Sunday, October 17, 2010David
Irving, "J.," and some of the 2010 tour group he
led to the Führer's Headaquarters in front
of Hitler's Bunker at The Wolf's Lair in East
Prussia, September 2010. Others inside bunker,
missed photo call. Motto of 2011 tour, starting
September 1: "Let's
invade Poland
again."
David Irving
spoke in Clearwater Florida: an audience member
describes by Stephen
Dahl HOW does Mr. Irving do it?
Within the space of two weeks, he comes from a tour
of Auschwitz,
a
tour of the Wolf's Lair,
an English sojourn, and then to the American
cousins, to wit, driving from Nashville, to
Atlanta, and on to Clearwater. Thence to his lair
in Key West. For a gentleman of his age he reminds
one of Dr. Samuel Johnson touring the
Hebrides in his sixties. As diarist James
Boswell wrote, "A greater journey has never
been attempted by one of such years" (or something
like that). Mr. Irving, having survived the
American diet, was predictably slumped in his
chair. He rose briefly, but gave most of his topic
"Hitler's People" from a chair. To his right the
delightful and gorgeous "J" teased him on his many
idiosyncrasies, half-stealing the show. But it was a right good talk, in fact, an
intimate evening in which Mr. Irving, in his
Saville Row best, offered a deeply personal
discourse on his life, his old Rolls Royce, and his
prodigious potpourri of interviews with various
officials, soldiers and secretaries of the Third
Reich -- most significantly, intimates of Adolf,
his secretaries, bodyguards, and "loyal"
minions. There is no one who has
spoken to more (once) living Nazi bigshots than
Mr. Irving, and no one but him (it seems) has
garnered their utter trust. The followers of David Irving were doubtless
familiar with his gambit, his track on
Middle-Atlantic English and his to-do's with book
editors. He gave an amusing tale of a compliment:
"Your wife is very homely." In England, a
compliment, one's wife being lovely, honest, and a
veritable hearth-fire. Not so in America. Or, "I'll
visit your wife and knock her up," which in Merrie
Olde means "knock on the door;" hereabouts,
something else. Irving adherents who watch the
YouTube lectures will recognize Mr. Irving has
several verbal mainstays, which serve mainly as
ice-breakers. Similarly, he related the story of
Adolf Hitler's fountain pen, snitched by Otto
Günsche, and preserved anonymously among the
latter's effects during his ten year stay in the
Gulags. Only about ten percent of German POWs
survived their Russian hospitality. David
Irving visits Hitler's secretary Christa Schroeder
in 1976 He went on to detail his visits with Hitler's
secretaries (he had four) and that Hitler needed to
chat with the ladies at day's end, generals and
politicos having eaten his fire. "He wanted a bit
of apple cake and a chat." One secretary
[Johanna Wolf] had spoken to no one,
and Irving respected her privacy. Which engendered
respect from the others. He would have the
interview, and quickly learned exactly when "it was
time to listen." David Irving would then go home
and write down everything he had heard, as no one
in the Hitler circle would record or give evidence
(that could be used against them) knowing that it
was being transcribed. It
is impossible to doubt Mr. Irving's honesty about
these encounters, and all Irving followers should
remind themselves that the press continually twists
his remarks. As in the famous remark about the
Auschwitz "gas chambers" : "More people died in the
back seat of Ted Kennedy's..." etc. Mr. Irving was
referring to the reconstruction of the gas chamber
by the Polish/Russian regime. Hence his view of
Auschwitz as a "Disney world" presentation. Indeed,
"What you see is the work of Hollywood
[type] carpenters." That it was a
reconstruction was not admitted for many years. No
one can argue that it is a huge tourist
attraction. Mr. Irving also referred to his
upcoming Heinrich Himmler biography, and
brought up his interview with Himmler's brother
Gebhard, who told him "Heini was a coward" --
scared of Hitler's disapproval. This Mr. Irving
linked to the Holocaust question and showed that
Himmler had every reason to keep the Führer
out of the loop. He emphasized that the
British had been reading the SS and Police encoded
transmissions which often refer to direct
exterminations, but leave many questions open. In
America the literal German mind is greatly
misunderstood. Their bureaucracy functioned on
written orders, not hints, or hems or haws. Mr.
Irving also made a significant point: "Back then,
the written word prevailed. Now it's all email and
phone calls." How true! Historian
with n*gger-brown Rolls Royce, in the good old days
(Photo: THE TATLER).
With the success of his Rommel book, Mr. Irving
was able to fill a bag with pounds sterling and
tramp to the Rolls Royce dealer in Berkeley Square,
Mayfair. At first rebuffed, he showed the contents
of his sac. "Ah. Which one would you like?" asked
salesman, as Irving pointed at the Silver Shadows.
"The n*gger brown one, Sir," was his reply; at the
time a perfectly normal color description. "Ah. We
call that chocolate-bean brown, Sir." This vehicle was so beautiful that Mr. Irving
would, particularly in Germany, find dozens of
people admiring it. So much for the good life, now
evaporated. Mr. Irving is the gypsy scholar
(Matthew Arnold's term) and needs readers'
support as much as he deserves it. [As for
ethnic terminology, it was once innocent, almost
jocund. Today it is used by the media as one more
tool of extortion. If black folks can (and do) use
the term why can not the rest of us? Or aren't we
all "equal"?]
THE question periods brought forth a number of
"what if" questions, usually an historian's biggest
waste of time. But Mr. Irving turned these "what if
Hitler had died in the bomb blast?" enquiries into
the obvious assertion that the Russians would have
preyed on the civil confusion, and would have raped
and killed even more Teutons, that the Allies had
"unconditional surrender" tattooed on their souls,
and that even Dunkirk was explainable: No one,
least of all Hitler, having fought them in WWI,
thought the British would ever abandon their posts
and betray their Belgian and French allies. The
British genius for defense is its sharpest spike.
Irving related an incident when the German chief of
naval operations staff asked, "When can we have the
'invasion barges' back?" to which Hitler replied,
"they are my ruse" -- explaining that he never had
a a real intention or plan to invade Britain. Mr. Irving also mentioned Churchill's alcoholic
rant and order to launch poison gas attacks on six
German cities (at a Cabinet meeting on July 6,
1944, confirmed by the diaries of four of his
toadies). Hitler not only forbade the assassination
of generals and politicians, he said, but ordered:
"Germany will never be the first to use poison
gas." If only Kaiser Wilhelm were of a similar
drift! Indeed, in 1944 the Germans had a huge
storehouse of nerve gases, thirty thousand tons, of
which the Allies had no knowledge, let alone gas
masks to protect them therefrom. Now, if Hitler had
released it on D-Day? Mr. Irving demurred. Thus,
most of the "what if" poseurs were deflated. So, everyone got their money's worth, and David
Irving, adored and bedraggled, went to (hopefully)
a few luxuriant days in Key West. Should he ever
write an autobiography, it should be entitled "My
Struggle". Wait a minute, I think that's been used
before. Never mind, the public's memory is
short.
-
Arrest
and Imprisonment of David Irving in Austria
2005-2006
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