David Irving |
Documents on the International Campaign for Real History
First posted Monday, January 2, 2012
© Focal Point 2012
I am a motor car of very low-grade fuelling habits. 87 octane, and I am happy eating the simplest fare.
Sunday, December 25, 2011
Kew, London (England)CHRISTMAS Day. An Iranian fan has written this morning from Nottingham:
I wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas. I have enjoyed hearing some of your speeches in YouTube and have a great admiration of your hard work to tell the real version of the second world war history. I couldn't imagine the sacrifices you and your family have made to tell the truth. It is because of people like you that a bit of humanity still exist and life is bearable. We live in Nottingham and I would love to attend your lectures if you have one in Nottingham.Always indebted to you and the truth tellers like yourself that make life impossible for themselves just to enlighten the masses.
A quick web-search reveals that the writer is a manager at Siemens, Nottingham. I reply: "I will probably come and talk in the Midlands in the early Spring. . . First step is always to spend 15 seconds filling in the brief details needed, at http://www.fpp.co.uk/apply." This very simple security procedure has fortunately proved a life-saver in the past.
My fourth daughter Beatrice emails from Australia replying to my good wishes around my extended family:
We are in Sydney for a week visiting Julie [an old school friend]. We are house-sitting for Julie's sister-in-law who lives around the corner and a Welsh friend of ours is house-sitting our place, feeding our two cats, so it's worked out well all around.Yes, Australia. "Thursday's child has far to go."
Monday, December 26, 2011
Kew, London (England)TWO p.m. Jessica persuades me to drive her to Kensington High Street, but once again the A4 is
jammed solid because of the closure of the ageing Hammersmith Flyover, so I turn off at Dukes Avenue and drop her in Chiswick. The terrorists now know that all they need to do to shut down West London is jump up and down on that overpass.
Dominique emails from Madrid, and asks for the illustrations from my mother's book The Dawnchild for her publishing contacts.
I am in a worsening depression. It is of course indirectly my own fault. I hope to pull out of this nose-dive when I resume work on Himmler this week. I can't remember ever having felt as low as this since 1999, just before the Lipstadt Trial.
I tell ...'s successor in our online bookstore: "I am going to relax for an hour, I've had my nose to the grindstone all day; let's chat in an hour after you have had time to read my stuff. I am in a state of real depression. Worst since my oldest daughter killed herself in 1999."
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Kew, London (England)WE are in the grips of a major bookstore mess. Every customer is being bounced off the site.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Kew, London (England)THE bookstore is working again; it seems I contributed to the mess by changing the merchant service provider's password as part of a different procedure. Apologies all round, but unspoken.
From a Moscow friend comes this message about our upcoming September 2012 Wolf's Lair Tour:
- 5:33 p.m Dear David, please inform of the tour's programme, its price and approximate date.
He has numerous friends who are interested:
- One of them is a co-founder of a popular Internet forum on military history and said he'd gladly advertise your tour. If you are not sure of the price yet then send me a tour programme only please.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Kew, London (England)I SPEND the morning digitising all the Goebbels photographs I may need now as alternates for the reprint. Many of the best originals are still missing, and I shall have to use substitutes.
At one p.m. I drive into Windsor. All the parking slots next to the bank at the top of the castle hill are full so I have to park down by the bridge and limp back up the hill. I deposit two cheques -- six are missing, inadvertently handed in by me yesterday at the post office in a blank envelope. They have gone off to the Belfast lost-mail office.
I find a photo store where I can get a good scan made of the negatives of the October 1933 Goebbels group photo in Geneva: the United Nations office there sent the negatives to me in the 1990s, before the digital age began. So in some ways the new edition will be better than the first. I limp back down the hill and drive round through Datchet to Eton.
In the evening I become lethargic again. I finish scanning all the Goebbels prints I may need now as alternates.
Fed Ex reports my shipment of ink has today finally been delivered to the cottage in Key West, nine days after I left. Fourteen days ago, I paid extra for "overnight" shipping, and now I am long gone. I forward details to Albert: "Can I take that this small shipment has been delivered safely into your hands, Albert? At the cottage? If so please sit on it (not literally) until I come."
Friday, December 30, 2011
Kew, London (England)THIS morning Hugo says, "When I picked you up at the airport you looked fifteen years younger, and upright: that was the loss of weight." Very kind of him, though "five" would have been more tactful than "fifteen." I am a motor car of very low-grade fuelling habits. 87 octane, and I am happy eating the simplest fare.
An Argentinian professor writes me, all in capital letters, Grrr. "Dear Mr Irving, Your fame has reach these far shores." etc etc., and much more of the same.
My best friend Rolf Hochhuth warned me back in the late 1960s never, ever to reply to fan mail, as it just encourages them to write again. He opened a wardrobe cupboard, and showed me: It was bulging from floor to ceiling with unopened fan mail. "If they send me books to sign," said Hochhuth, "I keep the books. "If they send me stamps for a reply, ditto."
I have always ignored his advice, and today I reply courteously to the professor.
"Thank you so much, Professor Altmann. Your opinion on the Holocausto is the same as mine, and you will find it strongly supported in my book on Himmler. You can write me in Spanish if you prefer. I was married for twenty years to a madrileña . . . I spoke in Argentina three or four times in 1991. Feliz Año Nuevo."
He then bombards me with emails, about ten at the last count, and I finally have to tell him in large print to STOP.
I write to our U.K. printers: "Dear Folks,
Pleased to say that things are picking up again. . . I have nearly completed work on the PDF and reconstruction of the Goebbels biography for which you estimated earlier ("Goebbels. Mastermind of the Third Reich"). The Indian-made OCR had 10,000 errors, which we have painstakingly weeded out; and we have had to rebuild the picture section entirely. Unless you can print from the film we have, we have no endpapers (original photos returned to owners). . . We shall sell most of them in the USA.I instruct my German lawyers to start proceedings against a German publisher to terminate the Hitler's War contract: they have had the contract since 2004, and have not printed a single copy (but are advertising it on their website as available). This reflects very poorly on me and, after all, it is absurd -- it is my flagship work. I wonder what is behind it. The lawyer will find out.
I ALLOW myself a brief end-of-year amusement. A scammer, "Stefan Tcholakov," sends me an URGENT email, stating that he has been robbed and needs a loan urgently to get home. "Thank God I still have my passport, so I'm waiting for your mail."
I don't know any Stefan Tcholakov. I reply: "My dear friend, do send me your landline phone number so I can rush funds to you immediately, David."
Instantly comes this response:
- I'm glad you responded back to my message, the amount of money I need to settle my bills is €2,360. All you have to do is to locate a Western Union or you can transfer online by using your Creditcard to log on to www.westernunion.com and get the money transferred in my name. Please use the details below to send:
- Name: Stefan Tcholakov, Address: Valencia 5, City: Malaga, 29001
- Just help me, write out the MTCN/Reference number and other necessary details. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
- Thanks, Stefan.
- P.S My phones was [sic] stolen during the incident please I really need you to help me as fast as you can.
Straight-faced, if he could only see it, I reply helpfully: "I need your landline phone number, to give you the MTCN. David."
What a fraudster. But he keeps at it:
Thanks a lot David I really appreciate your effort towards me here. all the lines have been shut down here during the incidents please David you have to believe me please if there is a phone i would have call you the only thing I could see here is the hotel intercom. and remember I don't speak Spanish, so communicating with people around me here is kind of difficult. please reply this message with the information needed to use in making claims of the money you sent here including the MTCN, your full name and location where money was sent by you.Waiting to hear from you. Stefan.
He is still waiting. I turn to other more urgent matters, and hope he does not suffer long. I am not by nature a callous person. I leave that heartless trait to the female of the human species.
I think it might suit the Telegraph gossip columnist Tim Walker: "Dear Tim
- somebody just sent me an interesting link from today's Guardian about Churchill' diaries.
- Pity they did not contact me.
- It is true, [in the early 1980s] the godson of Churchill's bodyguard "Tommy" Thompson offered to sell me Churchill's desk diaries for my famous biography "Churchill's War", vol. i: "Struggle for Power". He set a high price on them, 250,000 pounds. I considered them to be hot (Sotheby's had refused to auction them for that reason), but I agreed to rent the originals from the godson (Simon Ward-Thompson) for five thousand pounds per annum, a lot of money in those days. They were crucially important for [me as] a Churchill biographer. Sir Martin Gilbert did not have them. Hah!
- There were gaps in the set, which was otherwise complete from August 1939 to July 1945: The Battle of Britain months were missing. [When] I donated a set of high quality copies to the Churchill Archives many years ago, Correlli Barnett, the chief archivist, revealed that they had the missing pages: we did a swap, and our sets are now both complete.
- Incidentally, when the Treasury Solicitor first contacted me in the 1980s about the "stolen" diaries . . . I at once provided a set of copies at my own expense to the Government; I had by then returned the originals to the owner.
- I also obtained the Chequers guest register for the war years, which was even more illuminating in other ways: I had provided free accommodation for a year in a Mayfair apartment to an old lady in need, the widow of the Chequers police detachment commander; she turned out to be Jewish. But that's another story, as they say. . . I wonder what other skeletons are lurking inside the Thirty Year Rule closet.
William B writes from Toronto: I am very happy to donate and I look forward to "Himmler" -- I trust the book will give some insight into what made him tick -- it's always been beyond me! My wife . . . is not as interested in WWII history as I am but I manage to get her to look at some interesting items on your website from time to time. She is quite fascinated by Hitler's relationship with Eva, having visited the Eagle's Nest with me a few years ago. She is also interested in Goebbels, Magda, and the five beautiful children and their ultimate fate. I will definitely purchase the next edition of Goebbels when it comes out. It's always a treat to read A Radical`s Diary."
I answer with an invitation: "Then you should both consider coming to our Sept 2012 tour of Hitler's HQs in East Prussia (northern Poland). See the information on our recent tours there at http://www.fpp.co.uk/wolfslair. I was not up to much this last September, as my leg gave way; which was why one of our two Australian guests was able to scoop up Jaenelle unopposed, causing me great sorrow and some disruption in the bookstore."
He replies:
By the way, didn't I see you on CBC-TV back in the sixties with Rolf Hochhuth discussing, among other things, the bombing of Dresden and the death of General Sikorski? This prompted a heated debate between my parents and me about the morality of the Dresden attack. I, of course, took the view that it was wrong while my Anglophile parents the opposite - totally justified because "they started it". Anyway we never agreed on this but it didn't cause a great family rift, either.
Right: In the Toronto studios of CBC Television, Edward Prchal (left) meets David Irving in Nov 1967. Prchal was the sole survivor of the mysterious crash which killed General Sikorski in Jul 1943.I respond:
Yes indeed. I was on CBC two or three times in November 1967. Hochhuth's play Soldiers was premiered in Toronto and CBC invited me over. I appeared also on Front Page Challenge.-- one of Canada's most popular TV game shows. (Now of course I am banned from Canada).
In which connection Barry S. writes: "When is your next guided tour? The Poland trip was great fun. Hope to see you in the Spring."
Sergey Romanov sends me a lengthy conformist paper on the Reinhardt camps [download pdf, 5.6MB]. It is drafted by a new team, "Holocaust Controversies." This turns out to consist of Dr. Nicholas Terry, Roberto Muehlenkamp, Jonathan Harrison, Sergey Romanov and Jason Myers.
"Dr. Nicholas Terry is a lecturer at Exeter U, so it's not quite anonymous," Romanov protests, adding sarcastically: "Of course, Mr. Irving, you've never had a problem with anonymous publications when it suited you (see: 'Samuel Crowell')."
("Crowell" is a writer and researcher in the revisionist camp, who has asked to remain pseudonymous.)
I reply civilly: "Your paper looks very interesting, but a bit long. I will of course read it, but later. You may appreciate why some of the revisionist historians with professional positions needed to conceal their real names; but I was aware of them [their real names] as I am no threat to them."
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Kew, London (England)LAST day of a sad year, which seemed to start so well. The loss of my brother John, gathered up into Our Lord's arms early in August, and then at the last moment of my best friend and colleague to a paunchy Australian: These probably inevitable events have clouded my horizon badly.
John Justice writes from New South Wales (he has persevered in proof-reading Goebbels):
I've had one of the best Times of my Life reading and examining your work. It has been absolutely fantastic. This sort of revision is a great study in style, and I've learnt much about writing thanks to you. Further, just to be in contact with you, one of the greatest writers of the twentieth and twentieth centuries is exaltation made real.That kind of monstrous flattery does something to restore Australians in my esteem.
I reply: "Many thanks to you too John; we started out with twenty proof-readers and you are the only one who has stayed the course, just as I anticipated. I am now tangling with the task of reconstructing the picture sections, with half the best pictures returned to their owners. Not easy."
ENCOURAGED by the news from Martyna, I now write to the garage working on the vintage Rolls-Royce Silver Spur I have inherited a few years back from a fan's widow: I have yet to use the car, or even sit in the driver's seat; the experts have been working on her restoration for two years now; time-consuming rather than costly, but I always want a job to be done properly. The garage-owner has obtained some old Rolls accessories. "Okay Michael," I reply, relenting. "We will have those picnic tables fitted please, now that its emergence onto the open road again is approaching. I shall drop in for a chat."
Ironically, it will be at least six weeks after the surgery before I can legally drive the beast: that's the law around here. Thirty years old, she is. Best age for ladies.
I am finally catching up on my life, and doing things I should have done long ago. . . I also want to see about getting all my books back into our Classic-series print, and as a first step can I ask you to scour all your hard drives for any text versions of our books, which you so kindly scanned, as a first step to our setting them in our standard typeface. . . We want to see finally about turning some of them into eBooks, although I frankly think that typographically speaking all the non-PDF eBooks look like cr+p.We had Goebbels scanned in India, and it came back with literally 10,000 errors -- e.g., all the footnote-numbers missing or wrong, and there were 7,500 of them. We finally have that Labour of Sisyphus complete.
All the best, Linda, for the coming year. I lost my other best colleague . . . to a wealthy and paunchy (and non-limping) Australian and have been kicking myself, metaphorically speaking, ever since. So now I pick up my pitchfork and limp back into the Augean Stables to continue writing history as from tomorrow, January 1, 2012.
Got to get used to writing that year, 2012, and it seems like only yesterday it was "2011".
Jessica, now just eighteen, goes to a New Year's Eve dinner at F.'s -- black-tie event; that's nice. Before she goes, I get Hugo to take a photo of us together.
It takes a dozen tries. He can be very infuriating (unlike moi). Understands nothing about converging verticals and chopping off the top of people's heads.
I go to bed early, as I have promised to get up at four-fifty a.m. to take him to Heathrow. We Englishmen keep our promises. It is a short night, and I find myself lying awake most of the night, thinking.
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