Books by David Irving

[Jon G.]

Can't prove a negative? Sure you can.
...

Maybe you can, in logical terms. In historical terms, however, you can't. No need to worry, though. Every historian worth his salt* or his methods course** knows that you can't make conclusions based on silence, i.e. 'nothing speaks against it' does not prove anything in a historical context. That renders Irving's speculative 1977 thesis that Hitler didn't know about the Endlösung underway moot, unless he can provide evidence for it.

In other words, the burden of proof cuts the other way.

* Which might excuse Irving.
** Which might excuse several more contemporary historians.

[David Thompson]

For Mr. Irving's "speculative 1977 thesis that Hitler didn't know about the Endlösung," please post to the new thread, since we have a number of open threads on the subject in the H&WC section.

[JonS]

Maybe you can, in logical terms. In historical terms, however, you can't.

Once I would have agreed with you, but now I'm not so sure. Take the unicorn example in the linked doc, and replace it with ... say ... M4A1s mounting a 120mm main gun.

Instead of
1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record.
2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record.
3. Therefore, unicorns never existed.

We get
1. If 120mm M4A1s had existed, then there would be evidence in the historical record (photos, anecdotes, reports, manufacturing records, etc)
2. There is no evidence of 120mm M4A1s in the historical record.
3. Therefore, 120mm M4A1s never existed.

Sure, induction isn't "bulletproof, airtight, and infallible", but it's plenty good enough. And if a photo or report or manufacturing record of a 120mm M4A1 does turn up? Well, as John Maynard Keynes so eloquently put it, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

[Jon G.]

Hmm, I'm too tempted not to reply, even if we are veering off-topic, without really toucing the new Führer order topic. Regardless...

Maybe you can, in logical terms. In historical terms, however, you can't.

Once I would have agreed with you, but now I'm not so sure. Take the unicorn example in the linked doc, and replace it with ... say ... M4A1s mounting a 120mm main gun.

Instead of
1. If unicorns had existed, then there is evidence in the fossil record.
2. There is no evidence of unicorns in the fossil record.
3. Therefore, unicorns never existed.

We get
1. If 120mm M4A1s had existed, then there would be evidence in the historical record (photos, anecdotes, reports, manufacturing records, etc)
2. There is no evidence of 120mm M4A1s in the historical record.
3. Therefore, 120mm M4A1s never existed.

Well good for me I included a passus about 'contemporary historians' and methods courses.

I) You are arguing from silence with your unicorn/Sherman example. That doesn't mean that your example is wrong, just that it is limited.

II) Induction works wonders in our everyday lives. Without it, everything would be immensely more difficult. However, in a historical context, induction does not really help us draw conclusions. Mainly because

III) You are attempting to lift a burden of proof which does not lie with you. It is emphatically not your job to prove that unicorns (or 120 mm-armed Shermans*) never existed.

IV) It is up to the person claiming that they did to come up with some kind of evidence to back his claim, lest we can simply discard it as undocumented. Very rarely if ever would you feel prompted to prove a negative out of thin air - it is the other side of the argument (i.e. 'unicorns exist' or '120 mm armed M4A1s exist') which is at fault due to the absence of proof.

Sure, induction isn't "bulletproof, airtight, and infallible", but it's plenty good enough. And if a photo or report or manufacturing record of a 120mm M4A1 does turn up? Well, as John Maynard Keynes so eloquently put it, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

This is not a case of facts changing - it's a case of no facts registering at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M50_Super_Sherman

[JonS]

III) You are attempting to lift a burden of proof which does not lie with you. It is emphatically not your job to prove that unicorns (or 120 mm-armed Shermans*) never existed.

That should be true. But I've been in and seen far too many intarweb 'discussions' involving some ballbags who thinks the Twin Towers were prechambered, or the Nazis had a base in Antarctica, or Bush could find his own arse with both hands, or whatever. They're not likely to be convinced. Ever. But applying the approach of "if x then y" "not y" "therefore not x" is useful for one's own sanity.

IV) It is up to the person claiming that they did to come up with some kind of evidence to back his claim, lest we can simply discard it as undocumented. Very rarely if ever would you feel prompted to prove a negative out of thin air - it is the other side of the argument (i.e. 'unicorns exist' or '120 mm armed M4A1s exist') which is at fault due to the absence of proof.

Indeed. But it seldom seems to actually work that way.

P.S. I did know about the Ishermans that's why I specifically chose an early model, and a gun that wasn't commonly mounted - by anyone - until the 1990s

[michael mills]

Here is an article about Irving by Martin Broszat in VfZ, 1977:

http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1 ... roszat.pdf

Here he talks about the documentary material found by Irving and made available to other researchers, including his critics:

Zu nennen sind hier u. a. ein nicht sehr umfangreiches Notizbuch des ehemaligen Gesandten
Walter Hewel, des Verbindungsmannes des Reichsaußenministers v. Ribbentrop im
Führerhauptquartier (es war teilweise aus dem Indonesischen zu übersetzen und reizte Irving
schon deshalb besonders) und - wohl wichtiger — Aufzeichnungen Dr. Werner Koeppens, des
Verbindungsmannes des Reichsministers für die besetzten Ostgebiete, Alfred Rosenberg,
bei Hitler, über Gespräche im Führerhauptquartier. Vgl. im übrigen die Einführungsabschnitte
in Irvings Buch. Einen großen Teil dieses Materials hat Irving dem Institut für
Zeitgeschichte zur Verfügung gestellt. Er hat in aller Regel, das bleibt anzuerkennen, seine
Quellenbasis anderen Historikern gegenüber nicht verborgen, sondern auch seinen Kritikern
offengehalten. Dem verdankt der Verfasser die Möglichkeit, sich gelegentlich auch auf
die im IfZ vorhandenen Arbeitsmaterialien Irvings und seine dabei erkennbaren Arbeitsmethoden
beziehen zu können.

[trespasser07]

Back to the original posts, are we any closer to knowing when his Himmler biography will be published?

Regards

Trespasser07.

[Jon G.]

Here is an article about Irving by Martin Broszat in VfZ, 1977:

http://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1 ... roszat.pdf

Here he talks about the documentary material found by Irving and made available to other researchers, including his critics...

Sure, and it makes sense that it would be someone with as deep a knowledge of contemporary sources as Martin Broszat who paid credit to Irving's source knowledge, since the Anglo-Saxon historical community of the time, by and large, did not speak German.

Apart from that, though, Broszat and Irving weren't exactly eye to eye about Irving's interpretations of source material, to put it mildly; Broszat's review of Hitler's War was very damning.

[Dutto1]

If I was to compare David Irving to another author it would be Patrick Agte.Both writer's had brilliant documents to work with but the end product is an interprataion of there own views,they both like to whitewash carachters,Irving with Hitler and Agte with Jochen Peiper and Michael Wittmann.

Ron

[LWD]

... But applying the approach of "if x then y" "not y" "therefore not x" is useful for one's own sanity....

If we look at your examles they are both flawed however. In the unicorn case the fossile record is far from complete and indeed many species probably left no fossil recored so the nonexistance of unicorn fossils doesn't prove that unicorns don't exist. The 120mm armed M4 is a somewhat different case. If the proposition is restricted to "no M4A1s were built with 120mm guns" then we if we can find exhaustive production records we could indeed prove the point. Similarly if we can show that no 120mm guns were sent to the production facilities where M4A1s were built we could again prove the point. But if it's the large question of "no M4A1s were ever armed with a 120mm main gun" then it becomes more problemtaic as someone somewhere could have added one as a modification indeed if the turret rings aren't too big one might be able to simly add a 120mm breach loading mortar turret. Thus you can't prove the point although you can certainly give sufficient evidence to make it highly questionable. If however someone believes such vehicles existed then they can prove they did so if there is any real evidence and the ball is indeed in thier court.

I will also point out that your continued (and potentially political) example regarding Bush is inappropriate, so ill defined that it would be hard to prove, and if taken litterally obviously false.

[LWD]

... Despite Evans' exaggerated claim, it is clear that a number of historians regard Irving's works as a reliable source of data, even though they reject his apologetic interpretations.

Documentation PLS.

Still waiting.

[JonS]

If we look at your examples they are both flawed however.

But, that's exactly the point Hales was making. It isn't flawed. The unicorn proof isn't perfect, because nothing can ever be perfectly proven. But it is a valid proof, and it's more than good enough.

The premises can be attacked - would production records be left, would they exist in the fossil record, etc - but the form of the proof is sound.

[LWD]

If we look at your examples they are both flawed however.

But, that's exactly the point Hales was making. It isn't flawed. The unicorn proof isn't perfect, because nothing can ever be perfectly proven. But it is a valid proof, and it's more than good enough.

That is incorrect. The "unicorn proof" isn't a proof. It's an assertion and perhaps a reasoanble one (depending on how you define "unicorn") but it's a long way from a proof. Furthermore it is possible to prove assertions. For instance there are multiple photos, records of, and even remaining examples that are more than sufficient to prove that the M4A1 existed.

The premises can be attacked - would production records be left, would they exist in the fossil record, etc - but the form of the proof is sound.

No it is not. It may be sufficient given the lack of evidence to the contrary to make a propositoin seem even more questionable but it is not a proof at least as the term is used in logic.

[JonS]

It most certainly is a proof. For the rest, take it up with Hales.

[JonS]

In the unicorn case the fossile record is far from complete and indeed many species probably left no fossil recored so the nonexistance of unicorn fossils doesn't prove that unicorns don't exist.

That the fossil record is incomplete is beyond doubt. But that that prevents us from making assertions - such as the non-existence of unicorns - with a very high degree of confidence does not follow. There have been millions of fossils recovered, catalogued, and compared. We don't really need an example of every step of the evolutionary chain for any given species, genus, or family to know (or 'know') where it came from, how it changed, and where it went. Even lacking a fully formed unicorn, no unicorn-like fossils - either predecessors or descendents - have been found. So not only must we propose a putative gap right there in the fossil record, we must accept a gaping chasm where an entire branch just somehow vanished without trace.

Which is possible, in the technical sense of the word. Black swans do, after all, show up from time to time. But the liklihood is vanishingly small, and clinging to the belief that unicorns definately exist because there just might be a gap in the record isn't a rational approach to understanding the world.

Edit to add: it works the other way too, naturally. We can induce characteristics of species that must have existed in the gaps between the markers in the fossil record, just as we induced the existence of whole planets in our own solar system, long before anyone sensed them directly, by using a form of "If x then y" "y" "therefore x"