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Unless correspondents ask us not to, this Website will post selected letters that it receives and invite open debate. |
Alistair Spark has a question on those "Hitler diaries," Monday, August 5, 2002
What's up with the Diaries?I AM mystified by something. On your website you say that you were instrumental in exposing the Hitler Diaries fraud; but in the telephone logs you have just put up you clearly report that in fact you did come to believe them to be genuine. I am puzzled by this.
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David
Irving replies:
THERE IS no conflict in this. The Times, in one wicked moment, when admonished by a friend of mine that "Mr Irving was the first to expose them as fake," responded: ".... and the last to confirm them as genuine!"
That too is untrue, however. One reason that I post these things on the website is to establish absolute clarity. At the time there was much turmoil, and give-and-take, and to-and-fro, and certainty and uncertainty. In retrospect things become clearer. Hindsight is 20:20.
It was plain to me on April 24-25 that the diaries were fake, as there were major problems with the accompanying documents. Then we found reasons why the text of the diaries seemed possibly authentic. I certainly would have liked them to be.
I think there was a clipping in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, dated May 4, 1983, which made it somewhat clearer: the headline reported that I said the diaries could be genuine; with the important subtitle: "provided they withstand the chemical tests".
When I retrieve my papers, with the 1983 diaries, I will post all the diary items, and this will add further clarity (or perhaps greater confusion) to what was in fact a very amusing episode.
David Irving