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.