Capital & Class,
Spring 2003.
The journal is published by the
Conference of Socialist
Economists:
[In
which one of Prof "Skunky" Evans's
soulmates reviews his
book]
- Telling
Lies about Hitler -- The Holocaust,
History and the David Irving
Trial.
- Evans,
RJ.
- Verso
Press, 2002
- ISBN
1-85984-417-0 (pbk) £14.00 pp
326
by Andrew
McCulloch. [homepage]
Andrew McCulloch
teaches sociology at Northumbria
University.
I DEVOURED this book
guiltily one weekend when I was a
rather rude houseguest. Fortunately, my
friends seem to have tolerated my bad
behaviour in creeping off to read in
secret. Perhaps I was not missed that
much and therefore not found out.
The Hitler devotee David
Irving, however, definitely has
been exposed in this book as a cheat,
charlatan and indefatigable liar by the
patient detective work of Richard J.
Evans and his team. Irving would not be
much missed either, although I doubt
that he will easily go away. Guilt and
shame are not part of his
character.
Most people will believe that they
know about the circumstances that
occasioned this book. Evans chides
those sections of the media that
misunderstood the situation. It was
Irving, contrary to many accounts, who
instigated the libel
action against the publishers of
Deborah Lipstadt's (1994)
Denying the Holocaust: the growing
assault on truth and Memory. To
their great credit, Penguin did not
capitulate before his libel action
threats.
They engaged a legal team to defend
Lipstadt's claims in her book that
Irving was one of those, and a very
prominent and poisonous one, who had
falsified and manipulated the
historical record about the Holocaust
to serve his ideological commitment to
fascism, antisemitism and Hitler's
memory. It was not, therefore, Irving
who was the victim of those out to get
him -- but this did not stop him
constantly presenting the case publicly
in that light. Evan's book is an
account of the case. It includes his
devastating investigations of Irving's
work as a popularising ficto-historian
and some comments on the nature of
historical investigation.
Those claiming to have been libelled
-- that is defamed, lowered in the
esteem in the eyes of that legal
fiction, the reasonable man -- are in a
strong position in English law. To make
defamatory statements in good faith is
not a defence as everyone rich enough
to use the law courts is deemed to have
a good reputation until proven
otherwise. At the end of the book,
Evans calls for a long overdue change
in the English libel laws. The only
defence open to Penguin Books was to
prove the overall accuracy of
Lipstadt's claim and thereby discredit
Irving as a historian. Lipstadt was
not asked to appear in court by the
defence and Irving did not subpoena
her. The central issue was Irving's
claim to be a historian of
integrity.
RICHARD Evans, Professor of
Modem History at Cambridge University,
was engaged by the defence as the
expert witness who could put Irving's
historical work to the test. Irving's
central claims are that the number of
those killed in the Endlosung has been
vastly exaggerated and that Hitler did
not know about the extermination of the
Jews and other groups. Indeed, there
was no Nazi industrial process of
extermination. Irving also claims that
the fire bombing
of Dresden by the allies was a
similar crime, if not worse, when
compared to those unfortunately
committed by the Germans in the heat
and chaos of warfare. In order to do
this Irving has consistently falsified
the death toll in Dresden.
For those who do want to wedge the
door open that Hitler did not know,
there are some chinks or openings.
- Bauman accepts in
Modernity and the Holocaust
(1991: 15), for instance, that the
functional logic of the Nazi system
of 'polycratic' government led
inexorably in the direction of
genocide and that therefore there
was no d ocument which Hitler needed
to sign to achieve his terrible
aims.
- Another chink is suggested by
Inga Clendinnen: 'There are
many difficulties in the way of
understanding a Hitler, not least
because we know that had there been
no Hitler there would have been no
Holocaust. This fact is at once
obviously true, and so grossly
incommensurate with our notions of
adequacy regarding historical cause
and effect that we recoil from it'
(Clendinnen, 1999: 95).
Evans concludes that 'It was only
when...I followed Irving's claims and
statements about Hitler back to the
original documents. on which they
purported to rest, that Irving's work
in this respect was revealed as a house
of cards, a vast apparatus of deception
and deceit. Lipstadt was therefore
right to describe Irving as a Hitler
partisan who manipulated the historical
record in an attempt to portray his
hero in an unwarrantedly favourable
light' (p. 110). Evans and his team
showed to the satisfaction of the judge
that in 19 separate instances Irving
had deliberately falsified or
manipulated the historical record. The
general effect was to minimise the
Holocaust and shield Hitler from guilt.
This was not a passing blind spot; it
is a consistent feature of Irving's
mendacious historical writing from the
very beginning.
David
Irving
comments: THE suggestion above, that
"Lipstadt was not asked to
appear in court by the defence
and Irving did not subpoena
her," betrays the reviewer's
ignorance: a defendant cannot
be subpoena'd: if they choose
to Plead the Fifth, they
cannot be forced to testify.
But in describing "Skunky"
Evans as a writer who
"obviously heartily despises
and loathes" me, he hits the
nail on the head.
I put this
as a challenge to Evans in the
witness box on the very first
day. Perjuring himself, he
denied he nurtured any dislike
for me.
This lie
would have been one of the
main planks of our appeal, had
the Court of Appeal permitted
it to go ahead (it
refused).
The "expert
opinion" of a witness -- in
this case the head of the team
of expert witnesses -- who
reveals in his subsequent book
that from the very outset he
despised the subject of his
inquiries is quite worthless,
and should have been
disregarded by the Court.
Evans
perjured himself, a criminal
offence. Related
file: 
Extract
from Trial Transcript, David
Irving challenges Prof. Evans
-- testifying on oath -- about
his manifest bias
|
Irving is a fascist autodidact of
almost irrepressible energy whom Evans
obviously heartily despises and
loathes. Irving's morals in regard to
historical truth are, and always have
been, those of a virus. But although
part of the excitement of reading this
book revolves around the encounter of
two immiscible personalities in the
court room, its significance is far
wider than that. Verso, therefore, are
to be congratulated (Tariq Ali
in particular) for having the courage
to publish it. (Other publishers were
previously offered this volume and
backed out. Indeed, it is not published
by Penguin.)Despite his comprehensive legal
defeat (which left him bankrupted by
the costs) and a damning 350 page
judgement, Irving still has his
supporters, even amongst historians.
They see a fellow historian with
tenacity and talent who unfortunately
suffers from an ideological flaw. They
should see someone who has used the
apparatus of scholarship as a
smokescreen and that they have been
duped.
Despite
the fact that Evans had two research
assistants and that at one point 40
people were employed by the legal team
to nail Irving, Evans is critical of
those who did not have the historical
scholarship, expertise and knowledge to
see through him. It is not historians
as a profession but those proponents of
'Holocaust Studies' and the popular
enthusiasm for knowledge about the
Second World War that, in Evan's view,
have helped to create the atmosphere in
which the repellent Irving could ply
his dubious trade. Evans is especially
contemptuous, therefore, of those
professional historians who do give
Irving some credit.
Hitler's trial in 1924 after a
failed putsch presented an opportunity
that proved to be the making of him.
Fortunately, Irving has not yet been
able to make any political capital out
of his failed libel case. This book is
a slap in the face to all those
fascists (neo- or otherwise) who think
that Irving is a person or historian of
any worth. For those amongst them who
can read and who scream that their
opponents are liars, this book might,
just might, make them think about what
the truth really means. This book is
also a rebuke to the supporters of
absolute relativism, to those who
uncritically support post-modernism and
to all those who have not accepted
Norman Geras's fundamental point
that if we cannot find that some
statements are the truth, then there is
no possibility of claiming that some
acts are unjust. All we have are the
claim and counterclaim of contending
stories (Geras, 1995: 107). Not here in
this book, however.
Andrew McCulloch teaches
sociology at Northumbria
University.
References
- Bauman, Z (1991) Modernity
and the Holocaust, Polity
- Clendinnen, I (1999) Reading
the Holocaust, Cambridge.
- Geras, N (1995) Solidarity in
the Conversation of Mankind -- The
ungroundable liberalism of Richard
Rorty, Verso
Footnote:
The US edition of Evans's
book Lying about Hitler has
already been remaindered. It is
available from Hamilton
Books,
the primary/largest book remainder
service in the US, for $7.00. Its
sales were evidently abysmal. I am
proud to say my books have never
been remaindered. -- David
Irving
Evans
had two research assistants
and at one point 40 people
were employed by the legal
team to nail Irving. Evans is
critical of those who did not
have the historical
scholarship, expertise and
knowledge to see through him.
write to David
Irving