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Irving and Todt

Reply-To: H-NET History of Antisemitism List
Sender: H-NET History of Antisemitism List
From: Steven F Sage
List Editor: Richard S Levy
Wednesday, July 26, 2000

APROPOS of Roni Stauber's H-Net Antisemitism paper on the career of David Irving prior to the Lipstadt libel trial, I offer the following personal experience of a scholarly exchange with Irving. One of my two books-in-progress concerns Organisation Todt, the vast Nazi public works and slave labor agency. In that regard during summer 1998 I sought the (purported) diary of Fritz Todt, founder of OT.
Back in 1978, David Irving claimed in the preface to his book The War Path that he'd consulted Todt's diary, and had been the first to do so. Such a document should have been a real find. But Irving cited it substantively in only two places; in one of which, the factoid he cited was available in a published Nazi period source. More recently, Irving stated on his website that he had donated much source material to the Institut fuer Zeitgeschichte (IfZ, the Institute for Modern History) in Munich. Irving claimed having included the Todt papers in that bequest.
So I wrote to IfZ seeking the said Todt diary. IfZ replied stating they held no such item. Then I contacted Irving, who in reply mentioned a "transcript" of Todt's diary yet without naming any transcriber. A transcript sounds like a good news, bad news joke. The good news is that, if said Todt diary exists, one is relieved of deciphering Todt's scrawl, which I had already encountered. The bad news is that a transcript could have sanitized the diary, excerpted portions, and perhaps interpolated material. If a transcript exists. If a diary exists. When I informed Irving that IfZ denied holding any diary, he offered to contact's Todt's daughter in Munich on my behalf. But then, as I expected, Irving never got back to me.
So, does the Todt diary exist, available to scholars in any tangible form? Or is it like the Hitler diary of spring 1983? Or altogether a chimera? Proving a negative is difficult at any time but two circumstances seem relevant.
The first concerns Todt's only postwar German biographer, Franz W. Seidler, who holds a professorship at a Bundeswehr war college in Munich. Seidler uses the resources of the IfZ. He is also a denizen of the same city as Todt's daughter. He has written with acknowledged sympathies toward the Wehrmacht, and toward the memory of Fritz Todt. Were a Todt diary to be cited anywhere, one would expect it to have been cited in Seidler's German-language biography of Todt or his history of Organisation Todt. However, these contain no citations to the diary nor mentions of its existence.
The second case is that of an American academic given to neo-Nazi displays, who has also written about Todt. While a History department chairman at a southern U.S. university, this professor exhibited as his office motto a poster bearing the Nazi eagle and swastika above the inscription, "Treu und fest hinter dem Fuehrer", i.e., "loyal and firm behind the Fuehrer". The man's (unpublished) doctoral dissertation had concerned an aspect of Todt's works, and cited letters and memoranda obtained from the Todt family whose confidence he had sought, in 1967-1968. In this regard one might again have expected some citation to the Todt diary or at least an allusion to its existence. But the dissertation contained none.
Returning to Irving, the question of whether he really ever had a copy or some version of Fritz Todt's diary must remain unsolved as a matter of certainty although a researcher must proceed on the basis of a practical, working assumption. Whose words should guide that assumption, those of David Irving or of the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte? Aiming to complete a book of my own on a large but hitherto neglected topic, I've made my working choice and have proceeded. With several exciting finds but alas, no Todt diary.
Steven F Sage
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David Irving replies Wednesday, July 26, 2000

[email protected]

I APPRECIATE that (Norman Finkelstein notwithstanding) people have the belief that it is open season on David Irving.

Firstly, your readers might like to know that I have now (two days ago) posted Mr Justice Gray's Judgment in full on my website in a 134 page "printed" (i.e. PDF) version, with illustrations, documents, and annotations. This version corrects the various spelling, German, etc. errors in the original 333-page document. It is a free download at http://www.focal.org/lipstadt/judgment.pdf (Note the British legal spelling of "judgment").

Secondly: In my own defence allow me to make the following comments on Steven Sage's posting about the Todt diary. You can ignore it or post it if you wish. Sage implies that the document does not exist, i.e. that I lied. When I researched the first edition of Hitler's War, published by The Viking Press in 1977, I obtained from private sources, including members of Hitler's staff, many unpublished source documents, all of which I gave in the 1970s and 1980s to the Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Sammlung Irving, and microfilms of which I gave to the Imperial War Museum in London. The gentleman at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte who oversaw this collection was Dr Anton Hoch, who died fifteen years or so ago, and then Mr Hermann Weiss, who retired about five years ago. His successors have lost track of much of the documents. Not my fault.

The very extensive Fritz Todt papers were made exclusively available to me by his daughter, Frau Ilsebill Todt, who is necessarily selective about whom she assists. She is still alive in Munich and will always assist bona fide researchers. I have no influence on whom she assists. Among the papers she loaned to me were Todt's entire pocket diaries (Taschenkalendar), which I transcribed in part; that transcript is in my papers in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte. If they say they cannot find it, that is their shortcoming, not mine.

David Irving

Mr Irving states, "I should add that I have not seen or read Ronny Stauber's paper on my career." Hnet advises "From Revisionism to Holocaust Denial &emdash; David Irving as a Case Study" by member Roni Stauber is a thorough examination of the pre-Lipstadt Irving and dispels the idea that his devolution is either recent or sudden. The piece has been ably prepared by our web editor, David Lieberman.