Twitter and more notes

I'm not going to lie, I'm getting a tad excited about this project because ... David Irving got Twitter! Now as a product of my generation, I thoroughly enjoy a tweet or two and so it is great that I can incorporate such a modern social networking and internet device into my project. David Irving's Twitter account will be immensely useful because he will provide short and (hopefully) frequent comments on the Jewish news of the day. He only created his account 2 days ago so time will tell whether he tweets regularly, but I really hope he does because it will be a very useful resource. I am currently one of ten followers, and it is an eclectic bunch interested in the rambling of Irving.


In other news, I have thought about a general outline for my essay. Although not nearly as detailed as Zan's. So, I will find the three main points to come out of the trial about Irving as a historian (say, bias towards Hitler, falsifying statistics and misquoting) and find examples of such misdemeanours on his website. I am also thinking about emailing or tweeting Irving, not sure what about yet, because an actual quote I have retrieved directly from Irving will be great for my project, and the wonders of the internet allows such correspondence to occur.


Here are some more notes from Lying About Hitler:

• Irving saw himself as a self-proclaimed ‘stone cleaner’, refusing to accept the ‘bias’ of modern historians and take them on their word, preferring to go back to original sources to ‘verify’ the facts
• he believed Hitler was a ‘caricature’ who was blamed for everything and he saw it as his mission to correct this
• in the preface of Hitler’s War Irving wrote ‘this book views the situation as far as possible through Hitler’s eyes, from behind his desk’, this led to a very positive view of Hitler’s aims and career:
• “Adolf Hitler was a patriot” (pg. 40)
• “he tried from start to finish to restore the earlier unity, greatness and splendor of Germany” (pg. 40)
• “he restored faith in the central government; he rebuilt the German economy; he removed unemployment; he rebuilt the disarmed German armed forces, and then used this newly-won strength to attain Germany’s sovereignty once more” (pg. 41)
• “he became involved in his adventureof winning living space in the East” (pg. 41)
• “He had no kind of evil intentions against Britain and its Empire, quite the opposite ... Hitler’s foreign policy was led by the wish for secure boundaries and the necessity of an extension of the east” (pg. 41)
• “The forces which drove Germany to war did not sit in Berlin” (pg 41)
• yet for the above quotes in Hitler’s War Irving had provided no evidence, Evans counteracts all these statements on page 41
• Hugh Trevor-Roper noted “consistent bias” by Irving towards Hitler and against his opponents - “Mr Irving’s sympathies can hardly be doubted” (pg 41)
• Robert Harris said that while Irving may be “objectively” looking at unpublished records, “they were still the words of men and women who admired their ruler” (pg. 42)
• “Irving admitted that in writing Hitler’s War he had “identified” with the Fuhrer ... “I don’t drink”, he would say, “Adolf didn’t drink you know” ... In 1981, at the age of 41 he had founded his own right wing political group, built around his own belief in his “destiny” as a future British leader” - Harris (pg. 42)
• according to Charles W. Sydnor Jr Irving painted Hitler as “a fair-minded statesman of considerable chivalry” and “a man capable of genuine warmth and maudlin sentimentality” (pg 43)
• Martin Broszat noted that there was a contradiction between Irving’s self-confessed desire to look at events from behind Hitler’s desk, and his claim to take an objective view of events, he “does not remain silent about individual actions of killing and annihilation which go back to Hitler, but portrays them in an exculpatory and often erroneous way”, he charged that the whole book was dominated by a perspective narrowed by a partisanship in favor of Hitler (pg 43)
• Irving said:
• “Every time I’ve written a biography, you find you become closer to the character you are writing about because you’re his ambassador then. You’re his ambassador to the afterlife. Or to the next generation. And if you do you’re job conscientiously, then you bend over backward to do it ... I don’t think it should lead you to object an unobjective position” (pg. 43)
• Irving claims Hitler wanted to be have a biography written by “an Englishman of the next generation. Because a representive of the present generation cannot write the truth about me and certainly won’t want to either. It has to be an Englishman who knows the archives and who has mastered the German language.” (pg. 44) This sounds alot like how Irving saw himself yes? And also like he thinks he is carrying on “Hitler’s legacy” as Lipstadt claimed no?
• Irving said of Hitler:
• “He surrounded himself with people of a very very poor quality. He was a rotten judge of character. These are the mistake you have to avoid replicating.” Irving probably referring to himself as the you (pg 44)
• In regards to his admiration of Hitler:
• “Erm, yeah, certain aspects ... there are certain aspects of his life everybody admires. The fact he had risen from nobody ... and become the admired and respected leader of two great nations ... he got 49 million Germans to vote for him, with was 99.8% of the electorate ... I think that from 1938 onwards he began to go off the rails, in the moral sense. He became to big for his boots and assumed he was the law. And that is a very common defect.” (pg. 45)
• Evans counteracts that with claims that during the 1938 election there was massive intimidation of the electorate. 99.8% of the vote just doesn’t happen in a democratic society 

Ps: I have no control of the crazy font size changing that has been occurring, it just posts really weirdly.

More notes and websites

So today I was making more notes from Lying About Hitler, and googling some more David Irving stuff as  well. I stumbled across a very interesting website relating to Irving, called the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (http://www.codoh.com/). The opening quote on the website was "SHOW ME OR DRAW ME A NAZI GAS CHAMBER!" - Professor Robert Faurisson (actually written in capitals) which I think really sets the tone for the rest of the website. It was a really good resource for my project though. They have an archive of Irving's speeches, links to other Holocaust 'revisionist' sites and the founder, Bradley Smith's, blog. Hopefully as useful as it immediately appears.

Here are some more notes from Lying About Hitler:

• some journalists, historians and social commentators saw the trial as a battle against the culture of ‘revisionism’ of which Irving and other deniers were such avid participators
• Irving was involved in other libel suits at the same time suing Gitta Sereny and The Observer for alleging he had falsified the historical record
• he had threatened libel against John Lukacs and his American publisher and any British publisher who dared publish his book The Hitler of History in which Lukacs said of Irving:
• “almost all of Irving’s references ... must be considered with caution”
• “an apologist, rehabilitator and unrepentant admirer of Adolf Hitler” (in Irving’s words)
• “twisting and manipulating documentary evidence ... falsifying citations and references ... inventing historical sources or printing non-existent archival numbers, and ... making up quotations” (in Irving’s words)
• Lipstadt’s team took a three pronged approach to the case:

1. Commision professional historians to provide expert reports to the court presenting the evidence for gassing facilities at Auschwitz, for the mass murder itself and for the existence of Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews, and Hitlers involvment in this
2. Commision expert reports documenting Irving’s political views and his connection with the far-right, neo-fascist and extremist political organisations
3. Go through a fairly large sample of Irving’s work to show that he did falsify the historical record

• mentions (briefly) Irving’s website on pg. 31
• as a part of the legal process called ‘Discovery’ Irving, due to Lipstadt’s lawyers action, had to disclose all the documents in his possession relevant to the case
• resources for the Irving trial came from all over the world
• few historians, prior to Evan’s research team, had ever taken a claim made by Irving in a publication and traced it back to the original source
• Irving on his historical method regarding The Trail of the Fox (1977):
• “Well two thousand letters, that manuscript was probably six hundred pages long when it was finally [completed], you’re doing alot of condensing, you’re condensing an entire man’s life into six hundred pages of typescript, and the process of condensing is a nice way of saying “but of course you’re selecting, you’re selecting how to present this man” And that is undoubtedly a subjective operation” (pg. 34)
• Irving was adamant he had evidential backing for his work in 1986 he said “I can prove all my points because I’ve got all the documents and the evidence on my side”
• the case was taken very seriously, “Any victory for Irving is a loss for historical justice and a blow to the memory of the Holocaust” (Efraim Zuroff pg. 35)
• many German and Austrian observers were confused as to why the case had gone to trial at all, for Irving was so clearly in the wrong, this was because in Germany the fact that the Holocaust occurred is a part of their law
• there was dispute over the significance of the trial, would it actually alter society’s perception that the Holocaust occurred? Or was Irving’s reputation as a historian all that was on the line? (pg. 37)

Lying About Hitler - Notes

So I have been reading Lying About Hitler by Richard J Evans again, making notes as I go, because I think this will be the easiest way for me to actually remember and comprehend the trial. With the internet idea I have formulated I kind of plan of where I want to take it:


What does David Irving's website allow him to do that a book or other publication doesn't? And how is it further evidence he is a flawed historian?


I have been reading Irving's online newsletter, and at times it is very hard to decipher what Irving is talking about. On the whole the newsletter consists of him posting a link to a newspaper article about issues such as Judaism, hate crimes, the Holocaust, the Second World War and Nazism (Deborah Lipstadt even makes an appearance). Sometimes Irving will even add a "witty" and highly offensive observation about the articles contents. This is a new brand of historical observation that the internet allows for, because he couldn't write a whole book about these issues (eg. Winona Rider alleging Mel Gibson called her an "oven-dodger'), but he can post a link and make a comment about them. It seems like Irving just scours the internet looking for articles about Judaism and Nazism, their is a very wide range of topics covered in his newsletter.


I am going to use my knowledge of the trial (which I am still piecing together) to show that Irving was a flawed historian, briefly outlining his historiographical misdemeanours that were uncovered in the trial and then showing how they are still occurring on his website eg. misquoting and misstating statistics.


So I hope this is sounding okay ... let me know everyone!


These are the notes I have compiled so far from my more detailed reading of Evan's book (more to come):

• there has been a continuos stream of Holocaust denial material since WWII
• Lipstadt  book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory was published in 1993 giving an extended account of deniers since WWII saying they were closely linked to neo-fascism etc
• Irving has written more than 30 book about mostly about WWII and Nazi Germany
• early on he sparked controversy by saying:
• Allied bombers had killed many more than originally thought at Dresden (Destruction of Dresden - 1963)
• Churchill had ordered the assassination of General Sikorski (Accident - 1967)
• Hitler had not known about Jewish extermination until late 1943 (Hitler’s War - 1977)
• he was never trained as a historian - “History was the only subject I flunked at school” (pg.5) but thought this to be good as he wouldn’t be biased by any job or income
• in her book Lipstadt made some large claims, saying in regards to Irving (pg.6):
• “discredited”
• “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial”
• “familiar with historical evidence, he bends it until it conforms with his idealogical leanings and political agenda”
• “neofascist”
• “denial connections”
• “an ardent admirer of the Nazi leader”
• “declared that Hitler repeatedly reached out to the Jews”
• scholars had “accused him of distorting evidence and manipulating documents and misrepresenting data in order to reach historically untenable conclusions, particularly those that exonerate Hitler”
• “on some level, Irving seems to conceive himself as carrying on Hitler’s legacy”
• In regards to Holocaust deniers in general:
• “misstate, misquote and falsely attribute conclusions to reliable sources. They rely on books that directly contradict their arguments, quoting in a manner that completely distorts the author’s objectives”
• Irving wrote to Penguin (Lipstadt’s publisher) in November 1995 demanding the withdrawal of Lipstadt’s book from circulation, he alleged defamation and threatened to sue
• Lipstadt had only mentioned him on 6 pages of a 300+ page book
• Penguin refused and so Irving issued a defamation writ in September 1996
• almost all historians were critical of Irving’s historical methods but praised the huge level of research he had undertaken (pg. 8 - pg.12)
• Irving had faced many legal challenges before:

• sued for libel for Destruction of Convoy PG 17 - paid 40 000 pounds
• his published had to pay damages when Irving said Anne Frank’s diary was forged
• sued for libel by Jillian Page - paid costs
• he sued Colin Smythe for libel - Irving had to pay costs
• arrest and deportation from Austria in 1983
• convicted for insulting the dead in Germany in 1991
• banned entry from Germany, Canada and Australia in 1992-93
• he had to set up his own publishing company Focal Point, because he become so notorious for writing “boobs” (pg. 14)
• by mid-1990’s even he admitted his reputation was “down to its uppers” but it “hasn’t yet worn through the street”
• Irving on his historical method:
• “adopted strict criteria in selecting my source material”
• “borrowed deep into the contemporary writings of his closest personal staff, seeking clues to the real truth in diaries and private letters written to wives and friends”
• “for the few autobiographical works I have used I have preferred to rely on their original manuscripts rather than the printed texts”
• “I’ve trained myself to go for the line of most resistance and I go for the handwriting” (pg.15)
• “every historian has got to be selective ... you have got to select which documents you select”
• “I don’t have any kind of political agenda” (pg. 21)
• he was going up against decades of work from academic, phD bearing historians
• he did uncover new evidence, as did many other historians however
• he said history relied on “incest” yet this was the scholarly method approved by the masses using footnotes etc.
• in regards to the alleged Hitler Diaries (1983) Irving had been an early acknowledger of their inauthenticity, which was correct and appeared to prove he was a legitimate historian as other respected historians had deemed them real, but a couple of days later after announcing them fake, he changed his mind (maybe because they gave a favourable account of Hitler?) - suspiciously bias
• he summoned other historians to provide evidence for “what they’ve been saying for fifty years” and believed none could because their was an international campaign by the “Jewish community”, “our traditional enemies” (pg.22)
• he preached his own brand of ‘Real History’ (pg. 21)
• he believed Lipstadt to be part of this Jewish conspiracy, claiming his own freedom of speech (obviously not that of Deborah Lipstadt) (pg.22)
• he operated through his own website and the ‘Institute for Historical Review’
• the media was confused about the legal details, believing Lipstadt and Penguin were suing Irving, Irving himself saying “They want to ruin me” (pg. 24)

Thanks everyone :)

New Idea (not the magazine)

On the suggestion of Mr Wright I have decided on a bit of a idea switch. Because me other idea was perhaps a bit too broad, and as Mr Wright pointed out, has taken historians books to investigate, it isn't going to work as a topic for History Extension. An idea that will, hopefully, work for History Extension however is the idea of Irving's modern use and misuse of history through the rather modern means of his blog and website.

While this idea is strong, my only concern is whether other historians will have written about this, but I'm sure I can use the sources about Irving's misuse of history I have already gathered and find some more.

I better go, because my family is sitting in the car waiting for me, and I still have to brush my teeth, but I will blog later today with more thoughts on this idea.