David Irving's Documentary Exhibits

International Campaign for Real History

Among documents collected by David Irving for his libel actions is this answer to a questionnaire
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A French journalist faxed a list of questions to Mr Irving at the height of the scandal caused by his retrieval from Moscow of the diaries of Dr Goebbels. Here are two pages of his replies . . .

Summary ca July 17, 1992

On June 9 [1992] I was in Moscow, working in the archives. It was difficult to reach agreement with the Russians, as the Germans -- the Institut für Zeitgeschichte -- learning I was going to Moscow from a source in Moscow, at once tried to stop me: the director of the institute Prof. Möller and his archives chief Dr Werner Röder flew to Moscow on June 3 and 4 and negotiated a draft agreement with the Russians. [See statement by Prof. Tarasov]. They did not sign it however for two or three weeks. In those two or three weeks I saw everything I wanted to see and copied several hundred of the most vital pages. (See attached list). [Not reproduced on Website].

2. The handwriting of Dr Goebbels is very difficult to read in its entirety. Some people think they can read it -- until they try! The Daily Mail paid £20,000 for the pages; the institute provided only the handwritten pages up to 1941, because Dr Fröhlich refused to let the newspaper have her transcriptions (she is my friend!); the Mail then found they could not read the pages!

3. Genoud is a good friend of mine for nearly thirty years. He has acquired some rights. I offered him some payment. No further comment!

4. The Sunday Times paid me £75,000 for the complete package -- materials, editing, transcribing, translating and commenting.

5. I have no opinion of Norman Stone, I did not see him working in the Moscow archives, and I think it is scandalous that he should get any of the credit or prestige for this important historical find: the credit for the discovery goes to Elke Fröhlich; for obtaining and transcribing the materials, to me. Not to Stone! He is a typical parasite.

6. In November 1982 I heard rumours of the existence of Adolf Hitler papers, and I informed the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times did not want to hire me to search for them. In December I then saw the materials for the first time, and on December 16, 1982 I wrote a letter to the Sunday Times and to five other people (including Gerd Heidemann, later imprisoned for the fraud) warning them that the entire documents were certainly forgeries of a very clumsy nature; in my letter I gave the reasons why. The Sunday Times made no comment to me; in fact they had gone behind my back to obtain the "diaries" of Hitler, and they burned their fingers badly. On April 25, 1983, at the "Der Stern" press conference in Hamburg [right], I exposed the diaries as frauds and fakes. Malgré cela, all the newspapers now state: "David Irving is the man who authenticated the Hitler Diaries." It is difficult to destroy legends!

7. See the attached list of the contents of the fragments which I have obtained in Moscow. [Not on this Website]

8. As I immediately pointed out in a British television interview while still inside the Moscow archives on July 3, 1992, the Goebbels diary shows that "according to Goebbels" Hitler was deeply implicated in the Kristallnacht. I must stress: according to Goebbels. According to Hitler's personal staff, precisely the opposite is true. However, Goebbels's diary is very compelling.

9. The newspaper "Sunday Times" has come under the most immense pressure from the Jewish community to cancel its contract with me. They fear the increase in my prestige and authority which this series will bring me. This is because I am the most authoritative historian to claim that the gas chambers of Auschwitz did not exist except as a British wartime propaganda lie.

10. I have no interest in whether the historians community marginalizes me. They have marginalized themselves by refusing to accept the evidence of the archives. They have quoted each other. That is not research!

The British police have spent three sessions today and yesterday with me discussing added security for me in the face of death threats and threats of violence from the Jewish community. I was attacked by three or four Jewish thugs in a restaurant Sunday: they screamed obscene insults at the lady with me and taunted me and demanded that I "go outside" -- outside, twenty or thirty more adults shortly appeared, some equipped with walkie-talkies, and a television newsreel team who "just happened" to be there. The police are investigating and looking for the thugs. (This is not France: the police do keep law and order here).

11. I shall keep up my worldwide international tour, the International Campaign for Real History, as long as is necessary. It continues this winter with speaking tours of North America, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, as well as Britain and Germany. If I am banned from Italy under pressure from the Jewish community, I am proud: this is a confession by the Jewish community that they have no academic historian capable of debating with me.

12. Not yet.

13. HITLER'S WAR has not, alas, been published in France, although published in most other languages around the world (an Italian edition appears this autumn complete with 60 pages of colour photographs). Pressure was put on me in 1977 to include ten spurious pages about what is now called the "Holocaust". I refused. Contracts were cancelled in consequence with the Sunday Times, the Reader's Digest and American paperback companies.

14. My book "La Déstruction de Dresde" (Laffont, serie Ce Jour-là), was published when I was 25: immediate best seller. I failed History examination at school; studied Political History briefly at London University. Unimportant.

15. Indeed: my publisher in Germany was told that

NOTES [rest of document is missing at present].