David Irving is a widely discredited British historian who specializes in the military history of World War II. He has publicly expressed sympathy for Nazi policies and has been central in the Holocaust denial movement.
During his youth, Irving expressed dissatisfaction with how British media portrayed Hitler. In an interview with American journalist Ron Rosenbaum, he explained his early skepticism of the negative portrayals of Nazis.
During his tenure at Imperial College London, Irving displayed his anti-Semitic through words, writing for the student newspaper Felix. In one article, for instance, he called Hitler the "greatest unifying force Europe has known since Charlemagne." In another column, Irving accused Jews of owning the British press. He later wrote, "the formation of a European Union is interpreted as building a group of superior peoples, and the Jews have always viewed with suspicion the emergence of any 'master-race' (other than their own, of course)."
As Irving’s anti-Semitism matured, he began writing several books, some anti-Semitic, others not. Common among them, however, was a revisionist tendency that clashed with the work of honest, rigorous historians. When he had the chance to attack Jews, he did.
In the introduction of his 1975 book Hitler's War, for instance, he baselessly accused The Diary of Anne Frank of being a forgery, falsely claiming that a New York court had attributed the book to scriptwriter Meyer Levin and Anne Franke’s father. Following the release of Hitler's War, Irving published The Trail of the Fox in which he criticized members of the 20 July Plot for attempting to assassinate Hitler. He called them "traitors," "cowards," and "manipulators."
Whatever credibility Irving enjoyed, it evaporated following a failed libel case against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books. In 1998, Irving filed suit against Professor Lipstadt and her publisher in a British court, charging them with libel, In her book Denying the Holocaust, Lipstadt accused Irving of intentionally misrepresenting evidence to fit his anti-Semitic worldview.
Following two years of carefully examining Irving’s work, Lipstadt’s defense team presented their evidence to the court and showed that he had, in fact, forged documents as source material.
The English court concluded that Irving was an “active Holocaust denier,” “anti-Semite,” “racist,” and “associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.” Justice Charles Gray ruled that he had, “for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated evidence.” Unpleased with the court’s findings, Irving sought to appeal the ruling, without any success.
Irving’s legal troubles continued as he hardened his anti-Semitic positions. After denying the Holocaust in two speeches in 1989, the Austrian government issued an arrest warrant and banned him from entering the country. In 1992 a German court charged him with holocaust denial, barring him from entering the country as well. Australia joined the two in the same year, denying him entry into the country. By 2004 New Zealand announced that Irving would not be granted entry into the country on account of his hateful lectures. In 2006, Irving spent ten months in an Austrian prison on charges of “glorifying and identifying with the German Nazi Party,” a crime under Austria’s Verbotsgesetz law.
Today, Irving’s academic pull is weak, to say the least. The disgraced historian attracts only those who seek evidence to confirm their hatred. The validity of the evidence, however, is merely secondary and in many cases non-existent.
Click here to view the transcript of Irving's failed case against Deborah E. Lipstadt.
