ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE
OF B'NAl
B'RITH823 United Nations
Plaza
New York N Y 10017 MEMORANDUM To: | ADL Regional Offices | | From: | Justin J. Finger | | Date: | July 6, 1983 | | Subject: | Special Backgrounder: David Irving | |
British
author David Irving has been of concern to
ADL, as well as
to the Jewish community generally, since the 1977
publication of his book Hitler's
War, in which he promoted the outrageous
notion that Hitler was unaware of the existence of Nazi
death camps and did not order the genocidal "Final Solution"
carried out against European Jewry.[1] Since
that time Irving has become involved in activities sponsored
by Gerhard Frey, publisher of the far-right West German
newspaper National Zeitung (including a memorial
meeting dedicated to Hans-Ulrich Rudel, "ace" pilot of
Hitler's Luftwaffe), and by the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), a
group also headed by Frey that seeks to end all war-crimes
trials.[2]
Over the years, Irving's writings have sought to
rehabilitate the image of Hitler and the Third
Reich. Now we have learned
that Irving is scheduled to be a featured speaker
at the upcoming Labor Day convention, in the Los Angeles
area, of the Institute for Historical Review, the
pseudo-academic propaganda outfit inspired by Liberty
Lobby's Willis Carto and dedicated to denying the reality of
the Holocaust. The attached
background report, prepared by Assistant Research Director
Alan Schwartz, refutes Irving's distortions and sets the
record straight with regard to historical fact by quoting
from a wide range of renowned historians and experts on the
Nazi period. It is not yet clear
whether Irving will make other public appearances. Should he
surface in your region, please notify the Fact Finding
Department and your Civil Rights Coordinator. In the
meantime, this fact sheet can serve as an effective response
to inquiries about Irving and his work. We gratefully
acknowledge the editorial guidance provided by Dr. Lucy
Dawidowicz, the eminent historian of the Holocaust, during
the preparation of this paper. JJF:bl
att.
|
| DAVID IRVING British author
David
Irving, 44, has written several controversial
books relating to the Nazi regime and other aspects of the
Second World War.According to information from his
publishers, David Irving was born in 1938, the son of a
Royal Navy Commander,
was educated at the Imperial College and the University of
London, and spent a year working in a German steel mill,
where he became fluent in the German language. His many books on
World War II include The
Destruction of Dresden;
The German
Atomic Bomb; The Destruction of Convoy
PQ 17; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, and
The
Trail of the Fox (a best-seller about Field
Marshal Erwin Rommel).He has also published translations of
the memoirs of two of Hitler's military leaders, Field
Marshal Wilhelm Keitel and General Reinhard Gehlen. None of his other
works, however, has been more controversial - or more
patently flawed - than his 1977 book, Hitler's
War (New York: Viking Press).
Probably Irving's best-known work, Hitler's
War runs to well over 900 pages of wartime narrative
ostensibly told "through Hitler's eyes, and concludes that
the Fuhrer was actually a weak leader, irresolute and
vacillating, who took "ineffectual measures against his
enemies inside Germany for too long." Irving's astonishing
and insidious corollary "finding" - thoroughly refuted by
responsible historians and by the very documents relied upon
in Irving's distorted version of historical research - is
that Hitler neither ordered nor even knew about the
genocidal policy known as the "Final Solution" which
resulted in the murder of six million European Jews. Even
more disturbing is the recent evidence that Irving intends
to support anti-Semitic activities aimed at denying the very
fact that the Holocaust occurred. This matter is further
detailed later in this report. Irving's Theories Irving's thesis in
Hitler's War, questioning the origin and
responsibility for the Nazi policy of exterminating the
Jews, rests upon the following mistaken premises: (a) No
formal document signed by Hitler and ordering the
implementation of the genocide has been found; and (b) In a
November
30, 1941 entry in his telephone log, SS
Chief Heinrich Himmler recorded a directive he gave to
Security Police Chief Reinhard Heydrich to the effect
that "no liquidation" (keine Liquidierung) be
carried out regarding a particular transport of Berlin
Jews. This order, Irving alleges, came from Hitler. This,
Irving extrapolates, indicates that Hitler actually
opposed killing Jews. As to the first of
these premises, many professional historians and reviewers
of Irving's books have noted that while it is technically
true that no such single document exists, this fact is
simply misleading; to claim on this basis that Hitler was
ignorant of the extermination program reflects the confused
thinking of an amateurish dabbler in history, rather than a
serious and reliable analyst of historical events.
|
-2-On July
10, 1977, the London Times published an investigative
report into Irving's thesis about Hitler's lack of awareness
of the mass murders.[3]
The result was a thorough and convincing
refutation of Irving's position. In addition to illustrating
facts and documentation ignored by Irving, the report quoted
the very researcher employed by Irving to "search" for
"evidence" of Hitler's involvement in the "Final Solution"
as calling Irving's premise "ludicrous."[4]
The report also quoted the surviving author of the "Korherr
Statistical Report" - an official Nazi document dealing with
actions taken against the Jews - who described Irving's
thesis as "ridiculous." Moreover, Dr. Werner Koppen,
identified as Hitler's adjutant, called Irving's position
"absurd." Finally, discussing
the Nazis' use of indirect language with respect to the
"Final Solution" (including even the term itself), the
Times report criticized Irving for his "grave
misunderstanding of the degree of secrecy required" for the
program of genocide."The logic of euphemisms, like
'emigration,' 'expulsion,' and 're-settlement,'" the article
noted, "was that they were palatable labels for the horror
of what was going on. Hitler's Psychopathic Anti-Semitism An understanding of
the genesis of the "Final Solution" must begin with Hitler's
oft-stated promise to exterminate the Jews, to whom he
frequently referred as "parasites," "bacilli," and
"blood-suckers," the powerful corrupters and enemies of
Germany, requiring elimination ("Entfernung, or
"Beseitigung"). Throughout Mein Kampf,
Hitler's thousand-page testament composed during his
imprisonment in 1923-24 for his role in the unsuccessful
Munich "Putsch," one finds not only frequent similar
references, but open statements of his desire for the
destruction of the Jews, reflecting his obsession with the
subject.For example: It is the inexorable Jew who struggles for
his domination over nations. No nation can remove this
hand from its throat except by the sword. Only the
assembled and concentrated might of a national passion
rearing up in its strength can defy the International
enslavement of peoples. Such a process is and remains a
bloody one. And the following
from the final chapter of Mein Kampf: If at the beginning of the [First
World] War and during the War, 12 or 15 thousand of
these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under
poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our
very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of
the millions at the front would not have been in
vain. Hitler's psychopathic
hatred of the Jews was pervasive, starkly expressed,
unyielding and undiluted throughout his public career. As
Holocaust historian Dr. Lucy Dawidowicz noted in The War
Against the Jews, 1933-1945 (New York Holt,
Rinehart & Winston, 1975), "Anti-Semitism was the core
of Hitler's system of beliefs, and the central motivation
for his policies." At the brink of world War II, on January
30, 1939, Hitler candidly declared his war against the
Jews:
|
-3-In the course of my life I have very often
been a prophet, and have usually been ridiculed for it.
During the time of my struggle for power it was in the
first instance the Jewish race which only received my
prophecies with laughter when I said that I would one day
take over the leadership of the State, and with it that
of the whole nation, and that I would then ... settle the
Jewish problem. Their laughter was uproarious, but then I
think that for some time now they have been laughing on
the other side of their face(s). Today I will once more
be a prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in
and outside Europe should suceed in plunging the nations
once more into a world war, then the result will not be
the bolshevization of the earth, and thus this victory of
Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in
Europe!* In the middle of the
war, in a speech of February 24, 1943, Hitler referred to
the extermination (Ausrottung)
of European Jewry. At the end of the
war, with most of the Jews murdered, his Reich in shambles,
his own suicide imminent, Hitler could still dictate the
following final statement of April 29, 1945: "Above all I
charge the leaders of the nation and those under them to
scrupulous observance of the laws of race and to merciless
opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples,
International Jewry." Hitler's Orders According to
testimony at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials by Auschwitz
Commandant Rudolf
Hoess, among others, Himmler stated on several
occasions that Hitler had given the order for the "Final
Solution" and that the SS bore responsibility for executing
this order. It has been widely
documented that Hitler's murderous instructions to the SS
were carried out at the operational level by Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel in connection with "Operation Barbarossa,"
the Nazi code-word for the invasion of the Soviet
Union. In Section 1 of
Anatomy of the SS State (New York: Walker and Co.,
1968**), Dr. Helmut Krausnick, a leading German historian,
quoting from the Nuremberg record, clearly identifies Hitler
as the source of the genocide order: On Hitler's orders, the official duties of
the Einsatzgruppen were formally set out by Field Marshal
Keitel, Chief of 0KW, in "Instructions on Special Matters
attached to Directive No. 21 (Barbarossa)" of 13 March
1941, Paragraph 2(b), dictated by Hitler himself, read as
follows:
* Quoted in Documents on the Holocaust
(1981), published by Yad Vashem in cooperation with the
Anti-Defamation League and KTAV Publishing House,
Jerusalem.** Originally published in West Germany by Walter
Verlag A.G. (1965).
|
-4-"In order to prepare the political and
administrative organization the Reichsführer-SS has
been given by the Fuhrer certain special tasks within the
operations zone of the army; these stem from the
necessity finally to settle the conflict between two
opposing political Systems. Within the framework of these
tasks the Reichsfuhrer-SS will act independently and on
his own responsibility. This is, however, without
prejudice to the over-riding plenary power hereby
accorded to the Commander-in-Chief, Army, and the
authorities to whom it may be delegated by him. The
Reichsführer-SS is responsible for seeing that
military operations are not affected by any measures
necessary to carry out his task. Details will be settled
direct between OKH and the Reichsfuhrer-SS." The "special tasks"
entrusted to the Einsatzgruppen ("Special-Action Group"]
SS were to be clearly differentiated from specifically
military activity. Such instructions were clearly
reminiscent of and persuant to Hitler's genocidal racial
policy, which he had frequently justified in terms pitting
the Aryan way of life against the Jew in mortal
struggle. Nor was the March
directive the only such order. On September 12, 1941, Keitel
issued a directive regarding "Jews in the newly occupied
eastern territories," in which he again noted that the
"struggle against Bolshevism demands ruthless and energetic
measures, above all against the Jews, the main carriers of
Bolshevism." As Professor
Dawidowicz notes: "The Einsatzgruppen performed their
special tasks with staggering competence. According to
Nuremberg testimony, 2 million of the approximately 6
million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were killed by the
Einsatzgruppen and other security forces." Further Refutations Irving's "Hitler
didn't know" contention regarding the "Final Solution" is
further refuted by many noted historians whose writings
reflect the documented facts of the period, easily
accessible to any informed observer. Gordon A. Craig,
professor emeritus of humanities at Stanford University, who
is an award-winning historian of Germany, president of the
American Historical Association and a member of the Berlin
Historical Commission, has strongly criticized Irving's
theories about Hitler.In The Germans (New York: New
American Library, 1983), Craig notes that Irving's portrait
of a "more human" Hitler was achieved "not by the
presentation of new evidence but rather by means of the
technique employed by the author" -- a technique that
included ignoring statements by Hitler that did not fit
Irving's thesis. Craig adds, "Irving's
generosity toward Hitler assumed its most excessive form in
his treatment of the 'Final Solution'. . . .
[Irving] argued that there was no proof of Hitler's
having ordered the liquidation of the Jews, whereas, on the
contrary, there was 'incontrovertible evidence' that he
forbade it. Irving's 'incontrovertible evidence' of Hitler's
guiltlessness was of the flimsiest kind."
|
| -5- Craig goes on to
criticize Irving for "disregarding the commonsense view
that, given the enormity of the 'Final Solution' and the
potential results of its revelation, it was not surprising
that written evidence of Hitler's ordering the action did
not exist, and brushing aside as lnconsequential the
repeated instances of Hitler's Speaking publicly or
Privately of his intention of exterminating the
Jews." Finally, Craig
describes a 1978 meeting of historians in Germany, at which
Irving was subjected to widespread criticism.As Craig puts
it, "the Aschaffenburg conference, which included leading
writers on the Hitler problem from all over Germany, was in
accord when it came to rejecting Irving's views." In an essay analyzing
Irving's theories, entitled "Hitler and the Genesis of the
'Final Solution'" (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1979; XIII in Yad
Vashem Studies, Livia Rothkirchen, ed.), Prof. Martin
Broszat, director of the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte
(Institute for Contemporary History) in Munich, and author
of many books on Nazi Germany, states: In his book about Hitler, David Irving has
not presented in any systematic way either the factual
events of the "final solution" of Hitler's manifold
utterances about the treatment of the Jews during the
war.His revisionist theory is not derived from any
incontrovertible historical conclusion; rather the
arguments mustered in its support to which he constantly
refers, often arbitrarily scattered in the text and
footnotes, are in the main controversial, drawn from a
dozen different sources... He marshals inconclusive
arguments to which he authoritatively appends irrelevant
and erroneous inferences, presenting them as foregone
conclusions or to be assumed as such.Once the author had
committed himself to this theory, no shred of seeming
evidence was too shabby to support it. In his biography of
the Fuhrer, titled Adolf Hitler (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday & Co.,
1976), historian John Toland noted that "there was no doubt
that Hitler always took time to oversee the 'Final
Solution.' In this matter he neither needed nor took
advice.He made this clear in his message on the anniversary
of the promulgation of the party program in late February
[1941].'My prophecy,' he said, 'shall be fulfilled
that this war will not destroy Aryan humanity but it will
exterminate the Jew.Whatever the battle may bring in its
course or however long it may last, that will be its final
course.' The elimination of Jewry overrode victory
itself." Professor Dawidowicz,
too, notes that Hitler's obsession with killing the Jews was
paramount even to his imperial ambitions.Some people, she
has written, "thought that Hitler's notions about the Jews
were. . . no more than ideological window dressing" to
camouflage his military and political ambitions."Yet
precisely the reverse "as true," she continues."Hitler's
ideas about the Jews were at the center'of his mental
world.They shaped his world view and his political
ambitions, forming. . . the ineradicable core of National
Socialist doctrine." British historian
Gerald Reitlinger notes in The Final Solution (New
York: A.S. Barnes &
Co., 1961), "The part of the Fuehrer Order concerning the
execution of Jews was. . . never put on paper and even those
to whom it was passed were not all informed at the same
time." |
| -6- Illustrating this
point, and further noting Hitler's direct control over the
"Final Solution," Toland writes: "Only that March
[1941] did Goebbels himself learn the exact meaning
of the 'Final Solution.' Then Hitler told him flatly that
Europe must be cleansed of all Jews, 'if necessary by
applying the most brutal methods.The Fuhrer was so explicit
that Goebbels could now write in his diary: '. . A judgement is being visited upon the
Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved. . .One must
not be sentimental in these matters.If we did not fight
the Jew, they would destroy us.It's a life-and-death
struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish
bacillus.No other government and no other regime would
have the strength for such a global solution of this
question.' "By that Spring,"
Toland notes, six "killing centers" had been set up in
Poland, including Treblinka and Auschwitz In Harvest of
Hate, The Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews of
Europe (New York: Holocaust Library, 1979), Leon
Poliakov, a noted historian of anti-Semitism, quotes another
interesting diary entry - this one by Dr. Felix Kersten,
Himmler's personal physician.In this version of events
Himmler tells his doctor of Goebbels' involvement in
promoting Hitler's policy of genocide. Kersten quotes
Himmler: "In the Summer of 1940, the Fuehrer ordered that
the Jews be exterminated by degrees.He gave this task to the
55 and to we.That was the one and only time I contradicted
the Fuehrer. . . I told him, 'the 55 is ready to fight and
die from myself down to the last man, but don't give us a
mission like this.' The Fuehrer became furious and said,
'Himmler, you are being disobedient! What is the meaning of
this? This is an order; I take the responsibility for
it.' Personal Account of Auschwitz
Commandant The killing role of
the SS referred to by in these passages represented one-
half of the two-fold mechanism of the "Final Solution," the
other being the establishment of the death camps.With regard
to the latter point, the following excerpt from
Commandant of Auschwitz, The Autobiography of Rudolf
Hoess (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co., 1959),
Appendix 1, provides expert corroboration of Hitler's
order: In the summer of 1941, I cannot remember the
exact date, I was suddenly summoned to the Reichsfuhrer
55, directly by his adjutant's office.Contrary to his
usual Custom, Himmler received me without him adjutant
being present and said in effect:'The Fuhrer has ordered that the Jewish question
be solved once and for all and that we, the SS, are to
implement that order. 'The existing extermination centers in the East
are not in a position to carry Out the large actions
which are anticipated.I have therefore earmarked
Auschwitz for this purpose. . .You will learn further
details from
|
-7- Sturmbannfuhrer Eichmann of the Reich
Security head Officewho will call on you in the immediate
future. '. . You will treat this order as absolutely
secret, even from your superiors. 'The Jews are the sworn enemies of the German
people and must be eradicated.Every Jew that we
can lay our hands on is to be destroyed now during the
war, without exception. If we cannot now obliterate the
biological basis of Jewry, the Jews will one day destroy
the German people.' The murderous process
described here by Hoess was the subject of the infamous
Wannsee Conference in January, 1942.As noted by Professor
Raul Hilberg in his exhaustive 1961 study, The
Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle
Press), this conference (the invitation to which chillingly
indicated that it would be "followed by luncheon") brought
together high 55 officials and other Nazi figures to
coordinate and implement organizational and bureaucratic
details of the "Final Solution." Hilberg states: After the meeting was concluded, thirty
copies of the conference record were circulated in the
ministries and SS main offices.Gradually, the news of the
"final solution" seeped into the ranks of the
bureaucracy.The knowledge did not come to all officials
all at once.How much a man knew depended on his proximity
to the destructive operations and on his insight into the
nature of the destruction processOn the very highest level the full burden of
knowledge revealed itself in the written word. Hitler,
Goring, Himmler, and Goebbels had a complete view of the
destruction process; they knew the details of the mobile
killing operations in Russia, and they saw the whole
scheme of the deportations in the rest of
Europe. The Nuremberg record
is replete with statements attesting to the fact that the
extermination orders came directly from Hitler.These include
statements by Keitel, Hoess, Security Chief Ernst
Kaltenbrunner, Reich Chancellery chief Hans Heinrich
Lammers, and others. David Irving's
historical research on the Nazi regime is obviously so
questionable that it simply cannot be relied upon by anyone
seriously interested in the history of the Third
Reich. On Hitler's "Opposition" to Genocide In The Holocaust
and the Historians, a work exploring the "mystery of why
the Holocaust was belittled or overlooked in the history
books," Dr. Lucy Dawidovicz, the noted historian of the
Holocaust, described Hitler's War as "the nadir in
Hitlerology" and David Irving as "an amateur historian,
whose reputation as a German apologist and as a writer
without regard for accuracy or truth won him a measure of
notoriety."
|
| - 8- Professor Dawidowicz
went on to demolish the second part of Irving's thesis --
i.e., that Hitler expressly opposed killing the Jews -- in
the following excerpt, quoted from The Holocaust and the
Historians:* Irving's thesis, which denies Hitler's
responsibility for the murder of the Jews, is too
preposterous to require refutation and argument, but one
example will suffice to show his "scholarly" method.As
seemingly irrefutable proof for his case, Mr. Irving
offered an entry in Himmler's handwritten telephone
log.On November 30, 1941, at 1:30 P.M., Himmler, then in
Hitler's military headquarters bunker "Wolf's Lair,"
telephoned SS Obergruppenfuhrer Heydrich, then in
Prague.The gist of the telephone message was entered in
four short lines in the log, though Mr. Irving cited only
the last two lines:Judentransport aus Berlin keine
Liquidierung. That is: "Transport of Jews from Berlin. No
liquidation." From this Mr. Irving concluded that Hitler had
somehow learned what Himmler was up to and had ordered
him to stop.An obedient Nazi, Himmler had called Heydrich
in Prague to transmit Hitler's order.But in view of
everything we know about the destruction of the Jews,
Irving's construction of events makes no sense. .
.Irving's conclusion fails to provide a satisfactory
explanation of those two lines in view of what actually
happened, though it serves to support his perversely
fanciful interpretation of Hitler's character. To understand those two lines it is necessary to
read also the first two lines of the telephone
conversation.Here is the full German text: Verhaftung Dr. Jekelius [name not
fully decipherable]
Angebl [ich] Sohn Molotovs.
Judentransport aus Berlin.
keine Liquidierung. That is: Arrest Dr. Jekelius. Transport of Jews
from Berlin. No liquidation. The last two lines now make sense. Himmler called
Heydrich to instruct him that a certain Dr.Jekelius'
presumes to be the the Soviet Foreign Minister's son, was
to be taken in
* Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981,
pp 36-38
|
| -9- custody by the security police. Jekelius could be
located in the transport of Jews from Berlin arriving in
Prague and, unlike the rest of the transport, was not to be
liquidated.(Perhaps the Germans intended to exchange
Jekelius for one of their officers captured by the
Russians.) Irving, wittingly or unwittingly, has in fact
disproved his own theory.For if Hitler was indeed
responsible for Himmler's call (there is no evidence that he
was), then Irving has shown that Hitler did in fact know all
about the murder of the Jews.And indeed, how else could it
have been? The murder of the Jews was Hitler's most
consistent policy, in whose execution he persisted
relentlessly, and obsessiveness with the Jews may even have
cost him his war for the Thousand Year Reich.
|
| -10- 
The November 30, 1941 entry in Himmler's telephone
log relied upon by Irving as the basis for his contention
that Hitler opposed the killing of the Jews.Line 4 of the
indicated paragraph contains the "no liquidation"
reference.
|
| - 11 - Reviewers Expose Weaknesses of Hitler's
War The 1977 publication
of Hitler's War, asserting Irving's fantastic Hitler didn't
know" theory about the "Final Solution, generated widespread
criticism from many eminent reviewers. Professor Walter
Laqueur of Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and
International Studies, writing in the New York Times Book
Review of April 3, 1977, stated: "The reasons for this
book's shortcomings lie deep.Mr. Irving may have outgrown
the eccentric political views of his earlier years, . . .
when he criticized his native country for lining up with the
Bolsheviks in a fight against the first great unifying force
(meaning Nazi Germany) Europe had known in 600 years.'.But,
Dr. Laqueur goes on, Hitler's War "reads like the plea of an
advocate who knows from the very beginning what he intends
to prove and who marshals his evidence to his end
relentlessly and' with an enthusiasm worthy of a better
cause.The result is a book of value to a few dozen military
historians capable of separating new facts from old fiction,
of differentiating between fresh, documentary material and
unsupported claims, distortions and sheer
fantasies. Reviewing Hitler's
War in The New York Review of Books on May 26, 1977, noted
British historian Alan Bullock says of Irving's theory of
Hitler as a weak" leader that "there is so great a volume of
evidence against such a view that it is astonishing anyone
can seriously suggest it." Commenting on the
lack of an actual "Final Solution" document signed by
Hitler, Professor Bullock notes: This is hardly surprising considering the
monstrosity of the crimes being committed, the massacre
of several million people. Elaborate precautions were
taken to confine knowledge of the facts to as small a
circle as possible, denials were issued which Mr. Irving
himself characterizes as "the purest humbug," and the
ghastly reality was camouflaged by a series of euphemisms
(such as the "Final Solution") which were employed even
between those who knew what was taking place. Finally, rejecting
Irving's contentions, Professor Bullock observes that Irving
"asks us to believe that the man who claimed as his greatest
discovery the identification of the Jew as the bacillus
causing all decay in society, the man who from beginning to
end of his career made the cleansing of Germany of its
Jewish population a main plank of his program and spoke
openly of his intentions, had no knowledge of or interest in
what happened to the Jews when they got to the
East. Historian John Lukacs
in the August 19, 1977 National Review described Hitler's
War as "appalling," containing "hundreds of errors:
wrong names, wrong dates, and, what is worse, statements
about events, including battles, that did not really take
place.These errors, however, are not the result of
inadequate research; they are not technical mistakes or
oversights.They are the result of the dominant tendency of
the author's mind."
|
| - 12 - Comments on Irving's Other Work The very fact that
the Holocaust did occur--that it was carried out with
systematic precision by a regime ruled absolutely by Hitler
and notable for its strict adherence to rules and lines of
authority, should render any doubt as to Hitler's
authorization of genocide astonishingly simple-minded,
capricious and absurd.These facts may have forced Irving to
develop another facet of his writing about the Nazi regime
in order to put into question Hitler's authority and
control.Thus, Irving's effort to "humanize" Hitler, to
portray him as weak rather than ruthless, the victim of
scheming, uncooperative staffers and adversaries rather than
as the cold-blooded, all-controlling dictator. Several reviewers of
his books have pointed out that one of the clearest
implications in Irving's work is this apparent effort to
"rehabilitate" the reputations of Hitler and his regime, as
well as to disparage and ridicule the Allied
leaders. Reviewing Irving's
1977 book The Trail of the Fox, a biography of German
General Erwin Rommel whose nickname was "The Desert Fox,"
David Pryce-Jones wrote in the New York Times Book Review of
November 20, 1977: "Like all Irving's work, this goes beyond
revisionism: Hitler, his lieutenants and his creed are to be
pure and shining, cleansed of the crimes committed in their
name by tainted degenerates whom Irving keeps in the shadows
out of sight.Goebbels's Ministry of Propaganda might have
hoped for a postwar line like this." In a much earlier
work - Accident: The Death of General Sikorski
(1967) --Irving propounded another speculative and untenable
theory, concerning the assassination" in 1942 of the Polish
Prime Minister-in-exile, General Sikorski, allegedly carried
Out on the orders of Winston Churchill.Writing in the London
Sunday Times Weekly Review on June 12, 1977, British
historian Hugh Trevor-Roper observed: It is well known that some years ago Mr.
Irving convinced himself that General Sikorski, who died
in an air crash at Gibraltar, was "assassinated" by
Winston Churchill, to whom in fact his death was a
political calamity.Not a shred of evidence or probability
has ever been produced in support of this theory and when
it was tested in the courts, Mr. Irving's only "evidence"
was shown to be a clumsy misreading of a manuscript diary
(I have myself seen the diary and feel justified in using
the word "clumsy"). In more recent
years,reviewers of Irving's later books have continued to
observe these tendencies in his work.Another review by John
Lukacs (himself the author of two highly regarded books on
World War II history) reviewing Irving's 1981 work, The
War Between the Generals in the New York
Times Book Review of March B, described Irving as
"one of the worst contemporary historians" whose "factual
errors are beyond belief." Lukacs continues: "Mr. Irving's
methods are not merely bad; they are abominable.In this book
as in certain of his earlier books, one of his purposes is
to rehabilitate Hitler. . .He not only tells his readers
that Hitler was an able man (which, alas, in many ways he
was), but tries to convince them that he was a man morally
superior to his Opponents." Irving does this, Lukacs notes,
by continually denigrating Hitler's Opponents.
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| - 13 In his review of
The War Between the Generals in the New York
Times of April 16, 1981, Drew Middleton, the
Times' renowned military commentator, stated that in
this book, Irving "has reduced the greatest campaign of
World War II to the level of latrine gossip." "Moreover," Middleton
continues, "you get the feeling that when Mr. Irving finds a
particularly gamy quotation, he rushes it into print without
considering the reliability of its source." Middleton also
notes: "Frequently Mr. Irving is in error," and that "Mr.
Irving seems to take a juvenile delight" in depicting the
personal flaws and foibles of Allied leaders, such as
Eisenhower, Churchill and Patton. In a similar vein,
Newsday editor W. Sylvester McTernan, reviewing The
War Between the Generals in that Long Island newspaper on
April 2, 1981, wrote that the book "would appear to be part
of a continuing effort to rehabilitate National Socialism."
McTernan adds, "Outrageous assertions, properly documented,
are legitimate history, but Irving does not allow himself to
become too bent under the burden of proof.The danger, then,
is that as shallow a historian as Irving is, he writes
well.The casual reader is likely to swallow the book
whole. Support for Anti-Semitism In a May 7, 1981
letter to Newsday, responding to McTernan's review, Irving
defended his views as simply "unfashionable." More
interesting and revealing, however, was his reference in
this letter to what he called "my infuriating offer of
$1,000 for evidence that Hitler knew of Auschwitz." That
bizarre offer is highly reminiscent of the cynical $50,000
"reward" offer for "proof" that the Nazis perpetrated the
mass murder of Jews in death camp gas chambers - an offer
issued by the so-called Institute for Historical Review
(IHR).The IHR is a California-based pseudo-academic
organization dedicated to promoting propaganda denying the
reality of the Holocaust and is closely associated with long
time anti-Semite Willis A. Carto and his Liberty Lobby,
probably the most important anti-Semitic group in the United
States. The similarity
between these two "reward offers" would be, perhaps, only
incidental where it not for the fact that David Irving is
listed as a featured speaker at the fifth annual
"convention" of the Institute for Historical Review to be
held in the Los Angeles area over the 1983 Labor Day
weekend.Irving has thus come' to the point not only of
questioning Hitler's authority for the "Final Solution" and
of seeking to rehabilitate Hitler's reputation, but now is
also openly participating in the activities of blatant
anti-Semites who seek not simply to downplay Hitler's
crimes, but - in the guise of historical "revisionism" - to
deny them altogether. Rehabilitating the Reich An example of
Irving's effort to "humanize" Hitler and at the same time to
denigrate the Allied leaders, can be seen in the
introduction to Hitler's War. "In an age," Irving
writes, "in which the governments of the.democracies, both
during World War II and in later years, unhesitatingly
attempted, engineered, or condoned the assassination of the
inconvenient. . . we learn that Hitler, the unscrupulous
dictator, not only never resorted to the assassination of
foreign opponents, but flatly forbade the Abwehr
[Intelligence Agency] to attempt it
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- 14 -Most of all, Irving
states, he wants to "de-demonize the Nazi
leaders."Confronted by the phenomenon of Hitler himself,
(historians] cannot grasp that he was an ordinary,
walking, talking human weighing some 155 pounds, with
graying hair, largely false teeth, and chronic digestive
ailments." Irving has
consistently expressed such views over a period of years.On
a 1977 BBC program, for example, when asked whether he
thought Hitler was "evil," Irving replied, "I will go
further.He was as evil as Churchill as evil as Roosevelt, as
evil as Truman." More recently, a November 23, 1982 United
Press International story datelined Cologne, West Germany,
referred to a statement made by Irving during a television
discussion following the broadcast of the American series,
"Holocaust." According to this report, David Irving said
Adolf Hitler had not ordered the extermination of Jews and
he compared the extermination of Jews to the Anglo-American
bombing of Dresden." As Professor Walter
Laqueur noted in his review of Hitler's War in the
April 3, 1977 New York Times Book Review, "There is
no shred of evidence" for this notion about a benign Hitler
and other remarkable contentions by Irving.Professor Laqueur
pointed out that Hitler was a relentless worker," who "in
the early years of the war showed far more military genius
than his field marshals," and who "showed iron determination
and hypnotic powers of leadership" as well as "a phenomenal
memory." Furthermore, in this
review, Professor Laqueur described a significant legal
development which also sheds light on Irving's questionable
credibility: The affair of his Convoy PQ 17 book
has made Mr. Irving a little more cautious.That volume
blamed a captain of the Royal Navy for a "scatter" order
to merchantmen in a Russia-bound convoy in July, 1942, as
a result of which two-thirds of the ships were destroyed
by German U-boats.The court found the captain a brave man
who had done his duty; what it had to say about Mr.
Irving was much less flattering, and there were heavy
damages for libel. Irving's Latest Work A recent further
illustration of this perverse thinking by Irving appeared in
the April ii, 1983 issue of New York Magazine, in an
item about Irving's newest book, The Secret Diaries
of Hitler's Doctor.The book publishes the records
of Dr. Theodor Morell, Hitler's war-time physician. Continuing his two
major themes - namely, "humanizing" Hitler and claiming that
he did not know about the mass murder of the Jews - Irving
is quoted as saying, I don't think the Jewish people will
like" his new book, because "they regard Hitler as a
vampire-like figure.He was a very normal person with an
obsessive preoccupation with his medical
well-being." Moreover, Irving
added, "I was nervous that I would come across an entry
where Morell noted that Hitler wasn't able to sleep because
of the Jewish killings, which would have disagreed with my
findings (i.e., that Hitler was unaware of the genocide).I
was relieved not to see one.
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- 15 -Here, Irving not only
maintains the notion of Hitler as the "ordinary" man, but
singles out the Jewish community as the source of
the "demonizing" process he is trying to
reverse.Furthermore, one sees at work here Irving's
untenable intellectual method: first, he develops a
controversial,even groundless,' premise; second, he
"examines" the historical record and third, finding nothing
to contradict his theory, proclaims a discovery, and the
vindication of his guesswork. More Holocaust "Denial" Yet Irving has not
allowed the actual existence of documentation contrary to
his theories to stand in the way of his preconceived
notions, as has been previously noted in this report.In a
more sensational instance of questioning documentation
relating to the Holocaust, Irving has questioned the
authenticity of Anne Frank's diary.The London Jewish
Chronicle of December 7, 1979 reported: "Mr.
Irving said that he was neutral in the matter, but in view
of the doubts expressed by some Right-wing circles about the
authenticity of the diary, he felt that an independent
investigation was called for." The article also stated that
the introduction to the West German edition of Hitler's
War contained a statement to the effect that the
Diary of Anne Frank was among "many forgeries"
relating to the record of the Nazi regime.It is interesting
to note that one of the primary and most frequently advanced
propaganda assertions promoted by the Institute for
Historical Review is the claim that Anne Frank's diary is a
forgery.IHR literature promotes a book called Anne
Frank's Diary - A Hoax by Ditlieb Felderer, a
long time anti-Semitic activist and publisher in Sweden who
was recently sentenced to 10 months in prison for
disseminating hate material in that country.Felderer is one
of many anti-Semites listed as members of the Editorial
Advisory Committee of the Journal of Historical
Review, the quarterly publication of the IHR. Links to Other Extremists On the European
scene, Irving has lent his name and his presence to
activities sponsored by Gerhard Frey, publisher of the
far-right West German newspaper National Zeitung, who
is also president of the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), or
German People's Union, a group which is sympathetic to the
Nazi regime and which strives to end all war crimes
trials.The National Zeitung of May 6, 1983 carried
Frey's "invitation" to readers to attend a series of
lectures by Irving, identified as "the world-renowned
historian," on the now discredited "Hitler diaries."
Earlier, on January 21, 1983 the National Zeitung
carried a picture of the guests at a memorial meeting in
tribute to Hans-Ulrich Rudel, the most highly decorated
fighter pilot in Hitler's Luftwaffe, who died in 1982.This
photo and its caption identified Irving as occupying a
prominent place on the dais at this meeting.On May 9, 1983,
at a meeting of the DVU, Irving was awarded the
National Zeitung's "European Freedom Prize,"
worth 10,000 German marks. Irving's Early Thinking Irving has apparently
held an admiring view of the Nazi regime for many years.In
May, 1959, a campus publication called Carnival
Times, published in London, and listing David Irving
of Imperial College as Editor, carried an editorial titled
"Battle for Europe," which at one point referred favorably
to British neo-fascist Oswald Mosley.In the Course of making
a case for the formation of a "European Union," the editor
criticized the United States for opposing such a
|
| - 16 - plan allegedly because this union would mean "the
collapse of their lucrative NATO set-up." The editorial then
stated: The organs of the National Press owned by
Jews are acting in the same way.The formation of a
European Union is interpreted as an attempt at building a
group of superior peoples, and the Jews have always
viewed with suspicion the emergence of any "master race"
(other than their own, of course). Moreover, the
editorial defended the concept of the "European Union" as a
means of opposing the Soviet Union.To bolster this argument,
the editorial list stated: "Why, little Germany, by herself,
under the direction of Herr Hitler, nearly succeeded in
subjugating the combined might of the Bolshevik Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics.Perhaps If,, at the same time, he
was not being attacked by the whole of the rest of the
world, he might have succeeded." Conclusion It is clear that
David Irving's bizarre historical theories, particularly
regarding the Nazi regime, must be viewed skeptically by
people seriously interested in facts, rather than
sensationalism.Many renowned historians and knowledgeable
commentators have repudiated his work, observing that
Irving's books are far heavier on gossip and guesswork than
on scholarship.Even more important, his work is simply
unreliable as history, and transparently reveals a
disquieting desire to whitewash the image of Hitler and his
Reich. Apparently, David
Irving's careless "research" and lack of credibility have
thus far not dimmed his notoriety nor damaged his
marketability.Therefore, his involvement in such blatantly
anti-Semitic activities as those of the Institute for
Historical Review, his questioning of the authenticity of
Anne Frank's diary, and his other disturbing views and
activities must raise concern about the extent of Irving's
ability to influence the uninformed, and his potential for
providing respectability to bigots.
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Notes on the above
document 1. In 1977 the ADL undertook
serious
attempts to sabotage the sale and promotion by The
Viking Press of David Irving's best-selling biography
Hitler's War. 2: Before agreeing to lecture
to audiences of the DVU (the German People's Union), a
democratic German organisation run by Munich publisher Dr
Gerhard Frey, Mr Irving asked the German embassy for
advice, which responded in writing that the DVU was a
properly constituted and legal German organisation. It in no
way fits the description given in the ADL document.
[Return] 3: The Sunday Times
(not The Times which was owned by a different
corporation) published on July 10, 1997 an article by
journalists Gitta Sereny (now Mrs Don Honeyman) and
Lewis Chester. Sereny is a defendant in the 1996
libel action
brought by David Irving, in the course of which evidence
has come to light suggesting links existing in 1977 between
her and the ADL. [Return] 4: The reference is to Dr
Elke Fröhlich, Munich researcher and discoverer of
the whereabouts of the long-lost Goebbels diaries in the
Moscow archives. Dr Fröhlich was a close friend and
sometime assistant of Mr Irving since 1963. Gitta
Sereny had to publish in The Sunday Times two
weeks later a letter
retracting and apologising for this alleged quotation
from her.[Return]
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