University of Chicago free press
November 96
David Irving: "Historian" for Hitler
by John K. Wilson
Is David Irving a legitimate historian or a Holocaust denier? The answer
may be: both.
Irving does not have a college degree and has never been a part of academia,
but his books about Nazi Germany have attracted praise from mainstream
historians. His 1977 book, Hitler's War, was widely applauded,
though many critics were concerned about its defense of Hitler as a
man who knew nothing about the Holocaust until late in the war. One
critic called Hitler's War "the autobiography Hitler didn't
write."
But in recent years, Irving's anti-Semitism and Holocaust denials have
become more explicit. According to Irving, the Final Solution was masterminded
by lesser Nazi leaders such as Goebbels without the knowledge of Hitler.
Irving claims that the gas chambers at Auschwitz are a myth, and only
600,000 to 1 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust - a word
he refuses to capitalize, and uses only once in the Goebbels
book (referring to the Allied firebombing of Hamburg.)
The controversy over Irving reached a boiling point earlier this year,
when Irving's opponents pressed St. Martin's Press to withdraw his new
book about Joseph Goebbels. Publishers' Weekly called the book "repellent"
and Kirkus Reviews said it was "scurrilously misleading."
The book was finally canceled when St. Martin's Chairman Thomas McCormack
read it himself: "I hated it," he said "It seemed to me that the subtext
was the ugly one: that Jews brought it on to themselves." McCormack
called it "inescapably anti-Semitic", and said St. Martin's made a mistake
in agreeing to publish the book.
Christopher Hitchens criticizes David Irving's "depraved opinions" and
calls him "a sort of toxic substance," but Hitchens adds that Irving
is "probably one of the three or four necessary historians of the Third
Reich and of the Nazi period." But the more one learns about Irving,
the more difficult it becomes to trust his history of Nazi Germany.
Historian Gitta Sereny observes that Irving uses "selected quotes from
Goebbels's diaries, while carefully avoiding passages which show clearly
that Goebbels was only informed by Hitler himself of the annihilation
of the Jews many months after it had begun." In attempting to prove
the innocence of the Fuhrer he admires so much, Irving has sacrificed
historical truth.
Irving's home in England is a monument to Nazism, with framed front
pages of the Nazi party newspaper, a self-portrait of Hitler, and a
small tin statue of "the Fuhrer: which Irving calls "rather sweet."
Donald Cameron Watt, a professor of history at the London School of
Economics and a onetime collaborator of Irving's, says: "Hitler is his
hero, or so he wrote me at one point." According to Irving, "I was taught
that Hitler was the incarnation of evil. I now see him as no greater
an incarnation of evil than Churchill, Truman or Roosevelt." He calls
Hitler a "reluctant anti-Semite."
Irving has a long history of anti-Semitism and pro-nazi sentiments.
In 1959, Irving printed a publication full of articles admiring Nazi
Germany, defending apartheid in South Africa, and asserting that "the
national press" in Great Britain "is owned by Jews." At that time he
said, "you can call me a mild fascist if you like," and declared that
he "visited Hitler's eyrie at Berchtesgaden. I regard it as a shrine."
Irving's Holocaust denials have become more explicit since 1988. Irving
now says, "I do not think there were any gas chambers or any master
plan. It's just a myth and at last the myth is being eroded....eyewitness
evidence is a problem for psychiatrists." Irving has said, "the holocaust
of the Germans of Dresden was real. The holocaust of the Jews in the
Auschwitz gas chambers is a fabrication." In February 1992, Irving declared,
"The Jews are very foolish not to abandon the gas chamber theory while
they still have time." He warned that there would be anti-Semitic violence
because of how the Jews "have exploited people with the gas chamber
legend."
Irving says the Holocaust never happened and writes in his book that
Auschwitz was the "slave labor camp" with "the highest mortality rate"-
which is like saying that the electric chair is a piece of furniture
with the highest mortality rate.
In the Oct. 21 New Republic, Jacob Heilbrunn writes about the
disturbing anti-Semitism expressed by Irving. At a recent luncheon,
Heilbrunn reports that Irving blamed the Jews for "a Jewish declaration
of war on Germany. The Nazis were simply retaliating." Heilbrunn notes,
"Irving's books cannot be divorced from the man and his historical mission."
One of Irving's publications is a particularly vile newsletter called,
David Irving's Action Report, which includes letters from
admirers, such as a fan in England who writes, "An Auschwitz survivors
touring schools in my area, showing the film Schindler's List.
That's what I'd call propaganda brainwashing of young children." A college
student in Arlington, Massachusetts reports, "Along with a classmate
at college I have become very issue-oriented and we are not content
with the 'answers' of the big political parties nor their media promoters."
Irving's Action Report also prints the last letter from
Reinhold Elstner, a mad German "hero" who committed suicide last year
by burning himself to death in order to awaken German nationalism against
"judicial zionist revenge" and "insults to former German soldiers."
But perhaps the most bizarre part of Irving's Action Report
is a story he tells about Bill Casey, Reagan's CIA Director who was
the brains behind Ollie North's "Arms for Contras" gun deal with Iran.
Irving reports meeting Casey, and says Casey was a fan of the book,
Hitler's War, as well as, according to Irving, "something
of an admirer of the late Fuhrer."
Irving declares, "People ask me if I'm anti-Semitic. I say, not yet.
But it's a mighty and a manful struggle not to become anti-Semitic.
I have to remind myself every day, turn the cheek." He says he is "beginning
to doubt" the possibility that "Jewish reviewers are capable of reviewing
a book by me objectively."
For 30 years, he says, he suffered "a reign of terror" from those "minority
groups" seeking to undermine him. "I know the organizations involved.
I've come under their pressure and terror methods worldwide." Irving
refused to say what these organizations were, and added: "This is the
most extraordinary treatment of a historian since what the Iranians
did to Salman Rushdie." But he has said, "When I go to Florida for three
months I never use my credit card twice in the same place, so that Mossad
does not know where I am."
Irving's views about other subjects are equally bizarre. Irving thinks
that women were built to produce more men, and should be "subservient
to men." His solution to unemployment should be to "declare the employment
of a female a criminal offense." According to Irving, "God built women
for a certain task, which is producing us. But they haven't lain down
to accept that yet."
Irving calls himself a nationalist and a patriot." He advocates "benevolent
repatriation" for non-white immigrants: "The jackboot and the whip are
not the British way. We have to persuade them by the techniques of persuasion
and propaganda that they're on the wrong side of the Atlantic." He has
also denounced the participation of blacks in cricket leagues.
Nor is Irving a model of free speech himself. He regularly files libel
suits in England against his critics, including the highly respected
historian Gitta Sereny because she has criticized his books for twenty
years, refuting his claim that Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust.
According to Irving, "She was a shrivelled little prune then. And she
is a shrivelled little prune now."
There are serious censorship issues involved. The Labor Party in England
has proposed a prison sentence of up to two years for anyone who denies
the Holocaust. If the anti-denier law is passed, England will join Germany,
Austria, Switzerland, and France in banning the ideas of Holocaust deniers.
Irving is currently barred from Germany, Australia, Italy, and Canada
because of his views, and in 1992 he was fined 10,000 Marks by a Munich
court for claiming that the Auschwitz gas chambers were "fakes" built
after World War II to lure tourists to Poland. However, Irving has regularly
traveled to Germany despite the ban.
Irving bragged to a reporter in 1992, "I have been in and out of Germany
20 times since the ban was imposed. This last time I came across in
a rented truck at 4 a.m. and had not difficulty whatsoever. I was bringing
in a ton of books."
Ewald Althans, a self-professed neo-Nazi leader in Munich and the guiding
force behind a hate campaign against Boris Becker's black girlfriend,
helped smuggle him in.
Althans fully endorses Irving: "I support David Irving. The Holocaust
is a fabrication. The pictures of the dead, of gas chambers, of mass
murder are filmed by Hollywood, narrated by Trevor Roper and directed
by Hitchcock." Althans' office includes a huge poster of Irving, and
shelves of Irving's books and videos which Althans sells along with
his neo-Nazi fare. Irving has told rallies of neo-Nazis that he wished
he was "as magnificent an orator as Adolf Hitler."
The danger of the laws banning Holocaust denial is that they turn bigots
into free speech martyrs, and do little to alter the climate of anti-Semitism.
It is far more important to point out the lies spread by anti-Semites
like Bradley Smith and David Irving, than to try to prohibit them from
speaking.
However, this doesn't mean that Irving is entitled to have a major publisher
print his. St. Martin's Press won't publish a lot of authors, but that
hardly means it's censoring them. Instead, it's showing editorial judgment
- belatedly, to be sure, in Irving's case.
By printing Irving's book, St. Martin's would have given it a stamp
of legitimacy, as is shown by the fact that the University of Chicago
library preordered a copy of the book from them. No one is preventing
Irving from publishing the book himself (as he has done). No other New
York publisher would take his book (he says this is because more and
more publishers have names like "Goldberg"), and he intentionally refused
to seek out a "lesser" publisher, knowing that if the book was accepted
it might threaten his inflated sense of victimhood.
The debate over the fate of Holocaust denial inevitable brings strong
passions to the forefront. But it's good to find out that people care
so much about an important - perhaps the most important - event in history.
In the end, it is not necessary to refute Irving's defense of Hitler,
nor to debate the anti-Semites. But it is necessary to remember what
people like Irving are so desperate to ignore.
****************************************************************************
In 1975, David Irving falsely argued that The Diary of Anne Frank
was a fraud written after the war by a New York scriptwriter "in collaboration
with the girl's father." ****************************************************************************
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