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Subject: Your biased perspective
G G writes from Australia, Friday, March 13, 1998
I AM interested in teaching my students about the Nazi movement and I thought your biased perspective may be of some interest. Can you explain to us where your distorted views originate from and why you believe what you do when clear and reliable evidence is so against you. As an academic myself I am not interested in unsubstantiated propaganda, only facts.
Regards
Grant G.
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David Irving replies:
THANK YOU for your thought-provoking message, though I read it twice to make sure it was not tongue-in-cheek.
The answer to your challenge ("where from"?) is: From the primary sources. You must recall that for thirty-five years, until I was banned from them in Germany ("in the German public interest") I worked in the original archives, fortunately held in duplicate in the US National Archives and elsewhere. I also questioned most of the surviving members of Hitler's staff (and won their confidence, an important fact: see my book Hitler's War for that aspect). I looked at evidence with the same criteria as a judge in court: what does the evidence really tell us; which can we believe more, an "eye witness" or the forensic documentary evidence of the age? That is when we begin to run into serious problems. Why does not one single document of the war years refer explicitly to homicidal "gas chambers" or "gassings" on a massive scale? The other Nazi crimes are documented (mass shootings, euthanasia, etc). Not this one? Why not, if it was the biggest of the lot?
Come back to me for more. Meanwhile check out the Auschwitz items on my Website to which I shall add more over coming weeks. If you have items of comparable value, I shall of course post them too. A fair debate is what I want.
David
Irving
Focal
Point Publications
G G responded on March 17, 1998:
I HAD NOT intended to contact you again so soon, but this afternoon I stumbled across reviews of your work by your peers. As I am in no position now or in the forseeable future to make an in-depth analysis of your work so I find myself relying on their knowledge as a primary source for judging your views. These are reviews by: Dennis E Showalter (1977); Robert Waite (1979); Lucy Dawidowicz; Eberhard Jackel; Robert Harris (1986); John Keegan; Floyd, R. and Rosenberg, T. (1996) and can be found [on the Nizkor site] . Their views represent a great body of work and do not place your findings in a very favourable light. Their arguments appear to be valid and reliable and a solid base for historical judgements. Thus providing a substantial platform to establish future knowledge.
Regards
Grant G.
To this, David Irving replies:
Dear G. ,-- those people do not like me, and they have good reason not to. Take Jäckel, whom you cite. Look up my site on Jäckel, and you'll see what a goofball he is. Robert Waite was thrashed by me on a British TV programme with David Frost in June 1977. And so on. You'll find a file of very different views of my Hitler biography on my site, written by experts, and the full quotation of what John Keegan wrote, not just Nizkor's biassed extracts. I shall add to this file a lot over the next weeks. I am fighting to defend my name against very powerful vested interests, as you Australians have probably realised.
David Irving
Monday, December 6, 1999
Mr Irving,
Some time ago I wrote to you about you views. At the time the converstaion went nowhere and I asked you not to correspond with me any more. Now at the time I obtained your e-mail address through another web-site and did not realise that you publish any correspondence you recieve on your web-site, although this would explain the plethora of e-mails that I recieved from unfortunate souls who believe the nonsense you publish.
Anyway, to my surprise and horror a fellow staff member came up to me today and said, "what's this?" (they had conducted a simple search of my name using Yahoo). There before my eyes was the two letters that I had sent to you some 18 months ago -published on your web-site. I would like these removed before any further damage is done to my reputation and name. ... I will be checking at regular intervals over the next few days to ensure that they are removed.
My suggestion to you would be to seek permission from all e-mail that you recieve before publishing it as your disclaimer an the web-site is clearly not enough to properly inform people of how you itend to use their correspondence. Again I stress that I would like these letters removed immediately and do not give you permission to publish this or any other correspondence from my office.
Regards G G
To this, David Irving replies:
Monday, December 6, 1999
Dear Surprised and Annoyed
I guess some people like to write their nasty letters in private and not have others read them. I would however be interested in knowing what kind of institution you work for, where "fellow staff members" run searches on their colleagues' names on the Internet. My advice would be: move on!
2. I have removed your name from the item, but the letter remains posted; with added comments.
David Irving
© Focal Point
David Irving 1998