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My Evening With Historian David Irving

Last month I enjoyed the immense privilege of meeting historian David Irving at a private house in Lancashire. I was invited there because the previous month's attempt to host a speech in a hotel in Liverpool had been cancelled. Police had warned that it would not be safe. Presumably some fanatics and rent-a-mob activists had plans to make a violent demonstration.

There were no more than a dozen people at the house, which meant it was all the more of an exclusive treat. Mr. Irving signed books and gave us all a copy of a DVD about "Hitler's War."

We then retired to the lounge, where Mr Irving began his talk. The theme was generally about who was responsible for the destruction of the British Empire - Churchill or Hitler. The conclusion was that undoubtedly Churchill was to blame since he forced the war, when Hitler had no plans to invade Britain and was goaded into bombing our land, with Churchill insisting on constantly attacking Germany with psychopathically over-extreme bombing. (Britain could no longer afford to maintain its colonies at the end of the war. Effectively when you look at the economic situation of post-war Britain and Germany, Britain is the biggest loser.)

Mr. Irving explained how he had gained favor with many surviving National Socialists who lived in the Third Reich after he wrote "The Destruction of Dresden" in 1963 and this enormously helped him with further research.

I was not making notes of what was being said, but I recall that there were a number of surprising revelations. (That is not to say that these revelations will be news to anyone reading this, but I thought they were interesting). Most of us already know that it is Mr. Irving's position that Hitler knew nothing of mass killings of Jews but that in fact Himmler was responsible and that there was no systematic gassing, but rather they were shot - and no where near the six million figure. Hitler had felt that dealing with the Jews should be postponed until after the war.

He explained that Elizabeth the Queen Mother, as well as her husband King George VI were very actively in favor of accepting a peace deal with Germany and horrified at the idea of war. He says that there is evidence for the extent of Elizabeth's efforts to encourage peace in the Bodleian Library in Oxford, but that this is kept quiet for obvious propaganda purposes.

He talked of how Eva Braun had written a diary that was "fake" because she had deliberately lied in it, a rather neurotic act. It seems that the diary involved some sort of suicide threat which was intended to upset Adolf Hitler and make him show her more consideration, since she wasconsiderably more smitten with him than he was with her.

Another surprise to me was how amicably Mr. Irving talked about Sir Arthur Harris, Commander-in-Chief of Bomber Command, who led the bombing of Dresden. Bomber Harris was very effective at motivating those under his command and had admirable leadership skills. Although Mr. Irving thoroughly abhors the bombing itself, and says that it was something about which no British person could be proud, he presumably didn't want to let emotions get in the way of trying to understand the man, who I suppose could always resort to the excuse that he was only following orders in any case. Harris in turn respected Mr. Irving considering him the only historian that he would trust. That fact should give pause to those who think of Mr. Irving as being dogmatic and biased.

Mr. Irving talked of how he attended premier of the movie "Downfall," and how closely the script mirrored, or directly quoted from, his own words in "Hitler's War". He felt the movie was very good, yet that perhaps Steven Spielberg could have made it better! It bemused Mr Irving that Hermann Fegelein, an SS officer, was portrayed in the movie as a heroic and sympathetic character since the truth was that he was quite the opposite, while other Nazis are demonized unreasonably.

Mr. Irving gave evidence that Himmler did not commit suicide, but was in fact beaten to death. The very large cyanide capsule, which would have been impossible to conceal, was forced into his mouth afterwards. Photos exist which show Himmler on a bloodied floor and a written account at the time stated that he had a broken nose.

He mentioned how he had discovered "Hitler's Diary" was a forgery while other eminent historians had not. The Sunday Times had previously agreed to serialize it. One of the most obvious mistakes was that a letter that was purported to be from Goering had his rank wrong!

Mr. Irving has been put into prison on a few occasions for standing up for the truth. He does not regret his actions in refusing such requests as the falsification of evidence that Hitler knew about The Holocaust, (his publisher wanted him to do just that) saying that one day it will be his own books that are considered the accurate historical representation, while the others will have been dismissed for their craven political bias.

We later enjoyed a buffet and viewed some memorabilia that was on display including a pair of Hitler's reading spectacles, and Eva Braun's hairbrush and cigarette case, then said amicable goodbyes and wound our ways home through the rotting industrial ruins of a postwar paradise.