May 21, 1992 (Thursday)
London

5:20 p.m. Kershaw of Guardian left message, wants to interview me for Weekly Guardian. Phoned him and agreed. [He did not in the event conduct an interview]

June 1, 1992 (Monday)
London

8 45 a.m. Phoned Ian Kershaw of Guardian to tell him of my dates.

April 29, 1999 (Thursday)
Costa Mesa (California)

[Bulletin from London office:]

1. Letter from Ian Kershaw declining to be your expert witness.

2. […]

 

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October 11, 2000 (Wednesday)
Key West (Florida)

Just fancy that...

I BELIEVE that I show in this book that the more hermetically Hitler locked himself away behind the barbed wire and mine fields of his remote military headquarters, the more his Germany became a Führer-Staat without a Führer. Domestic policy was controlled by whoever was most powerful in each sector -- by Hermann Göring as head of the powerful economics agency, the Four-Year Plan; by Hans Lammers as chief of the Reich Chancellery; or by Martin Bormann, the Nazi party boss; or by Heinrich Himmler, minister of the interior and Reichsführer of the evil-famed SS. -- David Irving in Hitler's War

Larry M*** reports that "the October 2000 issue of Literary Review has two references to you. The first, in David Cesarani's review of Ian Kershaw's Hitler 1936-1945 Nemesis:

Once war started, Hitler lost interest in domestic affairs and barely appeared in Berlin. Germany became a 'Fuhrer state without a Fuhrer,' but there were plenty of energetic fanatics willing to fill the void. This explains how the 'Final Solution' could emerge without any evidence of Hitler's direct involvement. Like everything in Nazi Germany, it was impossible without him, but his 'absence' made it possible in the first place. Despite the shadow of David Irving hanging over any discussion of the 'Jewish Question,' Kershaw can confidently write that 'Hitler authorized more than he initiated,' knowing that he will not afford a scrap of comfort to those who would exculpate the Fuhrer.

November 18, 2000 (Saturday)
Key West (Florida)

4:15 to 4:35 PM a long call from Rolf Hochhuth, the second in a month. He is reviewing the two volumes of Kershaw's Hitler for Weltwoche, and has spotted that it derives very largely from my Hitler's War; Kershaw is good enough to cite the latter as his source frequently in his notes. Of course, his reliance is far more than just occasional, and I tell Rolf I am not sore about it. (a) Hitler's War is out of print, effectively; (b) I regard it as flattery, and there is not much I can do about it. It is not plagiarism, just poor form. He says that he's going to say this in his review too. I say that Kershaw is like all the other "historians" who let others do the field work, then sit in a library and read the books to write their own.

January 14, 2001 (Sunday)
London

11:15 to 31 am a long gossip with Dr John Fox, who is fizzing with rage at Ian Kershaw, who in all four editions of his university text books says Hitler did not know about or order the Final Solution, and in volume II of his new Hitler biography says exactly the opposite; Fox has pointed this out in a review in The Independent, which he will send me.

April 11, 2001 (Wednesday)
London

THIS, replying to A**** of Quebec: "Nobody has challenged my knowledge of German; no doubt for tactical purposes the defence in the Lipstadt case throughout the trial and before it stated that my knowledge of German was flawless. I am not criticising Kershaw for his knowledge of German; he merely told me in a letter that his knowledge of German was not good enough for him to be a useful witness in the trial. Perhaps that too was tactical; I have heard rumours that he is acting as a witness for Gitta Sereny in the next libel action."

 
... and see A Radical's Diary: February 14, June 18, 2002