Holocaust denier David Irving & Himmler Vol 2

[sekudlyda]

David Irving is a Holocaust denier, a Hitler apologist, and a history revisionist. Only he knows why. What surprises me is that there are still people who read his works, apparently. Why would anyone interested in that period of time read anything by Mr. Irving? If one is interested in the Third Reich and related issues, Mr. Irving is the last author I would look to for anything resembling the truth.

[sekudlyda]

David Irving is a Holocaust denier, a Hitler apologist, and a history revisionist. Only he knows why. What surprises me is that there are still people who read his works, apparently. Why would anyone interested in that period of time read anything by Mr. Irving? If one is interested in the Third Reich and related issues, Mr. Irving is the last author I would look to for anything resembling the truth.

[Sheldrake]

David Irving is a Holocaust denier, a Hitler apologist, and a history revisionist. Only he knows why. What surprises me is that there are still people who read his works, apparently. Why would anyone interested in that period of time read anything by Mr. Irving? If one is interested in the Third Reich and related issues, Mr. Irving is the last author I would look to for anything resembling the truth.

I'll offer the views of John Keegan one of the Sandhurst historians who reviewed his Hitler book positively. Keegan reckoned that Irving had done more than anyone else to put himself behind Hitler's desk and get inside his thinking. Sure Irving was pro Hitler which made that task easier or more palatable. Despite reservations over his use of sources, Irving's interpretation of Hitler's thinking has a value.

The problem historians have with Irving is like some history enthusiasts untrained in, or unconcerned about, historic method, he seems to have gone out looking for sources that agreed with his ideas and ignored those that didn't. Not disimmilar to some of the arguments on this forum... One of Irving's apparent successes was to track down new primary source material, getting old Nazis to talk to a friendly ear. The problems are:-

#1. Were they telling him the truth?
#2 Did they actually say what he claimed that they said?
#3 Were the sources all real? There is a suspicion that he may have made up convenient sources when he needed to.

How many English speaking historians know enough German to work their way around the archives or have the time and contacts to verify what Irving claims that Untersturmfuhrer Dumkopf said in an interview in 1975.

[Biber]

David Irving is a Holocaust denier, a Hitler apologist, and a history revisionist. Only he knows why. What surprises me is that there are still people who read his works, apparently. Why would anyone interested in that period of time read anything by Mr. Irving? If one is interested in the Third Reich and related issues, Mr. Irving is the last author I would look to for anything resembling the truth.

So you seem to suggest that you've never read anything by him. Is this true? If so, on what do you base your opinion of him then? Or are you just parroting the views of others?

Before you strike back, yes I have read a few things he has authored. If I remember correctly,I did indeed find them readable and engaging. But I also admit that I have not pursued other authors on the same topics. So I wiuld not begin to presume to speak to the legitimacy (or not) of his work. Should I ever do so, I certainly reserve the right to my own judgement on such matters.

With all these Irving haters about who don't, won't, or haven't read his writings, how do they know what to hate about him? They seem to be relying on the few who decided to take one for the team as it were. Too bad they can't form their own opinions.

[wm]

David Irving is a Holocaust denier, a Hitler apologist, and a history revisionist. Only he knows why. What surprises me is that there are still people who read his works, apparently. Why would anyone interested in that period of time read anything by Mr. Irving? If one is interested in the Third Reich and related issues, Mr. Irving is the last author I would look to for anything resembling the truth.

I will read a history book written by the Devil himself if interesting and properly annotated. Irving's books aren't especially useful, but sometimes they are irreplaceable.

[sekudlyda]

Biber wrote:
With all these Irving haters about who don't, won't, or haven't read his writings, how do they know what to hate about him? They seem to be relying on the few who decided to take one for the team as it were. Too bad they can't form their own opinions.

First, I do not hate David Irving. I just don't trust him. Second, I have read him. I read "The Destruction of Dresden" (1963) as well as portions of his two fawning biographies of Goring (1986) and Goebbels (1996). Frankly, that was more than enough. Third, I can form my own opinions, but thank you for your concern on that.

Mr. Irving's renderings of history are inherently untrustworthy which is why I'll never read anything he writes again. Unfortunately, we seem to be in the midst of a phenomenon, here and abroad, in which truth and facts have become partisan and agenda-driven. In this age of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, we're being called upon to acknowledge "alternative facts" which is something I'm unwilling to do. In trying to stay relevant to his acolytes, maybe Mr. Irving will make a comeback in this era of misinformation.

By the way, today, October 16th, is the 77th anniversary of the execution of the top ten Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg. Perhaps Mr. Irving is toasting the honored dead tonight.

[Gorque]

From Day 2 of the trial:

Q. [Mr Rampton]: So tell me what it was then that was the Holocaust that you removed from the 1991 edition and announced to the world that you had done so

[Mr Irving]: The word “Holocaust” has gone

[Mr Rampton]: Yes, but why

[Mr Irving]: Because I find the word “Holocaust” misleading, offensive and unhelpful

[Mr Rampton]: Why

[Mr Irving]: For precisely the reasons that I said 10 minutes ago, that it is too vague, it is imprecise, it is unscientific and it should be avoided like the plague, because the word “Holocaust” could be understood to mean one thing when somebody is referring to it meaning something else. I try
to avoid words like that. I shall be calling — I shall be asking one of my experts on precisely this matter who is an expert on the use of the word “Holocaust”. He also takes the strongest exception to it

[Mr Rampton]: So you removed it because you found it imprecise for one reason

[Mr Irving]: Yes, as a part of the general tidying up process — when you take a book after 10 years and you revise it and you work over it with a red pencil, you do a lot of tidying up and tightening up, and we did that with the new edition. We cut a lot of material out anyway because the book was the one-third too long and we wanted to bring a new material that we had obtained, the diaries of Hitler’s doctor and Goring, and so on. So there was a lot of editorial work that went on

[Mr Rampton]: I want to take it slowly because it may be important in the end. You removed it because it was imprecise, but you accept, you now tell me, that the Germans deliberately murdered perhaps something between one and two million Jews during the course of the War

[Mr Irving]: A criminally large number of Jews, yes

[Mr Rampton]: Where, in your opinion, did this happen, broadly speaking

[Mr Irving]: Well, we could take it sector by sector, but I am not sure if it is a meaningful exercise. If I am a Jew and I take it from Amsterdam and I am living a peaceful life and I find myself thrown into a stinking concentration camp where I die of disease, I considered myself to have been murdered

[Mr Rampton]: I excluded them, as you know perfectly well. I talked about shooting, gassing, hanging, kicking, what you like, but I excluded the people who died of disease or overwork or starvation

[Mr Irving]: Very well. On the Eastern front, particularly in the Baltic States, particularly in the Ukraine, I would estimate that up to one million Jews were murdered, using that word in a way that is completely incontrovertible. They were stood on the edge of pits and shot into the pits, clubbed to death

[Mr Rampton]: Just so that we get it straight: in the second edition of “Hitler’s War” — start at the beginning. In the firs edition you accepted that Auschwitz was an extermination centre, did you not

[Mr Irving]: Yes, a lazy acceptance which I now regret

[Mr Rampton]: That is as may be. By the time of the second edition you had recanted that acceptance, had you not

[Mr Irving]: That Auschwitz was an extermination centre, a dedicated extermination centre

[Mr Rampton]: Yes

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: You said, for example, I am paraphrasing, perhaps you will accept it, that the Hungarian Jews were sent to Auschwitz for slave labour

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: Instead of purposefully to be killed

[Mr Irving]: Definitely

[Mr Rampton]: What do you say went on — perhaps I will ask you this first. Do you accept that there were camps, and we will take them one by one, Chelmo

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: Belzec

[Mr Irving]: Belzec I am not certain of

[Mr Rampton]: Treblinka

[Mr Irving]: Treblinka I am becoming uncertain about

[Mr Rampton]: Sobibor

[Mr Irving]: Sobibor I know nothing of

[Mr Rampton]: Chelmo you accept

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: The other two, second two you are uncertain about

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: What happened at Chelmo

[Mr Irving]: In 1940 they established a killing centre. It was in a handy part of Europe. Hitler had ordered liquidation in the Polish campaign and afterwards the liquidation of all the Polish intellectuals and clergy and intelligentsia and the Jews who were liable to occupy leading positions, and
a lot of them found themselves shipped off to Chelmo where they were dispatched

MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not by gas

[Mr Irving]: Not to the best of my knowledge, my Lord, no, but I say this, and I hesitate to say this, as a non-expert on the Holocaust, this book was not written as a history of the Holocaust. This was book was written as a biography of Hitler and it would have been neither here nor there how his victims were disposed of

MR RAMPTON: Let us take the other three camps together. You would not accept that they were purpose built extermination centres either

[Mr Irving]: Not on the basis of the evidence I have seen so far

[Mr Rampton]: It follows, does it not, that you do not accept that people who were killed there were killed by the use of purpose designed gas chambers

[Mr Irving]: At which camps are you talking about, Treblinka

[Mr Rampton]: To the three East Polish ones

[Mr Irving]: There is a lot of debate each way which, in my mind, is unresolved and I have no particular interest in resolving it because, I repeat for the nth time, I am not a Holocaust scholar, and taking the Treblinka Miediner camp you have the problem there that they cannot make up their mind what kind of gas was used to kill the victims, was it Zyklone, was it diesel engine exhaust fumes, was it petrol engine exhaust fumes, when that kind of uncertainty occurs in the testimony, frankly I tend to turn my back on the entire story and write something that is safe rather than something that

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, can I ask this question. I thought, Mr Irving, when you were giving your evidence-in-chief, I think it was in response to a question from, you said you accepted that gassing had.occurred


[Mr Rampton]: But to the limited sent that it had been carried out on an experimental basis

[Mr Irving]: By experimental —

[Mr Rampton]: Let me finish the question. I had understood that to be a reference to the gas vans being broug termination of euthanasia programme. Am I wrong? Is it wider than that

[Mr Irving]: By “experimental” I do not mean that men stood around in white coats with clip boards and stopwatches. It as just local SS commanders who had been given the job of disposing of these people and were looking for other ways of doing it. Certainly the gas vans were used, because in Adolf Eichmann’s papers which I obtained in Argentina he describes having witnessed one such killing, and there are documents which satisfy me, which may be of great disinterest to the Defendants but they satisfy me that they are authentic that such killing trucks did exist, unless there are enormous coincidences in the use of language and words. The gas chambers story is sufficiently difficult to analyse, because on the one hand you have apparently consistent testimony of people who should have known, like the commandants and their deputies, testifying to the fact that these killings were carried out in gas chambers, and on the other hand you have the logistical and agricultural impossibilities which cannot be overlooked. I am sure that we will hear a lot more about them later on in the trial

MR RAMPTON: Yes, perhaps. Then let us return finally to page 2 of tab 11 of this file. I hope you still have it open, have you

[Mr Irving]: Page 2, tab 11, yes

[Mr Rampton]: Yes. In the second paragraph timed at 12.13 the last sentence reads: “If something didn’t happen then you don’t even dignify it with a footnote”. The “it” you are referring to there is the Holocaust whatever that may mean. Is that right

[Mr Irving]: Well, it is the gas chamber Holocaust

[Mr Rampton]: Yes. I am not trying to be unfair, but according to the internal syntax of that statement the “it” is the Holocaust, is it not

[Mr Irving]: It is the gas chamber Holocaust and I am sure his Lordship is well aware of the fact this is a speech delivered under very strained circumstances without a script. So one does not put every word on the gold balance, as the Germans say. The mere fact it means the gas chamber Holocaust is evident from the fact that if you look at the book I am talking about, Hitler’s War, there is any amount of reference to the rest of the Holocaust story, namely the shootings on the Eastern Front which are accepted in full degree

[Mr Rampton]: I said I was not trying to be unfair. I wanted to take it in stages

[Mr Irving]: You are being very fair and you are being very patient with me, but I have to be very careful with my responses

[Mr Rampton]: In the four walls of that little paragraph the “it” that did not happen is the Holocaust, grammatically speaking, is it not

[Mr Irving]: We keep coming back to the same question

[Mr Rampton]: No. Just say yes or no. It is very easy. I am not trying to trick you. It is, is it not? It is not a difficult question

[Mr Irving]: Which “it” are we talking about

[Mr Rampton]: In the last line: “If something didn’t happen you don’t even dignify it with a footnote”. That follows, does it not, from the earlier part —

[Mr Irving]: The something that did not happen is it

[Mr Rampton]: The something that did not happen is the Holocaust if you look at the previous line

[Mr Irving]: No, the clause, “if something didn’t happen”, that is the “it”

[Mr Rampton]: All right, we will read the whole thing. If you read —

[Mr Irving]: It is still going to say the same no matter how often you read it

[Mr Rampton]: “You won’t find the Holocaust mentioned in one line, not even a footnote. Why should we? If something didn’t happen then you don’t even dignify it with a footnote.” The something that did not happen is the Holocaust in this sentence, is it not

[Mr Irving]: It is the clause if something did not happen. Let me explain to you, by this time I had encountered a very fine American editor Tom Condon, who was my American editor, American publishers have people who have editors who teach you how to write, and this particular editor said: “Mr Irving, don’t waste time and ink telling your readers what has not happened.” He said: “Don’t say he didn’t like dogs but he did like cats. You just write ‘he did like cats'”. This is what I am getting at there. You do not waste ink

[Mr Rampton]: I follow that entirely, but let us look at the substance of the thing. The something that did not happen is the Holocaust, is it not, in this sentence

[Mr Irving]: The gas chamber Holocaust, yes

[Mr Rampton]: No, no, in the English, the something that did not happen is the Holocaust

[Mr Irving]: The whole of this speech is about the gas chamber, the whole of this part of the speech. You will notice the tape has previously jumped so we have no idea what has been cut out or what has been accidently omitted

[Mr Rampton]: I said I am said trying to be fair

[Mr Irving]: I must insist on fairness here, because I have stipulated that I will accept these transcripts and allow you to make great horseplay with them, except where they have been edited, and that is a paragraph or a sentence has that has been edited. It says specifically “tape jumps” which means it has been switched on and switched off. You are getting the second half of a sentence

[Mr Rampton]: I wish you would not be so nervous of me, Mr Irving. I said I am trying to be fair. Now look down at the other paragraph we looked at earlier. I am now going to put some words into your mouth. You have said in the earlier paragraph that the Holocaust did not happen. That is as plain as a pikestaff to anybody who can read English. Now we see, do we not, as you have been trying to tell us, what you mean by the Holocaust: “The biggest lie of the lot is the lie that Germans had factories of death with gas chambers in which they liquidated millions of their opponents.”

[Mr Irving]: My I intern that differently? I am sorry it is a question. I will intern that differently. The biggest lie of the lot is that the Germans had factories of death with gas chambers in which they killed millions of people

[Mr Rampton]: Liquidated, yes

[Mr Irving]: Do you notice the difference there

[Mr Rampton]: You can read it either, can you not

[Mr Irving]: You read it your way, Mr Rampton

[Mr Rampton]: No. What you are saying —

[Mr Irving]: And we at this end of the wicket will read it our way

[Mr Rampton]: What you say is the biggest lie is the assertion thatthere were gas chambers. That is what you say you meant by that

[Mr Irving]: Yes, in which millions were killed. This is what I asked you not to do, not just to take individual phrases out of a sentence and say, look at this bit and look at that. You have to judge the whole

[Mr Rampton]: I do not think that is very fair. I read the whole sentence

[Mr Irving]: No, you did not. You said there were gas chambers, the biggest lie is that they were gas chambers, and I am saying that, no, what I say is the biggest lie is that there were gas chambers in which millions were killed

[Mr Rampton]: I thought, Mr Irving, these were elements in the lie, factories of death, gas chambers and millions

[Mr Irving]: Only when taken together

[Mr Rampton]: Right

[Mr Irving]: My Lord, am I labouring these points too much

[Mr Rampton]: No, you are not at all. You deny that there were factories of death with gas chambers in which were liquidated millions of Jews. I have rephrased it so that it is absolutely crystal clear

[Mr Irving]: I thought I did not recognize it

[Mr Rampton]: So that it is absolutely crystal clear, it has not an ambiguity of what you wrote. I want to get your evidence clear

[Mr Irving]: Let me explain what underlies this sentence. Because it is logistically impossible to kill millions of people in the buildings that have been portrayed to us as factories of death, therefore they cannot have been, and that is the big lie, if you try to cut that particular sentence up any particular way then it becomes (A) something I did not say and (B) worthless for the purposes of this court

[Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, you sorely tempt me to proceed to Auschwitz straightaway, but I will resist it

[Mr Irving]: I am looking forward to Auschwitz

[Mr Rampton]: Would you accept that one version of the Holocaust which is generally understood, accepted and perceived —

[Mr Irving]: Will you avoid using the passive voice so we know precisely who is generally accepting, understanding and perceiving

[Mr Rampton]: Call it the public at large, the audiences to whom you speak

[Mr Irving]: Have you stood in Oxford Street with a clip board asking them, the public at large

[Mr Rampton]: You will not commit yourself to a generally understood sense of the Holocaust then

[Mr Irving]: I do not know what the generally sense of the Holocaus is. I have given my version of it. You are giving the court your version of it

[Mr Rampton]: Will you accept, Mr Irving, and if you will not say no, it matters not, will you accept that one element in the public perception of the Holocaust is the killing of millions of Jews in gas chambers constructed by the Nazis in various parts of Europe

[Mr Irving]: That I accept

[Mr Rampton]: You will

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: Right. And that you deny

[Mr Irving]: Why did you not ask that question right at the beginning

[Mr Rampton]: I wanted to know what you meant

[Mr Irving]: It is one element

[Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, please

[Mr Irving]: It is one element, as you say

[Mr Rampton]: Would you not accept that it was the major element in the public perception of what the Holocaust was about

[Mr Irving]: Now you are saying something different

[Mr Rampton]: I am asking you a further question

[Mr Irving]: You have changed from one element to a major element

[Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, please, I have asked you about one element. You have accepted that is an element. I now ask you whether you do not also accept that it is the major element

[Mr Irving]: In what

[Mr Rampton]: In the public perception of the words “the Holocaust”

[Mr Irving]: I do not know

[Mr Rampton]: Right. You do not know

[Mr Irving]: I have not take any statistical evaluations of what people think in Oxford Street

[Mr Rampton]: You deny, I think we are clear on this now, that the Germans killed millions of Jews in gas chambers in purpose-built establishments

[Mr Irving]: Will you repeat that sentence? You deny that Germans killed

[Mr Rampton]: You deny that the Nazis, do not let us talk about Germans, let us talk about Nazis, that the Nazis killed millions of Jews in gas chambers in purpose-built establishments

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: Yes

[Mr Irving]: I am sorry to take so long to answer, but I have to see exactly what it is you are asking. Purpose-built establishments, millions of Nazis in gas chambers, yes

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the reason really why you deny that because you do not accept there were any such purpose-built factories

[Mr Irving]: Well, the word “purpose-built” made my answer much easier, my Lord. You will understand why I say that when we turn to the architectural drawings and we bring in the evidence that I have

[Mr Rampton]: And Liechter

[Mr Irving]: Liechter I think is something that I am not going to rely on at all. As I said in my introduction on the Liechter report, the Liechter report is flawed. We now have very much better expertise

MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, you do tempt me very sorely. When Liechter first swam into your view, you had no expertise about Auschwitz or about gassing or extermination or anything like that, did you

[Mr Irving]: I did not need it. That was not what his report was based on

[Mr Rampton]: No. Mr Irving, when Liechter swam into view you had not studied this question at all, had you

[Mr Irving]: No

[Mr Rampton]: I think you said as much

[Mr Irving]: No

[Mr Rampton]: Yet I am right, am I not, that you announced Mr Liechter as having been, as it were, the corner stone of your conversion, if I may mix my metaphors

[Mr Irving]: Not Mr Liechter, but the laboratory analyses attached to his report. I am not sure whether I announced it in that way, but certainly that was the corner stone

[Mr Rampton]: I will just read from the same — there are many other references but we need not look them all up. Page 6 of the same transcript. We will start, if we may, at the large paragraph in the middle of the page, timed at 30.28 because again I do not want to be accused of taking anything out of context.

“Thank you Professor Faurisson for that wonderful erudite discursion on the argument on the controversy in which we are so emotionally and deeply embroiled. It is fascinating to see how an academic, a Professor, can enlarge upon what after all is just a tiny detail of history, as it now turns out. He can hold it under a microscope and see details, he can see details on those details and further details on those details. If I can just dot the i’s and cross the t’s to some of those details of details of details, he mentioned that after Fred Liechter did his truly epoch making investigation of the gas chambers at our Auschwitz, the forensic laboratory tests which yielded the extraordinary result which converted me” —

[Mr Irving]: There you have it

[Mr Rampton]: ” … made me into a hardcore disbeliever.”

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: That is right, is it not

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: So it was the Liechter report and that aspect of the Liechter report which summarised or discussed the laboratory findings that converted you into a hardcore disbeliever

[Mr Irving]: I specifically say there the laboratory forensic tests Can we analyse what I am disbelieving there

[Mr Rampton]: No. It is much better we do not go down that road

[Mr Irving]: I thought so

[Mr Rampton]: Because we might find ourselves discussing Auschwitz now which might not suit your book. Do you agree

[Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, you said it did not suit your book in the interval. You were very willing to start with Auschwitz

MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, we are not dealing with Auschwitz now. We are dealing really, are we not, with Holocaust denier

MR RAMPTON: Yes

[Mr Irving]: Yes

[Mr Rampton]: We have touched upon Mr Liechter. We are going to grapple with him much more extensively next week. We have touched upon Mr Liechter and it has led you to this conclusion that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, is it not? I use the historic present. It was Mr Liechter’s report and the bit about the laboratory tests which converted you into disbelief that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz, is that right

[Mr Irving]: That is correct

[Mr Rampton]: Is that is correct. As a consequence of that, you have come to believe, perhaps it was a matter of protest, perhaps not, I do not know, that the Nazis did not use gas chambers for the extermination of Jews let alone millions of Jews

[Mr Irving]: Yes, I have become very sceptical of that element of the story

[Mr Rampton]: And you have publicly expressed your disbelief

[Mr Irving]: Scepticism, yes

[Mr Rampton]: So if and in so far as that forms a part of people’s belief about the Holocaust, you are a Holocaust denier

[Mr Irving]: No

[Mr Rampton]: Are you not

[Mr Irving]: No. You do not have to believe in the whole to be a believer. How many of us are Christians who do not believe in every aspect of the Christian ethos

[Mr Rampton]: All right. I do not think we ought to argue metaphysics, Mr Irving

[Mr Irving]: It is a metaphysics problem you are putting there. You are saying: Believe the whole thing or you are a denier and you are ruined. You will not eat lunch in this town again.

[Mr Rampton]: I did not. I said in so far as that forms a part of people’s belief about the Holocaust, you deny that part, put it like that

[Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, are you leading evidence on people —

[Mr Rampton]: I am asking you —

[Mr Irving]: — people’s belief

[Mr Rampton]: I am asking you a question. If it should be thought that it forms a part of common belief about the nature of the Holocaust that large numbers of Jews were systematically gassed in purpose-built gas chambers, you are a Holocaust denier, are you not

[Mr Irving]: I do not know this does form a large part of people’s beliefs and I do not think you are allowed to lead evidence on people’s beliefs in an effort to back it up

[Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, only one last little bit about that. Whatever methods were used, and you deny the use of gas chambers, whatever methods were used to kill large numbers of Jews, whether they are 1, 2 or 3 or 6 million, you say it was not systematic, is that right

[Mr Irving]: Would you elucidate precisely what you mean by “systematic”? Something organised and ordered from the highest level of the Third Reich or something ordered from halfway up the system, or something that was just a system within the camp? I think the word “systematic” is a bit of a man trap

[CogCalgary]

Smart man no doubt,but really,not very interesting.
Starve people,then dispose.
3 or 6 million makes no difference.

[wm]

That guy sees a few trees but can't see the forest. Even more, he doesn't see lots of the other trees.
I think he found some facts, which he believed to be true, and acting out of ignorance, thought he would change the history of WW2 as was known.
But it wasn't actual malice; it was deep ignorance + arrogance.

[Sheldrake]

Irving authored at least three contraversial histories besides his biography of Hitler and other senior Nazis.

1. The Destruction of Convoy PQ.17 (1968) resulted in a libel case by Captain Jack Broome the commander of the escort group, which Broome won. (The actor Jack Hawkins said he used Broom as the model for his portrayal of George Ercickson in The Cruel Sea)

2. The Destruction of Dresden (1963) caused a lot of mischief by repeating the Nazi propaganda figure of 100,000 fatal victims of the bombing which appears to have been a gross exaggeration.

3. The Trail of the Fox (1977) took a hatchet to the reputation of Erwin Rommel portraying as a single minded careerist sacrificing subordinates aty the drop of a hat.

I accept that these are flawed histories, but like reading some of the posts on this forum, there throw up challenges to accepted views - even if I disagree with them.

[jabhatta]

when do you think David Irving's himmler volume 2 book will be released ?

[sekudlyda]

when do you think David Irving's himmler volume 2 book will be released ?

I don't know when it will be released but I sure hope it's marketed under "FICTION."

[wm]

This is Irving at his "best" DAVID IRVING THE HOLOCAUST LIE - THE BIGGEST LIE 1995
(in Europe, you probably will have to know how to pierce through the EU administrative censorship to see that.)
His ignorance and lack of logic are astounding because, obviously, he's a highly intelligent person. Maybe the term "arrogant idiot savant" would be appropriate here.

[Gorque]

His ignorance and lack of logic are astounding because, obviously, he's a highly intelligent person. Maybe the term "arrogant idiot savant" would be appropriate here.

Nice way of describing him after his testimony. He is highly intelligent, but extremely arrogant. His downfall, his arrogance that is.