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)