Ron Casey: You have published a book on
Churchill's War and in that you question his
role and his place in history as a great
statesman. Irving: I think there's no denying the
fact that Churchill was a great man, he was a man
of considerable presence and character and he was a
magnificent speaker and a wonderful writer. I think
it was a great tragedy for Britain that he became
Prime Minister in 1940, because I think he took the
wrong turning with Britain and the British Empire.
I think that if he'd taken a different turning in
1940 the world would have been spared a lot of
suffering and would also, incidentally, have been
spared what is now called the Holocaust. Ron Casey: What would that turn have
been? To sign a peace with Germany? Irving: If we had accepted the very
generous peace offer that the Germans made to us in
1940, as a lot of British historians are now coming
to agree - the younger generation of British
historians are coming round to agree that David
Irving isn't all that wrong with his
[hypothesis] - as you said I published the
book in 1987 in Australia - and the others are now
gradually coming round to my point of view. Ron Casey: You said just a moment ago,
something that interests me very much. You said it
would have avoided the Holocaust. Irving: Whatever it was, yes. Ron Casey: No, no, but by your own
words, you said there was a Holocaust. Irving: You're the one who said I said
that. Ron Casey: I just heard you. Irving: You said that I denied it. I've
[never] denied that there was a Holocaust.
I [just] don't like using that word. I
don't like talking about The Holocaust as
though there was only one Holocaust, it's just that
I get a bit unhappy about the fact that the Jewish
community have tried to make a monopoly of their
own suffering. They are the ones who make the money
out of misery whereas the Australians who suffered
in the Japanese prison camps haven't made a bent
nickel out of their suffering. And I tend to be
even-handed, if I can. Ron Casey: What is your estimate of the
number of Jews who died at the hands of Hitler's
regime in the war years? What number - and I don't
like using this word - what number would you
concede were killed in concentration camps? Irving: I think, like any scientist, I'd
have to give you a range of figures and I'd have to
say a minimum of one million, which is a monstrous
crime, and a maximum of about four million,
depending on what you mean by killed. If putting
people into a concentration camps where they die of
barbarity and typhus and epidemics is killing then
I would say the four million figure because,
undoubtedly, huge numbers did die in the camps in
the conditions that were very evident at the end of
the war. Ron Casey: I'm finding this more and
more surprising as we go along, Mr. Irving. Irving: Yes - Ron Casey: - No, hold on! Because I've
always been told that you "deny the Holocaust", you
deny the persecution of the Jews to the extent to
which the Jewish community would have us believe
but here you have just now admitted that you would
go to a high figure of four million. That, to me,
is a huge number of people and it vindicates the
claim of a Holocaust but you say that there could
have been up to four million. That doesn't sound to
me as though you're trying to deny it. You've just
said four million. Irving: There's been a lot of hard lying
about me ever since this unfortunate business
began. People have tended to do a lot of lying, and
they've tried to smear my character, and it's very
difficult at a range of 12,000 miles to keep my end
up in this particularly ugly campaign and I'm very
grateful to you for allowing me to speak, in
fact. Ron Casey: It just surprises me that
there is so much antagonism towards your proposed
visit to Australia and yet here, on this programme,
you've just admitted that the Holocaust could have
taken four million lives. It's like your guilty or
you're not guilty. You're pregnant: You can't be a
little bit pregnant, you've got to be pregnant or
not pregnant. What you've said to me now is that
you would as high as four million then all the Jews
have said about the Holocaust is true and, indeed,
that's a horrible figure but I've never heard it
said that David Irving would agree to four million
people being killed in the Holocaust. That, to me,
for you to say it, is quite amazing. Irving: It depends on definitions. It
depends on what we mean by that ugly word Holocaust
and I think that the Jewish community were very
clever in inventing that word round about 1970,
incidentally. They've invented the word but they
refuse to define what they mean by it. If you
include everybody who died by whatever means, then
you could probably go as high as four million but
an awful lot of people died in World War Two, about
twenty or thirty millions Russians and quite a lot
of English people and not a few Australians as
well. It was not limited just to the Jewish
community. Ron Casey: All right, good to talk to
you, Mr. Irving. Thank you for setting the record
straight once again, and this is the bottom line
with this interview, if the court rules that you
can come to Australia, you are quite willing to
appear to debate, to discuss, perhaps, is a better
word, your theories regarding the Holocaust, your
theories regarding the persecution of the Jews and
the deaths of Jews in concentration camps in World
War Two, you'd be quite willing to discuss that
publicly on television with leaders of the Jewish
community. Irving: You've got my word for it. Ron Casey: All right. Thanks David
Irving in London. Thank you for your time, sir. |