A Radical’s Diary (January 2010)

Now a billion-dollar industry swirls around the wretched girl, built up partly by her late father in Switzerland, and partly by the house owners in Amsterdam, each at each other’s throats. [ Previous Radical’s Diary ] January 1, 2010 (Friday) Windsor (England) I OFFER Bente sincere congratulations: “Well, that’s another year you made it through.” She asks: “Are you going to America again?” I say, probably not this year.

Another university in the Irish Republic asks me to come and speak: “You remember the previous Auditor you dealt with, my brother, and his attempts to give you a chance to address our house a few years ago? I’m just trying to look at the possiblity of you addressing our house in the future, with of course, the lessons of last time, in hand.” I sigh to myself. Here we go again: “I will be more than happy to come [but] my 2010 calendar will rapidly fill up.”

Affecting not to worry, Jessica asks me about the school fees. I say they are first on my list of four big things to pay this month. January 2, 2010 (Saturday) Windsor (England) I am writing around my many friends in the USA. It is a lot of addresses. Several now (forgetting themselves?) come clean. Among the respondents is a Mr Grant Arthur Gochin of 10900 Winnetka Ave, Chatsworth, California 91311: “Go f*ck yourself racist lying bigot.” He is evidently only a distant supporter.

I check my files. Two years ago he wrote me: “I collect autographs on first day covers, personalized to my seven year old son. May I send you a first day cover for autograph, and if so, at what address?” — Ah, the enemy. I see I even cleared him as ” OK”. How wrong can one be. An amusing ding dong exchange begins, ending with my macro: “This is an automatically generated response. We regret that we receive up to 300 emails a day and cannot undertake to read them all.

If you wish your recent email to be considered for posting in our hate-mail section, please ensure that you have thoroughly checked its spelling and grammar, and resubmit.” Stephen D. writes from Florida: “We are all better off for the Key West snapshot . I am at present reading Richard “Skunky” Evans’ book Lying about Hitler . I wonder if you could send me some caveats about its text? In short, the man appears not only to hate your guts, but your spleen and colon also.

His hatchet job is done via razor blades. But this Professor Evans is your biggest, most dangerous foe as his arguments are ruthlessly appealing … and appalling. He accuses you of willfully altering sources or using footnotes “without toes” (my term). As a Yale graduate, Class of 1967, I should like to warn you that all academics are vainglorious and mainly interested in debunking other academics: they feed on blood. Work, work — that’s your new future. “Arbeit macht das Leben süss”.

Someone ought to put that up in iron! I reply: “On my website there is an entire index devoted to Evans . We call him “Skunky” Evans, because of his lies. For instance, a decoded message of the Dresden police chief which I found [ see below ], reveals that the Lord Mayor of the city told him

on March 24, 1945 that 100,000 people are still registered as missing after the air raid. So who was lying, Evans or I?” Tom H. who was born two years after me, but in Berlin, Germany, writes that he is one of those brave souls keeping up the pressure on Wikipedia to straighten out its lies about me. “Your profession is no longer a Holocaust denier”, he writes, but: “Military history of World War II, Holocaust denial, Historical revisionism.” Even that is wrong of course.

I have never written about the Holocaust. “Your bio had been hi-jacked by zealots who refused to let any edits be included which they did not approve.” Tom is an expert “branding” specialist, and minored in propaganda analysis at Dartmouth College, USA. BUT wait, there is more on Professor Richard J Evans , Regius Professor of History at Cambridge (right). Stephen D. now writes: Two years ago I met a delightful family from Pennsylvania, where skunks are sold as pets.

They had a little skunklet, neutered, of course, and could not dub it save for names like “Oleo Cologne” or “Pepe LePew” from cartoons. “Why don’t you give it a name like an English butler?” I asked. “Something like, well, ‘Evans'”? “That’s cool,” said the little girl, its owner. So, if it please thee, somewhere, in Pennsylvania there is a much-loved skunk, sans scent glands, named “Evans.” I am glad to know that Evans has been memorialised as a real-life skunk in such a far-away place.

I am now beginning to understand the word karma , which also comes into my Heinrich Himmler biography. I WRITE to my perfect assistant Jaenelle Antas , who is in Indiana, about progress with editing our Classic Series. “I am working hard on Göring ,” I tell her. “It is such a fabulous book. It received the most glowing plaudits when it came out in the 1980s. You will love reading it. Working on page 137 right now: “. . .

Soon the first embryonic stage of Carinhall would be ready, a simple timber lodge. Out here among the dark Satanic forests of pine, beech, and oak, Göring felt like a Teutonic knight of old. He would carry a spear, and command Robert to dress him in red top boots of Russian leather with golden spurs, in floor-length coats like a French emperor, in silk blouses with puffy sleeves. Emmy or no Emmy, his waking thoughts were still overshadowed by the morbid memory of Carin.

Her ghost haunted him more than ever now that the workmen were constructing Carinhall. Down by the lakeside, on the far shore, he ordered them to excavate a macabre mausoleum, with five-foot-thick walls of Brandenburg granite. In a few months’ time it would be ready to receive the pewter sarcophagus from Sweden.

One day he expected to lie in it by his devoted Carin’s side — to spend all eternity with her beneath these moaning pines.” “You see now the effect women have on men,” I comment. “Traffic stoppers, everyone of them.” And then again at five-thirty p.m: “I have been wallowing in my own Göring book all afternoon. I can never write as well as that again.” Later: “I am a GREAT story teller.” She replies dutifully: “Yes, you are.”

January 5, 2010 (Tuesday) Windsor (England) TOM H. sends me an image [ above; click image to enlarge ] of the updated Wikipedia entry into which he has inserted the fine words of praise for me as an historian, uttered by Mr Justice Gray in his April 2000 Judgment, which the press mysteriously never quotes : “It usually takes them about fifteen minutes to discover that their turf has been disturbed. We’ll see how they try to weasel it away.”

I reply: “I will post that image on my website, if ‘they’ try to take it down. Please keep me closely informed. As for the [Wikipedia] photo caption, it does not mention that the Judge agreed that in several points Lipstadt had lied in her book – e.g. claiming that I consorted with Hizbollah terorrists, that I have a life size portrait of Hitler in my study, and that I stole or damaged the microfiches of the Goebbels diaries in the Moscow archives.

Under Section 5 of the UK Defamation Act, these smears however were considered outweighed by the highly damaging ‘Holocaust denier’ libel which claim by me was not sustained. I wonder if she removed the libels from later editions?” An hour later, Tom H. reports: As expected, my insert was quickly removed. Here is my complaint to the editors on that action: [etc: see annex ] I do not really want to get dragged into this.

I reply to him: “You may or may not understand, but I really do not want to get into a debate about Holocaust denial. It has absolutely nothing to do with me, except they use it as a bludgeon to attack me and my reputation as an historian. That said, it is amazing with what speed the enemy moves to neutralize anything favourable said about me.” He responds: “Exactly. But you must confront it head-on, in my opinion, to take that very effective ammunition out of their arsenal.

Once you are on record in the mainstream media, their hand will be played — and lost.” Dense snow lies heavily across South Buckinghamshire. I see three fully grown female deer strutting boldly across our main lawn toward the rose garden, foraging for food. January 7, 2010 (Thursday) Windsor (England) KEVIN H. informs me: “One has to admire the Australian attitude and straight talking approach!” It seems that one T. B.

Bechtel , a City Councillor from Newcastle, Australia, was asked on a local live radio talk show just what he thought about the allegations of torture of suspected Muslim terrorists.

His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience: HIS STATEMENT: “If hooking up one rag-head terrorist prisoner’s testicles to a car battery to get the truth out of the lying little camel-shagger will save one Australian life, then I have only three things to say, Red is positive, Black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet.”

Highly reprehensible. “Thanks for sharing that with me,” I reply to K., adding however: “That’s not what the aforementioned terrorist would say, no doubt.” Daughter Paloma has been staying here with her son for a week. Most airports have been shut down by the snow catastrophe. So much for “global warming.” She checks the Gatwick airport website, which confirms that tonight’s easyJet flight