MovieChat Forums > Denial (2016) Discussion > Curiously enough, Irving's old books...

Curiously enough, Irving's old books...

posted 8 years ago by SuperDevilDoctor
2 replies | jump to latest

...say that the Holocaust was real -- that it did happen.

I know, because I still have some of them on my shelf.

It's telling, however, that Irving usually covered subjects that allowed him to skirt the issue entirely... His biography of Rommel (who committed no war crimes) and the destruction of Convoy PQ17 (naval-air battle) being prime examples.

But his books Hitler's War and Göring have no choice but to mention the Final Solution.

The former tends to downplay Hitler's psychotic hatred of Jews and the crimes of the SS, however, as it conveniently tries to stick to purely military subjects.

The Holocaust simply cannot be avoided when covering Göring, though, and in his book Irving states that the Holocaust really occurred as an instrument of Nazi policy -- but that the death toll of murdered Jews was really more like four million instead of six million.

Irving's Göring biography received good reviews from the mainstream press and historical scholars at the time of its publication.

So what the hell happened to Irving after that?

How did he become an instrument of evil? Did he succumb to mental illness?

He definitely changed. (And because of it, lost his career and reputation... deservedly so.)

Send her to the snakes!

[–] ZortMcFleen 8 years ago

Lipstadt covers it in her book, the one Irving sued her over.

Irving latched onto "The Leuchter Report" -- a pseudo-scientific paper from Fred Leuchter, who was paid $35K by Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel to "prove" there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz. Irving saw the kind of money Zündel was pulling in from his Holocaust denial materials, and thought he could do the same sort of thing in the UK. He set up a Holocaust denial imprint ("Focus on History") and got the rights to sell the report in the UK as the first entry on the imprint's list. It was really the PR campaign for the Leuchter report which got Irving rolling, even though at the time even other Holocaust deniers were warning Irving that Leuchter was an idiot and that Irving would only end up embarrassing himself by associating with him. That prediction turned out to be true.

This was all happening at a time Irving had tasted success but was no longer tasting it; his first few pop-history books had done well, but they were doing more and more poorly as he aged. I think he saw Zündel's chunk of change (the guy was making serious bucks smuggling neo-Nazi materials into Germany for sale), wanted a big score, and swallowed the Holocaust denial bait.

I think one of the reasons that the Holocaust denial movement withered so dramatically after Irving wasn't just Irving's defeat, but the rise of the internet, and how it demonetized the movement. Why pay for mail-order Holocaust denial crap, of the sort that made Zündel a living, when you can get all you want on the internet for free? Once Holocaust denial stopped being a revenue stream, it stopped attracting those who, like Irving and Zündel, would make a living from it. That's why you can't point to any major figure in the Holocaust denial movement who's under 50, and most of them are around 70. The IHR's Weber is 65, Irving's nearing 80, Faurisson's almost 90, Carto and Smith checked out within the last two years, Carto at 89, Smith at 86. And who's replacing them as leaders in the movement? Nobody.

[–] SuperDevilDoctor 8 years ago

Interesting. Thanks for the backstory.

Send her to the snakes!