David Irving

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For other persons of the same name, see David Irving (footballer) and David Irving (politician).

David John Cawdell Irving (born March 24, 1938) is a British writer specializing in the military history of World War II. 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 status as a historian has been widely discredited^[1] as a result of controversy arising from his Holocaust denial and misrepresentation of historical evidence. During an unsuccessful libel case Irving brought against American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in 1998, an English court found 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." The judge also ruled that Irving had "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence."^[2][3] He served a prison sentence in Austria from February to December 2006 for Holocaust denial, which is a criminal offense in that country.^[4]

Contents 1 Early life 2 Student years 3 The Destruction of Dresden 4 Early attacks on Irving - the involvement of Gerry Gable 5 Historian 6 Revisionism 7 Accusations of Holocaust denial 8 Racism 9 Libel suit 9.1 Defence 9.2 Plaintiff 9.3 Ruling 9.4 Aftermath 10 Criticism by historians 11 Persona non grata 12 Arrest and imprisonment in Austria 12.1 Sentencing 12.2 Time in prison 12.3 Release 12.4 Controversy 13 Post-release 14 Bibliography 14.1 Books 14.2 Translations 14.3 Monographs 14.4 Collected articles in German 15 Notes 16 References 17 See also 18 External links 18.1 Irving v. Penguin Books Limited and Deborah E. Lipstadt trial

Early life

Irving, along with his twin brother,^[5] was born in Hutton, near Brentwood, Essex, England. His father, John James Cawdell Irving, was a commander in the Royal Navy, his mother Beryl an illustrator. During the Second World War, his father was an officer aboard the light cruiser HMS Edinburgh. On 2 May 1942, while escorting Convoy QP-11 in the Barents Sea, the ship was sunk by the German U-456. Irving's father survived, but after the tragedy severed all links with his wife and their children.^[6]

Student years

After completing A-levels at Brentwood School, Irving briefly studied physics (though never graduated) at Imperial College London. He gained notoriety by writing for the student newspaper Phoenix and in 1959 served as editor of the London University Carnival Committee's journal, Carnival Times. His time as editor was controversial, though Irving deflected criticism by characterizing the Carnival Times as "satirical".^{[citation needed]} He also stated he was against the formation of what is now the European Union.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, Irving also supported apartheid in South Africa, racist cartoons, and wrote appreciatively of Nazi Germany.^[7] Covering the controversy, the 1 May 1959 edition of the Daily Mail quoted Irving as saying, "You can call me a mild fascist if you like." He has denounced that article as libellous and the "handiwork of an imaginative Daily Mail journalist."^[8]

The Destruction of Dresden

Irving next left for West Germany, where he worked as a steelworker in a Thyssen steel works in the Ruhr area and learned German. He then moved to Spain, where he worked as a clerk at an airbase. During his time in Spain, Irving married his first wife, a Spanish woman by whom he had five children. In 1962, he wrote a series of 37 articles on the Allied bombing campaign, Wie Deutschlands Städte starben (How Germany's Cities Died), for the right-wing German 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 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.

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.^[9] 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.^[10] 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, despite the complaints of the man that he been misidentified by Irving, and was only reporting rumours that he heard about the death toll.^[11] Today, casualties at Dresden are estimated as most likely 25,000-35,000 dead, and probably towards the lower end of that range.^[12]

Early attacks on Irving - the involvement of Gerry Gable

In November 1963 Irving called the police because he suspected that three men who had gained access to his Mayfair apartment by claiming to be General Post Office (GPO) engineers were not genuine. Gerry Gable was arrested and held at Hornsey police station, and on 14 January 1964, along with Manny Carpel and another, Gable admitted breaking in with intent to steal private papers, and was convicted. 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, January 17, 1964 and other newspapers.^[13] 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.^[14] Gable was a former member of the British Communist Party, and would later run Searchlight magazine devoted to anti-Fascist activities. In the notorious 'Gable Memorandum', a letter from Gable to London Weekend Television in May 1977, he would later boast of his "top level security service sources."^[15]

Historian

After the success of the Dresden book, Irving continued writing, including some works of revisionist history. In 1964, he wrote The Mare's Nest, an account of the German secret weapons projects and the Allied intelligence countermeasures against it, translated the Memoirs of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in 1965, and in 1967 published Accident: The Death of General Sikorski, in which he suggests Churchill had a hand in the death of Polish government in exile leader General Władysław Sikorski. Irving claimed that the plane crash which killed General Sikorski in 1943 was really an "assassination" ordered by 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, which 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.

After PQ-17, Irving shifted to writing biographies. 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, referring to the surviving members of Hitler's circle (which Irving referred to as "the Magic Circle") claimed to have developed sympathies towards them. Many aging former mid- and high-ranked Nazis saw a potential friend in Irving and donated diaries and other material. In 1972, he translated the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen, and in 1973 published The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, a biography of Air Marshall Erhard Milch. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on Hitler's War and the War Path, his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler, The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, and a series in the Sunday Express describing the Royal Air Force's famous Dam Busters raid.

Description of Irving as a historian, rather than a historical author, is controversial, with some publications continuing to refer to him as a "historian"^[16] or "disgraced historian",^[17] while others insist he is not a historian, and have adopted alternatives such as "author" or "historic writer".^[18] Although Irving's works were generally ignored by academics^{[citation needed]}, and sometimes criticised as inaccurate when reviewed by specialists, his command of language and a wealth of anecdotes led generalists to write favourable reviews in the popular press, and many of his works sold well. He was particularly noted for his mastery of the voluminous and scattered German war records.

Revisionism

In 1977 Irving published Hitler's War, the first of his two-part biography on Adolf Hitler. In it, 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 German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was a "preventative war" forced on Hitler to avert an impending Soviet attack (supported by some, notably Soviet GRU defector Victor Suvorov, and others; see Icebreaker). 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 as a publicity stunt 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 it was primarily Britain that was responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939.

Reaction to Hitler’s War was polarized. 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, other historians were more hostile. 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. 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. Because of the controversy Hitler’s War generated, it was a best-seller in 1977.

Just months after the initial 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 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 July 20 Plot in the blackest of colours, and argued that their fate after July 20 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. 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.

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 an Rolls-Royce automobile, and to enjoy a very affluent lifestyle.^[19] 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.^[20]

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, 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 characterized 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 anti-Semitism.^[21] 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^{[citation needed]}.

In 1983, Irving played a major role in the Hitler Diaries controversy. 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 Trevor-Roper irrelevant).^[22] 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.^[23] However, a week later on May 2, 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. 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 alleged diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving's claim in Hitler's War that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust.^[24] 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. 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. Many historians have criticized Irving as a crass, self-promoting individual who merely used the Hitler Diaries controversy as a chance to enhance his profile with the public.

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^{[citation needed]}. By the time he finished the manuscript in 1985, his reputation was greatly diminished^{[citation needed]}, 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"^{[citation needed]}. Irving also accused Churchill of "selling out the British Empire" and "turning Britain against its natural ally, Germany."

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 camps. Many other historians attacked Nolte’s argument (and those, like Irving, who supported Nolte’s views) as highly factually incorrect 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.

In 1989, Irving published his biography of Hermann Göring, in which he highlighted, though did not endorse, the more "positive" features of the Nazi Reichsmarschall. Irving avoided discussion of 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.

In 1992, Irving signed a contact with the Macmillan Press 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.^[25] In 1995, the St. Martin's Press of New York City agreed to publish the Goebbels biography.^[26] 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.^[27] In March 1996, following widespread protests over allegations of anti-Semitism in Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, St. Martin's Press cancelled the contact, and left Irving in and situation where he was desperate for both publicity and the need to re-establish his reputation as an historian.^[28]

Accusations of Holocaust denial

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. 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 an historian but criticized him for maintaining that the Holocaust had taken place, and challenged him to take up the cause of Holocaust denial. It has been alleged 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.. It is not known what Irving’s response to Faurisson’s letter was.

Until 1988, Irving seemed torn between a desire to be taken seriously as an 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." By the mid-1980s, however, Irving associated himself with the Holocaust-denying I.H.R., 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. He also alleged that parts of The Diary of Anne Frank might have been forged by her surviving father, and in 1988 testified for the defence at Canadian-based Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel's trial. Irving was later to claim that Zündel had convinced him that the Holocaust had not occurred.^[29]

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.[30]

”

As to what evidence further led Irving to believe that the Holocaust never occurred, he cited a report by self-styled execution expert Fred A. Leuchter, which claimed there was no evidence for the existence of homicidal gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the trial, Irving published Leuchter's report in the United Kingdom and wrote its foreword. 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."^[31] In his 1991 revised edition of Hitler's War he had removed all references to death camps and the Holocaust.

Many have considered Irving’s historical arguments to be very convoluted. An example occurred in the above-mentioned interview with 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.) Irving had received the alleged memoir during a visit to Argentina in 1991 and was quite proud of his find. 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. Irving's reasoning is that if Cairo was taken by the Israeli Defence Forces, then the Israelis might discover the "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 defense in the event of being captured by the Israelis. In this way, Irving argued that The Eichmann Memoirs were genuine but that the claim that Hitler ordered the Holocaust was false — only made to reduce Eichmann's responsibility for the Holocaust. Also in the same interview, Irving claimed to want to be accepted as a scholar by other historians and bemoaned having to associate with what he called the lunatic anti-Semitic fringe groups; he claimed he would disassociate himself from these as soon as he was accepted by the historians' community.

Racism

Irving has expressed, both publicly and privately, racist sentiments. Several of these were cited by the judge's decision in Irving's lawsuit against Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt.^[32] For instance, in his diary entry for September 17, 1994, Irving wrote about a ditty he composed for his young daughter "when halfbreed 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 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.^[33]

And from a speech in 1992 (Sir Trevor McDonald, referenced in the quote, was the first black newsreader in the United Kingdom, with ITN), given to the Clarendon Club:

“

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… When I see these families arriving at the airport I am happy, and when I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.[34] But if there is one thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this — the way… the thing is when I am down in Torquay and I switch on my television and I see one of them reading our news to us. It is our news and they’re reading it to me. If I was a chauvinist I would say I object even to seeing women reading our news to us. But now we have women reading our news to us. If they could perhaps have their own news which they were reading to us, I suppose [laughter], it would be very interesting. For the time being, for a transitional period I'd be prepared to accept that the BBC should have a dinner-jacketed 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…"

”

Libel suit

In September 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher Penguin Books for publishing an British edition of Lipstadt's book, Denying the Holocaust, which had first been published in the United States in 1993. At the same time, Irving also sued Gitta Sereny for libel for an article she had written about him in The Guardian newspaper. Sereny's trial took place in 2001, a year after Lipstadt's trial in 2000, and perhaps for this reason, the 2001 libel trial attracted virtually no media attention — a marked contrast to the 2000 trial, which received very extensive media coverage in Britain. In 1997, Irving threatened to sue John Lukacs for libel if he published a British edition of his book, The Hitler of History, but perhaps because Irving already had two libel suits going at that time, he did not follow through with this threat.

In her book, Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt called him 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 an Holocaust denier when in his opinion there was no Holocaust to deny. 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. As explained by the trial judge, Sir Charles Gray:

“

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.

”

Defence

Lipstadt and Penguin hired the British solicitor Anthony Julius to present her case and he in turn briefed the libel barrister, Richard Rampton QC. They also retained Professor Richard J. Evans, historian and Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University, as an expert witness. Also working as an assistant expert witness was the American Holocaust historian Christopher Browning. 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 prejudice. 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:

“

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.[35]

”

Plaintiff

In the trial, Irving represented himself. He called the American Kevin B. MacDonald, an 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 prosecution of 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 appeared to refer to the Judge as 'Mein Führer' (page 193 of the transcript).

Ruling

In presenting his ruling, Justice Gray concluded (Paragraph 13.167) that he found the following claims against Irving to be 'substantially true':

“

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.

”

Irving lost subsequent attempts at appeal, the appeal finally being rejected by Lord Justice Sedley.

A 2001 episode of PBS's 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.

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.

Criticism by historians

Irving was once highly regarded for his expert knowledge of German military archives. Yet much of his scholarship was disputed by historians to the point that his standing as a historian was challenged from his earliest publications.^[18] 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.

In a review of Irving's 1988 book Churchill's War, David Cannadine, the director of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 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)."^[36]

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…" During the libel trial, 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".^[37]

In an April 20, 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."^[36] 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."^[38]

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, attempted to have it removed, but was unsuccessful. However, Mommsen did succeed in forcing Irving to feature a second letter from Mommsen written in 1998 in which Mommsen completely disavowed his first letter of 1977.

In a six-page essay in The New York Review of Books, 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".^[39] 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 an "useful irritant”; a 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.

Persona non grata

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 would come up again in 2005 when Irving was arrested and brought to trial (see next section.)^[40] 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 10000 DM to 30000 DM), and he was subsequently barred from entering Germany.^[41] Other governments followed suit, including Austria, Italy and Canada,^[42] where he was arrested in November 1992 and deported back to the United Kingdom.^[41] 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 have, for technical reasons, 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.

On April 27, 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.

Then, in February 1994, Irving spent ten days of a three month sentence in London's Pentonville prison for alleged 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 20000 DM in mid-1997.

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. The intended visit provoked an outcry among Jewish groups, who were not appeased by Irving's promise not to speak about the Holocaust.

Irving had visited New Zealand twice before in the 1980s. His intended 2004 visit was refused on the grounds that he had been convicted of 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.

Arrest and imprisonment in Austria

On November 11, 2005, the Austrian police in the southern state of Styria, acting under a 1989 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 grounds he would flee or repeat the offence. He remained in jail awaiting trial. On 20 February 2006 Irving pled guilty to the charge of trivialising, grossly playing down and denying the Holocaust.

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 that "There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz" and "It makes no sense to transport people from 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".

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".

In an uncompromising summary, Michael Klackl, the prosecuting attorney, stated:

“

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.[43]

”

The judge, Peter Liebtreu, summarized:

“

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.[44]

”

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.^[45]

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."

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".^[46] Within hours, the Austrian government reacted by barring Irving from further communication with the media.

Time in prison

Irving stated that he would use time spent in prison to write his memoirs, entitled Irving's War.

Nemesis Debora 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."^[47]

Indeed, many feared that Irving could become a martyr for far-right activists, and the issue also raised a debate on what grounds freedom of speech could be denied in democratic countries.

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 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.

Release

Both Irving, hoping to have the verdict overturned, and the Austrian prosecutor, calling for a longer sentence, served appeals on April 22, 2006. From September 1 to September 4, the Austrian Supreme Court considered Irving's appeal but ultimately ruled against him.^[48] The appeal over the length of sentence was heard and concluded on December 20. 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, and was deported to the United Kingdom.^{[49][50][51][52]} 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.^[53] On 21 December 2006, Irving was technically "expelled" from Austria; he was banned from ever setting foot in that country again.^[54]

Controversy

His imprisonment caused some controversy and has been criticized due to free speech issues. 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.^[55] 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."^[56] It has also been argued that by imprisoning Irving the Austrian courts are actually making a martyr out of Irving and are doing 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."^[57]

Post-release

Irving is now being seen in Hungary, where he has recently taken part and given a speech for a far-right nationalist rally on 15 March 2007.^[58] On 18 May 2007 he was expelled from the 52nd Warsaw International Book Fair in Poland. He was asked to leave the Fair grounds because the books he brought there have been recognized as promoting nazism and anti-Semitism, and this is against Polish law.^[59] Irving continues to make his presence felt in Europe, championing far-right causes.

Bibliography

Note: Most of Irving's books are available in PDF as free downloads at his web site.

Books

• The Destruction of Dresden (1963) ISBN 0-7057-0030-5
• The Mare's Nest (1964)
• The Virus House (1967)
• The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 (1967)
• 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
• Hitler's War (1977)
• The Trail of the Fox (1977), a biography of Erwin Rommel ISBN 0-525-22200-6
• 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 (1983) ISBN 0-306-80198-1
• Der Morgenthau Plan 1944-45 (in German only) (1986)
• War Between the Generals (1986) ISBN 0-86553-069-6
• Hess, the Missing Years (1987) Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-45179-1
• Churchill's War (1987) ISBN 0-947117-56-3
• Destruction of Convoy PQ-17 (1968), reprint (1989) ISBN 0-312-91152-1
• 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
• Apocalypse 1945, The Destruction of Dresden, updated and revised edition, (1995)
• Goebbels — Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996) ISBN 1-872197-13-2
• Nuremberg: The Last Battle (1996) ISBN 1-872197-16-7
• Churchill's War Volume II: Triumph in Adversity (1997) ISBN 1-872197-15-9
• Rommel: The Trail of the Fox, Wordsworth Military Library; Limited edition (1999) ISBN 1-84022-205-0
• Hitler's War and the War Path (2002) ISBN 1-872197-10-8

Translations

• The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel (1965)
• The Memoirs of General Gehlen (1972)
• Der unbekannte Dr. Goebbels (in German only) (1995)

Monographs

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

Collected articles in German

• Und Deutschlands Städte starben nicht (1963)
• Nürnberg: Die letzte Schlacht (1979)
• Wie Krank war Hitler wirklich? (1980)

Notes

References

• 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.
• "The Devil in the Details" by Gordon A. Craig pages 8-14 from New York Review of Books, September 19, 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 forward 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, London : Faber and Faber, 1986 ISBN 0-571-14726-7.
• Denying History: Who Says Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It by Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman; forward by Arthur Hertzberg, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000, ISBN 0-520-21612-1.
• Ann Tusa review, Guilty of Falsifying History, of Irving's Nurenburg: The last Battle"
• 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, 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.
• 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

See also

• Historical revisionism
• Freedom of speech
• Holocaust denial
• Faurisson affair

External links

Find more information on David Irving by searching Wikipedia's sister projects
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• David Irving's web site
• David Irving Archive from codoh.com
• Collection of Irving materials from nizkor.org
• Collection of Irving materials from holocaust-history.org
• David Irving file (from the Anti-Defamation League)
• From Revisionism to Holocaust Denial - David Irving as a Case Study by Roni Stauber
• David Irving & Revisionism
• "The World According to David Irving" by Gerald Posner, The Sunday Observer (London), 19 March 2000
• Holocaust Denial in England
• Irving Awaits Trial in Jail (25 November 2005)
• Nazi historian Irving finds his books in Austrian jail library 2 December 2005
• Torrent of David Irving's 1993 video "In Search of Truth in History", in which he describes his view on the holocaust and what he calls the "Zionist" agenda against it (horrible quality only at the beginning, not during the 70 minute speech)
• "This Wicked Man Hitler" Dawidowicz on David Irving by Lucy Dawidowicz
• Holocaust denier: 3-year jail term
• Felix Mueller - The Nazi Prohibition Act in Realtion to Freedom of Speech - Legal Background to the Irving Trial in Austria - February/March 2006
• 'Irving? Let the guy go home' by Deborah Lipstadt
• David Irving and Holocaust Denial by Robert Fulford
• "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, (November 6, 1999)
• "Pity for this Man is Out of Place" by Hans-Ulrich Wehler

Irving v. Penguin Books Limited and Deborah E. Lipstadt trial

• 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
• David Irving vs Penguin & Deborah Lipstadt Trial - a collection of materials at Irving's web site
• Holocaust Denial on Trial by Emory University
• Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans Complete text of Professor Evans' lengthy report on Irving's work in a number of areas
• The Irving-Lipstadt case, special report from the Guardian newspaper
• International Herald Tribune Article