THE FOLLOWING nasty specimen vilifying David Irving was published in The Australia/Israel Review, 1 October - 20 October 1996. The author, Michael Kapel, is a pathological liar who frequently writes in this journal. [Click for a 1998 attack on Mr Irving by The Australia/Israel Review]

Hitler's Willing Helper

Although for years he has tried to conceal it, David Irving's world has been marked by racial hatred, neo-Nazi violence, criminal convictions and extremist associations. In an exclusive investigation, the Review enters Irving's world.

By Michael Kapel

IT COULD have been worse, although it's bard to imagine how. It is Halle, Germany, 1991. Gottfried Küssel has illegally entered the country and is leading a neo Nazi demonstration down the main street of this quiet German town. Küssel, Austria's "Führer" and most reviled neo-Nazi leader, has since been sentenced to 10 years Imprisonment by a Vienna court for weapons offences and neo-Nazi activities. When be was arrested, a large arms cache was found on his premises. But in November 1991 he is still on the loose, even though he is banned from German territory.

The morning is cold, perhaps 10 below zero. At an intersection not far from the centre of town, followers of Küssel and the now-illegal Nationale Liste, a neo-Nazi group led by Christian Worch (jailed a year later), gather to march through Halle. In groups of three or four, skinheads emerge from back alleys and out of cars, forming a sea of shaved scalps, military fatigues and black commando boots.

"Deutschland für Deutscher - Ausländer Raus!" - Germany for Germans - Foreigners out - they chant, warming themselves for the rally to follow. Only the night before immigrant hostels near Halle have been attacked. The perpetrators have not yet been caught, the police are still investigating. Flags of the German eagle and iron cross flutter in the morning breeze. As the comrades meet the Nazi salute is given.

Now there's 500 of them, assembled outside the Mr McCash currency exchange bureau. German Federal riot police - the Bereitschaftspolizei - assemble opposite. Three rows deep, they are armed and carrying riot shields, helmets and batons.

A red truck drives up, carrying a large mobile platform. It is time for the rally to begin. Gottfried Küssel leads off. He is arrogant but nervous. His eyes dart furtively. Reporters and TV crews jostle to speak to him. "No, there is no place for foreigners in Germany," he says before brushing them aside. The demonstrators fall into line behind Küssel.

The skinheads begin to stamp their feet. It's a jackboot stomp, not unlike a Nazi goosestep. It echoes through the abandoned streets. The sun is up and the residents of Halle peer down at the street from their windows. The police are growing nervous. More and more groups of skinheads are joining the demonstration from intersecting streets. They clearly outnumber the authorities.

The truck has stopped in the city square and the 500 or so neo-Nazi youths gather around it. Then he appears. From the rear he makes his way through the crowd. He's taller than I expect. David Irving, clad in a trenchcoat. He clambers aboard the rear of the truck and seizes the microphone. It is Irving that these Nazi skinheads have come to hear and the anticipation in the crowd is at breaking point as "der Englische Historiker" barks at them in fluent German.

"I honour this opportunity to speak to the German Youth. The process of reunification is not yet over. There is still a German question. There are still German countries, German territories, not only here in Germany. not only in Europe but also scattered all over the world." Irving has his crowd. They are spellbound.

"I commemorate the great Rudolf Hess, Hitler's former Vice Führer. Rudolf Hess was a man of peace who we British caged up for 48 years. Rudolf Hess, a martyr for Germany and in his name .." The neo-Nazis go crazy. "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," they scream. The passers-by scatter. The local residents, peering out from their high rise apartments, pull their heads in. The press are terrified. The police bristle. Irving stands on the platform and grins.

After his speech Irving agrees to talk to a camera crew. He is pumped up. "You're seeing the German soul of nationalism emerging," he informs them.

By the evening the demonstrators have turned violent. There are running street battles with the police and left wing student protesters. There are arrests. skinheads are chased into the train station. Police trucks are brought in to take the Arrested protesters away. There are assaults. The injured are taken away in ambulances. A gun is found on one protester. This is the reality of David Irving's reborn German soul of nationalism.

If you can tell a man by the company he keeps, David Irving's contact book makes disturbing reading. To Australians he has portrayed himself as an historian. albeit a revisionist one. Little investigation has ever gone into his network of associates and the organisations he works with. In obscuring this network Irving is able to present himself as a martyr for free speech on the altar of political correctness. If he is merely a winter of unconventional history then there is a valid debate over his right to enter Australia. However, there is an overwhelming body of evidence to indicate that he is in fact an active and key player in an international network of extremist and neo-Nazi groups.

David Irving has addressed many meetings over the years, in many countries around the world, expounding his unconventional view of history. In Canada, the white supremacist Aryan Resistance Movement guarded Irving's talks in Vancouver in September 1991. The talks were organised by the Canadian League of Rights, sister group to the Australian League of Rights. The League helped organise a second meeting in Toronto several days later. Wolfgang Droege, leader of the openly Nazi white supremacist Heritage Front. appeared in Irving's entourage at most of his appearances during his November 1992 Canada tour. Irving was scheduled to address the Heritage Front in Toronto on November 1, 1992 but was arrested on immigration charges.

On the other side of the world. the British National Party (BNP), Britain's largest and most dangerous fascist group, has a long working association with Irving. Many of its members have criminal records for violent acts throughout Britain, including bombings, bashings, and stabbing attacks on blacks, Asians, Jews and political opponents. The BNP first became associated. with Irving through the Clarendon Club (a far-right social group in London) in the early 1980s. Irving's Clarendon Club meetings and his later Revisionist Seminars were by invitation only and the BNP often made up a large contingent of the invitees as well as providing security for Irving. Irving addressed meetings of the party from 1990 to 1992. An Irving Revisionist Seminar in July 1992 was attended by BNP "Leader" John Tyndall, who has a long criminal record, and was guarded by BNP skinheads. At a second seminar in September 1992, the majority of the audience were from the BNP, which again provided security, Tyndall and his deputy Richard Edmonds both attended an invitation-only Irving seminar in June 1992. The BNP annual rally for November 1993 also advertised Irving as its keynote speaker.

Members of Column 88. a neo-Nazi paramilitary group responsible for numerous violent attacks in Britain, frequently attended Clarendon Club meetings of Irving in the 1979-81 period. (The eighth letter of the alphabet is H. "88" - HH - Heil Hitler.) Column 88 leader Ian Souter Clarence attended Irving's Clarendon Club lectures in March 1979 and February 1980. On June 19 1993, Irving held a Holocaust denial meeting in Brighton. In attendance and guarding the meeting were BNP skinheads and members of Combat 18. (Combat 18 is a secret neo-Nazi paramilitary unit operating in England. Many of its members have criminal records and receive training from Ulster Protestant terrorists. "18" - AH - Adolf Hitler.)

Tony Malski, a self-avowed convicted Nazi activist with a long involvement with European right-wing terrorists, handled security for Irving's meetings. Malski also attended Irving's February 1980 Clarendon Club meeting where he bashed a photographer.

Because of Irving's reputation, many mainstream publishers will not handle his books. His latest book, a biography of Goebbels, is published by Focal Point. which is owned and run by Irving. This was previously the title of a short-lived magazine published by Irving in the early 1980s, which served as a bulletin board for the extreme right and carried advertisements for a wide range of racist and Nazi-controlled groups. In December 1981, it published a cover story advocating the repatriation of Britain's coloured immigrants. Focal Point was printed by notorious British nazi Anthony Hancock, who also printed for the National Front, the openly Nazi League of St. George, the BNP, Holocaust deniers, and numerous European neo-Nazi groups. Hancock admitted in court to associations with German, French and British terrorists, and has been accused by British authorities of involvement in a plot to forge passports. Hancock helped to organise Irving's September 1992 and June 1993 Revisionist Seminars. He is awaiting trial for cheque fraud and forgery worth several million pounds.

In the US, Dave Holland, National Director of the Southern White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was a guest at an Irving lecture in Smyrna, Georgia. in October 1992. The next month, Canadian Ku Klux Klan members made up part of Irving's audience at an invitation-only meeting.

In Germany it appears that Irving is not only one of the most popular drawcards within the neo-Nazi community but is also one of it's more influential figures. Irving was to speak at a May 9, 1992 Berlin rally organised by the neo-Nazi Die Nationalen (aka Deutsche Liga fur Volk und Heimat or German League for Nation and Homeland) to oppose German capitulation to the allies in 1945. The rally was cancelled by city authorities. The German Government has moved to ban this group. The Deutsche Jugend Bildungswerk, another neo-Nazi group, carried three boxes containing more than 100 of Irving's books into court for him during his unsuccessful appeal in Munich in 1992 against a fine for denying the Holocaust. The group also organised meetings for him in Germany. Ewald Althans, a veteran neo-Nazi leader heads the Deutsche Jugend Bildungswerk and was widely regarded for a time as the new Führer, Althans organised some of David Irving's German tours together with Karl Philipp, adviser to Hitler loyalist General Otto Remer. Althans claimed that "Mr Irving says the things we want to hear."

The Deutsche Volksunion (DVU) is regarded as Germany's largest extreme right-wing group. The movement has a membership of 20,000, relentlessly targets Jews through its newspapers and advocates the expulsion of all foreigners from Germany. Irving got top billing at its annual meeting in March 1992 in Passau, sharing the platform with party leader Gerhard Frey. The DVU also sponsored Irving tours of West Germany in the mid-1980s. Irving addressed the DVU regularly and in 1982 was awarded the European Freedom Prize by the Deutsche National Zeitung, published by Frey. Irving shared a platform with Frey at two meetings organised jointly by the DVU and its sub-group AKON in Hamburg and Düsseldorf in January 1982. He then said that "people I know in the DVU appear respectable citizens to me. I see no reason not to speak on its platforms."

The Gesellschaft für Freie Publizistik (GFP), is ostensibly dedicated to freedom of the press, but was in fact founded by former SS members from the "Mutual Support Association of the Waffen-SS." The organisation publishes anti-Holocaust books and has served as a bridge between the Third Reich and the German New Right. It also sponsored many of Irving's tours of Germany I the early 1980s. Irving spoke to this organisation in Rothenburg in May 1991, sharing the platform with extremists from the Deutsche Liga and Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands whose chairman, Günter Deckert, was sentenced to two years in prison for incitement in 1995. Nationale Liste, the neo-Nazi organisation led by Christian Worch also sponsored an address by David Irving in March 1990 in Hamburg.

Nationale Offensive is a violent neo-Nazi group responsible for firebombing attacks on immigrant hostels. The group sponsored two talks by Irving in the Augsburg and Engen in March 1992. Nationale Offensive was banned by the German Government in 1993 (A billposter advertising Irving's Augsburg address appears on the front cover of the Review.)

Irving has a few other friends who also seem to stand out. Take François Genoud for example. Genoud, a Swiss banker and lawyer, has been a Nazi since the 1930s. During the war he was made an "honorary" SS member, and awarded a "Gold Badge" by Hitler. A close friend of the leaders of the Third Reich, he holds the copyrights on the writings of Hitler, Bormann and Goebbels. At the end of the war, Genoud was alleged to have been responsible for spiriting Nazi funds out of Germany and into Swiss bank accounts. He has continued contacts with ex-SS men, was prominent in the New European Order extreme right group, and has been involved in paying for the legal defences of Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and terrorist groups including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), with which he is closely involved, and the Baader-Meinhoff group. Genoud told a London newspaper in 1992 that "Hitler was a great leader and if he had won the war, the world would be a better place today." Irving described Genoud as "a very old friend and esteemed colleague" and "an old and esteemed friend of mine and we share many causes." Genoud is also speculated to have been the source for Irving's Goebbels diary "discovery."

Then there's Thies Christophersen, an SS guard at Auschwitz and neo-Nazi activist. Christophersen is author of the notorious pamphlet The Auschwitz Lie. He is wanted in Germany, and is connected to the American based NSDAP-AO, which considers itself the exile organisation of the original Nazi Party. Christophersen attended a revisionist meeting with Irving in Hagenau near Strasbourg, France. When asked if he is in contact with Irving, Christophersen claims to have "known David Irving for many years."

In the Holocaust-denying network Irving is also closely associated and co-operates with Ernst Zündel, the Canadian Holocaust denier and extremist. Zündel paid for the production of the infamous Leuchter Report, which attempts to scientifically prove that the gas chambers were fabrications. Irving helped Zündel prepare his defence against publishing false news after claiming the Holocaust was a hoax. He testified for Zündel at his Canadian trial in 1988, where he was found guilty of "promotion of hatred." Irving says the reason he "won't accept" the gas chambers of the Holocaust is because of "that extraordinary Canadian Ernst Zündel."

Zündel was filmed with Irving at a Revisionist conference in Hagenau, France, where he stated "Why should we, upright German men, dirty ourselves in this slime, in this pigsty, in these demonic base lies that this pack of Jew rabble has spread?"

The other key player in the international Holocaust-denying network is Fred Leuchter, an unqualified American who bills himself as an "execution expert". He prepared a report claiming to scientifically prove that the gas chambers of the concentration camps could not have been used for the murder of Jews. The report was condemned by the British parliament as "fascist." Irving published and distributed the report and wrote an introduction to it in Britain. The introduction claimed "The infamous gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek did not exist - ever, except, perhaps as the brainchild of Britain's brilliant wartime Psychological Warfare Executive". This led to the British House of Commons condemning Irving in a motion as a "Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist." Irving subsequently held a press conference denouncing the "gassing lie", and threatened to send the report to every school in Britain.

During the trial of Zündel in 1988, Irving, along with French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, encouraged Leuchter to undertake his "report." Leuchter appeared at a British rally organised by Irving in November 1991, but was arrested mid-speech and deported from Britain by police for illegally entering Britain after a Home Office ban had been placed on him. Those present included Irving, Faurisson and BNP activists John Tyndall, Richard Edmonds, John Morse, Steve Tyler, and John Peacock. Security at the event was led by members of the neo-Nazi International Third Position and the BNP.

Conflict and community tension follow David Irving wherever he goes. In May 1993 David Irving was banned from entering Australia. But even before he was to arrive trouble was brewing. Jewish community members received intimidating and threatening letters from neo-Nazis. Holocaust-denying literature was distributed in Melbourne and Sydney suburbs. The Melbourne suburbs of St Kilda and Caulfield were blanketed with red white and black Nazi stickers from the NSDAP-AO. Posters denouncing "Jewish lies" and lauding Adolf Hitler were stuck on walls by the Australian National Socialist Movement, whose Brisbane leader attacked a synagogue in that city.

Two fires were set on the premises of a Melbourne synagogue and the Perth synagogue was extensively daubed with slogans including: "Irving was here," "Six million lies." and "White Power." Two petrol bombs were thrown at a synagogue in Sydney. Irving himself made what appeared to be threatening comments to Australian Holocaust survivors during a Melbourne radio interview - "Now I am coming to hit back ... I am coming back and they're going to hurt."

These were incidents in an Australian environment that is relatively benign and tolerant. In Europe, far more serious incidents have taken place.

In May 1992 the Deutsche Liga (a.k.a. Die Nationalen) planned a rally in Berlin, inviting Irving to be the main speaker. A wave of orchestrated neo-Nazi ,violence broke out across Germany the same day as the planned address. In Magdeburg, 60 neo-Nazis raided a birthday party in a restaurant, destroying the interior and leaving five people with fractured skulls. One victim later died. Refugee centres in Hainichen, Stollberg and Aue were subject to neo-Nazi attacks. In Wendisch Rietz/Beeskow neo-Nazis attacked a disco and attempted to kill a Nigerian refugee. A 24 year-old skinhead was later charged with attempted murder. Twenty Nazi skinheads attacked a musical group from Czechoslovakia performing in a local pub. In Halle, skinheads ambushed and stabbed three people leaving a fete. German authorities banned the Irving speech to the rally after fears of big counter-demonstrations and the possibility of violence.

On 4 July 1992 Irving organised a London Revisionist Seminar, guarded and attended by skinheads, neo-Nazis and members of the BNP The invitation to the seminar stated: "We do not want this gathering to be just another 'talking shop' - we want it to be a spur to practical action". Two hundred anti-fascist demonstrators picketed the meeting. Bottles and missiles were thrown between the two groups. A TV cameraman was assaulted by BNP skinheads. Seven people were arrested. More than a hundred police were required to hold back demonstrators. Irving was guarded by members of Combat 18.

Only two months later on September 19 Irving held another Revisionist Seminar in London, at the Eccleston Hotel. The audience was predominantly skinheads from the British National Party. The guest speaker was Irving's colleague Ernst Zündel from Canada. Zündel described Adolf Hitler as a great man and then lauded a murderous neo-Nazi attack on immigrant hostels in the former east German town of Rostock: "Rostock is a beacon of hope. They are thinking with their blood ... Our war is at home and the colour of our skin is our uniform. After the death of Maastricht a new Europe will emerge, a decentralised Europe on ethnic lines after there has been ethnic cleansing."

In March 1991 Irving was the guest speaker at a rally of the Deutsche Volks Union (DVU) in Passau. The 8000 neo-Nazis listened as Irving claimed that "Germany would be the victorious power of the Twentieth Century" and that in 10 years Germany would regain its territories to the East. After listening to Irving, 300 members of the DVU rioted in the streets, assaulting pedestrians, smashing windows and injuring people. Forty DVU supporters, many skinheads, are arrested for giving Nazi salutes and possessing of knives and knuckledusters. A further 20 were arrested after attacking a youth centre, smashing doors and windows.

Days later, The Independent carried an interview with Irving which described how he was still enthused after Passau. 'There was a crowd of 10,000! The audience was chanting my name!" Irving claimed to the paper that Germany would "achieve with the Deutschmark, everything that Hitler failed to achieve" and boasted "I'm a mob orator. The German language is a lovely language for making mob oratory in."

In 1990 Irving gave similar addresses in Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Stuttgart, Oberhausen, Gera, and Weinheim/Bergstrasse. According to German intelligence reports during 1990, Irving attended 12 additional rallies and functions in the former East Germany, including Dresden, Leipzig, and Gera. His motto was "An Englishman fights for the honour of the Germans." The Dresden lecture was organised by the German neo-Nazi leader Ewald Althans, who last year received a three-year prison sentence for inciting racial hatred. In Hamburg Irving spoke on 'The Warmonger Churchill."

Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that Irving appears aware of the consequences his actions have throughout Europe. Interviewed by the London magazine Time Out he claimed " Central Germany as I would call it - you would call it East Germany - is going to be a breeding ground of political extremism and the present tilt is towards the right. I won't exploit it personally, but I do go along and mob orate for other people ... I intend to drive from town to town making speeches from the back of a truck and just see what happens."

It's no wonder Irving is banned from so many countries. Not only don't they want him, they go out of their way to keep him out. For the rest of the world it's not an issue of free speech but rather preventing undesirable individuals with a record for rabble rousing, incitement and extremist associations from entering their borders.

The list of refusals has grown impressively. The first country to move against Irving's activities was Austria. In June 1984 authorities detained Irving in Vienna and expelled him before he could address the first of a series of "Free Rudolf Hess" rallies organised by the "Society for Truthful Contemporary History." The group is an offshoot of the extreme right wing National Democratic Party. The Austrian Interior Minister had been battling an upsurge in neo-Nazi activity and determined that Irving was an "undesirable alien" and banned him from re-entering the country. Norbert Burger, the self proclaimed "Führer" of Austria said that he thought it "a splendid achievement that his party had been able to enlist the services of the world famous historian, Irving, the scourge of the cover up historians."

On November 8 1989 the Criminal Court of Vienna also issued a warrant. On May 8 1992, the Munich District Court found Irving guilty of slander of the memory of deceased persons. The penalty was a fine of 10,000 Deutschmarks. Irving appealed the fine and for his trouble found it increased to 30,000 Deutschmarks. During the hearing Irving surrounded himself with stacks of books and announced to the court that "he wasn't just anybody." The court found that Irving wasn't just anybody and had said to a Lowenbräukeller (beer hall) meeting that "By now we know - that there was never any gas chambers in Auschwitz." The court held that "anyone who denies the murder of Jews during the Third Reich slanders each and every Jew." An order was subsequently issued by the German Government for Irving to be expelled. "Your presence in the Federal Republic of Germany infringes public security. public order and also considerably the interests of the Federal Republic of Germany... Your behaviour constitutes a danger to the inner security of the Federal Republic of Germany."

The fact that Irving was in Germany at all remains a source of irritation for authorities, who, under the direction of the Ministry for the Interior, had since 1990 had Irving on a list of undesirable aliens to be prevented entry at any border crossing. Somehow, Irving has repeatedly managed to evade these restrictions and appear at various lectures and neo-Nazi gatherings. Irving seems to enjoy the cat and mouse game with the German authorities. In a telephone interview with the London Times from Munich he boasted, "Yes I am here and I have been in and out of Germany twenty times since the ban was imposed. This last time I came across the border in a rented truck at 4 am and had no difficulty whatsoever ... I was in Austria yesterday where there is an arrest warrant out for me."

In Canada his efforts to undermine the authorities have not been as successful. Canada, long renowned for its liberal, tolerant and open society, was an easy target for Irving. But by 1992 authorities there had become uncomfortable with his activities. That year, the Canadian Secretary of State stated that "Mr Irving's sympathies and intentions have no place in our society. They are abhorrent to Canadian values and ideals and are an incitement to racism if not a direct promotion of racist attitudes." In October, Irving was notified by the Canadian Consul General in the US of the decision by the Canadian Department of Employment and Immigration that he was not to be admitted into Canada. He was duly served with a letter declaring him persona non grata.

What the Canadian government did not realise was that Irving had decided he was going to Canada regardless. On October 27, Irving attempted to illegally enter Canada at Niagara Falls. misrepresenting the purpose of his visit. He was arrested and served with a departure notice. Irving failed to honour the departure notice and Canadian immigration authorities issued a Canada-wide arrest warrant for him. Eventually Irving was found in a Chinese restaurant in downtown Victoria addressing a group of neo-Nazis. He was rearrested and handcuffed. The crowd became agitated and the police were forced to quickly leave the restaurant. Irving was thrown into jail.

He was then brought before a hearing of the Immigration Tribunal. When asked to give evidence Irving claimed that he had complied with Canadian immigration requirements and delivered a fantastic story to explain his behaviour. The court determined that Irving had "fabricated evidence," "concocted your story," had presented "unexplained discrepancies in your evidence" and ordered him deported.

Back home things have not gone so smoothly for Irving either. Arrested at his London home after a High Court judge ruled him in contempt for failing to reveal his assets when a German publisher sued him for the return of a DM 150,000 advance, Irving was sentenced to jail in 1994. In 1979 another German publisher, Ullstein, had to pay compensation to the father of Anne Frank after printing the introduction to the German edition of David Irving's Hitler's War, where Irving claimed that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery.

In Italy in 1992 the neo-fascist (and now banned) Gruppe Movimento Politico (Western Political Movement) hired a luxury hotel in Rome for a Holocaust denial seminar. Irving and Robert Faurisson were invited to attend the conference, which was largely attended by Italian skinheads. The skinheads were bussed into Rome from Milan and Verona and when Nazi salutes were made to Jewish demonstrators outside the hotel scuffles broke out. Eventually the skinheads requested and received police protection and were escorted back to the buses. In the end Faurisson never showed. Irving never made it out of Rome airport. As he descended the steps of the plane he was greeted by 10 car loads of armed Italian anti-terrorist police, questioned, refused entry and escorted back on to the plane.

Although Irving has visited South Africa several times, the Home Affairs Office decided in 1992 to withdraw the visa exemption which British citizens automatically hold for South Africa. In the same year Irving listed Clive Derby-Lewis as a referee in his South African visa request. This former South African MP has since been arrested, convicted and sentenced to death for complicity in and masterminding the assassination of black leader Chris Hani. Derby-Lewis provided Janusz Walus, Hani's accused murderer, with the gun he used to shoot Hani. Derby-Lewis was also president of the Western Goals Institute, one of the sponsors of Irving's London seminars. The Institute has close links to Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French Front National. During Irving's 1989 visit to South Africa he told a newspaper that he had become "great friends" with Mr Derby-Lewis. In December 1993 the South African Government refused Irving permission to enter.

Wahrheit Macht Frei, truth brings freedom, the excited crowd chant. It's a play on the words Arbeit Macht Frei, work brings freedom. which cynically hung over the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. It's April 21, 1990, the day after Hitler's Birthday. It's Munich, and guess what? It's another beer hall. The 500 strong crowd are enthused. David Irving has just brought them their 'truth'. "The gas chambers one can find as a tourist to Auschwitz were built by the Poles after World War II. The buildings have been chemically analysed and we have published the documents. This has stirred up so much dust that our enemies cannot breathe."

Michael Kühnen, the German neo-Nazi leader who is to later die in prison from AIDS, claps. Kühnen was head of the Freiheitliche Arbeiterpartei, a large party of skinheads. The whole crowd is clapping and hooting. Irving is happy. These are the heavyweights, important people in Irving's world. Former Nazi officers, young neo-Nazi leaders, older ideologues and financial backers for the networks.

In the corner is General Otto Ernst Remer, a living legend amongst today's neo-Nazis. Remer was adviser to the end amongst today's neo-Nazis. Remer was adviser to the former head of Egypt. Gamal Abdel Nasser and sold weapons to Syria. But he is best known as the man who tracked down the individuals who conspired to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. As a reward he was appointed Hitler's personal body guard. "I see him before me still", says Remer reminiscing about Hitler. "He was an important man. The kind that is only born once in a hundred years." Remer is an active and influential, key elder statesman in today's neo-Nazi movement. He was convicted in Germany in 1986 for denying Nazi war crimes.

Also there is convicted Nazi terrorist Manfred Roeder, who orchestrated the bombing of refugee hostels in 1980, and a man who identifies himself as Michael Carter. Except he's not Michael Carter, he's real name is Anthony Hancock, Irving's infamous English printer.

Talking to Irving are three of Germany's most senior neo-Nazi leaders, Christian Worch, Ewald Althans and the skinhead leader from Riehfeldt, Thomas Heinkel. Althans was jailed last year for three and a half years after a Berlin court found him guilty of neo-Nazi activity and incitement. Irving is in fine form. He's telling the audience a Holocaust denial joke about the two German privates looking for lone Jews in the Polish country side with a one-man gas chamber.

"The one-man gas chamber looked like a sedan chair, camouflaged as a telephone booth." Irving tells the crowd. "Now how did one fool the poor victim to enter this gas chamber? A telephone bell was rung inside and the privates said: I think it is for you."

After the meeting is over it was decided to march from the beer hall to the Feldherrnhalle, a location in Munich associated with Hitler's Putsch. The demonstration was not authorised. According to a 1994 German Intelligence report, 'The unauthorised demonstration was stopped by the police and in the process Irving was temporarily arrested as leader of the march."

While Irving is widely seen as part of a general push by extremist elements to absolve Hitler and the Nazi regime, he has also turned his attention to other targets. In 1992, Irving escalated his anti-immigrant attacks, telling the Clarendon Club: "Nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at an airport or at a station or at a seaport and I see a black family there ... I think that is the way God planned it, and that's the way it should be. When I see these families arriving at London Airport, I'm happy. but I'm even happier when I see them leaving London Airport. We can never totally ethnically cleanse Britain; it would be wrong to set about doing this. But we can relieve the pressure."

There is little doubt that Irving's long term objective is the resurrection of National Socialism. For that to be effectively achieved Hitler has to be humanised and the worst excesses of the period either refuted or removed from history. Hence his book Hitler's War, which sought to denigrate the Allied leaders, and more particularly Churchill's War. which was published in Australia by Veritas Publications, the West Australian-based publishing arm of the Australian League of Rights. (Between 1981 and 1990 Veritas received a total of $150,000 in Federal Government subsidies to publish Churchill's War and other extremist material, which was distributed internationally. Veritas was also the sponsor of Irving's banned visit to Australia in 1993.) Churchill's War argues that Sir Winston Churchill was a fraudulent opportunist and that rather than Hitler, it was Churchill who was responsible for the deaths of millions of civilians and Allied soldiers during World War II.

As part of his campaign to exonerate Hitler, Irving argues that it was not Hitler who was responsible for the terrible crimes of the Third Reich. "I found documents which show Hitler always put his hand out to protect the Jews," he claimed to Britain's ITN television.

"In 30 years of work in the archives I have never seen a single document that talks of gas chambers. The Holocaust is a word invented by Jewish propaganda and I have never seen even one document which can let us believe that Hitler was aware of the extermination of the Jews," he told the Italian newspaper L'Expresso; "The fact remains that the gas chambers in Auschwitz never existed," he said during the same interview.

"It's going to be a hot 12 months, but at the end of it, the gas chamber legend will have vanished once and for all," he told the London Independent.

"If you look at my work on Hitler, only just published, you won't find the Holocaust mentioned in even one line. Not even a footnote. Why should we? If something didn't happen then you don't even dignify it with a footnote," he told the Clarendon Club. "Two years from now nobody will believe in these legends any longer. They already don't believe in the absurd legend of Jewish concentration camp victims being turned into bars of soap.

Jews, he lectured the Jewish Chronicle of London, are "very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while they still have time ... I predict a new wave of anti-Semitism within 18 months because the Jews have exploited people with the gas chamber legend."

"Women never produce anything useful," and are "mental chewing gum," he tells the London Daily Express.

Freedom of speech does not mean acquiescing to the advocates of intolerance amongst us. This sends a clear message of permissiveness to those who incite racial hatred. inflame prejudices, and exacerbate social tension and conflict under the guise of civil liberties or freedom of speech. That's the vehicle that Irving has always tried to manipulate in Australia. In most other countries the issue of free speech no longer arises, as informed and familiar with Irving's background and agenda, commentators, journalists and politicians universally accept Irving as an undesirable figure. In Europe today he rarely receives media attention and headlines. Familiar with his cynical manipulation of media forums for the sake of headlines and the advancement of his views, most editors relegate Irving to the "In Brief" columns.

Prime Minister John Howard believes he has lifted a pall of political correctness and encouraged freedom of speech. David Irving believes that "we are hitting home and this is why the fight is hotting up. I think, though, that the next two years are the last two years before what I can see as final victory. I think the next two years will be very dramatic indeed, with a lot of violence." The entrance of David Irving into Australia is not a free speech issue. It's a national security one.

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