David Irving: The Dirt Continues to Accumulate

Assembled by John "Birdman" Bryant

 

08 Dec 03: Quote of the day (Letter to the Birdman - Full name posted with permission):
Hello John: I am a friend of Russ Granata and he suggested that I write to you about David Irving. I am the author of a book concerning the death of Heinrich Himmler, which proves he was murdered and which was scheduled to be published nearly three years ago. David Irving was to be the publisher. He lied about his intention to publish and apparently has now decided to steal my thesis and research for his own upcoming "Himmler" book. I had been warned about Irving from a German publisher (and a fellow researcher in England) who advised me two years ago that he was planning to steal my book, but I rather foolishly relied on David Irving's protestations that what they told me was untrue. Which now brings me to the following. I emailed Irving the other night and informed him of my decision to put my Himmler book ONLINE so all can read for themselves the circumstances of Himmler's death, Sure enough, Irving emailed me back immediately, blustering and threatening that he owns rights to the manuscript, and that I had better not do what I threatened to do. Well, he does NOT own rights to the manuscript and I am free to do whatever I wish with it and my wish is now to have it put up on line and try to arrange for as many links to the material as possible among revisionists and people interested in this era of history in general. I realize it will not earn me one cent in revenues, but at least it should put a crimp in Irving's plans. I was hopeful that you would put the material up on your site...My plan would be just to put up the last 5 chapters of the book which deal with the actual circumstances of Himmler's capture and death and the reasons why he was put out of the way. Sincerely yours Joseph Bellinger
[
Birdman comment: I am working to help get Joseph's book up, and help him if possible to earn some money from it.]

11 Dec 03: Ninth quote of the day (Letter from a reader describing an Irving talk):
I walked over to Irving, offered my hand, and he shook it. As such, I shook a hand that had shook a hand that had shook the hand of Hitler. "By the way, I'm English." I said. He looked me in the eye. I said that because of the way he spat out the word 'English' a few times during his brief talk [cut short by protesters]. ... Make of it what you want, but it was enough for me to feel a sense of doubt about the man. He is not an 'English Gentleman'. His obvious distaste for the English came through loud and clear in the way he said the word 'English'. The man is a phony. --W

23 Dec 03: Fifth quote of the day (Samuel writes to Edgar J Steele on one of David Irving's recent talks):
I gathered from your remarks that Mr. Irving's talk was the same in all places. It was very interesting but he did unsettle the audience with the remark that Eisenhower and FDR were the best Presidents we have ever had. This certainly brought a lively dissent from the audience. Of all the comments made that evening I will never forget this one. Mr. Irving was singing the praises of Eisenhower. He mentioned that Eisenhower was always militarily correct. He cited for example a time in April 1945 in Frankfurt in which through American neglect a hospital train of wounded German soldiers suffered a near total and catastrophic percentage of death. Mr. Irving said that Eisenhower sent a letter to the German General Staff informing them of this situation, his regrets and his actions to see that something like this does not happen again. Mr. Irving said, "I read this report myself." As soon as this anecdote was related I scratched furiously on my note pad in order to bring the question up of the million German soldiers starved to death "after" the war in American POW camps. I know about this first hand as my father-in-law told me about this situation. As you recall James Bacque's book Other Losses documents this. Before I could frame my question another member of the audience asked the same question. Mr. Irving acknowledged this as true but stated, "Maybe something Eisenhower saw after the war changed him." This comment still floors me.
[
Birdman comment: What kind of historian can Irving be if he says FDR and Ike were two of our best presidents? Informed readers know that FDR was responsible for getting America into WWII and giving half of Europe away to Stalin; while 'the Swedish Jew' Ike caused millions of Germans to die from hunger and maltreatment after the war. Can there be any better indication that Irving is either stupendously ignorant or else a Jewish tool?]

24 Dec 03: Second quote of the day (Thanks Fredrick - This is part of a much longer exchange between Kevin MacDonald and David Lieberman - I have merely extracted material relevant to David Irving):
Although at one time MacDonald assured readers of H-Antisemitism that he carefully evaluated his sources, in *The Culture of Critique* he did not blush to rely heavily (all but exclusively, in fact) on David Irving's notoriously shabby re-imagining of the anti-communist revolt in Hungary of 1956 in order to claim that the situation in postwar Poland was "analagous" to that in postwar Hungary (Irving, *Uprising!*, 1981). In fact, MacDonald went so far as to cite Irving as the basis for his own claim that in Hungary Jewish men enjoyed "unrestricted access" to gentile females, a classic and notoriously inflammatory antisemitic claim. When I checked MacDonald's citation of Irving's overview of sexual behavior in Hungary, I found a passage of unsurprisingly poor scholarship, characterized chiefly by the citation of anecdotal evidence in the form of oral history transcripts that went nowhere near supporting Irving's very broad sociological claims. Apart from raising questions about MacDonald's ability or willingness critically to evaluate his sources, however, was this: not once in the entire passage did Irving identify the religious or ethnic identities of any of the people -- men or women -- thought to be involved in the various transactions he describes. MacDonald's claim about Jewish men having "access" to gentile women, in other words, had not even the dubious Mr. Irving to show as its basis in fact. Asked to explain a) what methods he used to assess the value of Irving's scholarship and b) how he was able to draw from it his own imaginative conclusion, MacDonald chose to instead to stand on his dignity and assert that, since these questions came from me, they were beneath his attention. --David Lieberman, Dept. of Musicology, Brandeis University
[
MacDonald replies on the Irving matter: The only other comment I care to make here is regarding his complaints about me using David Irving as a reference. 1.) At the time I wrote my book (published in 1998), no one had accused David Irving of manufacturing anything and he was widely regarded (and still is, by many responsible people) as a premier historian of WWII, particularly military history; 2.) It is simply not the case that I rely "heavily" on David Irving. There are two references to Irving in a chapter with dozens of references, and even Lieberman has the grace to admit that on the critical issue of the composition of post-WWII governments in Eastern Europe I had a number of other sources. I would not have discussed Hungary at all except that what Irving said was entirely congruent with the work of Rothman and Lichter: Rothman, S., & Lichter, S. R. (1982). Roots of Radicalism: Jews, Christians, and the New Left. New York: Oxford University Press. If it's one thing I learned in writing in this area, one has to triangulate important things: Find several sources that agree and seem honest and well documented. The reference to sexual access was in a footnote, a reflection of the fact that I did not have much confidence in it. However, no evolutionist should be surprised to find that political power and sexual access are linked, and I included it because I suspect it was correct.]

 

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