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David Irving (born 1938), historian well known for his Holocaust revisionism. Among other things, he has denied that the Germans exterminated jews in Gas Chambers during World War II. In a judgement by the High court of Justice, Irving was found to be a Holocaust denier and an "anti-Semite."

A forgiving view of David Irving might see him as; a conflicted, ambitious, and talented, (albeit entirely misguided) young man, who tried to shake off, instead of reconciling, the legacy of German shame for his its Nazi past. He originally stirred up a hornets nest of very sensitive issues in a sensationalistic and irresponsible way, and in the light of the aftermath; the stinging controversy, the focused attacks upon his person, and marginalized prospects for future academic acceptance.

Too quick to rush to the assertion of his premises. he published books, perhaps originally with little understanding of the kind of backlash they would cause. 'Bad press being good press', he continued to work under conditions of ever-increased marginalization, and rejection by whatever limited academic connections he had. His associations with racist or quasi-racist groups, began in an attempt to seek support for his work, while perhaps negotiating issues in a way that tried to reconcile disparate facts and social elements.

Irving, however, often was neither courteous or tactful; nor in the least bit considerate of the passionate anger his books, theories and comments would face, and he often spoke quite "tastelessly." As he put it, :

"I don't see any reason to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It's baloney, it's a legend. Once we admit the fact that it was a brutal slave labour camp and large numbers of people did die, as large numbers of innocent people died elsewhere in the war, why believe the rest of the baloney? ...I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber in Auschwitz."

Criticism

The critics of Irving claim that his scholarship is poor, the substance in his work trite, and its keen to make assumptions. In Richard Evans' Lying About Hitler, London University Professor David Cannadine was quoted (Re: Irving's first volume of his biography of Winston Churchill):

"It has received almost no attention from historians or reviewers...It is easy to see why.... full of excesses, inconsistancies and omissions... seems completely unaware of recent work done on the subject... It is not merely that the arguments in this book are so perversely tendentious and irresponsibly sensationalist. It is also that it is written in a tone which is a best casually journalistic and at worst quite exceptionally offensive. The text is littered with errors from beginning to end."

Richard Evans, himself, said: "Irving's conclusions were completely untenable. I thought his scholarship was sloppy and unreliable and did not meet even the most basic requirements of honest and competent historical research."

Revisionism

In essence, the judgement of Irving and revisionism, by most historians is that he and it represented a dubiously suspect middle ground between outright Neo-Naziism and Legitimate historianism, in some attempt to legitimize the Neo-Nazi movement. The general consensus on Irving, among established historians, is that he was in far over his head, making the typical mistake of amateur historians and scientists, of starting with a premise, and seeking to prove it, instead of researching, and letting the facts speak for themselves. This eventually led to his making academic blunders, and to consequent public denouncements, and thus "revisionism" was became a genre-of-sorts, sub-academia, attempting to tie together any work that countered any previously established research into Nazi history, as "revising" of history, and would attempt to include neo-Nazi racism in the same category as thorough research that might challenge an established fact.

Irvings "revisionism" centered around the idea that Hitler did not know in any detail about the events of the Holocaust, and that the coordinated actions by Nazis to murder 6 million Jews took place at some administrative level, beneath the attention of Hiter himself. While it is true that Hitler, was clever enough to sanitize records connecting him with the concentration camps, the idea that the absolute dictator of a large, modern country, having long-established political and administrative connections and heirarchies althroughout Germany, Austria, and other Nazi occupied areas, is highly suspect. There turns out to be very little paper evidence indeed, of the administration of the Holocaust, regardless of any connections to Hitler himself. Irving, his critics say, in order to accept that Hitler knew of the holocaust, (disregarding, for the moment, any direct role he may have had in its orchestration), would be, in essence, saying that Hitler was only a benign figurehead. The evidence supports otherwise.

Irving was someone who reacted defensively to sharp attacks of anti-Semitism working with limited credentials - doing serious work, albeit with little assistance and connection to familiar circles. Working with limited evidence, such as the forgery of a "Last confession of Hitler", as the partial basis for some of his work. Irving claims this as a defense, that others have cited these false sources, and yet still recieve legitimate attention, despite a flaw in their publication.

As the heated feelings about the Holocaust continue, but there has been some recent academic consensus on an important Holocaust issue: That in the late 1930's, Hitler had not yet planned to murder Jews of Europe, rather had hoped to forcibly move them out of Europe entirely. Only later, the theory says, after pressures from the war, did Hitler act to deliberately murder millions of Jews. This idea is contradicted by the that fact that the Nazis made prisons out of the Jewish ghettos, not allowing them to leave en masse. It is supported by the fact that there was not yet any devised way to kill and dispose of millions of people, in the camp furnaces.

Only more recently, and in the context of debunking Irving, who claimed that it was impossible to incinerate and dispose of 6 million people, was it discovered that the Nazis had calculated that human bodyfat, after preheating, could provide the added fuel that would sustain the feasible operation of the furnaces.

Irving v. Lipstadt

David Irving, in 1996, sued writer Deborah Lipstadt, and publisher Penguin Books in the High Court of Justice for her book Denying the Holocaust, on the claim of libel. The verdict in Irving v. Lipstadt was short:

14.1 It follows that there must be judgment for the Defendants.

This followed numerous court findings, including the counterclaims of his "anti-Semitism", of his being a "Holocaust denier", and of his misrepresentaton of fact in his books.

On the issue of Irving's anti-Semitism, Mr. Justice Gray of the Queen's Bench Division, in giving judgment against David Irving in April, 2000 wrote:

" words are directed against Jews, either individually or

collectively, in the sense that they are by turns hostile, critical, offensive, and derisory in their references to semitic people, their characteristics and appearances. A few examples will suffice: Irving has made claims that the Jews deserve to be disliked; that they brought the Holocaust on themselves; that Jewish financiers are crooked; that Jews generate anti-semitism by their greed and mendacity; that it is bad luck for Mr. Wiesel to be called "Weasel"; that Jews are amongst the scum of humanity; that Jews scurry and hide furtively, unable to stand the light of day; that Simon Wiesenthal has a hideous, leering evil face; and so on... The inference which in my judgment is clearly to be drawn from what Irving has said and written is that he is anti-semitic." (Matas, David. Bloody Speech. Winnipeg & Niagara Falls, 2000, p. 64)

=In defense of

Irving has had, at least, one defender in Dr. Joel Hayward of Massey University in New Zealand. Hayward, responding to claims that Irving was unqualified, having never finished a batchelor's degree, by citing respected historians Gerald Reitlinger, Georges Wellers, Jean-Claude Pressac, and Walter Laqueur, as having unusual qualifications as historians. Hayward also wrote:

"I have critically examined - keeping issues of truth, objectivity and bias at the forefront of my mind -- ALL his thirty-one books... been able to check his sources and they way he used them... I can say with confidence that I am as well positioned to comment on Irving's scholarship as anyone. My judgement: I certainly don't agree with all his arguments and conclusions, and strongly disagree with some, but I can't find serious flaws in his methodology and I have never found a single example of deliberate falsification of evidence. ...Deborah Lipstadt's book is hopeless Gerald Fleming's is easily the best of the anti-Irving books, but even that ultimately fails to prove falsification or improper consideration of evidence."

Hayward's motivations, however, have been called as suspect as well: His masters thesis at the New Zealand's University of Canterbury, caused an uproar, in making the claim that far fewer than 6 million Jews, perhaps fewer than 1 million, perished in Nazi concentration camps; adding that Hitler could not be held personally responsible for any suffering experienced by the Jews of Europe. Hayward later apologized for the thesis, expressing remorse over the "mistakes I made as an inexperienced student", adding that he was "inexperienced in the historian's craft and knew relatively little about the Holocaust and its complex historiography."

David Irving's 'Focal Point Publications' official website - Holocaust victims website