Irving, David

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David John Cawdell Irving was born on March 24, 1938, in Essex, England, the son of a Royal Navy Commander. After education at London University, he spent a year working in a steel mill in Germany, where he perfected his fluency in the language. (He later also learned to speak very good Spanish.)

His first book, The Destruction of Dresden, was published in 1963, when he was 25 years old. This was followed by many others, including The Mare's Nest: The Secret Weapons of the Third Reich, The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, The German Atomic Bomb, The War Between the Generals and The Trail of the Fox, a best-selling biography of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

His books have appeared in a range of languages. Several have been serialized in prominent periodicals. He has contributed articles to some 60 British and foreign periodicals including the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Express in Britain, and Stern and Der Spiegel in Germany.

Irving has a track record of uncovering startling new facts about supposedly well-known episodes of history. Much of his effectiveness has been due to his extensive reliance on primary source materials, such as diaries, original documents and so forth, from both official archives and private sources. He is disdainful of scholars who engage in what he calls inter-historian incest, and who thereby help to keep alive myths left over from Second World War propaganda.

“Most of Irving's books,” the Washington Post once noted, “are big, solid works... All are well written, exciting, fun to read, and all contain new information based on sensational discoveries.”

This fiercely independent and iconoclastic historian is widely acknowledged – even by adversaries – as an eminent authority on World War II, Hitler and Third Reich Germany . British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, writing in the Sunday Times of London, once declared: “No praise can be too high for Irving’s indefatigable scholarly industry.” He also called Irving one of the “few guides I would entirely trust … indefatigable in pursuit of the evidence, fearless in face of it, sound in judgment ...” Another prominent British historian, A.J.P. Taylor, wrote: “David Irving is a patient researcher of unrivalled industry and success."

Professor Gordon Craig of Stanford University, writing in 1996 in The New York Review of Books, remarked: “The fact is that he [Irving] knows more about National Socialism than most professional scholars in his field, and students of the years 1933–1945 owe more than they are always willing to admit to his energy as a researcher and to the scope and vigor of his publications ... Such people as David Irving, then, have an indispensable part in the historical enterprise, and we dare not disregard their views.”

Following the publication in 1977 of Hitler's War, probably his most important single work, he came under fire for its contention that Hitler did not order the extermination of Europe's Jews. The mass killings must have been carried out by Himmler and his cohorts behind Hitler's back, Irving concluded at that time. In 2002 a completely revised and updated deluxe edition of Hitler’s War was published under Irving’s own Focal Point imprint.

His 1981 book, Uprising! , an examination of the 1956 anti-Communist revolt in Hungary, also earned the ire of Jewish-Zionist groups because it did not ignore or whitewash the significant Jewish role in the Hungarian Communist regime. Irving’s biography of Hermann Göring was published in 1989. Churchill’s War: The Struggle for Power, the first volume of Irving’s monumental biography of Britain’s wartime leader, was published in 1987. The second volume, subtitled Triumph in Adversity, appeared in 2001.

Irving’s testimony in the Holocaust trial in 1988 of Ernst Zundel was a startling high point of that important court case. Appearing as the last of 23 defense witnesses, Irving stunned the packed Toronto courtroom by announcing that he had changed his mind about the Holocaust story. During his three days on the stand, he explained in detail why he no longer accepted that masses of Jews were killed in gas chambers during World War II, or that Hitler ordered the extermination of European Jewry.

Irving has made successful speaking tours in Germany, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the United States and other countries.

For example, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, he made triumphal speaking visits in what was still the “German Democratic Republic.” In February 1990 he addressed a large audience in Dresden on the 45th anniversary of the Allied firebombing of that once beautiful, baroque city. Large posters with Irving's picture appeared throughout the city to announce his presentation. He was greeted with flowers by Dresden’s cultural affairs director, and was interviewed on television. When he appeared on stage before the microphones, more than a thousand people gave him a standing ovation. Speaking in fluent German, he recounted Churchill's campaign to obliterate German cities. In June of that same year he returned for another speaking tour in the GDR. In spite of a ten mark admission fee, large crowds came to hear him speak in Leipzig, Gera, and again in Dresden .

On April 21, 1990, Irving was arrested in Munich after having addressed a sell-out crowd in the Bavarian city’s famed Löwenbräu beer-hall because during his talk he had referred to the “gas chamber” shown to tourists at the Auschwitz main camp as a phony postwar dummy (“Attrappe”). His arrest was followed by a spontaneous demonstration of some 250 supporters, who carried posters of Irving and two other Holocaust skeptics, Robert Faurisson and Ernst Zündel. After the crowd made its way past the historic Feldherrnhalle, police waded in and arrested several of the demonstrators.

For that remark, a German court in January 1993 fined Irving 30,000 marks (about $20,000), and later that year he was banned from the country. On the basis of that ban, he was subsequently barred from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand .

As it happens, Irving’s 1990 remark in Munich was, in fact, the truth. As even the curator of the Auschwitz State Museum has since acknowledged, the “gas chamber” shown to hundreds of thousands of visitors to the site is indeed a fraudulent postwar reconstruction.

Over the years Irving has addressed several conferences and meetings of the Institute for Historical Review. For example, in an address at an IHR meeting on April 17, 2005, entitled “The Faking of Adolf Hitler for History,” he identified some of the many fraudulent historical documents that have been cited over the years by “conformist” historians of the Third Reich era.

In 1998 Irving filed a lawsuit in London against Deborah Lipstadt and her British publisher, Penguin Books. He charged that Lipstadt had libeled him in her book, Denying the Holocaust, by calling him a falsifier and a Holocaust denier. After a much-publicized trial in London in early 2000, during which Irving represented himself, the court ruled in favor of the defendants.

In a ruling made public on April 11, 2000, Judge Charles Gray praised Irving's “thorough and painstaking research into the archives,” and commended his discovery and disclosure of many historical documents. He also noted Irving's intelligence and thorough knowledge of World War II history. On balance, though, Judge Gray’s lengthy statement was a severe rebuke of Irving, whom he called an anti-Semitic and racist “Holocaust denier” who had “deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.”

Irving was obliged to pay substantial costs of the trial. He lost subsequent attempts to appeal the verdict, and was forced into bankruptcy. But the worst was yet to come.

On November 11, 2005, he was arrested during a visit in Austria for the “thought crime” – committed in 1989 (!) – of having referred to “mythical” gas chambers at Auschwitz. Denied bail, he was held in jail until his trial on February 20, 2006, when a court in Vienna sentenced him to three years in prison for having “denied the Holocaust,” thus turning Irving into the most prominent “thought criminal” in the western world.

In the aftermath of the trial, newspapers, political leaders and intellectuals around the world spoke out against the sentence, as well as against the laws in Europe under which he and other dissidents have been imprisoned and fined for “Holocaust denial” (The only voices of approval were the predictable Zionist ones.)



Remarks presented to the Tenth International Revisionist Conference Ladies and gentlemen, we are very pleased and honored to once again welcome to this podium the distinguished British historian, Mr. David Irving. As many of those here this afternoon will recall, he also addressed the IHR conferences of 1983 and 1989. …

"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death." George Orwell British historian David Irving was fined 10,000 marks ($6,000) by a German court May 5 for public statements denouncing stories of mass exterminations of Jews in gas chambers at Auschwitz as a myth. Munich district court judge Thomas Stelzner ruled …

This may be Inconvenient History’s first Profile of a living subject. David Irving (born 1938, England) is not only living, but—very happily for the rest of us—working at a pace that would tire anyone half his age, at this moment on a biography of Heinrich Himmler. His only career after …

In early January, a libel trial convened in London, pitting dissident historian David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt, an American professor of religion. Irving, the plaintiff, claims that Lipstadt libeled him in her book, "Denying the Holocaust", charging that she made many false statements about him and his associations and that …

Revisionists have found it very difficult to overcome the tremendous inertia of conventional wisdom and beliefs about World War II and the Holocaust. As a result, revisionists have usually been ignored in the major media, and when they have been discussed on occasion in books or magazines it has only …

Joseph Sobran is a nationally-syndicated columnist, lecturer, author, and editor of the monthly newsletter Sobran's. This essay is reprinted from the March 2000 issue of Sobran's ([...address defunct, since the author is deceased; ed.]) An important libel suit is under way in London. David Irving, the controversial British historian of …

On Monday, January 31, 2000, American professor Kevin MacDonald took the stand at an expert witness in the London libel case of David Irving vs. Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. (Irving, a prominent British historian, had sued Lipstadt, and her British publisher, for hostile statements made about him in her …

IHR Journal Provides ‘Wake Up Call’ January 25, p. 23 Judge Gray: What puzzles me about this is that one of the documents Mr. Irving just handed in says that this further Polish or Auschwitz investigation has been published in the summer 1991 Journal of Historical Review. [“An Official Polish …

David Irving: 'Defeated But Unbowed' A verdict has finally been reached in the much publicized Irving-Lipstadt libel trial in London. Judge Charles Gray, in a lengthy ruling made public on April 11, 2000, called David Irving an anti-Semitic and racist “Holocaust denier” who has “deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.” …

This post appeared on a BBS on the Web and is quoted here to give a good illustration of what an honest intellectual appraisal of David Irving's talents and methodology reveals. Namely, the same kinds of things are pointed out that he was praised for by top historians for thirty …

Everyone is familiar with the fact that a court case has two aspects. On the one hand, there is the case as it is decided in a court of law, on the other hand, there is the case as it is decided in the court of public opinion. Frequently a …

Not to anyone’s great surprise, David Irving lost his libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin books. Judge Gray, newly appointed to the bench in England, ruled that, although Lipstadt did libel Irving in her book “Denying the Holocaust”, these libels could not be considered as damaging Irving’s reputation, because …

As many revisionists expected, the British historian David Irving failed in his libel suit against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt. In his complaint, Irving had accused Lipstadt of libeling him in her book, Denying the Holocaust in which she characterized Irving as a "Hitler apologist" who distorted, manipulated, and falsified …

David Irving was in good form as he addressed a special IHR meeting in southern California on April 29, 1999. In addition to his scheduled lecture on "Winston Churchill and Charles de -Gaulle: The Murderous Friendship," the British historian also spoke about the international campaign to silence him, and on …

At the time of the fifth international Revisionist Conference sponsored by the Institute for Historical Review, held in Los Angeles on 3–5 September 1983, I had the pleasure of meeting David Irving for the first time. Unfortunately, our meeting was too short. We had a brief conversation, and then I …

David Irving has been ordered by a German court to pay 30,000 marks (about $18,000) for telling an audience that the “gas chamber” at Auschwitz shown to hundreds of thousands of tourists annually is a phony postwar reconstruction (“Attrappen”). On January 13 a Munich court rejected Irving’s appeal of a …

The 'Dangerous' David Irving The historian David Irving has lost his libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. Mrs. Lipstadt had called Irving "one of the most dangerous spokesmen for Holocaust denial." In a devastating ruling, Judge Charles Gray declared Irving a "racist" and "anti-Semite" who distorts historical facts …

On March 15, 2000, British historian David Irving rose before the High Court of Justice in London to deliver his Closing Statement in a dramatic legal battle that had generated enormous media attention. At the center of the case is a 278-page book by Jewish- American scholar Deborah Lipstadt, Denying …

Historian Irving Says He’s Been Object of Campaign of Vilification Associated Press, March 15, 2000 LONDON – Historian David Irving, who has outraged survivors of Nazi death camps by saying the Holocaust was exaggerated, told Britain’s High Court on Wednesday that he had been the victim of a 30-year international …

Bowing to intense pressure, the Australian government has banned British historian David Irving from the country. In a February 10 letter, the best-selling historian was informed of the decision by Immigration Minister Gerry Hand to deny him a visa to visit the country for a lecture and promotional tour that …

"If Germar Rudolf is the future of revisionism, then revisionism is in trouble." That was the response of a certain Richard A. Salzer to a statement in this regard by Dr. Fredrick Toben. I do not know this person, and I am sure that he doesn’t know me either, therefore …

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev might have had David Irving in mind when he once warned that historians are dangerous because they have the power to upset everything. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said that the main thing is not to write history, but to make it. Irving is a …

Zionist Groups Demand Irving's Ouster Canadian Media Criticizes Ban As best-selling British historian and author David Irving approached the US-Canadian border at Niagara Falls after a speaking tour in the western United States, he knew that this particular visit to the "Great White North" would be different than previous visits. …

World-class historian David Irving is no stranger to readers of the JHR. His address to the 1983 Intemational Revisionist Conference, which appeared in the Winter 1984 Journal of Historical Review ("On Contemporary History and Historiography"), was something of a primer on Irving's Revisionist historiographical method. It was spiced as well …

Political prisoner David Irving has already written 1,000 pages of a new book on his persecution. This four page excerpt was sent from his prison in Vienna. The handwriting of the British historian is very difficult to read. This rendering owes its existence to the reading skills of a number …

On August 27, Canada's Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional the law under which German-Canadian publisher Ernst Zündel was convicted for publishing a Revisionist booklet about the Holocaust. In a four-three decision, the judges ruled that the "false news" law under which he was convicted violates the freedom-of-speech provisions of …

(Presented at the Eleventh IHR Conference, October 1992) Thank you, United States, for letting me come and speak. I mean that seriously because the fight is now getting quite creepy. For two years now, in country after country, I have been conducting this international Campaign for Real History. During this …

Auschwitz State Museum authorities have banned a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television team and British historian David Irving from visiting the site of the wartime German concentration camp. In a July 15 letter to Irving, Museum official Krystyna Oleksy wrote: "We must advise you that permission will not be given …

Holocaust Revisionism Why the panic? Judge for yourself. The evidence, the theory, the censorship\. http://www.codoh.com Or: [old mailing address] Doc. 1: Ad submitted to Catholic University of America Holocaust Revisionism Why are the Thought Police panicked? Read the evidence. Judge for yourself\. http://www.codoh.com [old mailing address] Doc. 2: Ad submitted …

A few weeks ago I met Dietmar Munier in Chicago, owner of the medium-sized publishing company Arndt in Kiel, northern Germany. He was hunting original color photographs of the Third Reich era for his many upcoming book projects, and while visiting archives in the United States, he decided to stop …

The study of history is an often difficult task. History is, after all, written by individuals, and it is almost impossible for an author to write something free of his own personal biases. This does not mean, however, that a biased account is completely without value as a source. The …

"The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data. The definition of 'important,' of course, depends on one's values." —Howard Zinn, Failure To Quit This year marks the tenth anniversary of the David Irving - Deborah Lipstadt libel trial. Irving sued …