David Irving |
oouDocuments on the International Campaign for Real History
Posted Monday, August 31, 2009
© Focal Point 2009
If any man earned the Nobel Peace prize, it was Rudolf Hess: the noble, much-loved German who risked his life, in vain, to end the World War II in 1941.
August 26, 2009 (Wednesday)
Windsor (England)AN American, Kevin B. [alabamapro@hotmail.com] asks: "Do you think National Socialism like in Germany will ever come to happen in the U.S...?" I reply: "I would not like to hazard a guess; not many people know that Hitler's Reich actually continued the Weimar Constitution. Though a bit fractured in parts."
I write to fellow-historian Max Hastings: "Dear Max,
We have known each other a long time, since before you were even [editor of] the Londoner's Diary [of the Evening Standard newspaper], and you have written generous things about me. I helped you with stuff for your great Overlord book. You are very familiar with my works, and with the fact that since 1972 I have been labouring at a three-volume Churchill biography published as Churchill's War:
- "Churchill's War", vol. i: "Struggle for Power"
- "Churchill's War", vol. ii: "Triumph in Adversity"
- "Churchill's War", vol. iii: "The Sundered Dream" (written but not yet out).
I have received many letters from friends and academics asking why you (or the Daily Mail?) have pirated this title ["Churchill's War"] for your book-series in the Mail.) I am sure you are not trying what is called passing-off, but it is irritating, just as is the revelation that a book called Hitler's War has just appeared in Random House: probably, but not necessarily, another irksome coincidence.
And while we are in grumpy mode, this goes from us to Random House publishers' Legal Department in New York:
Thank you for your letter of August 18 about the book Hitler's War by Harry Turtledove. It is an unsatisfactory response; even the simplest Net search would have revealed that David Irving's book Hitler's War (The Viking Press, et al.) has been on sale since 1975 and is permanently in print in our editions and around the world.Kindly ensure that all foreign editions of the Turtledove work, including and especially any UK edition, do not use the title Hitler's War or translations thereof. Otherwise the publishers involved will face appropriate legal action including injunctive, and a claim for damages, aggravated, in the light of the advanced warning contained in this letter.
August 27, 2009 (Thursday)
Windsor (England)
GREG of Florida has supplied another photo of Hitler in a visor cap, but still not the cap. I reply:
9:43 a.m Thanks for that interesting picture. You're getting closer I think. With all the millions of pictures taken of the Führer I am sure you will find one showing him in the right cap. Search all those colour photos recently released by LIFE magazine (Hugo Jaeger was the photographer) on the Internet.Why should I do his homework for him?
I SUSPECT bad problems are building up in northern Italy for my visit in September. The Italian press is filling with the most alarming reports. I tell the organizers -- whom I do not know -- I will comply with whatever they ask of me in this respect. Security must not be a problem.
12:24 p.m the Punjabi's workshop phones: The Pigmobile is fixed, and they want another very large sum; they have rebuilt the old engine with new parts. They want me to collect it tomorrow. Seems like a fourth comet joined the overhead collision of the other three -- school fees etc. A unique astronomical event, in banking terms.
I anticipate that my upcoming Italy trip will be rained off by police. The organisers seem like the usual lunatics.
August 28, 2009 (Friday)
Windsor (England)I COME downstairs once during the night to get Ibuprofen for the "Budapest" tooth. It's been hurting for a week now. In its final throes, methinks.
Up into Windsor, to withdraw almost every penny from the bank as the bands play and the Guard on Her Majesty changes; have to get the white van back from the repair shop, later today. Gradually restoring order to my affairs.
S. phones, to say somebody will pick up an ancient baby-carriage of his from our barn, he has found a craftsman who will restore it. I say with a chuckle, "I understand congratulations are in order."
He says something about being a bit old for it, but…
I remark in a paternal way, "Have you discussed the pram with Mrs S? If I know women, she may not be overjoyed at having an antique pram for her new baby."
He says it is not for public use, merely for use around the village. Sounds public enough to me. So Mrs S. will be strolling around their Surrey high street with an ancient four-wheeled high-sprung floating perambulator from the last century or earlier, and all the other young mums will be giggling and pointing. I suspect he doesn't know what he's letting himself in for.
US press sends us an estimate for printing the Wolf's Lair tour leaflet.
Jae says: "I bet you would restore a century old baby pram instead of buying a new one. That is exactly the kind of thing you like to do," and adds a smiley-face.
August 29, 2009 (Saturday)
Windsor (England)A VERY interesting email comes from a German [M.H.] who is obviously in cahoots with our man in the north: "All the documents I have can also be seen in G's private collection in Hamburg. He's got a mass of Himmler materials, not just from [Karl] Wolff." One of the items is a letter from Himmler to Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler's adjutant, ten days before the Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, in 1938, arguing the case for letting all Germany's Jews emigrate without any pettifogging obstructions.
He has also found out that the papers of Rudolf Hess were sent by his son Wolf-Rüdiger Hess to the Swiss government archives, where they are closed for thirty and fifty years respectively. These include presumably all the files that Wolf-Rüdiger, now alas dead, allowed me to inspect and inventory in 1990.
That is a bad slap in the face for the Germans. But I understand it, because the neutral Swiss authorities looked after Rudolf Hess's interests very well during his incarceration by Winston Churchill, and the Swiss minister was always a welcome guest in his prison cell in Britain.
The Swiss government archives allowed me to read many of the official documents which they hold on Hess for my 1987 book Hess, The Missing Years. Whereas the wonderful German government has just discovered to its delight that the Hess family missed renewing the lease on Hess's gravesite by two days, and is preparing to steamroller it: so a tiny note in the London Evening Standard informed us a few days ago.
If any man earned the Nobel Peace prize, it was Rudolf Hess: the noble, much-loved German who risked his life, in vain, to end the World War II in 1941.
Mr Medeiros donates $50 to our website and adds, after I thank him: "Just doing what I can. Any ETA on your autobiography and the Himmler biography?"
I explain in my reply: "People keep sending me unknown Himmler documents which they have found in auction houses and private papers -- just this evening another ten pages, fascinating stuff. One of the advantages of being 'notorious'"
August 30, 2009 (Sunday)
Windsor (England)TODAY we are throwing the year's second garden party. Defying all forecasts to the contrary, there are not even a few wisps of sun in the morning, and it stays grim all day, with low, heavy, leaden clouds obscuring any hope of sunshine. Welcome to the English summer. Not cold, but forbidding weather all the same.
Gregory in Florida emails again about the Hitler visor cap he owns; the authentication process is taking a long time. DNA may be our last resort. I still have a few strands of Hitler's hair here. I reply dutifully: "As soon as we find a genuine picture of Hitler wearing the hat, I am ready to splash it; it has attracted a lot of interest already." By "we" I mean "he".
Somebody tells me that the Guardian has yesterday published yet another gratuitous smear in its latest review of a book by the odious, oleaginous Andrew Roberts.
It includes this closing sentence:
Roberts is also dismissive of Hitler apologists such as David Irving, and this excellent one-volume history of the war stands as a principled rebuttal to their claims that Hitler was in any way a genius.I write them this letter for publication:
YOUR reviewer welcomes the "impressive new analysis" of WW2 by young historian Andrew Roberts for the "nuggets of overlooked evidence" he has unearthed in his latest work. The story of Field Marshal von Blomberg's unfortunate wife is not new; he could have found it in several of my biographies, and probably did -- I visited the woman in question in Berlin in the 1970s (she was rather abrupt). Maybe Roberts should have continued picking up crumbs from my table, as he once used to. Being the fellow who supplied him with Lord Halifax's secret diaries twenty years ago, in May 1989, which he used to write his own first biography, I find his sneering references to my work meagre recompense indeed.
K. gives a useful introduction, and I like that idea; in the USA we must do the same, Jae to introduce while I remain hidden, snoozing somewhere, until she calls me in. At K.'s suggestion I promote the one copy of Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich that we have available for £125 and it is snapped up; privately he then sells another that we have accidentally found for the same price to H. A rare book indeed! It is now unavailable.
I talk from five to 6 pm, with K. standing in the doorway toward the end, surreptitiously giving me wind-up signals in sight of half the audience, which is disconcerting; I must tell him not to do that. Our guests are loving the talk and, as I say, nobody dies. K. forces me to have a question-and-answer session, which turns out to be no less popular.
As I am talking, the police helicopter again flies past, from south to north, 200 yards away, this time with its spotlights on; I ask the audience to wave to these nice people, and a forest of hands will show on their cameras. If they had only landed in Farmer Philpott's field, they could have dropped in for a drink too.
Perhaps they are concerned because I've got the brother-in-law of the chief of MI6 here again. He buys a David Irving mug as a gift for this worthy gentleman.
Steve drives Jessica to Burnham station, as she wants to return to London (for the ghastly Notting Hill Gate carnival: Black-rap-crap all day. She'll grow out of it); a guest tells me she was seen departing clutching an unopened bottle of plonk, and I send an immediate text to her, "A bottle of red wine is missing. Any theories?"
But she's totally in the clear. She replies within seconds: "I took a bottle to give to Sophie's Mum to say thank you for having me" -- down in Devon for the last week. Devon, the last refuge for the White English from scoundrels.
By 8 pm the last guests have left, and I take my helpers down to the Palmer Arms for supper.
At ten-fifteen the house is empty but for me, and I begin picking up the mess. Four or five more wine-glasses have made the ultimate sacrifice, für das Vaterland gefallen, all of them in the kitchen fortunately. I am beginning to think that the £2,000 crystal candelabra, a sole relic of our Mayfair apartment, was not broken during my absence in the summer, but purloined -- I wonder if our housekeeper's friend, who "helped her" with the cleaning, had anything to do with it.
Said friend paid me a visit with her in tow a few days ago; it now strikes me that she was just the sort. The housekeeper said a few days earlier disingenuously that her friend remarked on how beautiful the candelabra was. Ooo, that's nice, I'll be after 'aving that.
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Andrew Roberts: A totally objective, impassionate, and neutral observer of the truth about Winston Churchill.
NOW ON ONE ENJOYABLE EASY-FIND INDEX: DAVID IRVING: A RADICAL'S DIARY 2005 TO 2009
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