David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
First posted Friday, December 3, 2010
© Focal Point 2010
For myself I am sanguine about such things. Everything will eventually find its own level.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)TOO MANY exhausting dreams again. In one, Josephine was there surrounded by her sisters; she was happy and laughing, and her body was unbroken. I felt so sad.
Jaenelle Antas says: "I imagine that is how she would want to be remembered -- happy, whole, and surrounded by family," and it brings tears to my eyes. Josephine is always with me in my thoughts.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)I WORK more into the evening on Himmler. I bike over for a bowl of soup at a Cuban cafe around seven p.m. Lima Bean as usual. On my return to the Old Town disaster strikes in the pitch darkness, as I wobble in through the front gate, turn right, change my mind, a branch catches my face, I put my left foot down and there is nothing there, and I go over noisily into a heap in the shrubbery with the bike on top of me, the bike's flashing lights pointing this way and that.
A passer-by asks if I'm alright. Yeah, right. "No problem," I call out, and fortunately he moves off and is therefore not a spectator of the tragic scene as it takes me five minutes to untangle myself from the bike and branches and shrubbery, and heave myself somehow upright. No bones broken, but my back hurts badly, and continues to do so all night.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)ANOTHER lengthy dream which includes a scene at some London Post Office, as television cameras cover the arrival of a trades union leader ('Simpson'?) to pick up mail, namely a package containing uranium. The details one remembers! Bente is caught up in the crush. She looks unchanged, and is in her twenties, is wearing a powder blue coat and her hair is very blond and "spooffy" as she called it.
My left leg is covered in painful blotches from last night. At the Sunday Breakfast Club Eric says it is from a poisonous plant. Hey ho. I thought I had been bitten. Never mind. God's punishment for thinking impure thoughts.
My German lawyer has written from Kiel; we have forced back the 2007 injunction sought by Arndt Verlag, no costs order; and now we proceed for the missing royalties, and he asks for our euro banking details. Looks like we may just be getting a German royalties payment from them, plus interest, at long last. After ten years!
I lay down but the back is still . . . awkward. Difficult to get up.
Jaenelle is merciless: "Ha, you are clumsier than I am!" she shouts from Indiana. "Why didn't you leave the porch light on while you were out?"
THOMAS H. reports that the Wikipedia entry on me shows it to be changed for the better. "There must have been some high-level shake-up to peel back the iron grip of those fanatic ideologues who completely controlled it. Here are two paragraphs that were impossible to get in only a few months ago: First, in the title opening, to have you declared an historian rather than a holocaust denier:
David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English writer specializing in the military history of World War II.[1] He is the author of 30 books on the subject, including The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Uprising! (1981), Churchill's War (1987), and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996).And second, to have any favorable mention of you as an historian at all:
The description of Irving as a historian, rather than a historical author, is controversial, with some publications continuing to refer to him as a "historian"[30] or "disgraced historian",[31] while others insist he is not a historian, and have adopted alternatives such as "author" or "historic writer".[1] The military historian John Keegan has praised Irving for his "extraordinary ability to describe and analyse Hitler's conduct of military operations, which was his main occupation during the Second World War".[32] Donald Cameron Watt, Emeritus Professor of Modern History at the London School of Economics, wrote that he admires some of Irving's work as a historian, though he rejects his conclusions about the Holocaust.[33] At the libel proceedings against Irving, Watt declined Irving's request to testify, appearing only after a subpoena was ordered.[34] He testified that Irving had written a "very, very effective piece of historical scholarship" in the 1960s, which was unrelated to his controversial work; he also suggested that Irving was "not in the top class" of military historians.[34]Progress, however slight." -- For myself I am sanguine about such things. Everything will eventually find its own level.
JAENELLE has found yet more sites selling or giving away my books as web versions. Even Stormfront is doing this: "This guy is offering to people to distribute your copyrighted works for free. I have sent him a nasty message. " I thank her for this invaluable detective work. She comments: "Unfortunately tracking down copyright thieves is damn near a full time job! Just when you take care of one, another pops up."
I suggest: "It would be different -- and you might suggest this to the more innocent culprits -- if they just posted a link to our website where these things can still be accessed. E.g. to http://www.fpp.co.uk/books. Then we do still retain a modicum of control."
She would however be in favour of removing our free downloads of any titles currently in print. I reply:
That defeats the object, which is to provide a free service to needy students and defeat the aims of the enemy to blot out my works.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)SAM tells me of a German proverb he likes: Giebt es krieg, so macht der Teufel die Hölle weiter. The Rev. James Wood's Dictionary of Quotations offers this translation: "When war falls out, the devil enlarges Hell." A poor translation, in fact wrongful, in my view. Weitermachen has nothing to do with enlarging. "When there's war, the Devil carries on with Hell," would be closer. [But see below*]
I now send to my delinquent Greek publisher Iolkos a three-day warning, to pay up or I will issue a European Payment Order. Not very nice to have to use this language to a much needed publisher. I wonder if the German publisher Arndt Verlag will now pay or whether they will go for another round with lawyers.
Supper with Sam on Stock Island; the grouper tasted off, so I did not eat it. On the way back we call at the airport here and and I book an Avis rental car for December 19; but they ask $114 a day for the smallest, instead of the usual $30 or 40, explaining that it is "high season." Hertz want the same price. I go on line and rebook with Avis for fifty dollars.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)THE back pain from the bicycle tumble has subsided, but I am if anything a bit more stiff this morning. I shall continue to walk around as a Very Upright Gentleman today.
Markus H. recoommends to me the book by Joe Bellinger on Heinrich Himmler's death. I reply that I am familiar with the work's existence. In fact I paid the author an advance of eleven thousand dollars for the world rights in 1999 -- he kept on asking for more -- then gave up on him as the manuscript he delivered was unpublishable. "Bellinger unfortunately was not quellenkritisch" -- careful about his sources.
Markus then sends me some of Bellinger's extraordinary vapourings about me on the Internet, where he even claims credit for finding Himmler's two hundred letters to his mistress: "Although I did not use these letters in my book," writes Bellinger grandly, and indeed how could he have, "David Irving latched upon them and is apparently including them in his upcoming Himmler book. Whether he gives me the credit for their discovery in the archives remains to be seen." I tell Markus:
That alone is a gross untruth. The owner of the letters, J S, contacted me in Chicago one day in 1999 and brought them all for me to read; I spent a whole morning reading them all. They were never in any archives, always in private hands."In regards to Mr. Irving, I know the man fairly well," continues Mr Bellinger on the Internet. "I spent days with him whilst conducting research at Stanford prior to beginning my work on "Himmler's Death."
Yes, Joe, I remember that drive with you from Los Angeles to Palo Alto well. (I had to drag the man away from his girlfriend in Rodeo Drive, Beverley Hills -- he was literally crying ! -- and drove him against his will up to Stanford at my expense to look at their Himmler materials. He cannot read German, let alone Sütterlin script. He had never researched in an archive in his life. I then began to realise that my $11,000 was a totally wasted investment. He never visited the archives in Washington or London either, which was what I paid him the advance for.)
"You will now understand," I tell Markus, "why I shall not venture to open B's work. Otherwise it will be said I've stolen it all from him." [Du versteht jetzt weshalb ich es nicht wagen werde, das Werk von B aufzumachen. Sonst heisst es, ich habe ihm alles geklaut.]
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)THERE is a reply this morning from the Medical School of the University of Vienna, Austria. I have been checking Himmler's version, in his diary, of an obiter dicta about sex by that famous predecessor of Dr Kinsey, Professor Max von Gruber. "The quote you are looking for by Prof Gruber is on page 85 of the 53rd-54th editions of his book Health and Sex Life, Stuttgart 1927. 'Probably two human beings would never stand eachother for long, living together as closely as married couples do, chained to eachother, were it not for seeking and finding satisfaction in their sex drive.'" [Das von Ihnen gesuchte Zitat von Prof. Dr. Max von Gruber steht in der 53. -54. Auflage von „Hygiene des Geschlechtslebens", Stuttgart 1927, auf Seite 85 und lautet: Wohl niemals würden zwei Menschen auf die Dauer ertragen, so enge wie Eheleute aneinander gekettet zu sein, wenn sie nicht dabei die Befriedigung ihres Geschlechtstriebes suchen und finden würden.]
A stranger Milan Kosanovic writes to me, fan mail: "I may not agree with you on every opinion you hold, but what you wrote in your preface to "Apocalypse" is something I would be prepared to sign and proud to display. And I do have significant Jewish ancestry.
Is there any parallel between Dresden and Auschwitz? To my mind both teach one lesson: that the real crime of war and peace is not Genocide -- with its implicit requirement that posterity reserve its sympathy for one race -- but Innocenticide. It was not the Jewishness of the victims that made Auschwitz a crime, but their innocence."Thank you for putting it so precisely and succinctly." PS: "I have just finished reading your Hitler's War"
I FINISH rejigging the hardback cover for The Secret Diaries of Hitler's Doctor. It was like doing a new book. About to upload it.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Key West (Florida, USA)THE GREEK publisher Iolkos says they will pay what they owe me in a week's time. A Greek translator asks me about the Joseph Goebbels diaries. "I have heard that there is a version around by Elke Fröhlich (maybe someone who stole your work?) In Wikipedia it says thata 29 volume edition edited by Elke Fröhlich and others is said to be 98% complete. The last volume was published in 2006. I would suppose that those are only in German?"
I reply: "Elke is and was a very good friend of mine. She first alerted me to the location of the original glass plates [in the KGB archives, Moscow] on May 9, 1992. She has now retired (born January 30, 1944). And yes, they are only in German. But some years and extracts are in English: Louis P Lochner edited them very well." - In fact I have not heard very often from EF for years, now I think of it; since around then in 1992. Time flies.
Twenty years earlier, in 1972, Elke Fröhlich had come with our family to southern Spain. From left, my daughters Josephine, Pilar, Beatrice, Paloma. (Picture by Pilar Irving, Sr.)
J.reports from Indianapolis that the book on the Hungarian Revolution has come from the printers: "The Uprising books look okay. There were some boxes that had taken quite a beating, but none of the books appears to have taken damage."
Well done. Singular subject, none, singular verb, appears. She continues:
More snow here. Will be fun carrying all these boxes into the post office today, as I'm sure the sidewalk will be very slick."Hals und Beinbruch," I reply: "Look it up."
Jessica, daughter number five, replies from London: "I'm so looking forward to you getting back! I miss living with you and also the Dorney house. I worry about both you and Mummy falling over, so watch where you are going! Its really icy here after solid snow. I've totally found a career I want to aspire to, at the world health organisation, they want people who have a first degree and can speak languages, which suits me as my French is coming along really well and if I get into Oxford to read human science it will be ideal! I like to have something to aspire to."
Um. Okay.
Mr Posner (pronounced PAHZ-ner) worked for many years with his father [Viktor Posner] who became known as the master of the hostile takeover, intentionally mismanaging companies into bankruptcy while enriching himself as they foundered.That sails as close to naked anti-Semitism as one might expect to find in this great newspaper. Oh yes, and it rings a bell in my memory: was not Victor associated with Ivan F Boesky, whon once financed a ballet on the Holocaust, and junk bond dumpster Michael R Milken? All of whom should perhaps be required to finance an opera called, "Why us?" or perhaps to write out those two words a thousand times a day for the rest of their miserable lives.
No doubt thousands of employees who lost their jobs in these "intentionally mismanaged companies" would happily spit on their graves.
Of the second sad death, that of Mr Cohen, the The New York Times reminds us that Robert Oppenheimer fathered the atomic bomb, Edward Teller (right) the hydrogen bomb, and Samuel T Cohen the neutron bomb. Well, three potential giga-murderers, possibly even tera-murderers, all linked by one unmentioned commonality. They are the ones who would willingly have crucified all humanity, whether out of greed, malice, or sheer scientific curiosity we shall now never know. It cannot have been for patriotism, as all were effectively rootless, homeless, soulless citizens.
Come to think of it, their people have had a lot of difficulty making up excuses for the Jewish chemist Fritz Haber, the inventor of mustard gas and Zyklon-B.
Years ago I interviewed Edward Teller at Stanford for Penthouse magazine. I think the lengthy taped interview is lost in my archives that were seized in 2002. Perhaps Peter Longerich will now do a biography on him.
I teased Edward Teller with what the Nobel prize winner Werner Heisenberg told me years earlier. I told Teller that I had had a long talk with Heisenberg, which ranged across his whole career; that Heisenberg was delighted not to be censured for having stayed in Germany during the Nazi era -- in fact when I asked him whether it had not damaged Nazi Germany's scientific effort that so many scientists, predominantly Jewish, had left, he said dismissively that those who had emigrated were all "second class" -- the really worthwhile men like Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassman and himself, had stayed. While still in his early twenties, he had been awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize "for the creation of quantum mechanics."
Heisenberg read through my whole manuscript [of The Virus House] in draft, which was about as expert an assessor as one could have wanted, and published a glowing half-page review of it in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
"Der Heisenberg hatte Recht," growled Teller to my surprise, in that gravelly, shaggy voice of his, and challenged me to name more than half a dozen of the émigrés who were actually good enough to work on the Manhattan Project.
Well, the late Sam Cohen was one.
* Reader R M says (Saturday, December 4, 2010): "Enlarging is in fact correct. According to Simrock, it's 'Wenn es Krieg giebt, so macht der Teufel die Hölle um hundert Klafter weiter.' 1 Klafter = 6 Fuß," or what sailors call a fathom. Okay, I bow to your discovery: With the added "fathom" dimensions, weitermachen could mean enlarge. Without them, I maintain, not. Let the debate begin! ^
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