David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
First posted Saturday, December 3, 2011
© Focal Point 2011
How do you feel about that? she asks, repeatedly, like a TV psychiatrist. I believe I gave them what they wanted..
Monday, November 21, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)JESSICA emails me: "Just got the Oxford interview!" I congratulate her.
Ten a.m. at the U.S. Holocaust Museum archives.
After an hour or two, I note that the two teenage students at the next door desk are reading a book called The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, and in the short stack beneath that I see original library copies of my Hitler's War and The War Path. Coincidence? As they leave around noon I introduce myself. One returns with her teacher, a Mrs Shapiro, who has set them a Holocaust Denial project. (Sigh). Very friendly in a Plump Jewess sort of way. Thanks me for helping her pupils. I agree to meet them all for a discussion downstairs, after I finish this afternoon at five p.m.
The first one turns up without Mrs Shapiro but with her friend Sydney, a young English girl from Coventry: both a few months older than Jessica. They grill me on "Holocaust denial," and Sydney is especially tenacious. "How do you feel about that?" she asks, repeatedly, like a TV psychiatrist. I believe I gave them what they wanted.
I formally cancel our deal with the accursed Turkish publisher. "Dear Emir, Please take note of the attached letter formally annulling our Agreement on "Hitler's War" (Millennium Edition, 2002)."
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)
UP at six a.m. I am still brooding . . . Soon I shall probably lose Jessica too. Then I remember Josephine (right, her first photo), and as is my wont ever since 1999, whenever I do remember her, I murmur, but where only God can hear, "God rest her soul."
I write to Hugo H-T:
Working these days in the Holocaust Museum archives, reading microfilms from a Russian source which I have borrowed from an elderly guy here in Washington. Most unusual stuff. 25 films.Yesterday's college girl and her friend Sydney and a third student with a camera ask me some final questions, and then take a group photo in the archives. I ask for a copy.
I go online at Panera and find that Hugo has written:
I have been toiling away in the Bundesarchiv (located rather appropriately in the former barracks of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler where in 1934 participants in the Röhm Putsches were executed).I looked at the two versions of the Radical's Diary and couldn't see anything particularly offensive. On the contrary, I think you have been very magnanimous ..., i.e., the paragraph beginning 'The Australian is tall and burly ...,' even though your fingers must have bled to type it. In the photograph of Jae, she is wearing the mother-of-pearl we all gave her in Poland last year.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)I DRAFT a letter to Hugo,
Replying belatedly to your message: yes the folks at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum are fully aware of who I am, and could not be more helpful.A friend texts me from Indianapolis: "Am having brunch at a Le Peep. Recall that I brought you here once and you threw a fit because you couldn't order just two eggs and toast."
That's what makes men different from women. I reply with gentle sarcasm: "You remember all the nice things ..."
The director of the Holocaust museum comes to say hello, Bradley Bauer, formerly of the Hoover Institution in California. Very cordial. He studied under the late Agnes F. Peterson, and we reminisce about that dear old lady. I first met her in 1976 when I researched in the archives there with my then assistant, the Italian Carla Venchiarutti (right). For some reason Agnes remembered Carla thirty years later when I visited.
Bauer is not uninterested in the new microfilms, but has quite proper archival concerns about (a) accessioning stuff that may have been acquired illegally, and (b) the proof of provenance. Neither is easy.
I have done a good day's work in the archives, copying today around 1,000 pages of stuff from my microfilms, including the Jäger reports, the original Ereignismeldungen and some Heinrich Müller telegrams, etc. It is hard going, as I work seven hours right through from ten a.m. to closing time, there being no cafeteria anywhere in this grim building, let alone on the fifth floor. Difficult to say how much of this film material is new and unknown. I certainly recognize a few items. Some appear to be microfilms of photocopies rather than originals. There are some Russian handwritten and typed pages interspersed.
Back in Falls Church, I start watching another Tom Selleck film, Quigley Down Under, set in Australia, but it is so stupid and violent (and anti-British too!) that after five minutes I shout, "Enough," and quit.
I then spend two hours drafting a letter to the U.S. Holocaust Museum archives director.
Very many thanks for our interesting talk, about the topic we discussed, the score or so 35mm microfilms of RSHA files from Moscow in private hands in Washington DC. I attach my rough shelf list of eight of them. It is by no means wall-to-wall, but lists the stuff that caught my eye. I will press the source for more detail on how, when and where he obtained them; I am aware of the importance of provenance. On the legality, I suspect they were purchased from a Russian citizen, at the time of the Soviet collapse. You will see from the files referred to above what kind of materials they contain. There is a stack of yellow legal pads containing very legible handwritten descriptions by a German-born American of the content of all the films. On page 8 of my scans from Reel 3G you will notice a file-cover sheet that definitely came from the Osobiye archives in Moscow, fond 500, opis 1, delo 25, but that is the only such Deckblatt or cover sheet I have found on these eight films.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia (USA)THANKSGIVING DAY in the U.S.A. today. I think we celebrate that in Britain on July 4. Breakfast at our usual diner.
I watch Robert Ludlum's Bourne Identity trilogy with Ned -- all three episodes. In the evening off to a Mcdonalds to go online and confirm tomorrow's American Airlines booking; I change the seat to the last available exit-seat, to get leg room for tomorrow's three-hour flight south. Then supper with Ned at the Irish pub, lamb shank, very good. I could not pay as my U.S. account is nearly empty today. Too generous with my friends last week, I fear.
I watch the third and final part of the film, The Bourne Ultimatum, from six-thirty to eight with Ned. It is not as good as the first two -- this third part is very dialogue-light, action-heavy, and confusing. Amusing to see that although the entire three films take place over a period of a few days, the desktop computers in the "CIA" offices change from clunky old CRT screens to the latest flat screen monitors, and Matt Damon ages by three or four years.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Falls Church, Virginia - Miami - Key West, Florida (USA)BEFORE leaving Washington DC I call in briefly at the Holocaust museum, because every file I have copied during my four days' work there, including 554 pages copied from one of my films on Wednesday, is corrupt, damaged perhaps by their security scanners at the doors. I have now backed up my files again off their system, and they seem okay.
4:44 p.m. flight down to Miami. Albert arrives by car after fifteen minutes to pick me up, and we drive back down to Key West, stopping at Key Largo for a bowl of clam chowder. At the little cottage about midnight-thirty. I see straight away that my bike has been stolen. Sad about that, it is as old as Jessica. When she was nearly one year old I used to ride each morning past the cemetery to the bakery with her sitting in the bike basket wearing a little white helmet; and to Higgs Beach, where she learned to walk. Now she is on the verge of university. The Miami Herald featured a photo of her in that bike basket on its front page one day late in 1994.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)A FRIEND has written me soon after two a.m. and I reply "Got here after midnight. Albert was very good. He's my best friend after you (and Jessica and Hugo). This morning by daylight I see the bad news about which he was rather reticent last night.
My bike has definitely gone. That is a serious, serious blow. I am unable to get around without it. So much for letting his firemen friends borrow it in March, about which I was, as you know not happy. I guess they left it unlocked, and it walked. If bikes can walk, which is more than I can right now. . .Just off to Harpoon Harry's, as soon as Albert comes. Albert says: "I am not going to miss this." Don't know what he means.
A link I posted yesterday does not work. I fix it, and explain to J:
I accidentally included a bit of your message in the URL.Not sparing my feelings, she replies: "Your website is set up in a very outdated fashion and any idiot could have easily found that directory, even inadvertently. Maybe you should think about getting your site redesigned. People often complain about how hard it is to navigate your site."
Meanwhile an even more hostile critic Vic McCracken writes:
I came back to your website after several years today and found little by way of historical analysis. It's now mostly a hitching post for Jew baiting. One understands your antipathy towards some Jews. But it seems to me to be a shame that trawling the world wide web so you can post articles about nasty Jews has become, in your final years, your obsession. You were much better as an historian. The content now on the site simply makes you out to be another Internet crackpot.I reply: "I don't trawl the web for items, people send them to me. People like you."
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)A REASONABLY good night, though up a couple of times, excursions which appear to have proved fatal for a cockroach lying flattened beside my bed this morning. Now, that reminds me of prison in Vienna.
An email tells me that David Duke was arrested by German police Friday as persona non grata. Quite. I never figured out why the Austrians so willingly allowed him to conduct his business while living in Austria; or perhaps I did.
I hobble down to the Banana Café for breakfast. K. is away visiting his Mom in Montana. Another Mother's Boy, like ...'s new beau. A delightful chat with the gang for an hour, then I hobble back to Margaret Street. It is now becoming almost impossible to walk.
Jessica now emails: "As I am sure you are eagerly anticipating, my birthday is fast approaching and therefore I require a suitably fabulous present! I do have my eye on a new Blackberry as my current one runs pathetically slow."
I reply: "I shall have to consult ..., she's the expert on such things." (Namely getting expensive gifts out of men.) Meanwhile I play for time: "Got no cash here at present. My bike was stolen, and I am helpless here without it. Have to buy another. (What happened to the bike I bought here for you in 2000?)"
I carried it back to London from Miami on a British Airways flight. Couldn't do that nowadays.
Up the spiral staircase to bed around ten p.m. The dead cockroach has mysteriously vanished, like the corpse in a cheap Raymond Chandler thriller.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)
A Chinese fan writes: "I am a sincere reader of your books about Germany in WWII from China.The first foreign historian book I read is The Trail of the Fox (1977), your biography of Erwin Rommel and I was deeply impressed by that book when I am only 12. It is a translated internal version appeared mid-1980s which circulated only around some libraries of military schools in China. Best Regards, Fan Wang."
I reply a 7:12 a.m: "I was interested to hear that the book appeared in China -- I was never paid for it!! Glad you liked it."
Some Dutch fans have also written me today:
We recently encountered your works and lectures on the internet. Sadly 14 Jewish family members of one of us (Henry Sturman) died in German concentration camps during WWII. We are grateful to you for your efforts in trying to find out the truth about such victims, Hitler and the third Reich. As you, we are interested in finding out the real truth about these events and about Hitler, and are sick and tired of a culture that welcomes critical inquiry up to a point, but spews fire and emotional outrage once you pass the line of politically correct "facts".There is deep irony in your attackers' hypocritical praise for your critical inquiries which have unearthed certain facts about WWII previously unknown, while at the same time they brand you a heretic for questioning certain other established facts. They don't seem to see that they are both sides of the same coin. True intellectual honesty, like you posess, is bound to bring up welcome as well as unwelcome facts.
Although we do not agree with all your conclusions, we admire your fight for freedom, and the fact that you have been able to maintain your intellectual integrity, together with a healty degree of humor, in the face of so much opposition. Please continue your brave search for truth, and know that people with a genuine passion for truth are with you.
HUGO has hilariously recounted his attendance at his nephew's wedding in a chapel in St Paul's Cathedral (Hugo's rather good-looking sister is married to the current chief of MI6, and neither really approves of me):
My brother and I were just about to sit down near the front when this tiny sylph-like person in a red hat rushed up to us and said 'You can't sit here, this is where we're sitting!'I couldn't make out who it was that was speaking to us peremptorily so I peered under the brim of her hat and said 'Who are you?' She then clenched her little fists and stamped her little foot and repeated her command rather more tersely whereupon I recognised the voice. It was my sister. She really looked like a girl of about 25. . .
A few minutes later, after my brother and I had found seats suitably near the back, I returned to her and complimented her on her youthful looks which had so misled me; to which she said 'Go and sit down, it's starting,' which it wasn't because there were still fifteen minutes to go before it started. I got the impression she wasn't pleased to see me. Something to do with you, I dare say.
Then Sir John Sawers [her husband] wandered over with his hands in his pockets and said 'Are you the surprise guest?'. I looked round and said well, actually I had come intending to join a demonstration [an anti-everything demonstration had gathered outside St Pauls] but seem to have got in with the wrong crowd. He hastened away. . . I later moved to the demonstration outside. Far more interesting people there than in the church.
I have spent today completing a new appendix for the Goebbels book reprint -- on the three Jews who came into his youthful orbit.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)JAE HAS written me at six-thirty a.m. from Indianapolis: "Hope I can get orders packed in time!"
I reply at once: "I was just thinking ten minutes ago, how very dedicated you are to your customers. A real professional. You bound to succeed in everything you turn your hand to. I am so glad to have you on my side."
Somebody sends me this item from The Jewish Chronicle:
When a speaker is banned, they take on the mantel of a martyr for freedom of speech and their cause often becomes more attractive. Consequently, when David Irving was banned from speaking in Europe and jailed in Austria (above), he cast himself in this role and received more media coverage worldwide than he would have if he had been allowed to speak and his absurd arguments about the Holocaust had been shown up by opposing speakers.Yes, the Jews would prefer something more like Hitler's Nacht und Nebel: no martyrs. The alternative is too ugly, namely allowing more Free Speech.
An anonymous fan sends me a link to a Hamburg, Germany, newspaper article: "Die zahlreichen Gesichter der braunen Subkultur":
"Nationalisten, Rassisten und Holocaustleugner finden jedoch auch außerhalb ihrer sicheren Internet-Welt genügend Lesestoff. Legale Verlage wie der Arndt-Verlag des vor allem in Schleswig-Holstein tätigen Dietmar Munier verbergen ihre Ideologie durch Andeutungen. Zu ihren Autoren gehören auch regelmäßig Holocaustverleugner wie David Irving oder Günter Deckert."Yes, what would they do without us. It is from the Hamburger Abendblatt: That is one of the hate-filled Axel Springer, i.e. pro-Israel, newspapers. I send it to my Kiel lawyer with the comment: "Man befreit sich von diesen blöden Verunglimpfungen nie." And I have been pursuing Dietmar Munier for ten years for unpaid author's royalties! The case is due to come to court in Kiel on December 14.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)Albert wants to be wakened early for his seven a.m. drive up to Miami and back. I find Jessica has written from England:
I am in Manchester atm [at the moment] for my [university] interview and was at a focus group last night. Manchester is amazing but I'm kind of put off by the level of lab work"Okay Jessica. Good luck with the interview; that will be good training for the Oxford interview! Just got back from breakfast. Albert is driving a cancer sufferer up to Miami and back today. An eight-hour drive! He is a good friend."
Later a friend emails: "Good morning. :-)" I reply: "Just limped back from Eaton Bikes. They phoned half an hour ago that the bike was ready. No it isn't. They have changed the tyres (which was their preference, not mine) but done none of the other jobs. So: still immobile."
Later: "Just went back to the bike shop for third time today but it still has jobs left undone. Needs a new brake lever, cable, etc., etc. They saw me coming. More scary is that they loaned me a bike, and I find my leg is so far gone I am not sure I can even ride any distance at all with the existing one. Better stick with Mr Triathlon Guy."
My German attorney writes about the latest German press libels: I reply, Ich glaube kaum, dass man hier auf dem Pressegesetzweg etwas erreichen kann. Eine alte Erfahrung, leider.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)I BINGED last night on prime rib with Albert after his return from Miami. He really has the soul of an angel. Is looking regularly after a local woman with cancer. Drove her to Miami, waited (and fell asleep) while she had her treatment, and then drove her back here [an eight-hour round trip]. "There are not many people like us still around," I tell my friend : "Picked up the red bike this morning, it cost $120 for the servicing, it will however do for any female who comes here -- but the red bike turns out to be useless for me. I shall have to buy a new one."
Later I add: "Just biked to the Post Office and back on the red bike. It runs smoothly, but the brake is feeble and the saddle is six inches too low even at maximum extension. I now see it's a woman's bike (bought it new for Aislinn Morrison or Tessa Reading I think). My legs are never fully straight, always bent. I think I'll leave it propped against a tree in Duval Street and hope somebody takes it. Probably nobody will."
She replies: "If you don't want the red bike, list it on Craigslist for $50. I bet somebody will buy it."
- "It has just cost $120 to repair."
- "Well, you said you were just going to lean it against a tree and hope somebody would take it!"
- "That would then be force majeure. Offering it on Craigslist would be accepting defeat. I do not accept defeat easily. That's the difference between British and Australians."
I write to my global proof-reading circle of friends: "The re-editing job [on "Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich"] is nearly complete. Just the illustrations, and some minor problems elsewhere. I have written a small addition for the new edition of my Goebbels biography -- a preface describing the global 1996 attempts to prevent its publication. As before, it is a copyright work. Comments are welcomed."
Friday, December 2, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)AWAKE from 4 a.m., still brooding on the calamity. It began three months ago in Warsaw. Who could have foreseen it? I certainly did not at the time.
10:30 a.m I phone the hospital in Manchester. Mr Jacobs cannot do the surgery before his return in April; would I accept Mr Goldstein or Mr Nedi? I say I have no problem with either, though I do query what nationality both are. She will contact Goldstein and get back to me, probably not before Monday. I say pick a date seven or ten days' hence, to give me time to get an airline ticket. Groan. Still no firm dates for the operation, then.
As for Gabriela Marquez, I establish pretty clearly that she's alive and well after all. I phone her friend Bonelli in Miami, and a guy says straight away that she is okay and did not have an accident in April, and they spoke with her since then. So she was up to her usual tricks. As I thought, and as my friends all said.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Key West, Florida (USA)DURING the night I decide it is time to mount a major Pressegesetz onslaught in Germany with my so far very successful Kiel lawyer against the "holocaust-denial" smears by the Springer group and others. Yes, we British fight back.
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