after protests, they cancelled the contract, leaving Irving in a situation in which, according to [[D. D. Guttenplan]], he was desperate for financial help, publicity, and the need to re-establish his reputation as a historian.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|pp=56–57}}.</ref> The book was eventually self-published.
Prominent British historian Sir [[John Keegan]] wrote in 1996 in his book ''The Battle for History'', "Some controversies are entirely bogus, like David Irving's contention that Hitler's subordinates kept from him the facts of the Final Solution, the extermination of the Jews..." In an 20 April 1996 review in ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' of ''Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich'', Keegan wrote that Irving "knows more than anyone alive about the German side of the Second World War", and claimed that ''Hitler's War'' was "indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the war in the round".<ref name="skeptics"/>


===Libel suit===
During the libel trial of 2000, Keegan—who had been subpoenaed by Irving to appear as a witness—lambasted Irving by saying: "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 with the Jewish people" and, when asked if it was perverse to say that Hitler did not know about the Final Solution, answered "that it defies common sense".<ref>[http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/i/irving.david/ftp.py?people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day016.01 Day 16 of David Irving vs Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt]</ref> In an article in ''The Daily Telegraph'' of 12 April 2000, Keegan spoke of his experience of the trial, writing that Irving had an "all-consuming knowledge of a vast body of material" and exhibited "many of the qualities of the most creative historians", that his skill as an archivist could not be contested, and that he was "certainly never dull". However, according to Keegan, "like many who seek to shock, he may not really believe what he says and probably feels astounded when taken seriously".<ref>[http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=/archive/2000/04/12/nirv512.html The trial of David Irving - and my part in his downfall]</ref>
{{Main|Irving v Penguin Books Ltd}}
{{wikisource|David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt}}


On 5 September 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against [[Deborah Lipstadt]] and her British publisher Penguin Books for publishing the British edition of Lipstadt's book, ''[[Denying the Holocaust]]'', which had first been published in the United States in 1993.<ref>{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=63}}.</ref> In the book, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier, falsifier and bigot, and said that he manipulated and distorted real documents.
In the 1990s, Irving featured on his web-site a translation of a letter by the prominent German historian [[Hans Mommsen]], praising Irving's skill as a researcher. Mommsen, who had written the letter in 1977, unsuccessfully attempted to have it removed, but did succeed in forcing Irving to feature a second letter from him written in 1998 in which Mommsen completely disavowed his 1977 letter.


During the trial, Irving claimed that Hitler had not ordered the extermination of the Jews of Europe, was ignorant of the Holocaust and was a friend of the Jews.<ref>{{cite web|title=David Irving: 'Hitler appointed me his biographer'|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-irving-hitler-appointed-me-his-biographer-1366464.html|newspaper=The Guardian|first=Johann |last=Hari |date=15 January 2009 |access-date=16 April 2022}}</ref>
In a six-page essay in ''[[The New York Review of Books]]'' published on September 19, 1996 the American historian [[Gordon A. Craig]], a leading scholar of German history at [[Stanford University]], noted Irving's claims that the Holocaust never took place and that [[Auschwitz]] was merely "a labor camp with an unfortunately high death rate".<ref>Craig, Gordon "The Devil in the Details" pages 8-14 from ''New York Review of Books'', 19 September 1996</ref> Though "such obtuse and quickly discredited views" may be "offensive to large numbers of people", Craig argued that Irving's work is "the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War" and that "we dare not" disregard his views. Craig called Irving a "useful irritant”; a ''[[Devil's Advocate|devil's advocate]]'' historian who promoted what Craig considered to be a twisted and wrong-headed view of history, with a great deal of élan, but his advocacy of these views forced historians to make a fruitful [[epistemological]] examination about the current state of knowledge about the [[Third Reich]].


Lipstadt hired the British solicitor [[Anthony Julius]] to present her case, while Penguin Books hired Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman, libel specialist from media firm [[Davenport Lyons]]. They briefed the libel barrister [[Richard Rampton]] QC and Penguin also briefed junior barrister Heather Rogers. The defendants (with Penguin's insurers paying the fee) also retained Professor [[Richard J. Evans]], historian and Professor of Modern History at [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge University]], as an expert witness. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian [[Christopher Browning]], the German historian [[Peter Longerich]], and the [[Dutch people|Dutch]] architectural expert [[Robert Jan van Pelt]]. The last wrote a report attesting to the fact that the death camps were designed, built and used for the purpose of [[mass murder]], while Browning testified for the reality of the Holocaust. Evans' report was the most comprehensive, in-depth examination of Irving's work:
The Hungarian-American historian [[John Lukacs]] in his 1997 book ''The Hitler of History'' has labeled Irving an apologist for Hitler who consistently mishandled historical evidence in Hitler’s favor.<ref name="Lukacs, John page 178">Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 178</ref> Lukacs maintains that over the years, Irving’s treatment of Hitler has gone from a barely concealed admiration to a [[Great man theory|Great Man]] treatment of Hitler.<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 26</ref> Lukacs argues that Irving's picture of Hitler is defective because of his tendency to confuse asserting that Hitler was a great warlord as being the same thing as proving Hitler was a military genius, which leads to a total neglect of the crucial question of why Hitler took particular decisions at particular times.<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 132</ref> Lukacs condemned Irving as a historical writer for his “twisting” of evidence (i.e. labeling [[Adolf Eichmann]]’s statement before an Israeli court in 1961 that he heard from Himmler that Hitler had given a verbal order for the Holocaust as mere “hearsay”).<ref name="Lukacs, John page 178"/> Lukacs described Irving in the 1997 American edition of ''The Hitler of History'' as the most influential of Hitler’s apologists, and found it “regrettable” that many professional historians cite Irving as a source.<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 229</ref> Lukacs called Irving’s historical opinions objectionable and inexcusable, and complained that too many of Irving’s opinions were supported by footnotes that referred either to sources that did not exist or said something different from what Irving wrote.<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 pages 229-230</ref> Some of the examples Lukacs cited in support of his claim was Irving’s contemptuous statement mocking the Polish cavalry for charging German tanks (a legend discredited even in the 1970s when Irving wrote ''Hitler’s War''), asserting with no source that Hitler refused a lavish banquet prepared for him in [[Warsaw]] in 1939 out of the desire to eat the same rations as the ordinary German soldier, for crediting a statement again with no source to Hitler in August 1940 that he would let Churchill live in peace after defeating Britain, for falsely claiming [[Battle of Moscow|Operation Typhoon]], the German drive onto Moscow in 1941 was forced on him by his General Staff, and for putting his own words in a speech of Hitler in September 1943 implying Churchill was a decadent homosexual (not something that was in Hitler’s speech).<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 pages 230-231</ref> Lukacs asserted too many of the crucial statements by Irving in ''Hitler’s War'' such as his claim that Hitler foresaw [[Operation Uranus]], the Soviet counter-offensive at the [[Battle of Stalingrad]] or his claim that the Hungarian leader Major [[Ferenc Szálasi]] wanted to fight to the bitter end in 1944-45 (when he wished for a German-Soviet compromise peace) were completely dishonest and untrue statements supported by references to non-existent documents.<ref>Lukacs, John ''The Hitler of History'', New York: Vintage Books, 1997, 1998 page 231</ref>


{{blockquote|Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://hdot.org/evans/#evans_6.html|work=Holocaust Denial on Trial: Expert Witness Report|title=Chapter 6. General Conclusion |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |author-link=Richard J. Evans |access-date=19 December 2013}}</ref>}}
Many have considered Irving’s historical arguments to be very convoluted. An example occurred in the above-mentioned interview with the American writer [[Ron Rosenbaum]], when Rosenbaum questioned Irving about a memoir that had come into Irving's possession that was alleged to have been written by [[Adolf Eichmann]] in the 1950s. The precise authenticity of the ''Eichmann Memoirs'' is in doubt, but parts of the book, according to the German Federal Archives, appeared to be genuine (through the book was apparently the result of an interview between Eichmann and an Argentine journalist in the 1950s).<ref name=autogenerated4>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 224.</ref> Irving had received the alleged memoir during a visit to [[Argentina]] in December 1991, when it was presented to him after he had spoken at a neo-Nazi rally and was quite proud of his find.<ref name=autogenerated4 /> In ''The Eichmann Memoirs'', Eichmann claimed to have heard from Himmler that Hitler had given a verbal order authorizing the Holocaust, thereby contradicting Irving's claim in ''Hitler’s War'' that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust. Irving's response to the claim that Hitler ordered the Holocaust in ''The Eichmann Memoirs'' was to claim that Eichmann wrote his memoirs in 1956 at the time of the [[Suez War]], and was fearful that [[Cairo]], [[Egypt]] might fall to [[Israel]].<ref name=autogenerated7>Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 225.</ref> Irving's reasoning is that if Cairo was taken by the Israeli Defence Forces, then the Israelis might discover the "[[Ratlines (history)|rat-line]]", as undercover smuggling networks for Nazis were known, that had allowed Eichmann to escape to Argentina, and that therefore Eichmann had written his memoirs as a potential defence in the event of being captured by the Israelis.<ref name=autogenerated7 /> In this way, Irving argued that ''The Eichmann Memoirs'' were genuine but that the claim that Hitler ordered the Holocaust was false – made only to reduce Eichmann's responsibility for the Holocaust. Also in the same interview, Irving claimed wanting acceptance as a scholar by other historians and bemoaned having to associate with what he called the lunatic fringe [[anti-Semitic]] groups; he claimed he would disassociate himself from these groups full of "cracked" people as soon as he was accepted by the historians' community.<ref name="Rosenbaum, Ron page 233">Rosenbaum, Ron ''Explaining Hitler'' New York: Random House, 1999 page 233</ref> Rosenbaum sarcastically wrote in his 1998 book ''Explaining Hitler '' that if Irving wanted to considered a historian, he was going about it in a rather strange way by denying the Holocaust at neo-Nazi rallies.<ref name="Rosenbaum, Ron page 233"/>.


The [[BBC]] quoted Evans further:
==Persona non grata==
[[Image:Irving deported canada1992.jpg|thumb|Irving as he was deported from Canada in 1992]]


{{blockquote|Irving ... had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. ... Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all.<ref name="Walker">{{cite news|last=Walker |first=Andrew |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4449948.stm |title=Profile: David Irving |work=BBC News |date=20 February 2006 |access-date=2 September 2011}}</ref>}}
After Irving denied the Holocaust in two 1989 speeches given in Austria, the Austrian government issued an arrest warrant against him and barred him from entering the country. This case came up again in 2005 when Irving was arrested and brought to trial (see next section).<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html Irving jailed for denying Holocaust | World news | The Guardian<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> In early 1992 a German court found him guilty of Holocaust denial under the ''Auschwitzlüge'' section of the law against ''[[Volksverhetzung]]'' (a failed appeal by Irving would see the fine rise from 10,000 DM to 30,000 DM), and he was subsequently barred from entering Germany.<ref name=ADLIrving> "In early 1992, German authorities fined him 10,000 marks (about $6,000) after he violated a federal law against public expression of the "Auschwitz Lie". Appealing the fine, an unrepentant Irving declared, "there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, I will not change my opinion." (His fine was subsequently tripled.) In 1993, he was banned from the country. His criminal convictions in Germany led Canadian authorities to deny him entrance as well; he was deported from Canada in 1992 after he admitted having lied to a Canadian customs official." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/irving.asp David Irving: Propagandists' Poster Boy], [[Anti-Defamation League]]. Retrieved 18 April 2007.</ref> Other governments followed suit, including Austria, Italy and Canada,<ref>Duff, Oliver. [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article346741.ece " David Irving: An anti-Semitic racist who has suffered financial ruin"], ''The Independent'', 21 February 2006.</ref> where he was arrested in November 1992 and deported back to the United Kingdom.<ref name=ADLIrving/> In an administrative hearing surrounding those events, he was found by the hearing office to have engaged in a "total fabrication" in telling a story of an exit from and return to Canada which would, for technical reasons, have made the original deportation order invalid. He was also barred from entering Australia in 1992, a ban he made four unsuccessful legal attempts to overturn.


Not only did Irving lose the case, but in light of the evidence presented at the trial a number of his works that had previously escaped serious scrutiny were brought to public attention. He was also ordered to pay all of Penguin's trial costs, estimated to be as much as £2 million (US$3.2 million), though it is uncertain how much of these costs he would ultimately pay.<ref name="Walker"/><ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/709996.stm | access-date=12 January 2011|title=Irving defiant over libel defeat|work=BBC News|date=12 April 2000}}</ref> When he did not meet these, Davenport Lyons moved to make him bankrupt on behalf of their client. He was declared bankrupt in 2002,<ref>{{cite news|first1=Vikram|last1=Dodd|last2=Guttenplan|first2=D. D. |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/mar/05/humanities.highereducation |title=Holocaust denier made bankrupt|work=The Guardian|date=5 March 2002|location=London}}</ref> and lost his home, though he has been able to travel around the world despite his financial problems.<ref>{{cite news|last=Dodd|first=Vikram|url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2002/may/22/irving.humanities|title=Failed libel action costs Irving his home|work=The Guardian|date= 22 May 2002|access-date=2 September 2011|location=London}}</ref>
On 27 April 1993 Irving was ordered to attend court to be examined on charges relating to the ''[[Loi Gayssot]]'' in France. The law, however, does not permit extradition and Irving simply refused to travel to France.


Irving subsequently appealed to the [[Court of Appeal of England and Wales#Civil Division|Civil Division]] of the [[Court of Appeal of England and Wales|Court of Appeal]]. On 20 July 2001, his application for appeal was denied by Lords Justices [[Malcolm Pill|Pill]], Mantell and [[Sir Richard Buxton|Buxton]].<ref name=appealjudgment>''Irving v Penguin Books Ltd & Anor'' (2001) [http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2001/1197.html EWCA Civ 1197]</ref><ref>{{cite news|title='Holocaust denier' loses appeal bid |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/1448417.stm |work=[[BBC News]] |publisher=[[BBC]] |date=20 January 2001 |access-date=26 June 2009}}</ref>
Then, in February 1994, Irving spent ten days of a three month sentence in London's [[Pentonville prison]] for contempt of court following a legal wrangling over publishing rights. Irving's legal troubles continued as a [[Mannheim]] court indicted him for defaming the dead; because of this action, he would be fined 20,000 DM in mid-1997.


The libel suit was depicted in a 2016 film, ''[[Denial (2016 film)|Denial]].''
Early in September 2004, [[Michael Cullen]], the [[Deputy Prime Minister of New Zealand|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 (New Zealand)|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 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 Irving's promise not to speak about the Holocaust.


===Life after the libel suit===
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 offences by a German court, and that at various times had been deported from, and/or refused entry to, Canada, the United States, Italy, and South Africa. "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 on board. "As far as I'm concerned, the legal battle now begins", he was quoted as saying.
{{see also|Irving trial}}
[[File:David irving.jpg|thumb|right|Irving at [[The National Archives (United Kingdom)|the National Archives of the United Kingdom]], 2003]]


Early in September 2004, [[Michael Cullen (politician)|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 defended its invitation of Irving, saying that it amounted not to an endorsement of his views, but rather an opportunity to question him. A government spokeswoman said that "people who have been deported from another country are refused entry" to New Zealand. 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 on board.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fpp.co.uk/newzealand/index2.html |title=Index to items covering David Irving's September 2004 New Zealand tour |last=Irving |first=David |publisher=Focus Point |access-date=2 September 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110902022741/http://www.fpp.co.uk/newzealand/index2.html |archive-date=2 September 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref><!-- Unreliable source (obviously), but exceptionally allowed in an about-self fashion -->
==Arrest and imprisonment in Austria==
On 11 November 2005, the Austrian police in the southern state of [[Styria]], acting under a 1989 [[arrest warrant|warrant]], arrested Irving. Four days later, he was charged by state prosecutors with the speech crime of "trivialising the Holocaust". His application for bail was denied on the grounds that he would flee or repeat the offence. He remained in jail awaiting trial. On 20 February 2006 Irving pleaded guilty to the charge of "trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust".


On 11 November 2005, the Austrian police in the southern state of [[Styria]], acting under the 1989 [[arrest warrant|warrant]], arrested Irving. Irving pleaded guilty to the charge of "trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust". Irving stated in his plea that he had changed his opinions on the Holocaust, "I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the [[Adolf Eichmann|Eichmann]] papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."<ref>{{cite web|title= David Irving jailed for Holocaust denial|author=<!-- Staff writer(s) -->|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/feb/20/austria.thefarright|date=20 February 2006|newspaper=The Guardian}}</ref> Irving had obtained the papers from Hugo Byttebier, a Belgian who had served in the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] during the war and had escaped to Argentina.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-33999-2004-04-12.html|title=Página/12 :: El país :: La historia de Byttebier, otro nazi en Argentina|website=www.pagina12.com.ar|language=es|access-date=8 January 2018}}</ref>{{better source needed|reason=This seems to have been published originally in El País, a Spanish paper. Can't we cite that instead?|date=April 2022}} Irving was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in accordance with the law prohibiting Nazi activities ({{lang|de|[[Verbotsgesetz 1947|Verbotsgesetz]]}}, "Prohibition Law").<ref name="BBC 2006-02-20">{{cite news | title=Holocaust denier Irving is jailed | date=20 February 2006 |work=BBC News |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm | access-date =16 June 2009 }}</ref> Irving sat motionless as judge Peter Liebetreu asked him if he had understood the sentence, to which he replied "I'm not sure I do" before being escorted out of the court by Austrian police. Later, Irving said that he was shocked by the severity of the sentence. He had reportedly already purchased a plane ticket home to London.<ref>{{cite news|last=Connolly|first=Kate|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/1511075/Irving-clutches-Hitler-book-in-court.html|title=Irving clutches Hitler book in court|work=The Daily Telegraph|date=21 February 2006}}</ref>
=== Sentencing ===
Before Irving's sentencing hearing, he stated through his lawyer that he had changed his views and his ways. At the trial, Judge Liebtreu quoted numerous statements of Irving's, including "there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz" and "it makes no sense to transport people from [[Jewish Amsterdam#The Holocaust|Amsterdam]], Vienna and Brussels 500 kilometres to Auschwitz simply to liquidate them when it can be more easily done 8 km from the city where they live". Irving informed Judge Liebtreu that he "regretted the formulation".


In December 2006, Irving was released from prison and banned from ever returning to Austria.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2288055,00.html |title=Convicted Holocaust Denier Irving Expelled from Austria |date=22 December 2006 |publisher=Deutsche Welle |access-date=20 September 2009}}</ref> Upon Irving's arrival in the UK he reaffirmed his position, stating that he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/21/uk.irving.ap/index.html |title=Holocaust denier: 'No need to show remorse' |website=[[CNN]] |access-date=16 January 2007 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070116221731/http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/21/uk.irving.ap/index.html |archive-date=16 January 2007}}</ref> On 18 May 2007, he was expelled from the 52nd Warsaw International Book Fair in Poland because the books he took there were deemed by the organizers as promoting [[Nazism]] and antisemitism, which is in violation of Polish law.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/18/europe/EU-GEN-Poland-Irving.php |title=British writer David Irving asked to leave Polish book fair |work=International Herald Tribune |date=29 March 2009 |access-date=20 September 2009}}</ref>
Towards the end of the hearing, Irving again publicly recanted, saying that "I've changed my views. I spoke then about Auschwitz and gas chambers based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that any more and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews. ..I made a mistake by saying there were no gas chambers, I am absolutely without doubt that the Holocaust took place. I apologise to those few I might have offended though I remain very proud of the 30 books I have written." However, Irving continued to insist that Hitler knew nothing of the [[death camps]], and that "The figure of six million killed Jews is just a symbolic number".


Since then, Irving has continued to work as a freelance writer, despite his troubled public image. He was drawn into the controversy surrounding Bishop [[Richard Williamson (bishop)|Richard Williamson]], who in a televised interview recorded in Germany in November 2008 denied the Holocaust took place, only to see Williamson convicted for incitement in April 2010 after refusing to pay a fine of €12,000.<ref>{{cite news|last=Pidd|first=Helen|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/26/british-bishop-holocaust-fine |title=German court fines British bishop for Holocaust claims |work=The Guardian |access-date=10 May 2011|date=26 October 2009|location=London}}</ref><ref name=MSNBC2010>{{cite news|title=British bishop convicted of Holocaust denial: German court fines cleric $13,000 for saying Jews were not gassed to death|date=16 April 2010|agency=Associated Press|url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna36595788|access-date=10 May 2011}}</ref> Irving subsequently found himself beset by protesters on a book tour of the United States.<ref>{{cite news | last = Solomont | first = E. B. | title = Survivors in New York enraged by Holocaust-denier Irving's tour | work = The Jerusalem Post | date = 13 November 2009 | page = 2 |url=http://fr.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258027279080&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull | access-date = 22 December 2009 | ref = CITEREFjpost2009 }}{{dead link|date=March 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> He has also given lectures and tours in the UK and Europe; one tour to Poland in September 2010 which led to particular criticism included the [[Treblinka]] death camp as an itinerary stop.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11381483 |title=Holocaust denier Irving in Poland for Hitler tour |publisher=BBC |date=21 September 2010 |access-date=2 September 2011}}</ref>
In an uncompromising summary, Michael Klackl, the prosecuting attorney, stated: <blockquote>David Irving only uses words, but these words are used by right-wing extremists to give them an ideological position. Mr Irving might have said he has changed his views, but that has all been a show for you. Theatrical exhibition to save himself from the maximum sentence. He has played a role for you today. The thread of anti-Semitism runs through him.<ref>[http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article346727.ece Irving gets three years' jail in Austria for Holocaust denial - Europe, News - Independent.co.uk<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref></blockquote>


Irving and [[Nick Griffin]] (then the [[British National Party]] leader) were invited to speak at a forum on free speech at the [[Oxford Union]] on 26 November 2007, along with [[Anne Atkins]] and [[Evan Harris]].<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/7112480.stm |title=Union debate row speakers arrive |date=26 November 2007 |work=BBC News |access-date=16 April 2022}}</ref> The debate took place after Oxford Union members voted in favour of it,<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7110758.stm |title=BNP to speak to Oxford students | access-date=4 December 2007 | work=BBC News | date=24 November 2007}}</ref> but was disrupted by protesters.<ref>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/7114343.stm |title=Angry scenes greet Oxford debate |work=BBC News |date=27 November 2007 |access-date=16 April 2022}}</ref> {{As of|2016}} Irving was lecturing to small audiences at venues disclosed to carefully vetted ticket-holders a day or two before the event on topics, including [[List of conspiracy theories#Antisemitic conspiracy theories|antisemitic conspiracy theories]], and at one such event, claiming to write the truth unlike "conformist" historians while asserting fabrications about leading Nazis,<ref>{{cite web|last=Usborne|first=Simon|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/exclusive-david-irving--the-hate-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-8792411.html|title=Exclusive: David Irving – the hate that dare not speak its name|work=The Independent|date=30 August 2013|access-date=15 January 2017}}</ref> the life and death of Heinrich Himmler and the saturation bombings during World War II.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://irvingbooks.com/xcart/home.php?cat=250|title=David Irving looks back: My fifty years defending Real History against its enemies. An evening with the historian |date=December 2016|access-date=14 January 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170106094302/https://irvingbooks.com/xcart/home.php?cat=250|archive-date=6 January 2017|url-status=dead}} Web site lists new events from time to time.</ref>
The judge, Peter Liebtreu, summarized: <blockquote>He showed no signs that he attempted to change his views after the arrest warrant was issued 16 years ago in Austria.... He served as an example for the right wing for decades. He is comparable to a prostitute who hasn't changed her ways.... Irving is a falsifier of history and anything but a proper historian. In the world of David Irving there were no gas chambers and no plan to murder the Jews. He's continued to deny the fact that the Holocaust was genocide orchestrated from the highest ranks of the Nazi state.<ref>[http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=266392006 Scotsman.com News<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref></blockquote>


Irving established a website selling [[Nazi memorabilia]] in 2009. The items are offered by other people, with Irving receiving a commission from each sale for authenticating them. Irving stated in 2009 that the website was the only way he could make money after being bankrupted in 2002.<ref name="Telegraph Irving sets up Nazi memorabilia website">{{cite news|last1=Moore|first1=Mathew|title=Holocaust denier David Irving sets up Nazi memorabilia website|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4951684/Holocaust-denier-David-Irving-sets-up-Nazi-memorabilia-website.html|access-date=6 February 2016|work=The Telegraph|date=7 March 2009}}</ref> Items sold through the website include Hitler's walking stick and a lock of the dictator's hair. Irving has also investigated the authenticity of bones purported to be from Hitler and [[Eva Braun]].<ref>{{cite news|last1=Preston|first1=Alex|title=The man who sleeps in Hitler's bed|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/24/the-man-who-sleeps-in-hitlers-bed|access-date=6 February 2016|work=The Guardian|date=24 June 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Denham|first1=Jess|title=Channel 4 criticised for paying Holocaust denier £3,000 for lock of Hitler's hair|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/channel-4-criticised-for-paying-holocaust-denier-3000-for-lock-of-hitlers-hair-9212494.html|access-date=6 February 2016|work=The Independent|date=24 March 2014}}</ref>
At the end of the one-day hearing, Irving was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in accordance with the Austrian Federal Law on the prohibition of National Socialist activities (officially ''Verbotsgesetz'', "Prohibition Statute") for having denied the existence of gas chambers in National Socialist concentration camps in several lectures held in Austria in 1989. Irving sat motionless as Liebtreu asked Irving if he had understood the sentence, to which Irving replied "I'm not sure I do" before being bundled out of the court by Austrian police. Later, Irving declared himself shocked by the severity of the sentence. He reportedly had already purchased a plane ticket home to London, believing the court would "not be stupid enough" to lock him up.<ref>[http://www.arts.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;?xml=/news/2006/02/21/wirving121.xml Irving clutches Hitler book in court]</ref>


During an interview with [[Johann Hari]], Irving said that in the 1970s, [[Erwin Giesing]], one of Hitler's doctors, had quoted Hitler to him thus: "One day, an Englishman will come along and write my biography. But it cannot be an English man of the present generation. They won't to {{sic}} be objective. It will have to be an Englishman of the next generation, and one who is totally familiar with all the German archives." Irving said that Giesing had identified him as the objective Englishman that Hitler had spoken of.<ref name=hari1>{{cite web|title=David Irving: 'Hitler appointed me his biographer'|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-irving-hitler-appointed-me-his-biographer-1366464.html|newspaper=The Independent|author=Johann Hari|date=15 January 2009}}</ref>
After the sentencing, Liebtreu told the audience that "The court did not consider the defendant to have genuinely changed his mind. The regret he showed was considered to be mere lip service to the law".


During the same interview, Irving claimed that various Nazis hid what was happening to the Jews from Hitler because he was "the best friend the Jews had in the Third Reich".<ref name=hari1 />
On 28 February, Irving once again questioned the Holocaust, asking "Given the ruthless efficiency of the Germans, if there was an extermination programme to kill all the Jews, how come so many survived?" He claimed that the number of people gassed in [[Auschwitz]] was relatively small, and that his earlier claims that there had been no gassing at all had been a "methodological error". According to Irving, "You could say that millions died, but not at Auschwitz".<ref>[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/28/uirving.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/02/28/ixportaltop.html Irving goes on denying Holocaust]</ref> Within hours, the Austrian government reacted by barring Irving from further communication with the media.


=== Time in prison ===
=== 2009 Norwegian Festival of Literature ===
In October 2008, controversy arose in Norway over Irving's invitation to speak at the 2009 [[Norwegian Festival of Literature]]. Several{{who|date=April 2022}} of Norway's most distinguished authors protested against the invitation. The leader of the board for the festival, Jesper Holte, defended the invitation by stating: "Our agenda is to invite a liar and a falsifier of history to a festival about truth. And confront him with this. Irving has been invited to discuss his concept of [[truth]] in light of his activity as a writer of historical books and the many accusations he has been exposed to as a consequence of this." Although Irving was introduced in the festival's webpages as "historian and writer", the board chair leader defended the more aggressive language being used to characterise Irving in connection with the controversy that had arisen. [[Lars Saabye Christensen]] and [[Roy Jacobsen]] were two authors who had threatened to boycott the festival on account of Irving's invitation, and [[Anne B. Ragde]] stated that [[Sigrid Undset]] would have turned in her grave. As the festival has as its subsidiary name "Sigrid Undset Days", a representative of Undset's family had requested that the name of the Nobel laureate be removed in connection with the festival.<ref>{{cite news|first=Geir |last=Rakvaag |title=Irving fortsatt invitert |url=http://www.dagsavisen.no/kultur/article372935.ece |work=[[Dagsavisen]] |location=Oslo |date=7 October 2008 |access-date=8 October 2008 |language=no |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081008174519/http://www.dagsavisen.no/kultur/article372935.ece |archive-date=8 October 2008}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |first= Vibecke |last= Wold Haagensen |title= Irving invitert som løgner |url=http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/hedmark_og_oppland/1.6252043 |publisher= [[NRK]] |location= [[Hedmark]]/[[Oppland]] |date=7 October 2008 |access-date=8 October 2008 |language= no}}</ref> Also, the Norwegian [[free speech]] organization [[Fritt Ord (organization)|Fritt Ord]] was critical of letting Irving speak at the festival<ref name="UPI">{{cite news |title= Holocaust denier unwelcome in Norway |url=http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/10/09/Holocaust_denier_unwelcome_in_Norway/UPI-56301223577740/ |agency = [[United Press International|UPI]] |date=9 October 2008 |access-date=10 October 2008}}</ref> and had requested that its logo be removed.<ref>{{cite news|title=Holocaust denial speaker's invitation cancelled |url=http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2704141.ece |work=[[Aftenposten]] |location=Oslo, Norway |date=9 October 2008 |access-date=10 October 2008 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081010220014/http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2704141.ece |archive-date=10 October 2008}}</ref> In addition, [[Edvard Hoem]] announced that he would not attend the 2009 festival with Irving taking part. [[Per Edgar Kokkvold]], leader of the [[Norwegian Press Confederation]], advocated cancelling Irving's invitation.<ref>{{cite news |first= Olav |last= Østrem |title= Sæterbakken slår tilbake |url=http://www.klassekampen.no/55114/article/item/null |work= [[Klassekampen]] |location= Oslo, Norway |date= 9 October 2008 |access-date= 10 October 2008 |language= no |url-status= dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012070848/http://klassekampen.no/55114/article/item/null |archive-date= 12 October 2008}}</ref>
While in jail Irving wrote an account of his imprisonment and the Austrian justice system, which has now appeared online: [http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Banged/index.html Banged Up].


Days after the controversy had started, the invitation was rescinded. This led to the resignation of [[Stig Sæterbakken]] from his position as content director as he was the person who had invited Irving to the event. The head of the Norwegian Festival of Literature, Randi Skeie, deplored what had taken place: "Everything is fine as long as everyone agrees, but things get more difficult when one doesn't like the views being put forward."<ref name="UPI"/> Sæterbakken called his colleagues "damned cowards", arguing that they were walking in lockstep.<ref name="Olsen">{{cite news |first = Geir |last = Olsen |title = Retrett mot David Irving. Irving: – De tør ikke møte meg |url=http://www.vg.no/rampelys/artikkel.php?artid=528392 |work = [[Verdens Gang]] |location = Oslo, Norway | date = 10 October 2008 | access-date = 15 October 2008 | language = no}}</ref>
Deborah Lipstadt, upon hearing of Irving's sentence to three years' imprisonment, said, "I am not happy when [[censorship]] wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship... The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth".<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4733820.stm Holocaust denier Irving is jailed]</ref>


According to editor-in-chief Sven Egil Omdal of {{lang|no|[[Stavanger Aftenblad]]}}, the opposition to Irving's participation at the festival appeared as a concerted effort. He suggested that [[campaign journalism]] from two of Norway's largest newspapers, ''[[Dagbladet]]'' and ''[[Aftenposten]]'', and Norway's public service broadcaster [[NRK]] was behind the controversy.<ref>{{cite news |first= Sven Egil | last = Omdal | title = Ikke fullt så Fritt Ord |url=http://www.aftenbladet.no/debatt/medieblikk/927176/Ikke_fullt_saa_Fritt_Ord.html |work= [[Stavanger Aftenblad]] |location= [[Stavanger]], Norway | date = 11 October 2008 | access-date = 15 October 2008 | language = no |url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090127051552/http://www.aftenbladet.no/debatt/medieblikk/927176/Ikke_fullt_saa_Fritt_Ord.html | archive-date = 27 January 2009}}</ref>
Indeed, many feared that Irving could become a [[martyr]] for far-right [[activist]]s, and the issue also raised a debate on what grounds freedom of speech could be denied in democratic countries.{{Fact|date=January 2008}}


David Irving commented that he had not been told that the festival was going to present him as a liar,<ref name="Olsen"/> and that he was preparing a lecture about the real history of what took place in [[Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany|Norway during World War II]], contrary to what official historians have presented. Irving stated that he had thought the Norwegian people to be "made of tougher stuff."<ref>{{cite news |first= Ann |last= Christiansen |title= Irving: – Utsatt for global kampanje |url=http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2703646.ece |work= [[Aftenposten]] |location= Oslo, Norway |date= 9 October 2008 |access-date= 15 October 2008 |language= no |url-status= dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012211137/http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/article2703646.ece |archive-date= 12 October 2008}}</ref>
Concerning the Austrian 'Prohibition Statute,' the Austrian Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs insisted that it conforms with international law and international human rights standards, and that it is not contrary to [[European Convention on Human Rights#Article 10 - right to freedom of expression|Article 10]] of the [[European Convention on Human Rights]] 1950, that being a statute "...necessary in a democratic society (inter alia)... for the prevention of disorder or crime,... [and]... for the protection of the rights of others". Should Irving have wished to determine whether the Austrian authorities were correct on this point and not an excessive and illegal intrusion on the right of freedom of expression, he would have had to appeal to the [[European Court of Human Rights]].{{Fact|date=January 2008}}


Only days after the cancellation Irving announced that he would go to Lillehammer during the literature festival and deliver his two-hour lecture from a hotel room.<ref>{{cite news |first= Andreas |last= Wiese |title= David Irving rir igjen |url=http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/10/15/550314.html |work= [[Dagbladet]] |location= Oslo, Norway |date= 15 October 2008 |access-date= 15 October 2008 |language= no |url-status= dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081017085639/http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/10/15/550314.html |archive-date= 17 October 2008}}</ref>
=== Release ===
Both Irving, hoping to have the verdict overturned, and the Austrian prosecutor, calling for a longer sentence, served appeals on 22 April 2006. The [[Supreme Court of Austria|Austrian Supreme Court]] considered Irving's appeal but ultimately ruled against him in September 2006.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5313504.stm Holocaust denier verdict upheld] - BBC News</ref><ref>{{cite-web|url=http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/04/europe/EU_GEN_Austria_Holocaust_Denial.php|work=[[International Herald Tribune]]|title=Report: Austria's highest court rejects appeal in David Irving trial|accessdate=2006-02-19}}</ref> The appeal over the length of sentence was heard and concluded on 20 December. The court replaced two-thirds of Irving's jail sentence with probation. Since he had already served the balance of his sentence in jail, he was released from prison.<ref>[http://www.salon.com/wire/ap/archive.html?wire=D8M4MFA00.html Holocaust Denier Freed, Gets Probation] - Salon {{Dead link|date=March 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite-web|url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122000287_pf.html|title=Irving wins appeal on Holocaust denial in Austria|work=Washington Post|accessdate=1009-02-19}}</ref><ref>{{wayback|url=http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/20/austria.irving.ap/index.html|title=Holocaust denier freed from prison|date= 20070116005035}}</ref><ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6196073.stm "Holocaust denier to be released], BBC News, 20 December 2006.</ref>
Upon Irving's arrival in the UK he reaffirmed his position, stating that he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.<ref>{{wayback|url=http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/21/uk.irving.ap/index.html|title=Holocaust denier: 'No need to show remorse'|date=20070116221731}}</ref> On 21 December 2006, Irving was technically "expelled" from Austria; he was banned from ever returning to the country again.<ref>[http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2288055,00.html Convicted Holocaust Denier Irving Expelled from Austria | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 22.12.2006<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>


==Reception by historians==
=== Controversy ===
{{main|Critical responses to David Irving}}
Irving, once held in regard for his expert knowledge of German military archives, was a controversial figure from the start. His interpretations of the war were widely regarded as unduly favourable to the German side. At first this was seen as personal opinion, unpopular but consistent with full respectability as a historian.<ref name="Lipstadt 2005 22">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|2005|p=22}}.</ref>


By 1988, however, Irving had begun to reject the status of the Holocaust as a systematic and deliberate genocide. He soon became the main proponent of Holocaust denial. This, along with his association with far-right circles, dented his standing as a historian. A marked change in Irving's reputation can be seen in the surveys of the [[historiography of the Third Reich]] produced by [[Ian Kershaw]]. In the first edition of Kershaw's book ''The Nazi Dictatorship'' in 1985, Irving was called a "maverick" historian working outside the mainstream of the historical profession.<ref>{{Harvnb|Kershaw|1985|p=150}}.</ref> By the time of the fourth edition of ''The Nazi Dictatorship'' in 2000, Irving was described only as a historical writer who had in the 1970s engaged in "provocations" intended to provide an "exculpation of Hitler's role in the Final Solution".<ref>{{Harvnb|Kershaw|1985|p=268}}.</ref> Other critical responses to his work tend to follow this pattern.
His imprisonment caused some controversy and has been criticized on the grounds of free speech issues. The German historian [[Hans-Ulrich Wehler]] supported Irving’s imprisonment under the grounds that “The denial of such an unimaginable murder of millions, one third of whom were children under the age of 14, cannot simply be accepted as something protected by the freedom of speech”.<ref>{{cite web
| last = Wehler
| first = Hans-Ulrich
| authorlink = Hans-Ulrich Wehler
| coauthors =
| title = Pity for this man is out of place
| work =
| publisher = Spiegel
|month=February | year=2006| url = http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,402404,00.html
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2008-05-29 }}</ref> By contrast [[Deborah Lipstadt]] argued that Irving should not be imprisoned for expressing views that she finds odious and wrong.<ref>{{cite web
| last = Lipstadt
| first = Deborah
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Irving, Let the Guy Go Home
| work =
| publisher = BBC
|date=5 November
| url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4578534.stm
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2007-03-23 }}</ref> Others have stated that "nothing could be more fatal to our rights to speak and to write than for us to deny others the right to deny our dearest beliefs".<ref>{{cite web
| last = Glass
| first = Charles
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = Free Speech Is For Everyone- Even David Irving
| work =
| publisher = The Independent - UK
|date=5 November
| url = http://www.rense.com/general69/crank.htm
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2007-03-23 }}</ref> Opponents of Irving’s imprisonment argue that free speech should be applied to everyone regardless of their viewpoints and that it is a slippery slope to imprison someone due to the lack of factual accuracy or unpopularity of their opinions.<ref>{{cite web
| last = Shermer
| first = Michael
| authorlink = Michael Shermer
| coauthors =
| title = Free speech, even if it hurts
| work =
| publisher = La Times
|month=February | year=2006| url = http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shermer22feb22,0,2752813.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2007-03-23 }}</ref> It has also been argued that by imprisoning Irving the Austrian courts made a martyr out of Irving and did more damage than good, and that it would have been better to simply "let him go home and let him continue talking to six people in a basement," and "let him fade into obscurity where he belongs".<ref>{{cite web
| last = O'Neill
| first = Brendan
| authorlink =
| coauthors =
| title = 'Irving? Let the guy go home'
| work =
| publisher = BBC news
|date=6 January
| url = http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4578534.stm
| format =
| doi =
| accessdate = 2007-03-23 }}</ref>


The description of Irving as a historian, rather than an author writing about history, is controversial, with some publications since the libel trial continuing to refer to him as a "historian"<ref name="DI_historian">e.g. [https://www.theguardian.com/irving/ The Guardian]</ref> or "disgraced historian",<ref name=DIdisgraced>Philippe Naughton and agencies in Vienna. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080724155120/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2049360,00.html "Irving jailed for three years, despite Holocaust U-turn"], ''[[The Times]],'' 20 February 2006.</ref> while others insist he is not a historian, and have adopted alternatives such as "author"<ref name="DI_author">"In 1969 ''[[The Daily Telegraph]]'' determined 'It is incorrect to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.{{'"}} {{cite news |last= Ingrams |first= Richard |url=http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece |title= Irving was the author of his own downfall |work= [[The Independent]] |date= 25 February 2006 |location= London |access-date= 27 March 2010 |url-status= dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071220125920/http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article347567.ece |archive-date= 20 December 2007}}</ref>
==Post-release==
or "historical writer".<ref name="DI_writer">"...{{nbsp}}Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as 'historical writer' instead." Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books, [http://hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html Expert Witness Report] by [[Richard J. Evans]] FBA, Professor of Modern History, [[University of Cambridge]], 2000, Chapter 6. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131206151336/http://www.hdot.org/en/trial/defense/evans/6.html |date=6 December 2013 }}</ref>
Irving appeared in Hungary in 2007, where on 15 March he took part in and gave a speech for a far-right nationalist rally.<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6453183.stm - BBC News</ref>
The military historian [[John Keegan]] praised Irving for his "extraordinary ability to describe and analyse Hitler's conduct of military operations, which was his main occupation during the [[Second World War]]".<ref name="keegan">{{cite web |author=Keegan, John|url=http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=%2Farchive%2F2000%2F04%2F12%2Fnirv512.html |title=The trial of David Irving—and my part in his downfall |access-date=25 February 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040627233112/http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=%2Farchive%2F2000%2F04%2F12%2Fnirv512.html |archive-date=27 June 2004|author-link = John Keegan}}. ''The Daily Telegraph'' (UK). 12 April 2000</ref> Donald Cameron Watt, [[Emeritus Professor]] of Modern History at the [[London School of Economics]], wrote that he admires some of Irving's work as a historian, though he rejects his conclusions about the Holocaust.<ref name=HistoryNeeds>{{cite news |title=History needs David Irvings|first=Donald |last=Cameron Watt |work= London Evening Standard |date= 11 April 2000}}</ref> At the libel proceedings against Irving, Watt declined Irving's request to testify, appearing only after a [[subpoena]] was ordered.<ref name="Guttenplan 128">{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=128}}.</ref> He testified that Irving had written a "very, very effective piece of historical scholarship" in the 1960s, which was unrelated to his controversial work. He also said that Irving was "not in the top class" of military historians.<ref name="Guttenplan 128" />


==Personal life==
On 18 May 2007, he was expelled from the 52nd Warsaw International Book Fair in Poland because books he brought there were deemed by the organizers as promoting Nazism and antisemitism, which is in violation of Polish law.<ref>[http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/18/europe/EU-GEN-Poland-Irving.php British writer David Irving asked to leave Polish book fair - International Herald Tribune<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
In 1961, while living in [[Francoist Spain|Spain]], Irving met and married a Spaniard, María del Pilar Stuyck. They have four children.<ref name="Craig"/> They divorced in 1981. In 1992, Irving began a relationship with a Danish model, Bente Hogh. They have a daughter, born in 1994.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1511329/Irvings-girlfriend-is-left-homeless-and-bitter.html |title=Irving's girlfriend is left homeless and bitter |date=24 February 2006 |last=Tweedie |first=Neil |work=The Telegraph}}</ref>


Irving's daughter Josephine suffered from schizophrenia.<ref name=judgement1>{{cite web|title=Judgment has been passed. So how do you feel about being labelled as a racist now, Mr Irving?|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/judgment-has-been-passed-so-how-do-you-feel-about-being-labelled-as-a-racist-now-mr-irving-281034.html|newspaper=The Independent|date=15 April 2000|first=Julia|last=Stewart}}</ref> She was involved in a car crash in 1996 which resulted in her having to have both of her legs amputated. In September 1999, at the age of 32, she died by suicide by throwing herself out of a window of her central London flat.<ref>{{cite web|title=David Irving: Controversial scholar|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/709012.stm|website=BBC News|date=11 April 2000}}</ref> One of the wreaths sent to her funeral contained a card which stated, "Truly a merciful death, [[Philipp Bouhler]] and friends".<ref name=judgement1 /> The reference to Bouhler was a reference to the Nazi who was in charge of Hitler's [[Aktion T4|euthanasia programme]].<ref name=judgement1 /> Irving described it as a "very cruel taunt".<ref name=judgement1 />
Irving and [[British National Party|BNP]] leader [[Nick Griffin]] were invited to speak at a forum on free speech at the [[Oxford Union]] on 26 November 2007, along with [[Anne Atkins]] and [[Evan Harris]].<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7112480.stm - BBC News</ref> The debate took place after Oxford Union members voted in favour of it,<ref>{{cite web | url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7110758.stm |title=BNP to speak to Oxford students | accessdate=2007-12-04}}</ref> but was disrupted by protesters.<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/7114343.stm - BBC News</ref>
===Illness===
In February 2024, Irving's family announced that he had fallen ill while in Florida in October 2023 and "has been in declining health ever since", had been hospitalised for two months, and has returned to England but requires "round-the-clock care". The statement also says "It is with sadness that we must accept that David is now unable to engage in his life’s work".<ref name="ill">"It is with sadness that we must accept that David is now unable to engage in his life’s work".{{cite web |title=Beyond History: Supporting David Irving in His Greatest Challenge |url=https://irvingbooks.com/blog/support-david-irving/ |website=Irving Books |date=5 February 2024 |publisher=David Irving |access-date=22 February 2024}}</ref>


==In popular culture==
===Snubbed by Norwegian arts festival===
* In 1982, Irving appeared on ''[[In Search of... (TV series)|In Search of...]]'' (TV Series) Season 6, Episode 20, Eva Braun, offering his commentary on the episode's exploration of whether or not she died in the Bunker with Hitler. Irving explained the testimony by [[Otto Gunsche]] Hitler's Adjutant, whom Irving had interviewed in his research.<ref>"Eva Braun" [[In Search of... (TV series)|In Search of...]] (TV series) Season 6, Episode 20, 1 February 1982, Alan Landsburg Productions, 2014 DVD release NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products Group 2012.</ref>
In October 2008 a controversy erupted in Norway over David Irving's invitation to The [[Norwegian Festival of Literature]] taking place between 26&ndash;31 May 2009 in [[Lillehammer]]. The festival is the largest literature festival in the Nordic countries. Several of the country's most distinguished authors protested the invitation. (see [[Norwegian_Festival_of_Literature#David_Irving_controversy|article on Festival]] for details)
* In 1988, Irving made an [[After Dark (TV series)#"Winston Churchill"|extended appearance]] on the Channel 4 discussion programme ''[[After Dark (TV series)|After Dark]]''.
* Irving was portrayed by [[Roger Lloyd-Pack]] in the 1991 ITV series ''[[Selling Hitler]]''.<ref>{{cite web|title=Selling Hitler|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0124256/|website=IMDb|date=11 June 1991}}</ref>
* Irving was portrayed by [[John Castle]] in courtroom dramatizations of the Lipstadt case for the [[PBS]] ''[[Nova (American TV program)|Nova]]'' episode "Holocaust on Trial" (2000).<ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/makingn06.html "Holocaust on Trial: Making"] ''NOVA Online''</ref>
* Irving is portrayed by [[Timothy Spall]] in the 2016 film ''[[Denial (2016 film)|Denial]]'', based on [[Deborah Lipstadt]]'s 2005 book ''History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier''.<ref>[[David Hare (playwright)|Hare, David]] (3 September 2016) [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/03/david-hare-nothing-but-the-truth-about-a-holocaust-denial "David Hare on writing nothing but the truth about a Holocaust denier"] ''[[The Guardian]]''</ref>
*Irving is portrayed in the [[alternate history|alternate universe]] novel ''[[The Mirage (Ruff novel)|The Mirage]]'' as the Prime Minister of the Anglican Kingdom of Britain.


==Works==
In a matter of days after the controversy had started, the invitation was withdrawn. This led author [[Stig Sæterbakken]], who had invited Irving, to resign from his position as director of program content for the festival in protest of the decision. The head of the festival, Randi Skeie, deplored what had taken place, stating "Everything is fine as long as everyone agrees, but things get more difficult when one doesn't like the views being put forward."<ref> {{cite news |title= Holocaust denier unwelcome in Norway |url= http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/10/09/Holocaust_denier_unwelcome_in_Norway/UPI-56301223577740/ |agency = [[United Press International|UPI]] |date=October 9, 2008 |accessdate=October 10, 2008}}</ref>


'''Books'''
===Involvement in Williamson Controversy===
{{Div col}}
As [[Bishop Richard Williamson]] came under pressure from the [[Vatican]] to retract his statements denying the Holocaust as genocide and support revisions, he contacted Irving for guidance. Irving advised Williamson to admit to "mass killings" at [[Treblinka]], [[Sobibor]], and Belzec from the spring of 1942 to October 1943. Irving further argued that the issue had been played up to distract public attention from [[Israel]]'s actions against [[Hamas]] in [[Gaza]] and the resulting loss of civilian [[Palestinian]] life. Irving indicated that, "There is much dispute over numbers and methods of killing,” but he “should not dispute that there were such killings."<ref>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/28/world/europe/28bishop.html</ref>
* ''[[The Destruction of Dresden]]'' (1963) {{ISBN|0-7057-0030-5}}, updated and revised 1995 as ''Apocalypse 1945, The Destruction of Dresden'', further revised for 2007

* ''[[The Mare's Nest]]'' (1964)
==Bibliography==
===Books===
* ''[[The Destruction of Dresden]]'' (1963) ISBN 0-7057-0030-5
* ''The Mare's Nest'' (1964)
* ''The Virus House'' (1967)
* ''The Virus House'' (1967)
* ''The Destruction of Convoy PQ17'' (1967)
* ''The Destruction of Convoy PQ17'' (1968), reprinted (1980) {{ISBN|0-312-91152-1}}, updated in 2009.
* ''Accident The Death of General Sikorski'' (1967) ISBN 0-7183-0420-9
* ''Accident The Death of General Sikorski'' (1967) {{ISBN|0-7183-0420-9}}
* ''Breach of Security'' (1968) ISBN 0-7183-0101-3
* ''Breach of Security'' (1968) {{ISBN|0-7183-0101-3}}
* ''The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe'' (1973), a biography of [[Erhard Milch]] ISBN 0-316-43238-5
* ''The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe'' (1973), a biography of [[Erhard Milch]] {{ISBN|0-316-43238-5}}
* ''The Night the Dams Burst'' (1973): (in 3 parts).
* ''[[Hitler's War]]'' (1977)
* ''The Trail of the Fox'' (1977), a biography of [[Erwin Rommel]] ISBN 0-525-22200-6
* ''[[Hitler's War]]'' (1977), updated in 2000 as a millennium edition
* ''The Trail of the Fox'' (1977), a biography of [[Erwin Rommel]] {{ISBN|0-525-22200-6}}, reissued 1999 in Wordsworth Military Library, {{ISBN|1-84022-205-0}}
* ''The War Path'' (1978) ISBN 0-670-74971-0
* ''The War Path'' (1978) {{ISBN|0-670-74971-0}}
* ''The War Between the Generals'' (1981)
* ''The War Between the Generals'' (1981)
* ''Uprising!'' (1981), ISBN 0-949667-91-9
* ''Uprising!'' (1981), {{ISBN|0-949667-91-9}}
* ''The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor'' (1983) ISBN 0-02-558250-X
* ''The Secret Diaries of Hitler's Doctor'' (1983) {{ISBN|0-02-558250-X}}
* ''The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany'' (1983) ISBN 0-306-80198-1
* ''The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany'' (1968) {{ISBN|0-671-28163-1}}
* ''Der Morgenthau Plan 1944-45'' (in German only) (1986)
* ''Der Morgenthau Plan 1944–45'' (in German only) (1986)
* ''War Between the Generals'' (1986) ISBN 0-86553-069-6
* ''War between the Generals'' (1986) {{ISBN|0-86553-069-6}}, updated in 2010.
* ''Hess, the Missing Years'' (1987) Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-45179-1
* ''Hess, the Missing Years'' (1987) Macmillan, {{ISBN|0-333-45179-1}}
* ''Churchill's War'' (1987) ISBN 0-947117-56-3
* ''Churchill's War'' (1987) {{ISBN|0-947117-56-3}}: (in 4 parts).
* ''Göring'' (1989), biography of [[Hermann Göring]] {{ISBN|0-688-06606-2}}, updated in 2010.
* ''Destruction of Convoy PQ-17'' (1968), reprint (1989) ISBN 0-312-91152-1
* ''Das Reich hört mit'' (in German only) (1989)
* ''Göring'' (1989), biography of [[Hermann Göring]] ISBN 0-688-06606-2
* ''Das Reich hört mit'' (in German only) (1989)
* ''Hitler's War'' (1991), revised edition, incorporating ''The War Path''
* ''Hitler's War'' (1991), revised edition, incorporating ''The War Path''
* ''Apocalypse 1945, The Destruction of Dresden'', updated and revised edition, (1995)
* ''Der unbekannte Dr. Goebbels'' (in German only) (1995)
* ''Goebbels – Mastermind of the Third Reich'' biography of [[Joseph Goebbels]] (1996) {{ISBN|1-872197-13-2}}, cleaned-up and corrected in 2014
* ''Der unbekannte Dr. Goebbels'' (in German only) (1995)
* ''Goebbels Mastermind of the Third Reich'' (1996) ISBN 1-872197-13-2
* ''Nuremberg: The Last Battle'' (1996) {{ISBN|1-872197-16-7}}
* ''Nuremberg: The Last Battle'' (1996) ISBN 1-872197-16-7
* ''Churchill's War Volume II: Triumph in Adversity'' (1997) {{ISBN|1-872197-15-9}}: (in 3 parts)
* ''Churchill's War Volume II: Triumph in Adversity'' (1997) ISBN 1-872197-15-9
* ''Hitler's War and the War Path'' (2002) {{ISBN|1-872197-10-8}}
* ''True Himmler'' (2020) {{ISBN|1-872197-83-3}}
* ''Rommel: The Trail of the Fox'', Wordsworth Military Library; Limited edition (1999) ISBN 1-84022-205-0
{{Div col end}}
* ''Hitler's War and the War Path'' (2002) ISBN 1-872197-10-8


===Translations===
'''Translations'''
* ''The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel'' (1965)
* ''The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel'' (1965)
* ''The Memoirs of General Gehlen'' (1972)
* ''The Memoirs of General Gehlen'' (1972)


===Monographs===
'''Monographs'''
* ''The Night the Dams Burst'' (1973)
* ''The Night the Dams Burst'' (1973)
* ''Von Guernica bis Vietnam'' (in German only) (1982)
* ''Von Guernica bis Vietnam'' (in German only) (1982)
* ''Die deutsche Ostgrenze'' (in German only) (1990)
* ''Die deutsche Ostgrenze'' (in German only) (1990)
* ''[http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Banged/index.html Banged Up]'' (online only) (2008)
* ''Banged Up'' (2008)


==See also==
===Collected articles in German===
{{Portal|Biography|United Kingdom}}
* ''Und Deutschlands Städte starben nicht'' (1963)
*[[Arthur Butz]]
* ''Nürnberg: Die letzte Schlacht'' (1979)
*[[Faurisson affair]]
* ''Wie krank war Hitler wirklich?'' (1980)
*[[Historical negationism]]

*[[Critical responses to David Irving]]
==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}


==References==
==References==
===Explanatory notes===
*''Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'' by [[Deborah E. Lipstadt]], New York: Free Press; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada; New York; Oxford: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993, ISBN 0-02-919235-8.
{{Reflist|group=Note}}
*"The Devil in the Details" by [[Gordon A. Craig]] pages 8-14 from ''New York Review of Books'', 19 September 1996
*''Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial'' by [[Richard J. Evans]], New York: Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 0-465-02152-2: The author was a major expert witness at the trial, and this book presents both his view of the trial, and much of his expert witness report, including his research on the Dresden death count.
*''The Holocaust on Trial'' by D. D. Guttenplan, New York: Norton, 2001, ISBN 0-393-02044-4.
*''David Irving's Hitler: a faulty history dissected, two essays'' by [[Eberhard Jäckel]]; translation and comments by H. David Kirk; with a foreword by [[Robert Fulford]], Port Angeles, Wash. : Ben-Simon Publications, 1993. ISBN 0-914539-08-6
*''The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial'' by Robert Jan Van Pelt, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002, ISBN 0-253-34016-0: Van Pelt was another expert witness at the trial, focussing on Auschwitz.
*''Selling Hitler: The Story Of The Hitler Diaries'' by [[Robert Harris (novelist)|Robert Harris]], London: Faber and Faber, 1986 ISBN 0-571-14726-7.
*“Hitler’s Ghost” by [[Christopher Hitchens]] pages 72-74 from ''Vanity Fair'', June 1996.
*''Denying History: Who Says Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It'' by Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman; foreword by Arthur Hertzberg, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-21612-1.
*“Two Alibies for the Inhumanities: A. R. Butz, "''The Hoax of the Twentieth Century''" and David Irving, "''Hitler's War''"” by Bradley Smith pages 327-335 from ''German Studies Review'', Volume 1, Issue # 3. October 1978.
*''The Hitler of History'' by [[John Lukacs]], New York: A. A. Knopf, 1997, ISBN 0-679-44649-4.
*''History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving'' by Deborah E. Lipstadt, New York: Ecco, 2005, ISBN 0-06-059376-8.
*"David Irving: The Big Oops" pages 221-236 from ''Explaining Hitler: the search for the origins of his evil'' by [[Ron Rosenbaum]] New York: Random House, 1998. ISBN 0-679-43151-9
*"Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" pages 73-125 from ''Yad Vashem Studies'' by [[Martin Broszat]], Volume 13, 1979; reprinted pages 390-429 in ''Aspects of the Third Reich'' edited by H.W. Koch, London: Macmillan, 1985, ISBN 0-333-35272-6; originally published as "Hitler und die Genesis der "Endlösung". Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving", pages 739-775 from ''Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte'', Volume 25, 1977.
*"The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's Hitler's War" pages 169-99 from ''Central European History'' by Charles W. Sydnor, Jr, Issue # 2, Volume 12, June 1979.
*"David Irving and the 1956 Revolution" by András Mink pages 117-128 from ''Hungarian Quarterly'', Volume 41, Issue #160, 2000.
* Felix Müller - Das Verbotsgesetz im Spannungsverhältnis zur Meinungsfreiheit. Eine verfassungsrechtliche Untersuchung; Verlag Österreich, 2005, 238 Seiten, br., ISBN 3-7046-4685-7
*Schiedel, Heribert. ''Irving sitzt in Österreich'' in ''Jungle World'', 23 November 2005. ISSN 1613-0766
*''[[Wikisource:David Irving vs Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt]]''
*''Mister'' by Alex Kurtagic, Guildford: Iron Sky Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-9561835-0-7


==See also==
===Citations===
{{Reflist|refs=
*[[Historical revisionism (political)|Historical revisionism]]
<ref name="observer 1981">[[#CITEREFobserver1981|''The Observer'', 29 March 1981]]</ref>
*[[Freedom of speech]]
<ref name=Waterhouse>[[#CITEREFindependent1992|''The Independent'', 11 July 1992]]</ref>
*[[Holocaust denial]]
<ref name="Virus House research">Pearce Wright's review in [[#CITEREFtimes1967|''The Times'', 23 February 1967]]. "...{{nbsp}}Irving interviewed German scientists and officers of the wartime Allied Intelligence mission. He says there has been no history of the German atomic research effort until now{{nbsp}}..."</ref>
*[[Faurisson affair]]
}}
*[[Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.|''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.'' (documentary by Errol Morris)]]

===Bibliography===
{{Refbegin|colwidth=30em}}
*{{cite book | first = Martin | last = Broszat | title = Aspects of the Third Reich | chapter = Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses | trans-title = "Hitler and the Genesis of the 'Final Solution': An Assessment of David Irving's Theses" | volume = 13 | pages = 390–429 | location = London | publisher = Macmillan | orig-year = 1977 | year = 1985 | doi = 10.1007/978-1-349-17891-9_13 | isbn = 0-333-35272-6}}
*{{cite book|author = Craig, Gordon A.|title = The Germans|url=https://archive.org/details/germans00crai|url-access = registration|publisher = G. P. Putnam's Sons|year = 1982|location = New York|isbn = 0-399-12436-5|ref = CITEREFCraig1982|author-link = Gordon A. Craig}}<!-- whitespace
-->
* {{cite journal | author = Dawidowicz, Lucy | title = Lies About the Holocaust | year = 1980 | journal = Commentary | volume = 70 | issue = 6 | pages = 31–37 | ref = CITEREFDawidowicz1980}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Evans, Richard J. | title = In Hitler's Shadow|url=https://archive.org/details/inhitlersshadow00rich | url-access = registration| publisher = Pantheon Books | year = 1989 | location = New York|isbn = 0-394-57686-1 | ref = CITEREFEvans1989 | author-link = Richard J. Evans}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Evans, Richard J.|title = Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial|url=https://archive.org/details/lyingabouthitler00evan|url-access = registration|publisher = Basic Books|year = 2001|location = New York|isbn = 0-465-02152-2|ref = CITEREFEvans2001}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book| author = Evans, Richard J.| title = Telling Lies about Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial | year = 2002 | publisher = Verso | isbn = 978-1-85984-417-5 | ref = CITEREFEvans2002}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Guttenplan, D. D.|title = The Holocaust on Trial|url=https://archive.org/details/holocaustontrial00gutt|url-access = registration|publisher = W. W. Norton & Company|year = 2001|location = New York|isbn = 0-393-02044-4|author-link = D. D. Guttenplan | ref = CITEREFGuttenplan2001}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Harris, Robert|title = Selling Hitler: The Story of the Hitler Diaries|publisher = Faber and Faber|year = 1986|location = London|isbn = 0-571-14726-7|author-link = Robert Harris (novelist)|ref = CITEREFHarris1986}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Jäckel, E.|title = David Irving's Hitler: A Faulty History Dissected, Two Essays|publisher = Ben-Simon Publications|year = 1993|location = Port Angeles, WA|isbn = 0-914539-08-6|others = translation and comments by H. David Kirk|ref = CITEREFJäckel1993|author-link = Eberhard Jäckel}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Kershaw, Ian|title = The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation|publisher = Edward Arnold|year = 1985|location = London|isbn = 0-7131-6408-5|ref = CITEREFKershaw1985|author-link = Ian Kershaw}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Lipstadt, Deborah|title = Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory|publisher = Free Press|year = 1993|location = New York|isbn = 0-02-919235-8|ref = CITEREFLipstadt1993|author-link = Deborah Lipstadt|title-link = Denying the Holocaust}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Lipstadt, Deborah|title = History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving|url=https://archive.org/details/historyontrialmy00lips|url-access = registration|publisher = Ecco Press|year = 2005|location = New York|isbn = 0-06-059376-8|ref = CITEREFLipstadt2005}}<!--
-->
*{{cite journal | first = John | last = Lukacs | title = Caveat Lector | pages = 946–950 | journal = National Review | volume = 29 | issue = 32 | year = 1977}}
* {{cite book|author = Lukacs, John|title = The Hitler of History|publisher = Knopf|year = 1997|location = New York|isbn = 0-679-44649-4|ref = CITEREFLukacs1997|author-link = John Lukacs}}<!--
-->
* {{cite journal | last = Mink | first = András | title = David Irving and the 1956 Revolution | journal = Hungarian Quarterly | pages = 117–128 | volume = 41 | issue = 160 | year = 2000}}
* {{cite book | last = Müller | first = Felix | title = Das Verbotsgesetz im Spannungsverhältnis zur Meinungsfreiheit: eine verfassungsrechtliche Untersuchung | year = 2005 | publisher = Verlag Österreich | isbn = 978-3-7046-4685-9 | language = de}}
*{{cite book|author = Rosenbaum, Ron|title = Explaining Hitler|publisher = Harper Perennial|year = 1999|location = New York|edition = 1st Harper Perennial|isbn = 0-679-43151-9|ref = CITEREFRosenbaum1999|author-link = Ron Rosenbaum|title-link = Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author = Robert Jan van Pelt|author-link = Robert Jan van Pelt|title = The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial|url=https://archive.org/details/caseforauschwitz00pelt|url-access = registration|publisher = Indiana University Press|year = 2002|location = Bloomington, IN|isbn = 0-253-34016-0|ref = CITEREFVan Pelt2002}}<!--
-->
*{{cite book|author1 = Frederick M. Schweitzer | author2 = Marvin Perry | title = Anti-Semitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present | year = 2005 | publisher = Palgrave Macmillan US | isbn = 978-1-4039-7912-4 | ref = CITEREFSchweitzerPerry2005}}<!--
-->
* {{cite web | last = Schiedel | first = Heribert | title = Irving sitzt in Österreich | website = Jungle World | url = https://jungle.world/artikel/2005/47/irving-sitzt-oesterreich | date = 23 November 2005 | language = de}}
* {{cite book|author = Shermer, Michael|author2 = Grobman, Alex|title = Denying History |publisher = University of California Press|year = 2002|location = Berkeley, CA|isbn = 0-520-21612-1|ref = CITEREFShermerGrobman2002|author-link = Michael Shermer|title-link = Denying History}}<!--
-->
* {{cite book|author = Shermer, Michael|author2 = Grobman, Alex|title = Denying History |publisher = University of California Press|year = 2009|location = Berkeley, CA|isbn = 978-0-520-26098-6|ref = CITEREFShermerGrobman2009|author-link = Michael Shermer|title-link = Denying History}}<!--
-->
* {{cite journal | last = Smith | first = Bradley F. | title = Review: Two Alibies for the Inhumanities: A. R. Butz, "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century" and David Irving, "Hitler's War" | journal = German Studies Review | volume = 1 | issue = 1 | pages = 327–335 | doi = 10.2307/1429224| jstor = 1429224 }}
* {{cite book | last = Stern | first = Kenneth | title = Holocaust Denial | year = 1993 | publisher = American Jewish Committee | isbn = 978-0-87495-102-8}}
* {{citation | last = Sydnor | first = Charles W. Jr. |title= The Selling of Adolf Hitler: David Irving's ''Hitler's War'' |pages= 169–99 |periodical= Central European History | issue= 2 |volume= 12 |date=June 1979 |doi=10.1017/s0008938900022342 | s2cid = 143831047 | ref = CITEREFSydnor1979}}
*{{cite book | last = Wyden | first = Peter|title = The Hitler Virus: the Insidious Legacy of Adolf Hitler|publisher = Arcade Publishing|year = 2001|location = New York|isbn = 1-55970-532-9}}
*''[[Wikisource:David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt]]''
{{Refend}}

===Reviews===
{{Refbegin}}
* {{citation |last= Craig |first= Gordon A. |title= The Devil in the Details |date= 19 September 1996 |periodical= [[The New York Review of Books]] |pages= 8–14 }}
*{{cite news|title = Nazis' mighty atom|date = 23 February 1967|work=The Times|page = 8|ref = CITEREFtimes1967|author = Wright, Pearce}}
{{Refend}}

===News articles===
{{Refbegin}}
*{{cite news|title = A bucketful of slime|date = 29 March 1981|work=The Observer|ref = CITEREFobserver1981|author = Ascherson, Neal}}<!--
-->
*{{cite magazine|url=http://www.vanityfair.com/news/1996/06/hitlers-ghost-christopher-hitchens|title = Hitler's Ghost|date = June 1996|magazine = Vanity Fair|pages = 72–74|ref = CITEREFHitchens1996|author = Hitchens, Christopher|author-link = Christopher Hitchens}}<!--
-->
*{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/farright/story/0,,2179842,00.html|title = Discredited Irving plans comeback tour|date = 29 September 2007|work=The Guardian|location=London|ref = CITEREFguardian2007|author = Taylor, Matthew|access-date =27 March 2010}}<!--
-->
*{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/farright/story/0,,1714403,00.html|title = Irving jailed for denying Holocaust|date = 21 February 2006|work=The Guardian|location=London|ref = CITEREFguardian2006|author = Traynor, Ian|access-date =27 March 2010}}<!--
-->
*{{cite news|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-week-when-goebbels-exploded-i-regard-payment-from-the-sunday-times-as-being-in-two-forms----cash-and----prestige-my-reputation-is----more-important-than-the-money-from-brentwood-to-berchtesgaden-rosie-waterhouse-traces-the-disturbing-story-of-the-revisionist-david-irving-1532491.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121104070341/http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/the-week-when-goebbels-exploded-i-regard-payment-from-the-sunday-times-as-being-in-two-forms----cash-and----prestige-my-reputation-is----more-important-than-the-money-from-brentwood-to-berchtesgaden-rosie-waterhouse-traces-the-disturbing-story-of-the-revisionist-david-irving-1532491.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 November 2012|title = From Brentwood to Berchtesgaden: The disturbing story of the 'revisionist' David Irving|date = 11 July 1992|work = The Independent on Sunday|location=London|ref = CITEREFindependent1992|author = Waterhouse, Rosie|access-date =24 May 2009}}
{{Refend}}

===Film===
{{Refbegin}}
*[[Errol Morris]] (1999). ''[[Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.]]''. [http://errolmorris.com/film/mrd_transcript.html Transcript]
{{Refend}}


==External links==
==External links==
{{Sister project links}}
{{sisterlinks}}
*[http://www.fpp.co.uk/ David Irving's web site]
*{{official website|http://www.fpp.co.uk/}}
*[http://www.codoh.com/irving/irving.html David Irving Archive] from [http://www.codoh.com codoh.com]
*{{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110608192211/http://www.codoh.com/irving/irving.html |date=8 June 2011 |title=David Irving Archive }} at Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (archived from the [http://www.codoh.com/irving/irving.html original])
*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/ Collection of Irving materials] from [http://www.nizkor.org nizkor.org]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20160915194219/http://www.phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/irving-david/index.html Collection of Irving materials] from [[The Holocaust History Project]]
* {{IMDb name|410257}}
*[http://www.holocaust-history.org/irving-david/ Collection of Irving materials] from [http://www.holocaust-history.org/ holocaust-history.org]

*[http://www.adl.org/learn/ext_us/irving.asp?LEARN_Cat=Extremism&LEARN_SubCat=Extremism_in_America&xpicked=2&item=Irving David Irving file] (from the Anti-Defamation League)
{{David Irving}}
*[http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/i/irving.david/press/Electric_Telegraph.961109 ''Guilty of Falsifying History'' Ann Tusa review of Irving's ''Nurenburg: The last Battle''"]
{{Historical revisionism}}
*[http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/irving.html From Revisionism to Holocaust Denial - David Irving as a Case Study] by [[Roni Stauber]]
{{Neo-Nazism}}
*[http://www.davidirving.8m.com/ David Irving & Revisionism]
{{UK far right}}
*[http://www.posner.com/articles/irving_sunday_observer.htm "The World According to David Irving"] by [[Gerald Posner]], ''The Sunday Observer'' (London), 19 March 2000

*[http://www.robertfulford.com/DavidIrving.html David Irving The Libel Trial Re-examined] by [[Robert Fulford]]
{{Authority control}}
*[http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/1997/issue4/butler4.html Holocaust Denial in England]
*[http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051125/wl_canada_nm/canada_irving_austria_col_1 Irving Awaits Trial in Jail] (25 November 2005)
*[http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/02/wrevis02.xml Nazi historian Irving finds his books in Austrian jail library] 2 December 2005
*[http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/i/irving-david/dawidowicz/dawidowicz-on-irving.html "This Wicked Man Hitler" Dawidowicz on David Irving] by [[Lucy Dawidowicz]]
*[http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/02/20/austria.irving.trial.ap/index.html Holocaust denier: 3-year jail term]
*[http://fmueller.net/diss-zsfg_en.html Felix Mueller - The Nazi Prohibition Act in Relation to Freedom of Speech - Legal Background to the Irving Trial in Austria - February/March 2006]
*[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4578534.stm 'Irving? Let the guy go home'] by [[Deborah Lipstadt]]
*[http://www.robertfulford.com/IrvingHolocaustDenial.html David Irving and Holocaust Denial] by [[Robert Fulford]]
*[http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/02/david_irving_jailed_in_austria.html David Irving Jailed In Austria] by J.R. Dunn
*[http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=4473 "Springtime for Hitler—and the History Channel"] - about the [[History Channel]] hiring Irving as historian for a documentary about World War II, by [[Mark Greif]] in [[The American Prospect]], (6 November 1999)
*[http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,402404,00.html "Pity for this Man is Out of Place"] by [[Hans-Ulrich Wehler]]
*[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-irving-hitler-appointed-me-his-biographer-1366464.html David Irving: 'Hitler appointed me his biographer' 17 January 2009 ''The Independent'' news article]
===Irving v. Penguin Books Limited and Deborah E. Lipstadt trial===
*[http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2000/115.html Judgement by the Hon. Mr. Justice Gray] in Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstadt [2000] EWHC QB 115 (11 April 2000), published as ''The Irving Judgment'' by Penguin, ISBN 0-14-029899-1
*[http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/index.html David Irving vs Penguin & Deborah Lipstadt Trial] - a collection of materials at Irving's web site
*[http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/ Holocaust Denial on Trial] by [[Emory University]]
*[http://www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/evidence/evanscontent.asp Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans] Complete text of Professor Evans' lengthy report on Irving's work in a number of areas
*[http://www.guardian.co.uk/irving/ The Irving-Lipstadt case, special report from the Guardian newspaper]
*[http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/04/europe/EU_GEN_Austria_Holocaust_Denial.php International Herald Tribune Article]


{{DEFAULTSORT:Irving, David}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Irving, David}}
[[Category:English biographers]]
[[Category:David Irving| ]]
[[Category:English journalists]]
[[Category:Nazi era scholars and writers]]
[[Category:Holocaust deniers]]
[[Category:Alumni of Imperial College London]]
[[Category:People from Essex]]
[[Category:1938 births]]
[[Category:1938 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Historical revisionism (political)]]
[[Category:20th-century English biographers]]
[[Category:British people imprisoned abroad]]
[[Category:21st-century English biographers]]
[[Category:20th-century English translators]]
[[Category:21st-century English criminals]]
[[Category:Alumni of Imperial College London]]
[[Category:Alumni of University College London]]
[[Category:Antisemitism in England]]
[[Category:British people convicted of Holocaust denial]]
[[Category:Criminals from Essex]]
[[Category:Writers from Essex]]
[[Category:Criminals from London]]
[[Category:English conspiracy theorists]]
[[Category:English male criminals]]
[[Category:English neo-Nazis convicted of crimes]]
[[Category:English people imprisoned abroad]]
[[Category:Historical negationism]]
[[Category:Holocaust denial in Canada]]
[[Category:British male biographers]]
[[Category:People deported from Austria]]
[[Category:People deported from Canada]]
[[Category:People educated at Brentwood School, Essex]]
[[Category:People from Hutton, Essex]]
[[Category:Prisoners and detainees of Austria]]
[[Category:Prisoners and detainees of Austria]]
[[Category:Old Brentwoods]]
[[Category:Prisoners and detainees of England and Wales]]
[[Category:Holocaust denial in Austria]]
[[Category:English expatriates in West Germany]]
[[Category:Holocaust denial in the United Kingdom]]
[[Category:German–English translators]]
[[Category:Persons convicted of Holocaust denial offenses]]
[[Category:English pamphleteers]]

[[ar:ديفيد إيرفينغ]]
[[ca:David Irving]]
[[cs:David Irving]]
[[cy:David Irving]]
[[da:David Irving]]
[[de:David Irving]]
[[et:David Irving]]
[[es:David Irving]]
[[fa:دیوید ایروینگ]]
[[fr:David Irving]]
[[hsb:David Irving]]
[[it:David Irving]]
[[he:דייוויד אירווינג]]
[[jv:David Irving]]
[[nl:David Irving]]
[[ja:デイヴィッド・アーヴィング]]
[[no:David Irving]]
[[pl:David Irving]]
[[pt:David Irving]]
[[ru:Ирвинг, Дэвид]]
[[sk:David Irving]]
[[sr:Дејвид Ирвинг]]
[[fi:David Irving]]
[[sv:David Irving]]
[[uk:Девід Ірвінг]]
[[ur:ڈیوڈ ارونگ]]

{{Historical revisionism}}

Latest revision as of 22:38, 25 December 2024

David Irving
Irving in 2012
Irving in 2012
Born (1938-03-24) 24 March 1938 (age 86)
Hutton, Essex, England
Occupation
  • Author
Language
  • English
  • German
EducationBrentwood School, Essex
Alma mater
Years active1962–present
Notable works
Spouse
María del Pilar Stuyck
(m. 1961; div. 1981)
PartnerBente Hogh (since 1992)
Children5

David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English author who has written on the military and political history of World War II, especially Nazi Germany. He was found to be a Holocaust denier in a UK court in 2000 as a result of a failed libel case.[1]

Irving's works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987) and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). In his works, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews, or, if he did, he opposed it.[2] Though Irving's negationist claims and views of German war crimes in World War II (and Hitler's responsibility for them) were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents, which he held closely but stated were fully supportive of his conclusions.[3] His 1964 book The Mare's Nest about Germany's V-weapons campaign of 1944–45 was praised for its deep research but criticised for minimising Nazi slave labour programmes.[4]

By the late 1980s, Irving had placed himself outside the mainstream of the study of history, and had begun to turn from "'soft-core' to 'hard-core' Holocaust denial", possibly influenced by the 1988 trial of Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel.[5] That trial, and his reading of the pseudoscientific[Note 1] Leuchter report, led him to openly espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.[6][7]

Irving's reputation as a historian was further discredited[Note 2] in 2000, when, in the course of an unsuccessful libel case he filed against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, High Court Judge Charles Gray determined in his ruling that Irving willfully misrepresented historical evidence to promote Holocaust denial and whitewash the Nazis, a view shared by many prominent historians.[Note 3] The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite and racist,[8] who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".[8][9] In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of Hitler's role in the Holocaust to depict Hitler in a favourable light.

Early life

David Irving and his twin brother Nicholas[10] were born six months before the start of the undeclared German–Czechoslovak War, as Nazi Germany moved towards its opening of World War II. The family lived in Hutton, near Brentwood, Essex, England. They had a brother, John,[11] and a sister, Jennifer.[12] Their father, John James Cawdell Irving (1898–1967), was a career naval officer and a commander in the Royal Navy. Their mother, Beryl Irving (née Newington), was an illustrator and a writer of children's books.[13]

During World War II, Irving's father was an officer aboard the light cruiser HMS Edinburgh. On 30 April 1942, while escorting Convoy QP 11 in the Barents Sea, the ship was badly damaged by the German submarine U-456. Two days later, the ship was attacked by the German destroyers Hermann Schoemann, Z24 and Z25, and now beyond recovery was abandoned and scuttled by a torpedo from HMS Foresight. Irving's father survived but severed all links with his wife and children after the incident.[14]

Irving described his childhood in an interview with the American writer Ron Rosenbaum as: "Unlike the Americans, we English suffered great deprivations ... we went through childhood with no toys. We had no kind of childhood at all. We were living on an island that was crowded with other people's armies".[15] According to his brother, Nicholas, David has been a provocateur and prankster since his youth. Nicholas Irving has said that "David used to run toward bombed out houses shouting 'Heil Hitler!'", a statement which Irving denies.[13]

Irving went on to say to Rosenbaum that his negationist views about World War II dated to his childhood, particularly due to his objections to the way Adolf Hitler was portrayed in the British media during the war.[15] Irving asserted that his sceptical views about the Third Reich were rooted in his doubts about the cartoonist caricatures of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders published in the British wartime press.[15]

Student years

Irving in 1955

After completing A levels at Brentwood School, Irving studied for a physics degree at Imperial College London, leaving after the first year. He did not complete the course because of financial constraints.[10][16]

Irving later studied for two years toward a degree in Economics in the department of Political Economy at University College London.[17] He again had to drop out due to lack of funds.[18][19] During this period at university, he participated in a debate on Commonwealth immigration, seconding British Union of Fascists founder Sir Oswald Mosley.[20]

Carnival Times article

Irving's time as an editor of the Carnival Times, a student rag mag of the University of London Carnival Committee, became controversial in 1959 when he added a "secret supplement" to the magazine.[21][22] This supplement contained an article in which he called Hitler the "greatest unifying force Europe has known since Charlemagne". Although Irving deflected criticism by characterising the Carnival Times as "satirical",[23] he also stated that "the formation of a European Union is interpreted as building a group of superior peoples, and the Jews have always viewed with suspicion the emergence of any 'master-race' (other than their own, of course)".[24] Opponents also viewed a cartoon included in the supplement as racist and criticised another article in which Irving wrote that the British press was owned by Jews.[25] Volunteers were later recruited to remove and destroy the supplements before the magazine's distribution.[24] Irving has said that the criticism is "probably justifiable" and has described his motivation in producing the controversial secret issue of Carnival Times as being to prevent the Carnival from making a profit that would be passed on to a South African group which he considered a "subversive organisation".[17][26]

The Destruction of Dresden

Irving tried to join the Royal Air Force but was deemed to be medically unfit.[27]

After serving in 1959 as editor of the University of London Carnival Committee's journal, instead of doing national service, Irving left for West Germany, where he worked as a steelworker in a Thyssen AG steel works in the Ruhr area and learned the German language. He then moved to Spain, where he worked as a clerk at an air base.[13]

By 1962, Irving was engaged to write a series of 37 articles on the Allied bombing campaign, Und Deutschlands Städte starben nicht ("And Germany's Cities Did Not Die"), for the German boulevard journal Neue Illustrierte. These were the basis for his first book, The Destruction of Dresden (1963), in which he examined the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945. By the 1960s, a debate about the morality of the carpet bombing of German cities and civilian population had already begun, especially in the United Kingdom. There was consequently considerable interest in Irving's book, which was illustrated with graphic pictures, and it became an international best-seller.[28]

In the first edition, Irving's estimates for deaths in Dresden were between 100,000 and 250,000 – notably higher than most previously published figures.[29] These figures became widely accepted in many standard reference works. In later editions of the book over the next three decades, he gradually adjusted the figure downwards to 50,000–100,000.[30] According to Richard J. Evans at the 2000 libel trial that Irving brought against Deborah Lipstadt, Irving based his estimates of the dead of Dresden on the word of one individual who provided no supporting documentation, used a document forged by the Nazis, and described one witness who was a urologist as Dresden's Deputy Chief Medical Officer. The doctor later complained about being misidentified by Irving, and further, that he, the doctor, was only repeating rumours about the death toll.[31] According to an investigation by Dresden City Council in 2008, casualties at Dresden were estimated as 22,700–25,000 dead.[32]

Irving had based his numbers on what purported to be Tagesbefehl 47 ("Daily Order 47", TB 47), a document promulgated by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and on claims made after the war by a former Dresden Nazi functionary, Hans Voigt, without verifying them against official sources available in Dresden. Irving's estimates and sources were first disputed by Walter Weidauer, Mayor of Dresden 1946–1958, in his own account of the Dresden bombing. When it was later confirmed that the TB 47 used was a forgery, Irving published a letter to the editor in The Times on 7 July 1966 retracting his estimates, writing that he had "no interest in promoting or perpetuating false legends". In 1977, the real document TB 47 was located in Dresden by Götz Bergander.[33][34][35]

Despite acknowledging that the copy of "TB 47" he had used was inaccurate, Irving argued during the late 1980s and 1990s that the death toll at Dresden was much higher than the accepted estimates: in several speeches during this period, he said that 100,000 or more people had been killed in the bombing of Dresden. In some of the speeches Irving also argued or implied that the raid was comparable to the Nazis' killing of Jews.[36]

1963 burglary of Irving's flat

In November 1963, Irving called the Metropolitan Police with suspicions he had been the victim of a burglary by three men who had gained access to his Hornsey flat in London by claiming to be General Post Office engineers. Anti-fascist activist Gerry Gable was convicted in January 1964, along with Manny Carpel. They were fined £20 each.[37]

Subsequent works

After the success of the Dresden book, Irving continued writing, including some works of negationist history, although his 1964 work The Mare's Nest – an account of the German V-weapons programme and the Allied intelligence countermeasures against it – was widely praised when published and continues to be well regarded. Michael J. Neufeld of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has described The Mare's Nest as "the most complete account on both Allied and German sides of the V-weapons campaign in the last two years of the war."[38]

Irving once said he works to remove the "slime" applied to the reputation of Adolf Hitler (pictured).[39]

Irving translated the Memoirs of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in 1965 (edited by Walter Görlitz) and in 1967 published Accident: The Death of General Sikorski. In the latter book, Irving claimed that the plane crash which killed Polish government in exile leader General Władysław Sikorski in 1943 was really an assassination ordered by Winston Churchill, so as to enable Churchill to betray Poland to the Soviet Union. Irving's book inspired the highly controversial 1967 play Soldiers by his friend, the German playwright Rolf Hochhuth, where Hochhuth depicts Churchill ordering the assassination of General Sikorski.

Also in 1967, Irving published two more works: The Virus House, an account of the German nuclear energy project for which Irving conducted many interviews,[40] and The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, in which he blamed British escort group commander Commander 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 a 17-day-trial before London's High Court, Broome won. Irving was forced to pay £40,000 in damages, and the book was withdrawn from circulation.

After PQ-17, Irving largely shifted to writing biographies. In 1968, he published Breach of Security, an account of German reading of messages to and from the British Embassy in Berlin before 1939 with an introduction by the British historian Donald Cameron Watt. As a result of Irving's success with Dresden, members of Germany's extreme right wing assisted him in contacting surviving members of Hitler's inner circle. In an interview with the American journalist Ron Rosenbaum, Irving claimed to have developed sympathies towards them.[41] Many ageing former mid- and high-ranked Nazis saw a potential friend in Irving and donated diaries and other material. Irving described his historical work to Rosenbaum as an act of "stone-cleaning" of Hitler, in which he cleared off the "slime" that he felt had been unjustly applied to Hitler's reputation.[39]

In 1969, during a visit to Germany, Irving met Robert Kempner, one of the American prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials.[42] Irving asked Kempner if the "official record of the Nuremberg Trials was falsified", and told him that he was planning to go to Washington, D.C., to compare the sound recordings of Luftwaffe Field-Marshal Erhard Milch's March 1946 evidence with the subsequently published texts to find proof that evidence given at Nuremberg was "tampered with and manipulated".[43] Upon his return to the United States, Kempner wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, that Irving expressed many "anti-American and anti-Jewish statements".[42]

In 1971, Irving translated the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen, and in 1973 published The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, a biography of Field Marshal Milch. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on Hitler's War and The War Path, his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler; The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel; and a series in the Sunday Express describing the Royal Air Force's famous Dam Busters raid. In 1975, in his introduction to Hitler und seine Feldherren, the German edition of Hitler's War, Irving attacked Anne Frank's diary as a forgery, claiming falsely that a New York court had ruled that the diary was really the work of American scriptwriter Meyer Levin "in collaboration with the girl's father".[44]

Revisionism

Hitler's War

In Hitler's War, Irving used a 1942 memorandum by Hans Lammers (pictured), the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, to the Justice Minister, saying: "The Führer has repeatedly pronounced that he wants the solution of the Jewish Question put off until after the war is over."

In 1977, Irving published Hitler's War, the first of his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler. Irving's intention in Hitler's War was to clean away the "years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument" to reveal the real Hitler, whose reputation Irving argued had been slandered by historians.[45] In Hitler's War, Irving tried to "view the situation as far as possible through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk".[45] He portrayed Hitler as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent, and who was constantly let down by incompetent or treasonous subordinates.[45] Irving's book faulted the Allied leaders, especially Winston Churchill, for the eventual escalation of war, and argued that the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was a "preventive war" forced on Hitler to avert an impending Soviet attack.[46] Irving also argued that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust: while not denying its occurrence, he argued that SS leader Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich were its originators and architects. Irving made much of the lack of any written order from Hitler ordering the Holocaust; he offered to pay £1,000 to anyone who could find such an order.[47] As of 2019, his offer still stood.[48]

In Hitler's War, Irving quoted a 1942 memorandum by Hans Lammers, the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, to the Reich Justice Minister Franz Schlegelberger, saying: "the Führer has repeatedly pronounced that he wants the solution of the Jewish Question put off until after the war is over". Irving took this as proof that Hitler ordered against the extermination of the Jews.[49] He falsely claimed that "no other historians have quoted this document, possibly finding its content hard to reconcile with their obsessively held views" about Hitler's responsibility for the Holocaust.[49] However, the interpretation of the document is not as simple as Irving made it out to be in his book.[50] The memorandum has no date and no signature on it, although historians estimate that it was issued at some point between 1941 and 1942 by looking at the other documents where the memorandum is located. They have concluded that the memorandum was more than likely from late 1941 when Hitler was still advocating the expulsion of the Jews, rather than later when he advocated their extermination.[50]

Critical reaction to Hitler's War was generally negative. Reviewers took issue with Irving's factual claims as well as his conclusions. For example, American historian Charles W. Sydnor Jr. noted numerous errors, such as Irving's unreferenced statement that the Jews who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 were well supplied with weapons from Germany's allies.[51] Sydnor pointed out that Hitler had received an SS report in November 1942 which contained a mention of 363,211 Russian Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen between August and November 1942.[52] Sydnor remarked that Irving's statement that the Einsatzgruppen were in charge in the death camps seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust, as the Einsatzgruppen were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps.[53]

Irving's work in the late 1970s and early 1980s

Months after the release of Hitler's War, Irving published The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. In it, Irving attacked the members of the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler, branding them "traitors", "cowards", and "manipulators", and uncritically presented Hitler and his government's subsequent revenge against the plotters, of which Rommel was also a victim. In particular, Irving accused Rommel's friend and Chief of Staff General Hans Speidel of framing Rommel in the attempted coup. The British historian David Pryce-Jones in a book review of The Trail of the Fox in the edition of 12 November 1977 of The New York Times Book Review accused Irving of taking everything Hitler had to say at face value.[54][19]

In 1978, Irving released The War Path, the companion volume to Hitler's War which covered events leading up to the war and which was written from a similar point of view. Again, professional historians such as Donald Cameron Watt noted numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations. Despite the criticism, the book sold well, as did all of Irving's books up to that date. The success of his books enabled Irving to buy a home in the prestigious Mayfair district of London, own a Rolls-Royce car and enjoy an affluent lifestyle.[55] In addition, Irving, despite being married, became increasingly open about his affairs with other women, all of which were detailed in his self-published diary.[56] Irving's affairs caused his first marriage to end in divorce in 1981.

In the 1980s, Irving started researching and writing about topics other than Nazi Germany, but with less success. He began his research on his three-part biography of Winston Churchill. After publication Irving's work on Churchill received at least one bad review from Professor David Cannadine (then of the University of London):

It has received almost no attention from historians or reviewers ... It is easy to see why ... full of excesses, inconsistencies and omissions ... seems completely unaware of recent work done on the subject ... It is not merely that the arguments in this book are so perversely tendentious and irresponsibly sensationalist. It is also that it is written in a tone which is at best casually journalistic and at worst quite exceptionally offensive. The text is littered with errors from beginning to end.[57]

In 1981, he published two books. The first was The War Between the Generals, in which Irving offered an account of the Allied High Command on the Western Front in 1944–45, detailing the heated conflicts Irving alleges occurred between the various generals of the various countries and presenting rumours about their private lives. The second book was Uprising!, about the 1956 revolt in Hungary, which Irving characterised as "primarily an anti-Jewish uprising", supposedly because the Communist regime was itself controlled by Jews. Irving's depiction of Hungary's Communist regime as a Jewish dictatorship oppressing Gentiles sparked charges of antisemitism.[58] In addition, there were complaints that Irving had grossly exaggerated the number of people of Jewish origin in the Communist regime and had ignored the fact that Hungarian Communists who did have a Jewish background like Mátyás Rákosi and Ernő Gerő had totally repudiated Judaism and sometimes expressed antisemitic attitudes themselves.[59] Critics such as Neal Ascherson and Kai Bird took issue with some of Irving's language that seemed to evoke antisemitic imagery, such as his remark that Rákosi possessed "the tact of a kosher butcher".[58]

In 1982, Irving described himself as an "untrained historian" and argued that his lack of academic qualifications did not mean that he could not be considered a historian. He listed Pliny the Elder and Tacitus as examples of historians without university training.[60]

Hitler Diaries

In 1983, Stern, a weekly German news magazine, purchased 61 volumes of Hitler's supposed diaries for DM 9 million and published excerpts from them. Irving played a major role in exposing the Hitler Diaries as a hoax. In October 1982 Irving had purchased from the same source as Stern's 1983 purchase, 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to conclude that many of the documents were forgeries.[61] Irving was amongst the first to identify the diaries as forgeries, and to draw media attention. He went so far as to crash the press conference held by Hugh Trevor-Roper at the Hamburg offices of Stern magazine on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine.[62] Irving's performance at the Stern press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news: the next day, Irving appeared on the Today television show as a featured guest.[63] Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because they had come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia from whom Irving had purchased his collection in 1982.[61] At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving said, "I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here".[61] Irving was proud to have detected and denounced the hoax material and of the "trail of chaos" he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and took pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his sloppy work, in not detecting the hoax, and past criticism of Irving's methods and conclusions.[64] Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries, such as a diary entry for 20 July 1944, which would have been unlikely given that Hitler's right hand had been badly burned by the bomb planted in his headquarters by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg earlier that day.[65]

A week later, on 2 May, Irving asserted that many of the diary documents appeared to be genuine: at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler's physician Theodor Morell.[64] Robert Harris, in his book Selling Hitler, suggested that an additional reason for Irving's change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving's claim in Hitler's War that Hitler had no knowledge of it.[66] Subsequently, Irving conformed when the diaries were declared a forgery by consensus. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.[64]

Other books

By the mid-1980s, Irving had not had a successful book for some years and was behind schedule in writing the first volume of his Churchill series, the research for which had strained his finances.[67] He finished the manuscript in 1985, and the book was published in 1987, as Churchill's War, The Struggle for Power.

In 1989, Irving published his biography of Hermann Göring.[68]

Holocaust denial

Movement towards Holocaust denial

A note in Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler's telephone log on 30 November 1941 stating "no liquidation" was later used by Irving as his central argument in trying to prove that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust.

Over the years, Irving's stance on the Holocaust has changed significantly. Since at least the 1970s, he has either questioned or denied Hitler's involvement in the Holocaust and whether or not the Nazis had a plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

Irving always denied Hitler was antisemitic, even before he openly denied the Holocaust.[69] Irving claimed Hitler only used antisemitism as a political platform, and that after he came to power in 1933 he lost interest in it, while Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis continued to espouse antisemitism.[70] In 1977 on a BBC1 television programme, he said that Hitler "became a statesman and then a soldier ... and the Jewish problem was a nuisance to him, an embarrassment."[71] In 1983, Irving summarised his views about Hitler and the Jews when he said that "probably the biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich, certainly when the war broke out, was Adolf Hitler. He was the one who was doing everything he could to prevent things nasty happening to them."[71] In the same year, he further declared about Hitler and the mass killing of Jews, "There is a whole chain of evidence from 1938 right through to October 1943, possibly even later, indicating that Hitler was completely in the dark about anything that may have been going on."[71] Irving boasted that he had not been disproved.[71]

In his first edition of Hitler's War in 1977, Irving argued that Hitler was against the killings of the Jews in the East. He claimed that Hitler even ordered a stop to the extermination of Jews in November 1941; British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper noted that this admission blatantly contradicted Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant about what was happening to Jews in Eastern Europe.[72] On 30 November 1941, Heinrich Himmler went to the Wolf's Lair for a private conference with Hitler and during it the fate of some Berlin Jews was mentioned. At 1.30 pm, Himmler was instructed to tell Reinhard Heydrich that the Jews were not to be liquidated. Irving falsely claimed that Himmler telephoned SS General Oswald Pohl, the overall chief of the concentration camp system, with the order: "Jews are to stay where they are" (Himmler actually referred to "administrative leaders of the SS" needing to stay where they were).[72] Irving argued that "No liquidation" (Keine Liquidierung) was "incontrovertible evidence" that Hitler ordered that no Jews were to be killed.[72] However, although the telephone log is genuine, it provides no evidence that Hitler was involved at all, only that Himmler contacted Heydrich and there is no evidence that Hitler and Himmler were in contact before the phone call.[72] This is an example of Irving's manipulation of documents since there was no general order to stop the killing of Jews.[72] Historian Eberhard Jäckel wrote that Irving "only ever sees and collects what fits his story, and even now he will not let himself be dissuaded from understanding what he wants to by the phrase 'postponement of the Jewish question'."[72]

In June 1977, British television host David Frost aired a debate. During the debate, Irving argued that there was no evidence Hitler even knew about the Holocaust. Frost asked Irving whether or not he thought Hitler was evil, he replied, "He was as evil as Churchill, as evil as Roosevelt, as evil as Truman".[69]

From 1988, Irving started to espouse Holocaust denial openly: he had previously not denied the Holocaust outright, and for this reason many Holocaust deniers were ambivalent about him.[73] They admired Irving for the pro-Nazi slant in his work and the fact that he possessed a degree of mainstream credibility that they lacked, but were annoyed that he did not openly deny the Holocaust.[74] In 1980, Lucy Dawidowicz noted that, although Hitler's War was strongly sympathetic to the Third Reich, because Irving argued that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust as opposed to denying the Holocaust happened at all, his book was not part of the "anti-Semitic canon".[75] In 1980, Irving received an invitation to speak at a Holocaust-denial conference, which he refused on the grounds that his appearance there would damage his reputation.[73] In a letter, Irving stated his reasons for his refusal as: "This is pure Realpolitik on my part. I am already dangerously exposed, and I cannot take the chance of being caught in flak meant for others!"[73] Though Irving refused at this time to appear at conferences sponsored by the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review (IHR), he did grant the institute the right to distribute his books in the United States.[73] Robert Jan van Pelt suggests that the major reason for Irving wishing to keep his distance from Holocaust deniers in the early 1980s was his desire to found his own political party called Focus.[73]

In a footnote in the first edition of Hitler's War, Irving writes, "I cannot accept the view ... [that] there exists no document signed by Hitler, Himmler or Heydrich speaking of the extermination of the Jews".[76] In 1982, Irving temporarily stopped writing and made an attempt to unify all of the various far-right splinter groups in Britain into one party called Focus, in which he would play a leading role.[46] Irving described himself as a "moderate fascist" and spoke of plans to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom,[77] but his efforts to move into politics, which he regarded at the time as very important, failed due to fiscal problems.[46] Irving told the Oxford Mail of having "links at a low level" with the National Front (NF).[46] Irving described The Spotlight, the main journal of the Liberty Lobby, as "an excellent fortnightly paper".[46] At the same time, Irving put a copy of Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of 30 January 1939, promising the "annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe" if "Jewish financiers" started another world war, onto his wall.[78]

Following the failure of Focus, in September 1983, Irving for the first time attended a conference of the IHR.[73] Van Pelt has argued that, with the failure of Irving's political career, he felt freer to associate with Holocaust deniers.[73] At the conference, Irving did not deny the Holocaust, but did appear happy to share the stage with Robert Faurisson and Judge Wilhelm Stäglich, and claimed to be impressed with the pseudoscientific allegations of neo-Nazi and Holocaust denier Friedrich "Fritz" Berg that mass murder using diesel gas fumes at the Operation Reinhard death camps was impossible.[79] At that conference, Irving repeated his claims that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust because he was "so busy being a soldier".[80] In a speech at that conference, Irving stated: "Isn't it right for Tel Aviv to claim now that David Irving is talking nonsense and of course Adolf Hitler must have known about what was going in Auschwitz and Treblinka, and then in the same breath to claim that, of course our beloved Mr. Begin didn't know what was going on in Sabra and Chatilla".[80] During the same speech, Irving proclaimed Hitler to be the "biggest friend the Jews had in the Third Reich".[81] In the same speech, Irving stated that he operated in such a way as to bring himself maximum publicity. Irving stated that: "I have at home... a filing cabinet full of documents which I don't issue all at once. I keep them: I issue them a bit at a time. When I think my name hasn't been in the newspapers for several weeks, well, then I ring them up and I phone them and I say: 'What about this one, then?'"[80]

A major theme of Irving's writings from the 1980s was his belief that it had been a great blunder on the part of Britain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that ever since then and as a result of that decision, Britain had slipped into an unstoppable decline.[77] Irving also took the view that Hitler often tried to help the Jews of Europe.[77] In a June 1992 interview with The Daily Telegraph, Irving claimed to have heard from Hitler's naval adjutant that the Führer had told him that he could not marry because Germany was "his bride".[77] Irving then claimed to have asked the naval adjutant when Hitler made that remark, and upon hearing that the date was 24 March 1938, Irving stated in response "Herr Admiral, at that moment I was being born". Irving used this alleged incident to argue that there was some sort of mystical connection between himself and Hitler.[82]

In a 1986 speech in Australia, Irving argued that photographs of Holocaust survivors and dead taken in early 1945 by Allied soldiers were proof that the Allies were responsible for the Holocaust, not the Germans.[83] Irving claimed that the Holocaust was not the work of Nazi leaders, but rather of "nameless criminals",[83] and claimed that "these men [who killed the Jews] acted on their own impulse, their own initiative, within the general atmosphere of brutality created by the Second World War, in which of course Allied bombings played a part."[83] In another 1986 speech, this time in Atlanta, Irving claimed that "historians have a blindness when it comes to the Holocaust because like Tay–Sachs disease it is a Jewish disease which causes blindness".[84] In 1986, he told reporters in Brisbane, Australia, without explaining how the Allied bombing raids on Germany had made non-Germans to be antisemitic that:

the Jews were the victims of a large number of rather run-of-the-mill criminal elements which exist in Central Europe. Not just Germans, but Austrians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, feeding on the endemic antisemitism of the era and encouraged by the brutalization which war brought about anyway. These people had seen the bombing raids begin. They'd lost probably women, wives and children in the bombing raids. And they wanted to take revenge on someone. So when Hitler ordered the expulsion, as he did – there's no doubt that Hitler ordered the expulsion measures – these people took it out on the person that they could.[85]

By the mid-1980s, Irving associated himself with the IHR, began giving lectures to groups such as the far-right German Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), and publicly denied that the Nazis systematically exterminated Jews in gas chambers during World War II.[86] Irving in his revised edition of Hitler's War in 1991 removed all mentions of "gas chambers" and the word "Holocaust". He defended the revisions by stating, "You won't find the Holocaust mentioned in one line, not even in a footnote, why should [you]. If something didn't happen, then you don't even dignify it with a footnote."[87][88]

Irving was present at a memorial service for Hans-Ulrich Rudel in January 1983 after the latter's death, organised by the DVU and its leader Gerhard Frey, delivering a speech,[89][90] and was given the Hans-Ulrich-Rudel-Award by Frey in June 1985.[91] Irving was a frequent speaker for the DVU in the 1980s and the early 1990s, but the relationship ended in 1993 apparently because of concerns by the DVU that Irving's espousal of Holocaust denial might lead to the DVU being banned.[19]

In 1986, Irving visited Toronto, where he was met at an airport by Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel.[92] According to Zündel, Irving "thought I was 'Revisionist-Neo-Nazi-Rambo-Kook!'", and asked Zündel to stay away from him.[92] Zündel and his supporters obliged Irving by staying away from his lecture tour, which consequently attracted little media attention, and was considered by Irving to be a failure.[92] Afterwards, Zündel sent Irving a long letter in which he offered to draw publicity to Irving, and so ensure that his future speaking tours would be a success.[92] As a result, Irving and Zündel became friends, and Irving agreed in late 1987 to testify for Zündel at his second trial for denying the Holocaust.[93] In addition, the publication in 1987 of the book Der europäische Bürgerkrieg 1917–1945 by Ernst Nolte, in which Nolte flirted with Holocaust denial as a serious argument, encouraged Irving to become more open in associating with Zündel.[92]

David Irving appearing on the TV show After Dark in 1988, discussing Winston Churchill.

In 1988, Irving argued that the Nazi state was not responsible for the extermination of the Jews in places like Minsk, Kiev and Riga because according to him they were carried out for the most part by "individual gangsters and criminals".[85]

In 1989, Irving during a speech told an audience that "there is not one shower bath in any of the concentration or slave labour camps that turns out to have been some kind of gas chamber."[94] He described Jewish Holocaust survivors as "liars, psychiatric cases and extortionists."[95] In 1990, Irving said on 5 March that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and that "30,000 people at the most were murdered in Auschwitz ... that's about as many as we Englishmen killed in a single night in Hamburg." He reiterated his claim that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz on 5 March 1990 to an audience in Germany:

There were no gas chambers in Auschwitz, there were only dummies which were built by the Poles in the postwar years, just as the Americans build the dummies in Dachau ... these things in Auschwitz, and probably also in Majdanek, Treblinka, and in other so-called extermination camps in the East are all just dummies.[96]

During the same speech, he said, "I and, increasingly, other historians ... are saying, the Holocaust, the gas chamber establishments in Auschwitz did not exist."[85] Later on in the same year, Irving told an audience in Toronto, "The gas chambers that are shown to the tourists in Auschwitz are fakes."[85]

Irving denied that the Nazis gassed any Jews or other people, with the exception of admitting that a small number of people were gassed during experiments.[94]

In 1990, Irving told an audience in Canada that "particularly when there's money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it" there would be people claiming to be eyewitnesses to gas chambers or extermination camps.[97] He continued:

And the only way to overcome this appalling pseudo-religious atmosphere that surrounds the whole of this immense tragedy called World War II is to treat these little legends with the ridicule and bad taste that they deserve. Ridicule isn't enough, you've got to be tasteless about it. You've got to say things: "More women died on the back seat of Senator Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz." You think that's tasteless? What about this: I'm forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try to kid people that they were in these concentration camps. It's called "The Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust, and Other Lies" – "A.S.S.H.O.L.E.S." Can't get more tasteless than that. But you've got to be tasteless because these people deserve all our contempt, and in fact they deserve the contempt of the real Jewish community and the people, whatever their class and colour, who did suffer.[97]

In 1991, Irving espoused an antisemitic conspiracy theory when he stated that the Jews "dragged us into two world wars and now, for equally mysterious reasons, they're trying to drag us into the Balkans."[98]

In 1995, when Irving was confronted with a Holocaust survivor, he repeated the same claim and asked, "How much money have you made from that piece of ink on your arm, which may indeed be real tattooed ink? Yes. Half a million dollars, three-quarters of a million for you alone?"[97]

On 6 October 1995, Irving told an audience in Tampa, Florida, that he agreed with the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that the Jews "had it coming for them".[99] He continued:

What these people don't understand ... is that they are generating antisemitism by their behaviour, and they can't understand it. They wonder where the antisemitism comes from and it comes from themselves, from their behaviour ... I said to this man from Colindale, this leader of the Jewish community in Freeport, Louisiana, I said ... "You are disliked, you people. You have been disliked for three thousand years. You have been disliked so much that you have been hounded from country to country, from pogrom to purge, from purge back to pogrom, and yet you never asked yourselves why you're disliked. That's the difference between you and me. It never occurs to you to look into the mirror and say, why am I disliked? What is it that the rest of humanity doesn't like about the Jewish people, to such an extent that they repeatedly put us through the grinder?" And he went berserk. He said "Are you trying to say that we are responsible for Auschwitz? Ourselves?" And I said, "Well the short answer is yes. The short answer I have to say is yes ... If you had behaved differently over the intervening three thousand years, the Germans would have gone about their business and not have found it necessary to go around doing whatever they did to you."[100]

Thus, according to Irving, the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves.[98]

Ernst Zündel trial

Ernst Zündel, whom Irving met in 1986 and became good friends with and collaborated with to distribute Holocaust denial

In January 1988, Irving travelled to Toronto, Ontario, to assist Douglas Christie, the defence lawyer for Ernst Zündel at his second trial for denying the Holocaust.[77] Working closely with Robert Faurisson, who was also assisting the defence, Irving contacted Warden Bill Armontrout of the Missouri State Penitentiary who recommended that Irving and Faurisson get into touch with Fred A. Leuchter, a self-described execution expert living in Boston.[81] Irving and Faurisson then flew to Boston to meet with Leuchter, who agreed to lend his alleged technical expertise on the behalf of Zündel's defence.[77] Irving argued that an alleged expert on gassings like Leuchter could prove that the Holocaust was a "myth".[77] After work on the second Zündel trial, Irving declared that based on his exposure to Zündel's and Leuchter's theories that he was now conducting a "one-man intifada" against the idea that there had been a Holocaust.[101] Subsequently, Irving claimed to the American journalist D. D. Guttenplan in a 1999 interview that Zündel had convinced him that the Holocaust had not occurred.[102] In the 1988 Zündel trial, Irving repeated and defended his claim from Hitler's War that until October 1943 Hitler knew nothing about the actual implementation of the Final Solution. He also expressed his evolving belief that the Final Solution involved "atrocities", not systematic murder: "I don't think there was any overall Reich policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors. And believe me, I am glad for every survivor that there was."[103][unreliable source?] Similarly, Irving disputed the common held view among historians that the Wannsee Conference meeting on 20 January 1942 was when the extermination of Jews in the near future or later was discussed, he argued:

Several of the participants in the Wannsee Conference subsequently testified in later criminal proceedings that ... none of them had an idea that at that conference there had been a discussion of liquidation of Jews ... There is no explicit reference to extermination of the Jews of Europe in the Wannsee Conference, not in any of the other documents in that file.[104]

Between 22 and 26 April 1988, Irving testified for Zündel, endorsing Richard Harwood's book Did Six Million Really Die? as "over ninety percent ... factually accurate".[105]

As to what evidence further led Irving to believe that the Holocaust never occurred, he cited The Leuchter report by Fred A. Leuchter, which claimed there was no evidence for the existence of homicidal gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Irving said in a 1999 documentary about Leuchter: "The big point [of the Leuchter report]: there is no significant residue of cyanide in the brickwork. That's what converted me. When I read that in the report in the courtroom in Toronto, I became a hard-core disbeliever".[106][full citation needed] In addition, Irving was influenced to embrace Holocaust denial by the American historian Arno J. Mayer's 1988 book Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?, which did not deny the Holocaust, but claimed that most of those who died at Auschwitz were killed by disease: Irving saw in Mayer's book an apparent confirmation of Leuchter's and Zündel's theories about no mass murder at Auschwitz.[107]

After the trial, Irving published Leuchter's report as Auschwitz, The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report in the United Kingdom in 1989 and wrote its foreword.[101] Leuchter's book had been first published in Canada by Zündel's Samisdat Publishers in 1988 as The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek.[108] In his foreword to the British edition of Leuchter's book, Irving wrote that "Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved".[101] The alleged swindle was the reparations money totalling 3 billion DM paid by the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel between 1952 and 1966 for the Holocaust. Irving described the reparations as being "essentially in atonement for the 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz", which Irving called a "myth" that would "not die easily".[101] In his foreword, Irving praised the "scrupulous methods" and "integrity" of Leuchter.[101]

For publishing and writing the foreword to Auschwitz The End of the Line, on 20 June 1989, Irving together with Leuchter was condemned in an Early Day Motion of the House of Commons as "Hitler's heirs".[109] The motion went on to describe Irving as a "Nazi propagandist and longtime Hitler apologist" and Auschwitz The End of the Line as a "fascist publication".[110] In the Motion, the House stated that they were "appalled by [the Holocaust denial of] Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist David Irving".[84] In response to the House of Commons motion, Irving in a press statement challenged the MPs who voted to condemn him, writing that: "I will enter the 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz and you and your friends may lob in Zyklon B in accordance with the well known procedures and conditions. I guarantee that you won't be satisfied with the results!"[111]

In a pamphlet Irving published in London on 23 June 1989, he made the "epochal announcement" that there was no mass murder in the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.[112] Irving labelled the gas chambers at Auschwitz a "hoax", and writing in the third person declared that he "has placed himself [Irving] at the head of a growing band of historians, worldwide, who are now sceptical of the claim that at Auschwitz and other camps were 'factories of death', in which millions of innocent people were systematically gassed to death".[112] Boasting of his role in criticising the Hitler diaries as a forgery in 1983, Irving wrote "now he [Irving] is saying the same thing about the infamous 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek. They did not exist – ever – except perhaps as the brainchild of Britain's brilliant wartime Psychological Warfare Executive".[112] Finally, Irving claimed "the survivors of Auschwitz are themselves testimony to the absence of an extermination programme".[112] Echoing the criticism of the House of Commons, a leader in The Times on 14 May 1990 described Irving as a "man for whom Hitler is something of a hero and almost everything of an innocent and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception".[110]

Holocaust denial lecture circuit

Interior of the gas chamber of Auschwitz I camp. In a 1990 speech, Irving stated: "I say the following thing: there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. There have been only mock-ups built by the Poles in the years after the war."[113]

In the early 1990s, Irving was a frequent visitor to Germany, where he spoke at neo-Nazi rallies.[86] The chief themes of Irving's German speeches were that the Allies and Axis states were equally culpable for war crimes, that the decision of Neville Chamberlain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that of Winston Churchill to continue the war in 1940, had been great mistakes that set Britain on a path of decline, and the Holocaust was just a "propaganda exercise".[86] In June 1990, Irving visited East Germany on a well-publicized tour entitled "An Englishman Fights for the Honour of the Germans", on which he accused the Allies of having used "forged documents" to "humiliate" the German people.[111] Irving's self-proclaimed mission was to guide "promising young men" in Germany in the "right direction" (Irving has often stated his belief that women exist for a "certain task, which is producing us [men]", and should be "subservient to men": leading, in Lipstadt's view, to a lack of interest on Irving's part in guiding young German women in the "right direction").[114] German nationalists found Irving, as a non-German Holocaust denier, to be particularly credible.[114]

In January 1990, Irving gave a speech in Moers where he asserted that only 30,000 people died at Auschwitz between 1940 and 1945, all of natural causes, which was equal—so he claimed—to the typical death toll from one Bomber Command raid on German cities.[113] Irving claimed that there were no gas chambers at the death camp, stating that the existing remains were "mock-ups built by the Poles".[113] On 21 April 1990, Irving repeated the same speech in Munich, which led to his conviction for Holocaust denial in Munich on 11 July 1991. The court fined Irving DM 7,000 (equivalent to €3147.38 in 2021[115]). Irving appealed against the judgement, and received a fine of DM 10,000 (€4496.27 in 2021) for repeating the same remarks in the courtroom on 5 May 1992.[113] During his appeal in 1992, Irving called upon those present in the Munich courtroom to "fight a battle for the German people and put an end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told against this country for fifty years".[101] Irving went on to call the Auschwitz death camp a "tourist attraction" whose origins Irving claimed went back to an "ingenious plan" devised by the British Psychological Warfare Executive in 1942 to spread anti-German propaganda that it was the policy of the German state to be "using 'gas chambers' to kill millions of Jews and other undesirables".[101] During the same speech, Irving denounced the judge as a "senile, alcoholic cretin".[116] Following his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving was banned from visiting Germany.[117]

Inside a barracks in Auschwitz II Birkenau. In 1992 during his appeal for his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving called Auschwitz a "tourist attraction".[101]

Expanding upon his thesis in Hitler's War about the lack of a written Führer order for the Holocaust, Irving argued in the 1990s that the absence of such an order meant that there was no Holocaust.[118] In a speech delivered in Toronto in November 1990 Irving claimed that Holocaust survivors had manufactured memories of their suffering because "there's money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it".[19] In that speech, Irving used the metaphor of a cruise ship named Holocaust, which Irving claimed had "luxury wall to wall fitted carpets and a crew of thousands ... marine terminals established in now virtually every capital in the world, disguised as Holocaust memorial museums".[119] Irving went on to assert that the "ship" was due for rough sailing because recently the Soviet government had allowed historians access to "the index cards of all the people who passed through the gates of Auschwitz", and claimed that this would lead to "a lot of people [who] are not claiming to be Auschwitz survivors anymore" (Irving's statement about the index cards was incorrect: what the Soviet government had made available in 1990 were the death books of Auschwitz, recording the weekly death tolls).[119] Irving claimed on the basis of what he called the index books that, "Because the experts can look at a tattoo and say 'Oh yes, 181, 219 that means you entered Auschwitz in March 1943'" and he warned Auschwitz survivors "If you want to go and have a tattoo put on your arm, as a lot of them do, I am afraid to say, and claim subsequently that you were in Auschwitz, you have to make sure a) that it fits in with the month you said you went to Auschwitz and b) it is not a number which anyone used before".[119]

On 17 January 1991, Irving told a reporter from The Jewish Chronicle that "The Jews are very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time".[120] Irving went on to say that he believed antisemitism will increase all over the world because "the Jews have exploited people with the gas chamber legend" and that "In ten years, Israel will cease to exist and the Jews will have to return to Europe".[120] In his 1991 revised edition of Hitler's War, he had removed all references to death camps and the Holocaust. In a speech given in Hamburg in 1991, Irving stated that in two years' time "this myth of mass murders of Jews in the death factories of Auschwitz, Majdanek and Treblinka ... which in fact never took place" will be disproved (Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka were all well established as being extermination camps).[121] Two days later, Irving repeated the same speech in Halle before a group of neo-Nazis, and praised Rudolf Hess as "that great German martyr, Rudolf Hess".[121] At another 1991 speech, this time in Canada, Irving called the Holocaust a "hoax", and again predicted that by 1993 the "hoax" would have been "exposed".[119] In that speech, Irving declared, "Gradually the word is getting around Germany. Two years from now too, the German historians will accept that we are right. They will accept that for fifty years they have believed a lie".[119] During that speech given in October 1991, Irving expressed his contempt and hatred for Holocaust survivors by proclaiming that:

Ridicule alone isn't enough, you've got to be tasteless about it. You've got to say things like "More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz." Now you think that's tasteless, what about this? I'm forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try and kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it's called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, "ASSHOLs". Can't get more tasteless than that, but you've got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.

In another 1991 speech, this time in Regina, Irving called the Holocaust "a major fraud... There were no gas chambers. They were fakes and frauds".[122]

In November 1992, Irving was to be a featured speaker at a world anti-Zionist congress in Stockholm that was cancelled by the Swedish government.[86] Also scheduled to attend were fellow Holocaust-deniers Robert Faurisson and Fred A. Leuchter, and Louis Farrakhan, together with representatives of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, the Lebanese militant Shiite group Hezbollah, and the right-wing Russian antisemitic group Pamyat.[86] In a 1993 speech, Irving claimed that there had been only 100,000 Jewish deaths at Auschwitz, "but not from gas chambers. They died from epidemics".[123] Irving went on to claim that most of the Jewish deaths during World War II had been caused by Allied bombing.[123] Irving claimed that "The concentration camp inmates arrived in Berlin or Leipzig or in Dresden just in time for the RAF bombers to set fire to those cities. Nobody knows how many Jews died in those air raids".[123]

In a 1994 speech, Irving lamented that his predictions of 1991 had failed to occur, and complained of the persistence of belief in the "rotting corpse" of the "profitable legend" of the Holocaust.[119] In another 1994 speech, Irving claimed that there was no German policy of genocide of Jews, and that only 600,000 Jews died in concentration camps in World War II, all due to either Allied bombing or disease.[116] At the same time, Irving started to appear more frequently at the annual conferences hosted by the IHR.[124] In a 1995 speech, Irving claimed that the Holocaust was a myth invented by a "world-wide Jewish cabal" to serve their own ends.[125] Irving also spoke on other topics at the IHR gatherings. A frequent theme was the claim that Winston Churchill had advance knowledge of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor, and refused to warn the Americans, in order to bring the United States into World War II.[126] In 1995 he stated that, "We revisionists, say that gas chambers didn't exist and that the 'factories of death' didn't exist."[94] In 1999, Irving said during a television interview, "I'm a gas chamber denier. I'm a denier that they killed hundreds of thousands of people in gas chambers, yes."[94]

At the same time, Irving maintained an ambivalent attitude to Holocaust denial depending on his audience. In a 1993 letter, Irving lashed out against his former friend Zündel, writing that: "In April 1988 I unhesitatingly agreed to aid your defence as a witness in Toronto. I would not make the same mistake again. As a penalty for having defended you then, and for having continued to aid you since, my life has come under a gradually mounting attack: I find myself the worldwide victim of mass demonstrations, violence, vituperation and persecution" (emphasis in the original). Irving went on to claim his life had been wonderful until Zündel had got him involved in the Holocaust denial movement: van Pelt argues that Irving was just trying to shift responsibility for his actions in his letter.[123] In an interview with Australian radio in July 1995, Irving claimed that at least four million Jews died in World War II, though he argued that this was due to terrible sanitary conditions inside the concentration camps as opposed to a deliberate policy of genocide in the death camps.[116] Irving's statement led to a very public spat with his former ally Faurisson, who insisted that no Jews were killed in the Holocaust.[123] In 1995, Irving stated in another speech that "I have to take off my hat to my adversaries and the strategies they have employed—the marketing of the very word Holocaust: I half expected to see a little TM after it".[116] Likewise, depending on his audience, during the 1990s Irving either used the absence of a written Führerbefehl (Führer order) for the "Final Solution" to argue that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust, or claimed that the absence of a written order meant there was no Holocaust at all.[124]

Racism and antisemitism

Although Irving denies being a racist,[127] he has expressed racist and antisemitic sentiments, both publicly and privately.[128] Irving has often expressed his belief in the conspiracy theory of Jews secretly ruling the world, and that the belief in the reality of the Holocaust was manufactured as part of the same alleged conspiracy.[56] Irving used the label "traditional enemies of the truth" to describe Jews, and in a 1963 article about a speech by Sir Oswald Mosley wrote that the "Yellow Star did not make a showing".[56] In 1992, Irving stated that "the Jews are very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time" and claimed he "foresees a new wave of antisemitism" the world over due to Jewish "exploitation of the Holocaust myth".[110] During an interview with the American writer Ron Rosenbaum, Irving restated his belief that Jews were his "traditional enemy".[129] In one interview cited in the libel lawsuit, Irving also stated that he would be "willing to put [his] signature" to the "fact" that "a great deal of control over the world is exercised by Jews".[130]

After Irving was sacked by The Sunday Times to help them with their serialisation of the Goebbels diaries, he described a group of protesters outside of his apartment as, "All the scum of humanity stand outside. The homosexuals, the gypsies, the lesbians, the Jews, the criminals, the Communists..."[131][132]

Several of these statements were cited by the judge's decision in Irving's lawsuit against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt,[130] leading the judge to conclude that Irving "had on many occasions spoken in terms which are plainly racist."[133] One example brought was his diary entry for 17 September 1994, in which Irving wrote about a ditty he composed for his young daughter "when half-breed children are wheeled past":

I am a Baby Aryan
Not Jewish or Sectarian
I have no plans to marry an
Ape or Rastafarian.

Christopher Hitchens wrote that Irving sang the rhyme to Hitchens's wife, Carol Blue, and daughter, Antonia, in the elevator following drinks in the family's Washington apartment.[134]

Persona non grata

Irving during his trial in Austria with a copy of his book Hitler's War

After Irving denied the Holocaust in two speeches given in Austria in 1989, the Austrian government issued an arrest warrant for him and barred him from entering the country.[135] In early 1992, a German court found him guilty of Holocaust denial under the Auschwitzlüge section of the law against Volksverhetzung (a failed appeal by Irving would see the fine rise from 10,000 DM to 30,000 DM), and he was subsequently barred from entering Germany.[136][19] Other governments followed suit, including Italy and Canada,[137] where he was arrested in November 1992 and deported to the United Kingdom.[19] In an administrative hearing surrounding those events, he was found by the hearing office to have engaged in a "total fabrication" in telling a story of an exit from and return to Canada which would, for technical reasons, have made the original deportation order invalid. He was also barred from entering Australia in 1992, a ban he made five unsuccessful attempts to overturn.[138]

David Irving being deported from Canada, 1992

In 1992, Irving signed a contract with Macmillan Publishers for his biography of Joseph Goebbels titled Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich.[139] Following charges that Irving had selectively "edited" a recently discovered complete edition of Goebbels's diaries in Moscow, Macmillan cancelled the book deal.[140] The decision by The Sunday Times (who had bought the rights to serialised extracts from the diaries before Macmillan published them) in July 1992 to hire Irving as a translator of Goebbels's diary was criticised by Austrian-British historian Peter G. J. Pulzer, who argued that Irving, because of his views about the Third Reich, was not the best man for the job.[110] Andrew Neil, the editor of The Sunday Times, called Irving "reprehensible", but defended hiring him because he was only a "transcribing technician", which others criticised as a poor description of translation work.[110]

On 27 April 1993, Irving was ordered to attend court to be examined on charges relating to the Loi Gayssot in France, making it an offence to question the existence or size of the category of crimes against humanity. The law does not extend to extradition, and Irving refused to travel to France.[141] Then, in February 1994, Irving spent 10 days of a three-month sentence in London's Pentonville prison for contempt of court following a legal wrangling over publishing rights.[142][143]

In 1995, St. Martin's Press of New York City agreed to publish the Goebbels biography: but after protests, they cancelled the contract, leaving Irving in a situation in which, according to D. D. Guttenplan, he was desperate for financial help, publicity, and the need to re-establish his reputation as a historian.[144] The book was eventually self-published.

Libel suit

On 5 September 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher Penguin Books for publishing the British edition of Lipstadt's book, Denying the Holocaust, which had first been published in the United States in 1993.[145] In the book, Lipstadt called Irving a Holocaust denier, falsifier and bigot, and said that he manipulated and distorted real documents.

During the trial, Irving claimed that Hitler had not ordered the extermination of the Jews of Europe, was ignorant of the Holocaust and was a friend of the Jews.[146]

Lipstadt hired the British solicitor Anthony Julius to present her case, while Penguin Books hired Kevin Bays and Mark Bateman, libel specialist from media firm Davenport Lyons. They briefed the libel barrister Richard Rampton QC and Penguin also briefed junior barrister Heather Rogers. The defendants (with Penguin's insurers paying the fee) also retained Professor Richard J. Evans, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, as an expert witness. Also working as expert witnesses were the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning, the German historian Peter Longerich, and the Dutch architectural expert Robert Jan van Pelt. The last wrote a report attesting to the fact that the death camps were designed, built and used for the purpose of mass murder, while Browning testified for the reality of the Holocaust. Evans' report was the most comprehensive, in-depth examination of Irving's work:

Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.[147]

The BBC quoted Evans further:

Irving ... had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. ... Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all.[148]

Not only did Irving lose the case, but in light of the evidence presented at the trial a number of his works that had previously escaped serious scrutiny were brought to public attention. He was also ordered to pay all of Penguin's trial costs, estimated to be as much as £2 million (US$3.2 million), though it is uncertain how much of these costs he would ultimately pay.[148][149] When he did not meet these, Davenport Lyons moved to make him bankrupt on behalf of their client. He was declared bankrupt in 2002,[150] and lost his home, though he has been able to travel around the world despite his financial problems.[151]

Irving subsequently appealed to the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal. On 20 July 2001, his application for appeal was denied by Lords Justices Pill, Mantell and Buxton.[152][153]

The libel suit was depicted in a 2016 film, Denial.

Life after the libel suit

Irving at the National Archives of the United Kingdom, 2003

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 defended its invitation of Irving, saying that it amounted not to an endorsement of his views, but rather an opportunity to question him. A government spokeswoman said that "people who have been deported from another country are refused entry" to New Zealand. 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 on board.[154]

On 11 November 2005, the Austrian police in the southern state of Styria, acting under the 1989 warrant, arrested Irving. Irving pleaded guilty to the charge of "trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust". Irving stated in his plea that he had changed his opinions on the Holocaust, "I said that then based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews."[155] Irving had obtained the papers from Hugo Byttebier, a Belgian who had served in the SS during the war and had escaped to Argentina.[156][better source needed] Irving was sentenced to three years' imprisonment in accordance with the law prohibiting Nazi activities (Verbotsgesetz, "Prohibition Law").[157] Irving sat motionless as judge Peter Liebetreu asked him if he had understood the sentence, to which he replied "I'm not sure I do" before being escorted out of the court by Austrian police. Later, Irving said that he was shocked by the severity of the sentence. He had reportedly already purchased a plane ticket home to London.[158]

In December 2006, Irving was released from prison and banned from ever returning to Austria.[159] Upon Irving's arrival in the UK he reaffirmed his position, stating that he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.[160] On 18 May 2007, he was expelled from the 52nd Warsaw International Book Fair in Poland because the books he took there were deemed by the organizers as promoting Nazism and antisemitism, which is in violation of Polish law.[161]

Since then, Irving has continued to work as a freelance writer, despite his troubled public image. He was drawn into the controversy surrounding Bishop Richard Williamson, who in a televised interview recorded in Germany in November 2008 denied the Holocaust took place, only to see Williamson convicted for incitement in April 2010 after refusing to pay a fine of €12,000.[162][163] Irving subsequently found himself beset by protesters on a book tour of the United States.[164] He has also given lectures and tours in the UK and Europe; one tour to Poland in September 2010 which led to particular criticism included the Treblinka death camp as an itinerary stop.[165]

Irving and Nick Griffin (then the British National Party leader) were invited to speak at a forum on free speech at the Oxford Union on 26 November 2007, along with Anne Atkins and Evan Harris.[166] The debate took place after Oxford Union members voted in favour of it,[167] but was disrupted by protesters.[168] As of 2016 Irving was lecturing to small audiences at venues disclosed to carefully vetted ticket-holders a day or two before the event on topics, including antisemitic conspiracy theories, and at one such event, claiming to write the truth unlike "conformist" historians while asserting fabrications about leading Nazis,[169] the life and death of Heinrich Himmler and the saturation bombings during World War II.[170]

Irving established a website selling Nazi memorabilia in 2009. The items are offered by other people, with Irving receiving a commission from each sale for authenticating them. Irving stated in 2009 that the website was the only way he could make money after being bankrupted in 2002.[171] Items sold through the website include Hitler's walking stick and a lock of the dictator's hair. Irving has also investigated the authenticity of bones purported to be from Hitler and Eva Braun.[172][173]

During an interview with Johann Hari, Irving said that in the 1970s, Erwin Giesing, one of Hitler's doctors, had quoted Hitler to him thus: "One day, an Englishman will come along and write my biography. But it cannot be an English man of the present generation. They won't to [sic] be objective. It will have to be an Englishman of the next generation, and one who is totally familiar with all the German archives." Irving said that Giesing had identified him as the objective Englishman that Hitler had spoken of.[174]

During the same interview, Irving claimed that various Nazis hid what was happening to the Jews from Hitler because he was "the best friend the Jews had in the Third Reich".[174]

2009 Norwegian Festival of Literature

In October 2008, controversy arose in Norway over Irving's invitation to speak at the 2009 Norwegian Festival of Literature. Several[who?] of Norway's most distinguished authors protested against the invitation. The leader of the board for the festival, Jesper Holte, defended the invitation by stating: "Our agenda is to invite a liar and a falsifier of history to a festival about truth. And confront him with this. Irving has been invited to discuss his concept of truth in light of his activity as a writer of historical books and the many accusations he has been exposed to as a consequence of this." Although Irving was introduced in the festival's webpages as "historian and writer", the board chair leader defended the more aggressive language being used to characterise Irving in connection with the controversy that had arisen. Lars Saabye Christensen and Roy Jacobsen were two authors who had threatened to boycott the festival on account of Irving's invitation, and Anne B. Ragde stated that Sigrid Undset would have turned in her grave. As the festival has as its subsidiary name "Sigrid Undset Days", a representative of Undset's family had requested that the name of the Nobel laureate be removed in connection with the festival.[175][176] Also, the Norwegian free speech organization Fritt Ord was critical of letting Irving speak at the festival[177] and had requested that its logo be removed.[178] In addition, Edvard Hoem announced that he would not attend the 2009 festival with Irving taking part. Per Edgar Kokkvold, leader of the Norwegian Press Confederation, advocated cancelling Irving's invitation.[179]

Days after the controversy had started, the invitation was rescinded. This led to the resignation of Stig Sæterbakken from his position as content director as he was the person who had invited Irving to the event. The head of the Norwegian Festival of Literature, Randi Skeie, deplored what had taken place: "Everything is fine as long as everyone agrees, but things get more difficult when one doesn't like the views being put forward."[177] Sæterbakken called his colleagues "damned cowards", arguing that they were walking in lockstep.[180]

According to editor-in-chief Sven Egil Omdal of Stavanger Aftenblad, the opposition to Irving's participation at the festival appeared as a concerted effort. He suggested that campaign journalism from two of Norway's largest newspapers, Dagbladet and Aftenposten, and Norway's public service broadcaster NRK was behind the controversy.[181]

David Irving commented that he had not been told that the festival was going to present him as a liar,[180] and that he was preparing a lecture about the real history of what took place in Norway during World War II, contrary to what official historians have presented. Irving stated that he had thought the Norwegian people to be "made of tougher stuff."[182]

Only days after the cancellation Irving announced that he would go to Lillehammer during the literature festival and deliver his two-hour lecture from a hotel room.[183]

Reception by historians

Irving, once held in regard for his expert knowledge of German military archives, was a controversial figure from the start. His interpretations of the war were widely regarded as unduly favourable to the German side. At first this was seen as personal opinion, unpopular but consistent with full respectability as a historian.[184]

By 1988, however, Irving had begun to reject the status of the Holocaust as a systematic and deliberate genocide. He soon became the main proponent of Holocaust denial. This, along with his association with far-right circles, dented his standing as a historian. A marked change in Irving's reputation can be seen in the surveys of the historiography of the Third Reich produced by Ian Kershaw. In the first edition of Kershaw's book The Nazi Dictatorship in 1985, Irving was called a "maverick" historian working outside the mainstream of the historical profession.[185] By the time of the fourth edition of The Nazi Dictatorship in 2000, Irving was described only as a historical writer who had in the 1970s engaged in "provocations" intended to provide an "exculpation of Hitler's role in the Final Solution".[186] Other critical responses to his work tend to follow this pattern.

The description of Irving as a historian, rather than an author writing about history, is controversial, with some publications since the libel trial continuing to refer to him as a "historian"[187] or "disgraced historian",[188] while others insist he is not a historian, and have adopted alternatives such as "author"[189] or "historical writer".[190] The military historian John Keegan praised Irving for his "extraordinary ability to describe and analyse Hitler's conduct of military operations, which was his main occupation during the Second World War".[191] Donald Cameron Watt, Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the London School of Economics, wrote that he admires some of Irving's work as a historian, though he rejects his conclusions about the Holocaust.[192] At the libel proceedings against Irving, Watt declined Irving's request to testify, appearing only after a subpoena was ordered.[193] He testified that Irving had written a "very, very effective piece of historical scholarship" in the 1960s, which was unrelated to his controversial work. He also said that Irving was "not in the top class" of military historians.[193]

Personal life

In 1961, while living in Spain, Irving met and married a Spaniard, María del Pilar Stuyck. They have four children.[13] They divorced in 1981. In 1992, Irving began a relationship with a Danish model, Bente Hogh. They have a daughter, born in 1994.[194]

Irving's daughter Josephine suffered from schizophrenia.[195] She was involved in a car crash in 1996 which resulted in her having to have both of her legs amputated. In September 1999, at the age of 32, she died by suicide by throwing herself out of a window of her central London flat.[196] One of the wreaths sent to her funeral contained a card which stated, "Truly a merciful death, Philipp Bouhler and friends".[195] The reference to Bouhler was a reference to the Nazi who was in charge of Hitler's euthanasia programme.[195] Irving described it as a "very cruel taunt".[195]

Illness

In February 2024, Irving's family announced that he had fallen ill while in Florida in October 2023 and "has been in declining health ever since", had been hospitalised for two months, and has returned to England but requires "round-the-clock care". The statement also says "It is with sadness that we must accept that David is now unable to engage in his life’s work".[197]

Works

Books

  • The Destruction of Dresden (1963) ISBN 0-7057-0030-5, updated and revised 1995 as Apocalypse 1945, The Destruction of Dresden, further revised for 2007
  • The Mare's Nest (1964)
  • The Virus House (1967)
  • The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 (1968), reprinted (1980) ISBN 0-312-91152-1, updated in 2009.
  • Accident – The Death of General Sikorski (1967) ISBN 0-7183-0420-9
  • Breach of Security (1968) ISBN 0-7183-0101-3
  • The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe (1973), a biography of Erhard Milch ISBN 0-316-43238-5
  • The Night the Dams Burst (1973): (in 3 parts).
  • Hitler's War (1977), updated in 2000 as a millennium edition
  • The Trail of the Fox (1977), a biography of Erwin Rommel ISBN 0-525-22200-6, reissued 1999 in Wordsworth Military Library, ISBN 1-84022-205-0
  • The War Path (1978) ISBN 0-670-74971-0
  • The War Between the Generals (1981)
  • Uprising! (1981), ISBN 0-949667-91-9
  • The Secret Diaries of Hitler's Doctor (1983) ISBN 0-02-558250-X
  • The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany (1968) ISBN 0-671-28163-1
  • Der Morgenthau Plan 1944–45 (in German only) (1986)
  • War between the Generals (1986) ISBN 0-86553-069-6, updated in 2010.
  • Hess, the Missing Years (1987) Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-45179-1
  • Churchill's War (1987) ISBN 0-947117-56-3: (in 4 parts).
  • Göring (1989), biography of Hermann Göring ISBN 0-688-06606-2, updated in 2010.
  • Das Reich hört mit (in German only) (1989)
  • Hitler's War (1991), revised edition, incorporating The War Path
  • Der unbekannte Dr. Goebbels (in German only) (1995)
  • Goebbels – Mastermind of the Third Reich biography of Joseph Goebbels (1996) ISBN 1-872197-13-2, cleaned-up and corrected in 2014
  • Nuremberg: The Last Battle (1996) ISBN 1-872197-16-7
  • Churchill's War Volume II: Triumph in Adversity (1997) ISBN 1-872197-15-9: (in 3 parts)
  • Hitler's War and the War Path (2002) ISBN 1-872197-10-8
  • True Himmler (2020) ISBN 1-872197-83-3

Translations

  • The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel (1965)
  • The Memoirs of General Gehlen (1972)

Monographs

  • The Night the Dams Burst (1973)
  • Von Guernica bis Vietnam (in German only) (1982)
  • Die deutsche Ostgrenze (in German only) (1990)
  • Banged Up (2008)

See also

References

Explanatory notes

  1. ^ Leuchter Report dismissed as pseudoscientific:
    • "Leuchter and Rudolf have published pseudoscientific reports purporting to show that chemical residues present in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau are incompatible with homicidal gassings." Green, Richard J. "Leuchter, Rudolf, and the Iron Blues". Archived from the original on 17 May 2008. Retrieved 11 September 2008.
    • "The Leuchter Report, a pseudo-scientific document which allegedly proves that Zyklon B was not used to exterminate human beings, was translated into Arabic and sold at the International Book Fair in Cairo in January 2001." Roth, Stephen (2002). Antisemitism Worldwide, 2000/1. University of Nebraska Press. p. 228.
    • "The turning point came in 1989, when Irving launched Fred Leuchter's pseudo-scientific Leuchter Report, which made the spurious claim that the absence of cyanide residues in the walls of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other camps proved that they could not have functioned as mass extermination centres." Brinks, Jan Herman; Timms, Edward; Rock, Stella (2006). Nationalist Myths and Modern Media. I.B. Tauris. p. 72.
    • "The Leuchter report, was, indeed, an amateurish report produced by a man with no expertise, either historical or forensic." Hirsh, David (2003). Law Against Genocide. Routledge Cavendish. p. 134.
    • "Another common tactic of the deniers is to engage in historical inquiries that on the surface appear legitimate but upon close examination prove to be based on pseudo-science. One prominent example was the investigation of the Auschwitz gas chambers by Fred Leuchter [...] Detailed study of the 'Leuchter Report' revealed that it was based on erroneous assumptions (cyanide does not penetrate deeply into concrete). It also emerged that Leuchter had falsified his credentials and overstated his expertise. Despite this, his report is still cited by deniers." Cull, Nicholas John; Culbert, David Holbrook; Welch, David (2003). Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 168.
    • "... the institute relied primarily on the talents of a California-based publicist named Bradley Smith who packaged and promoted Leuchter's discredited material as if it were the very essence of 'scientific research' or at least a tenable 'point of view', intrinsically worthy of inclusion in the academic agenda ..." Churchill, Ward (1997). A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present. City Lights Books. p. 24.
    • "After the trial, both Irving and Zündel published the results of Leuchter's trial research as The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth, despite the fact that the court rejected both the report and Leuchter's testimony. ... The discredited report is popular in the Holocaust denial movement and one edition features a foreword by Irving." Gerstenfeld, Phyllis B.; Grant, Diana R. (2003). Crimes of Hate: Selected Readings. SAGE. p. 201.
    • "Leuchter's report contained a considerable amount of scientific, or, as it turned out, pseudo-scientific analysis of chemical residues on the gas chamber walls and similar matters. It was quickly discredited, not least on the basis of Leuchter's failure adequately to defend his findings on the witness stand." Evans, Richard J. "The 1991 Edition of Hitler's War". David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial (electronic ed.). Section 3.3c, Paragraph 13. Archived from the original on 14 March 2016. Retrieved 12 September 2008.
  2. ^ Irving is discredited as a historian in a number of sources:
    • "Conclusion on meaning 2.15 (vi): that Irving is discredited as a historian." David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt [2000] EWHC QB 115 (11 April 2000).
    • "Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies and director of The Rabbi Donald A. Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University. She is the author of two books about the Holocaust. Her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory led to the 2000 court case in which she defeated and discredited Holocaust denier David Irving." "Task of Justice & Danger of Holocaust Deniers". Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State – Understanding Auschwitz Today. PBS.
    • "If the case for competence applies to those who lack specialist knowledge, it applies even further to those who have been discredited as incompetent. For example, why ought we include David Irving in a debate aiming to establish the truth about the Holocaust, after a court has found that he manipulates and misinterprets history?" Long, Graham (2004). Relativism and the Foundations of Liberalism. Imprint Academic. p. 80. ISBN 1-84540-004-6.
    • "[Irving] claimed that Lipstadt's book accuses him of falsifying historical facts in order to support his theory that the Holocaust never happened. This of course discredited his reputation as a historian ... On 11 April, High Court judge Charles Gray ruled against Irving, concluding that he indeed qualified as a Holocaust denier and anti-Semite and that as such he has distorted history in order to defend his hero, Adolf Hitler." Wyden 2001, p. 164.
    • "In Britain, which does not have a Holocaust denial law, Irving had already been thoroughly discredited when he unsuccessfully sued historian Deborah Lipstadt in 2000 for describing him as a Holocaust denier." Callamard, Agnès (April 2007). "Debate: can we say what we want?". Le Monde diplomatique.
  3. ^ Shown to have misrepresented historical evidence:
    • "In 1969, after David Irving's support for Rolf Hochhuth, the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, The Daily Telegraph issued a memo to all its correspondents. 'It is incorrect', it said, 'to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.'" Ingrams, Richard (25 February 2006). "Irving was the author of his own downfall". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 20 December 2007. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
    • "It may seem an absurd semantic dispute to deny the appellation of 'historian' to someone who has written two dozen books or more about historical subjects. But if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as 'historical writer' instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian's primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian." Irving v Lipstadt and Irving v Penguin Books, expert witness report by Archived 6 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine Richard J. Evans FBA, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, 2000, Chapter 6.
    • "State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: 'He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history.'" Traynor, Ian (21 February 2006). "Irving jailed for denying Holocaust". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
    • "Irving has never examined and interpreted facts for the simple reason that he is not a historian. He twists or suppresses evidence to fit a foregone conclusion—the opposite of what any reputable historian does." Taylor, Charles (24 May 2001). "Evil takes the stand". Salon. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 30 May 2007.
    • Hugh Trevor-Roper: "But I don't regard him as an historian. I don't think he has any historical sense. He is a propagandist who uses efficiently collected and arranged material to support a propagandist line." Cited in Evans 2002, p. 261; and Shermer, Michael (3 May 2005). "Enigma: The Faustian Bargain of David Irving". Skeptical Inquirer.

Citations

  1. ^ Hare, Ivan & Weinstein, James (2010). Extreme Speech and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 553. ISBN 978-0199601790.
  2. ^ Evans 2001, p. 101.
  3. ^ Guttenplan 2001, pp. 91, 277, 278
  4. ^ Neufeld, Michael J. (2009). "Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War". In Dick, Steven J. (ed.). Remembering the Space Age. Government Printing Office. p. 81. ISBN 9780160867118.
  5. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 119–23
  6. ^ van Pelt, Robert Jan (2002). The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (First ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 15. ISBN 0-253-34016-0.
  7. ^ Evans 2001, p. 125.
  8. ^ a b "The ruling against David Irving". The Guardian. London. 11 April 2000. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
  9. ^ "Hitler historian loses libel case". BBC News. 11 April 2000. Retrieved 2 January 2010.
  10. ^ a b Guttenplan 2001, p. 41.
  11. ^ "Irving, John N B (mother Newington)" in Register of Births for Hampstead Registration District, vol. 1a (1930), p. 803
  12. ^ "Irving, Jennifer C (mother Newington)" in Register of Births for Billericay Registration District, vol. 4a (1935), p. 878
  13. ^ a b c d Craig, Olga (26 February 2006). "David, what on earth would Mother think?". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 5 August 2011. Retrieved 2 September 2011.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  14. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 40.
  15. ^ a b c Rosenbaum 1999, p. 227.
  16. ^ Shermer & Grobman 2009, p. 281.
  17. ^ a b "David Irving: Information for Counsel on my Background". Fpp.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 August 2011. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  18. ^ Evans 2002, p. 11
  19. ^ a b c d e f "David Irving: Propagandists' Poster Boy". Anti-Defamation League. 2005. Archived from the original on 5 April 2007. Retrieved 18 April 2007.
  20. ^ Staff (2 February 1961). "Mosley packs them in". Pi. Archived from the original on 30 March 2017. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
  21. ^ Extremism in America: David Irving Archived 30 December 2017 at the Wayback Machine Anti-Defamation League
  22. ^ The Independent, 11 July 1992
  23. ^ Wyden 2001, p. 159,
  24. ^ a b Lay, Kat (26 May 2009). "50 years on: David Irving, Apartheid and ULU". London Student. Archived from the original on 30 November 2009. Retrieved 21 August 2010.
  25. ^ Atkins, Stephen E. (2009). Holocaust Denial as an International Movement. Walport, Connecticut; London, England: Praeger. p. 119. ISBN 978-0-313-34538-8.
  26. ^ "International Pressure Groups". Drs.library.yale.edu:8083. Archived from the original on 8 July 2010. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  27. ^ Andrew Walker (20 February 2006). "Profile: David Irving". BBC.
  28. ^ Packer, George (1 February 2010). "Embers". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2 January 2020.
  29. ^ Guttenplan 2001, pp. 225–226.
  30. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 43.
  31. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 225.
  32. ^ Seeking to establish a definitive casualty figure, an independent investigation (commissioned by the Dresden city council), ended in 2010 drawing a conclusion that a maximum of 25,000 people were killed, of which 22,700 deaths have been positively identified—20,100 named and a further 2,600 unnamed ("Report: Dresden bombing deaths overestimated", NBC News, 10 January 2008; (in German) "Mindestzahl der Dresdner Bombenopfer nach oben korrigiert (lowest number of Dresden raids casualties corrected upwards", Sächsische Zeitung, 15 April 2010 (subscription required)).
  33. ^ Evans 2001, pp. 148–184
  34. ^ Weidauer, Walter (1965), Inferno Dresden. Über Lügen und Legenden um die Aktion "Donnerschlag.", Dietz Verlag, pp. 6, 132, ISBN 3-320-00818-8
  35. ^ Von Benda-Beckmann, Bas (2010), A German Catastrophe?: German Historians and the Allied Bombings, 1945–2010, UvA Proefschriften Seris, Amsterdam University Press, p. 150, ISBN 978-9056296537
  36. ^ Evans 2001, pp. 179–191.
  37. ^ Copsey, Nigel (2016). Anti-Fascism in Britain. Routledge. p. 194. ISBN 9781317397618.
  38. ^ Neufeld, Michael J (2009). "Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War". In Dick, Steven J (ed.). Remembering the Space Age. Government Printing Office. ISBN 9780160867118.
  39. ^ a b Rosenbaum 1999, p. 232.
  40. ^ Pearce Wright's review in The Times, 23 February 1967. "... Irving interviewed German scientists and officers of the wartime Allied Intelligence mission. He says there has been no history of the German atomic research effort until now ..."
  41. ^ Rosenbaum 1999, pp. 227–229.
  42. ^ a b Lipstadt 2005, p. 293.
  43. ^ Lipstadt 2005, pp. 293–294.
  44. ^ Lipstadt 1993, p. 232.
  45. ^ a b c Craig 1982, p. 72.
  46. ^ a b c d e Evans 1989, p. 166 n. 20.
  47. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 46.
  48. ^ "Letters to David Irving on this Website". Archived from the original on 25 December 2019. Retrieved 15 July 2020.
  49. ^ a b Evans 2002, p. 89
  50. ^ a b "Evans: David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial". Holocaust Denial on Trial.
  51. ^ Sydnor 1979, p. 179
  52. ^ Sydnor 1979, pp. 182–183
  53. ^ Sydnor 1979, p. 176
  54. ^ Pryce-Jones, David (20 November 1977). "With Apologies to Adolf Hitler". The New York Times.(subscription required)
  55. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 52.
  56. ^ a b c Guttenplan 2001, p. 51.
  57. ^ "David Irving: Britain's Holocaust "revisionist"". Nizkor.org. Archived from the original on 12 August 2011. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  58. ^ a b Guttenplan 2001, p. 47.
  59. ^ The Observer, 29 March 1981
  60. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 11–12
  61. ^ a b c Evans 2001, p. 19.
  62. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 48.
  63. ^ Harris 1986, pp. 320–323.
  64. ^ a b c Van Pelt 2002, p. 22.
  65. ^ Lipstadt 2005, p. 19.
  66. ^ Harris 1986, pp. 338–339.
  67. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 56.
  68. ^ Hoffmann, Peter (28 May 1989). "HITLER'S GOOD RIGHT ARM". The New York Times.
  69. ^ a b Evans 2002, p. 50
  70. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 50–51
  71. ^ a b c d Evans 2002, p. 51
  72. ^ a b c d e f "EVANS: DAVID IRVING, HITLER AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL". Holocaust Denial on Trial.
  73. ^ a b c d e f g Van Pelt 2002, p. 21.
  74. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 153–154
  75. ^ Dawidowicz 1980, p. 35
  76. ^ Eugene Holman (7 January 2007). "David Irving: a study in incompetency and dishonesty". The Holocaust History Project.
  77. ^ a b c d e f g Lipstadt 1993, p. 161.
  78. ^ Evans 1989, p. 167.
  79. ^ Van Pelt 2002, pp. 22–23.
  80. ^ a b c Van Pelt 2002, p. 23.
  81. ^ a b Lipstadt 1993, p. 162.
  82. ^ Lipstadt 1993, pp. 161–162.
  83. ^ a b c Van Pelt 2002, p. 40.
  84. ^ a b Stern 1993, p. 32
  85. ^ a b c d Evans 2002, p. 134
  86. ^ a b c d e Lipstadt 1993, p. 8.
  87. ^ Dodd, Vikram (13 January 2000). "Gas chamber claims impossible, says Irving". The Guardian.
  88. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 54
  89. ^ "Big crowd commemorates death of Nazi pilot". United Press International. 9 January 1983. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  90. ^ "Gedenkveranstaltung für Hans Ulrich Rudel, 1983" [Memorial service for Hans Ulrich Rudel, 1983]. Sueddeutsche Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 28 November 2018.
  91. ^ "Funke: David Irving, Holocaust denial, and his connections to right wing extremists and neo-national socialism (neo-nazism) in Germany". Emory University. Retrieved 27 November 2018.
  92. ^ a b c d e Van Pelt 2002, p. 41.
  93. ^ Van Pelt 2002, p. 42.
  94. ^ a b c d Evans 2002, p. 133
  95. ^ Schweitzer & Perry 2005, p. 185
  96. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 133–134
  97. ^ a b c Evans 2002, p. 141
  98. ^ a b Evans 2002, p. 147
  99. ^ Evans 2002, p. 146
  100. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 146–147
  101. ^ a b c d e f g h Lipstadt 1993, p. 179.
  102. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 54.
  103. ^ "David Irving". The 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zündel – 1988. Institute for Historical Review. Archived from the original on 29 April 2022. Retrieved 28 December 2022.
  104. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 135–136
  105. ^ Van Pelt 2002, p. 44.
  106. ^ Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr..
  107. ^ Van Pelt 2002, pp. 47–48.
  108. ^ Lipstadt 1993, p. 260.
  109. ^ Lipstadt 1993, pp. 179–180.
  110. ^ a b c d e Lipstadt 1993, p. 180.
  111. ^ a b Brinks, Jan Hermann. Children of a New Fatherland, London: I.B. Tauris, 2000, p. 107.
  112. ^ a b c d Van Pelt 2002, p. 48.
  113. ^ a b c d Van Pelt 2002, p. 55.
  114. ^ a b Lipstadt 1993, p. 16.
  115. ^ 1500 to 1850: Ulrich Pfister, 2010. "Consumer prices and wages in Germany, 1500 - 1850," CQE Working Papers 1510, Center for Quantitative Economics (CQE), University of Münster. 1851-1882: Coos Santing, 2007, Inflation 1800-2000, data from OECD, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Economic Outlook. Historical Statistics and Mitchell, B. R. International Historical Statistics, Africa, Asia and Oceania 1750-1993 London : Macmillan ; New York : Stockton, 1998, International Historical Statistics, Europe 1750-1993 London : Macmillan ; New York : Stockton, 1998, and International Historical Statistics, The Americas 1750-1993 London : Macmillan ; New York : Stockton, 1998. After 1883, German inflation numbers based on data available from the Deutsches Statistisches Bundesamt archive and GENESIS database.
  116. ^ a b c d Shermer & Grobman 2002, p. 50.
  117. ^ Lipstadt 1993, p. 221.
  118. ^ Rosenbaum 1999, p. 233.
  119. ^ a b c d e f Van Pelt 2002, p. 57.
  120. ^ a b Stern 1993, p. 33
  121. ^ a b Rosenbaum 1999, p. 222.
  122. ^ Stern 1993, p. 48
  123. ^ a b c d e Van Pelt 2002, p. 56.
  124. ^ a b Shermer & Grobman 2002, pp. 49–50.
  125. ^ Shermer & Grobman 2002, p. 51.
  126. ^ Shermer & Grobman 2002, p. 56.
  127. ^ "Irving taught his nine-month-old daughter racist ditty, libel trial told". The Guardian. 3 February 2000.
  128. ^ "Trial Judgement: Mr Justice Gray".
  129. ^ Rosenbaum 1999, p. 234.
  130. ^ a b Interview for This Week, 28 November 1991. pp. 7–8. Cited by David Irving v. Penguin Books and Sarah Lipstadt. IX: JUSTIFICATION: THE ALLEGATION THAT IRVING IS AN ANTI-SEMITE AND A RACIST.
  131. ^ Lawson, Dominic (24 February 2004). "So what turned David Irving into an apologist for racism and genocide?". The Independent.
  132. ^ "David Irving: A Political Self-Portrait". Holocaust Denial on Trial. 3 May 2016. Der ganze Pöbel, der ganze Abschaum der Menschheit steht draußen. Die Homosexuellen, die Zigeuner, die Lesben, die Juden, die Verbrecher, die Kommunisten, die Linksradikalen, die Chaoten, die ganze Kommune steht da und mußte hinter Stahlbarrikaden zurückgehalten werden zwei Tage lang.'] [Videocassette 210, 'David Irving: "Ich komme wieder", ca. 1994', 26m 56s–26m 81s.]
  133. ^ "Judge: Why Irving had to lose", BBC News, 11 April 2000.
  134. ^ Hitchens, Christopher. "The Strange Case of David Irving", Los Angeles Times, 20 May 2001. Reprinted in Hitchens, Christopher. Love, Poverty and War: Journeys and Essays, Nation Books, 2004, p. 261. ISBN 978-1-56025-580-2
  135. ^ Traynor, Ian (21 February 2006). "Irving jailed for denying Holocaust". London: The Guardian<!. Retrieved 20 September 2009.
  136. ^ Evans 2002, pp. 27–28
  137. ^ Duff, Oliver. " David Irving: An anti-Semitic racist who has suffered financial ruin" Archived 22 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The Independent, 21 February 2006.
  138. ^ "Holocaust denier to try another visit to Australia". The World Today.
  139. ^ Waterhouse, Rosie (6 July 1992). "Jews attack publisher of Irving book: Protesters to demand company abandons plan to print Goebbels biography by historian working on diaries". The Independent.
  140. ^ Guttenplan 2001, p. 55.
  141. ^ Irving, David. "Global Vendetta". Focal Point. Archived from the original on 3 September 2011. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  142. ^ "Far-right author sentenced to jail for contempt of court". The Independent. 12 February 1994. Retrieved 6 November 2023.
  143. ^ "David Irving". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved 6 November 2023.
  144. ^ Guttenplan 2001, pp. 56–57.
  145. ^ Van Pelt 2002, p. 63.
  146. ^ Hari, Johann (15 January 2009). "David Irving: 'Hitler appointed me his biographer'". The Guardian. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  147. ^ Evans, Richard J. "Chapter 6. General Conclusion". Holocaust Denial on Trial: Expert Witness Report. Retrieved 19 December 2013.
  148. ^ a b Walker, Andrew (20 February 2006). "Profile: David Irving". BBC News. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  149. ^ "Irving defiant over libel defeat". BBC News. 12 April 2000. Retrieved 12 January 2011.
  150. ^ Dodd, Vikram; Guttenplan, D. D. (5 March 2002). "Holocaust denier made bankrupt". The Guardian. London.
  151. ^ Dodd, Vikram (22 May 2002). "Failed libel action costs Irving his home". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  152. ^ Irving v Penguin Books Ltd & Anor (2001) EWCA Civ 1197
  153. ^ "'Holocaust denier' loses appeal bid". BBC News. BBC. 20 January 2001. Retrieved 26 June 2009.
  154. ^ Irving, David. "Index to items covering David Irving's September 2004 New Zealand tour". Focus Point. Archived from the original on 2 September 2011. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  155. ^ "David Irving jailed for Holocaust denial". The Guardian. 20 February 2006.
  156. ^ "Página/12 :: El país :: La historia de Byttebier, otro nazi en Argentina". www.pagina12.com.ar (in Spanish). Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  157. ^ "Holocaust denier Irving is jailed". BBC News. 20 February 2006. Retrieved 16 June 2009.
  158. ^ Connolly, Kate (21 February 2006). "Irving clutches Hitler book in court". The Daily Telegraph.
  159. ^ "Convicted Holocaust Denier Irving Expelled from Austria". Deutsche Welle. 22 December 2006. Retrieved 20 September 2009.
  160. ^ "Holocaust denier: 'No need to show remorse'". CNN. Archived from the original on 16 January 2007. Retrieved 16 January 2007.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  161. ^ "British writer David Irving asked to leave Polish book fair". International Herald Tribune. 29 March 2009. Retrieved 20 September 2009.
  162. ^ Pidd, Helen (26 October 2009). "German court fines British bishop for Holocaust claims". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
  163. ^ "British bishop convicted of Holocaust denial: German court fines cleric $13,000 for saying Jews were not gassed to death". Associated Press. 16 April 2010. Retrieved 10 May 2011.
  164. ^ Solomont, E. B. (13 November 2009). "Survivors in New York enraged by Holocaust-denier Irving's tour". The Jerusalem Post. p. 2. Retrieved 22 December 2009.[permanent dead link]
  165. ^ "Holocaust denier Irving in Poland for Hitler tour". BBC. 21 September 2010. Retrieved 2 September 2011.
  166. ^ "Union debate row speakers arrive". BBC News. 26 November 2007. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  167. ^ "BNP to speak to Oxford students". BBC News. 24 November 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2007.
  168. ^ "Angry scenes greet Oxford debate". BBC News. 27 November 2007. Retrieved 16 April 2022.
  169. ^ Usborne, Simon (30 August 2013). "Exclusive: David Irving – the hate that dare not speak its name". The Independent. Retrieved 15 January 2017.
  170. ^ "David Irving looks back: My fifty years defending Real History against its enemies. An evening with the historian". December 2016. Archived from the original on 6 January 2017. Retrieved 14 January 2017. Web site lists new events from time to time.
  171. ^ Moore, Mathew (7 March 2009). "Holocaust denier David Irving sets up Nazi memorabilia website". The Telegraph. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  172. ^ Preston, Alex (24 June 2015). "The man who sleeps in Hitler's bed". The Guardian. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  173. ^ Denham, Jess (24 March 2014). "Channel 4 criticised for paying Holocaust denier £3,000 for lock of Hitler's hair". The Independent. Retrieved 6 February 2016.
  174. ^ a b Johann Hari (15 January 2009). "David Irving: 'Hitler appointed me his biographer'". The Independent.
  175. ^ Rakvaag, Geir (7 October 2008). "Irving fortsatt invitert". Dagsavisen (in Norwegian). Oslo. Archived from the original on 8 October 2008. Retrieved 8 October 2008.
  176. ^ Wold Haagensen, Vibecke (7 October 2008). "Irving invitert som løgner" (in Norwegian). Hedmark/Oppland: NRK. Retrieved 8 October 2008.
  177. ^ a b "Holocaust denier unwelcome in Norway". UPI. 9 October 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  178. ^ "Holocaust denial speaker's invitation cancelled". Aftenposten. Oslo, Norway. 9 October 2008. Archived from the original on 10 October 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  179. ^ Østrem, Olav (9 October 2008). "Sæterbakken slår tilbake". Klassekampen (in Norwegian). Oslo, Norway. Archived from the original on 12 October 2008. Retrieved 10 October 2008.
  180. ^ a b Olsen, Geir (10 October 2008). "Retrett mot David Irving. Irving: – De tør ikke møte meg". Verdens Gang (in Norwegian). Oslo, Norway. Retrieved 15 October 2008.
  181. ^ Omdal, Sven Egil (11 October 2008). "Ikke fullt så Fritt Ord". Stavanger Aftenblad (in Norwegian). Stavanger, Norway. Archived from the original on 27 January 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2008.
  182. ^ Christiansen, Ann (9 October 2008). "Irving: – Utsatt for global kampanje". Aftenposten (in Norwegian). Oslo, Norway. Archived from the original on 12 October 2008. Retrieved 15 October 2008.
  183. ^ Wiese, Andreas (15 October 2008). "David Irving rir igjen". Dagbladet (in Norwegian). Oslo, Norway. Archived from the original on 17 October 2008. Retrieved 15 October 2008.
  184. ^ Lipstadt 2005, p. 22.
  185. ^ Kershaw 1985, p. 150.
  186. ^ Kershaw 1985, p. 268.
  187. ^ e.g. The Guardian
  188. ^ Philippe Naughton and agencies in Vienna. "Irving jailed for three years, despite Holocaust U-turn", The Times, 20 February 2006.
  189. ^ "In 1969 The Daily Telegraph determined 'It is incorrect to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.'" Ingrams, Richard (25 February 2006). "Irving was the author of his own downfall". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 20 December 2007. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
  190. ^ "... Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as 'historical writer' instead." Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books, Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans FBA, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge, 2000, Chapter 6. Archived 6 December 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  191. ^ Keegan, John. "The trial of David Irving—and my part in his downfall". Archived from the original on 27 June 2004. Retrieved 25 February 2006.. The Daily Telegraph (UK). 12 April 2000
  192. ^ Cameron Watt, Donald (11 April 2000). "History needs David Irvings". London Evening Standard.
  193. ^ a b Guttenplan 2001, p. 128.
  194. ^ Tweedie, Neil (24 February 2006). "Irving's girlfriend is left homeless and bitter". The Telegraph.
  195. ^ a b c d Stewart, Julia (15 April 2000). "Judgment has been passed. So how do you feel about being labelled as a racist now, Mr Irving?". The Independent.
  196. ^ "David Irving: Controversial scholar". BBC News. 11 April 2000.
  197. ^ "It is with sadness that we must accept that David is now unable to engage in his life’s work"."Beyond History: Supporting David Irving in His Greatest Challenge". Irving Books. David Irving. 5 February 2024. Retrieved 22 February 2024.
  198. ^ "Eva Braun" In Search of... (TV series) Season 6, Episode 20, 1 February 1982, Alan Landsburg Productions, 2014 DVD release NBCUniversal Television Consumer Products Group 2012.
  199. ^ "Selling Hitler". IMDb. 11 June 1991.
  200. ^ "Holocaust on Trial: Making" NOVA Online
  201. ^ Hare, David (3 September 2016) "David Hare on writing nothing but the truth about a Holocaust denier" The Guardian

Bibliography

Reviews

  • Craig, Gordon A. (19 September 1996), "The Devil in the Details", The New York Review of Books, pp. 8–14
  • Wright, Pearce (23 February 1967). "Nazis' mighty atom". The Times. p. 8.

News articles

Film