Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 65.39.86.104 (talk) at 06:28, 9 July 2005. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

David John Cawdell Irving (born March 24, 1938) is an author of numerous books on World War II, such as Hitler’s War and The Destruction of Dresden. In the late 1990s, he sued the Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for listing him as a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust. After a much publicized trial, Irving lost the case.

Early life

Born in Essex, England, his father John James Cawdell Irving was a Commander in the Royal Navy, his mother Beryl an illustrator. During the Second World War, his father was an officer aboard the Light Cruiser HMS Edinburgh. On May 2, 1942, while escorting Convoy QP11 in the Barents Sea, she was sunk by the German U-456. Irving’s father survived, but after the incident cut off all ties with his wife and their children.

Irving first gained notoriety as a student at Imperial College London, where he wrote for the student newspaper and served as the editor of the London University Carnival Committee’s journal, Carnival Times. Here, Irving made allegations such as "the national press is owned by Jews", and contributed to a variety of extremist features, including racist cartoons, and a defense of South African apartheid as a result of which Irving was removed from his editorial duties.

"The Destruction of Dresden"

Irving soon dropped out of college and went to Germany, where he worked in a Thyssen steel works in the Ruhr and learned German. He then moved to Spain, where he worked as a clerk at an airbase near Madrid. In 1962 he wrote a series of thirty-seven articles on the Allied bombing war, Wie Deutschlands Städte Starben, for the German journal Neue Illustrierte. These served as the basis of his first book The Destruction of Dresden, published in 1963. In it, he examined the Allied bombing of Dresden during the final months of World War II. By the 1960s, a debate about the morality of the carpet bombing of German cities and civilian population had already begun. Hence, the public was receptive to Irving's persuasively written book, illustrated with graphic pictures. The book became an international bestseller.

Successful historian

After the Dresden book, Irving continued writing revisionist history. In 1964, he wrote The Mare's Nest, an account of the German secret weapons projects and the Allied intelligence countermeasures against it, translated the Memoirs of Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel in 1965, and in 1967 published Accident: The Death of General Sikorski, in which he accused Churchill of ordering the fatal air crash of Polish leader Wladyslaw Sikorski. Also in 1967, he published two more works: The Virus House, an account of the German nuclear energy project, and The Destruction of Convoy PQ.17, in which he blamed the British convoy commander Captain Jack Broome for the catastrophic losses of the Convoy PQ-17. Amid much publicity, Broome sued Irving for libel in October 1968, and in February 1970, after seventeen days of deliberation before London’s High Court, Broome won. Irving was forced to pay 40,000 British pounds in damages, and the book was withdrawn from circulation.

After PQ-17, Irving shifted to writing biographies. Though Irving's works were generally ignored by academics, and often criticized, his command of language and a wealth of entertaining anecdotes resulted in favorable reviews in the popular press, and many of his works sold well. During this period, Irving's credentials as a British historian of generally democratic views were only rarely challenged. Irving was particularly noted for his mastery of the voluminous and scattered German war records. During this time, aside from researching for his upcoming biographies, Irving wrote a series in the Sunday Express describing RAF’s famous Dam Busters raid.

As a result of his Dresden book, by the late 1960s, many former mid- and high-ranked German public persons donated Irving diaries and other materials. In 1972, he translated the memoirs of General Reinhard Gehlen and in 1973 published The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, a biography of Air Marshall Erhard Milch. He spent the remainder of the 1970s working on Hitler's War and the War Path, his two-part biography of Hitler, and The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

Revisionist

In 1977, Irving released his book, Hitler's War, the first of his two-part biography of Hitler. In it, Irving tried to describe the war from "Hitler's point of view". He painted a complimentary picture of Hitler, portraying him as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent. Irving faulted the Allied leaders, most notably Churchill, for the eventual escalation of war. However, the most controversial claim of the book was that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust. Instead, while not denying its existence, Irving claimed that Himmler and his deputy Heydrich were its originators and architects. In a later review of Irving's Goebbels - Mastermind of the "Third Reich" in The Daily Telegraph, British historian Sir John Keegan stated that Irving "knows more than anyone alive about the German side of the Second World War," and that Hitler's War was "indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the war in the round." A year later, in 1978, Irving released The War Path, the companion volume to Hitler's War, covering events leading up to the war and written from a similar point of view. Just months after the initial release of Hitler's War in 1977, Irving published The Trail of the Fox, a biography of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. In it Irving challenged the popular notion that Rommel was one of the leaders of the rebellion; he claimed that Rommel stayed loyal to Hitler until the end and that the real blame for his forced suicide lay with Rommel's associates, whom Irving accused of scheming against Rommel so they could save their own lives.

In the 1980s, Irving started writing about topics other than Nazi Germany, as he researched his three-part biography of Churchill. In 1981, he released two books. The first was The War Between the Generals, in which Irving offered an account of the Allied High Command, detailing the alleged infighting between the various generals and presenting rumors about their private lives. The second book was Uprising!, about the 1956 revolt in Hungary, which Irving characterized as "primarily an anti-Jewish uprising", because he believed the Communist regime was controlled by Jews. In 1983, Irving was one of the first, and certainly the first well-known historian to proclaim that the forged Hitler Diaries were, in fact, forgeries.

In 1987, Irving published Churchill's War. In it, Irving characterized Churchill as a "man who destroyed two empires, one of them the enemy's." In 1989, he published his biography of Hermann Göring, in which he provided information about Göring's jovial personality and brighter aspects, such as his outlawing of vivisection and promotion of reforestation.

By the mid-1980s, Irving began his lecturing tours, associated himself with the Institute for Historical Review, and claimed that The Diary of Anne Frank was heavily edited (by using a ball point-pen, invented after the WWII) by her father. In 1988, he testified for the defense at Canadian-based Ernst Zündel's trial. There, Irving supported Fred A. Leuchter's report that described chromatographic analysis of samples collected from the walls of gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration campshowing no traces of cyanide. Later, Irving published Leuchter’s report in the United Kingdom and wrote its foreword.

In 1998, Irving launched a libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt, and her publisher Penguin Books. In her book Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt accused him as a Holocaust denier and falsifier, and stated that because of his skilful manipulations and distortions of real documents, Irving was one of the most dangerous proponents of Holocaust denial. Irving decided to represent himself. In his closing statement, Irving claimed to have been a victim of an international, mostly Jewish, conspiracy for more than three decades. As he was finishing his testimony, he (apparently inadvertently) referred to the judge as "Mein Führer", instead of "My Lord".

The trial judge concluded that "Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism. Irving lost subsequent attempts at appeal. He was also liable to pay the substantial costs of the trial, which ruined him financially, and he was subsequently forced into bankruptcy.

Irving bibliography

• The Destruction of Dresden (1963) ISBN 0705700305
• The Mare's Nest (1964)
• The Virus House (1967), a history of the uncompleted German atomic bomb program, directed by Werner Heisenberg. The name derives from a sign on the project, intended to scare people away.
• The Destruction of Convoy PQ17 (1967)
• Accident -- The Death of General Sikorski (1967) ISBN 0718304209
• Breach of Security (1968) ISBN 0718301013
• The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe (1973), a biography of Erhard Milch ISBN 0316432385
• Hitler's War (1977), Hitler in wartime
• The Trail of the Fox (1977), a biography of Erwin Rommel ISBN 0525222006
• The War Path (1978) ISBN 0670749710
• The War Between the Generals (1981)
• Uprising! (1981), ISBN 0949667919
• The Secret Diaries of Hitlers Doctor (1983) ISBN 002558250X
• The German Atomic Bomb: The History of Nuclear Research in Nazi Germany (1983) ISBN 0306801981
• War Between the Generals (1986) ISBN 0865530696
• Churchill's War (1987), Churchill in wartime ISBN 0947117563
• Destruction of Convoy PQ-17, reprint (1989) ISBN 0312911521
• Göring (1989), biography of Hermann Göring ISBN 0688066062
• Goebbels - Mastermind of the "Third Reich" (1996) ISBN 1872197132
• Hitler's War (1991), revised edition, incorporating The War Path
• Nuremberg: The Last Battle (1996) ISBN 1872197167
• Churchill's War Volume II: Triumph in Adversity (1997) ISBN 1872197159
• Rommel: The Trail of the Fox, Wordsworth Military Library; Limited edition (1999) ISBN 1840222050
• Hitler's War and the War Path (2002) ISBN 1872197108

Note: Most of Irving's books are available in PDF format as free downloads at his web site.

Reference

• Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory by Deborah E. Lipstadt. ISBN 0452272742
• Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial by Richard J. Evans, 2001. The author was a major expert witness at the trial, and this book presents both his view of the trial, and much of his expert witness report, including his research on the Dresden death count. ISBN 0465021530
• The Holocaust on Trial by D. D. Guttenplan. ISBN 0393322920
• The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial by Robert Jan Van Pelt. Van Pelt was another expert witness at the trial, focussing on Auschwitz. ISBN 0253340160
• Denying History: Who Says Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It by Michael Shermer. ISBN 0520234693
• The Hitler of History by John Lukacs. ISBN 0679446494
• History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving by Deborah E. Lipstadt, 2005. ISBN 0060593768

External links

• David Irving's web site
• Institute for Historical Review
• Collection of Irving materials from nizkor.org
• Collection of Irving materials from holocaust-history.org
• David Irving file (ADL)
• From Revisionism to Holocaust Denial - David Irving as a Case Study by Roni Stauber
• Fakes & Frauds II: David Irving
• David Irving & Revisionism
• "The World According to David Irving" by Gerald Posner, The Sunday Observer (London), March 19, 2000
• Holocaust Denial in England

Irving v. Penguin Books Limited and Deborah E. Lipstadt Trial

• Judgment by the Hon. Mr. Justice Gray in Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstat EWHC QB 115 (11th April, 2000)
• David Irving vs Penguin & Deborah Lipstadt Trial - a collection of materials at Irving's web site
• Holocaust Denial on Trial by Emory University
  • Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans Complete text of Professor Evans' lengthy report on Irving's work in a number of areas.
• The Irving case, special report from the Guardian newspaper

• 1938 births
• Holocaust denial
• Neo-Nazis
• Fascist/Nazi era scholars and writers