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David Irving & Revisionism

David
Irving

by
Dr. Karl Kolcheck

An
aging David Irving, who has begun to look more and more like a demented Rudolf
Hess with lantern jaw and sunken eyes, was once considered the enfant
terrible of the world of historical writers.

Now,
he is merely the enfant, having slipped into almost total obscurity. This
diminution of public attention is highly distressing to Irving, the victim of a
deprived, fatherless childhood, who lusts after public attention like a hart
panteth after water but in his case, the well has run dry.

His
early books such as the "Destruction of Dresden," first published in
1963, were well-researched and crafted but the decline set in early and
progressed to the terminal state, an awful biography of Hitler's propaganda
minister, Josef Goebbels, published in 1996. Based to a very large degree on
completely fictitious documentation prepared by the former Soviet KGB as
political disinformation, this book is full of pointless anecdotes, sniggering
sexual innuendo and leaves an objective reader with the distinct feeling that
the book should have been written in the sort of soft crayon supplied to therapy
patients in locked wards.

Although
Irving has written, co-authored or translated, thirty-odd books, the great
majority of them have the greatest overall similarity to a meringue; there is
bulk but no substance.

This
plenitude of books must be viewed by their owners as being of great value
because they are so seldom touched.

A
fair number of Irving's works could have been found, in palmier days, in many
major, and some minor, public and academic libraries but as he has diminished in
an accelerated fashion, these books have been removed from the shelves in
increasing numbers.

Their
author attributes this to the underhanded work of malicious Jewish groups but
since the index cards have also been removed from the library files, it would be
safer to assume that librarians, like so many others, have had quite enough of
David Irving.

Irving
ascended, or descended (depending entirely upon the view of the reader), from a
pro-German writer to a fierce and highly partisan supporter of Adolf Hitler, his
acquired and well-worshipped father figure, and an intemperate and completely
inaccurate denigrator of his legion of critics.

He
had access to the personal diaries of a number of luminaries of the Third Reich
and was able to publish a great deal of interesting information that proved to
be of limited use to legitimate historians. Unfortunately for students of
history, most historical diaries are, more often than not, completely
self-serving and Irving's interpretations of them have proved to be equally so.

His
major fault as a historical writer, aside from a serious lack of literary style,
has been that he wrote to an idea and instead of making a study of authentic
documentary, as opposed to anecdotal, sources, he selected material that
supported his various ideological thesis and deliberately ignored anything else
that might refute the ideas he tried to nourish in the minds of his readers.

Also,
Irving has no problem whatsoever in inventing conversations or archival records
and putting these spurious evidences into his political screeds with perfect
aplomb.

The
respected historian John Lukacs has devoted what amounts to more space than he
deserves to Irving in his 1997 book, "The Hitler of History." In this work,
which is a scholarly and reasonably balanced work on Hitler's place in
historical reporting, Lukacs, on pages 229 through 232 points out a small
sampling of Irving's deliberate distortions of records and his habit of not
identifying any references for important assertions.

In
a number of specific cases, it is obvious that Irving has simply invented
sources, quotes and other supportive data.

British
author and historian Martin Middlebrook has dealt with Irving's failings very
clearly in his 1973 book, "The Nuremberg Raid." On pages 293 through 296,
Middlebrook dissects a story that Irving reported in his work "And the German
Cities Did Not Die-A Documentary Account" published by a small, right wing Swiss
house in 1963.

In
this book, Irving stated categorically that the Germans had learned in advance
about the disastrous 1944 British air raid on Nuremberg in which a very large
percentage of the raiding aircraft were lost to German action.

Irving
quotes three British airmen, who were prisoners of war in Germany, to the effect
that the Germans had prior knowledge of this raid.

Very
extensive research on the part of Middlebrook proved that two of the named
airmen had no knowledge whatsoever of the statements attributed to them by
Irving, in fact flatly denying them, and the third alleged witness simply never
existed anywhere except in Irving's imagination.

Another
exposition of Irving's literary mendacity can be found in a chapter of a 1994
book entitled "The Churchill Papers" by Alexander Baron, pages 13 through 17.

This
study lists a large and significant number of serious errors of fact appearing
in Irving's book, "Churchill's War."

In
all of his books, Irving consistently misstates or creates facts, invents
important dates and proper titles and generally acts as if has never read any of
the works in the lengthy bibliographies he always provides as proof of his
research.

Probably
the worst example of this can be found in "Hitler's War", published in 1977, in
which Irving discusses the German Freikorps leader, Albert Leo
Schlageter. This man was involved in the Ruhrkampf in the 1920's and was
caught and executed by the French in Dusseldorf in 1923.

This
part of Irving's reportage is correct.

What
is not correct, however, and is an error exposing such a gross unfamiliarity
with the subject of German history as to stagger the imagination, is the
connected statement that at Schlageter's side on that date was also shot one
Andreas Hofer.

As
any legitimate scholar of German history will instantly recognize, Hofer was the
man who raised the Austrian Tyrol against Napoleon I and was indeed captured and
shot by the French but in Mantua, Italy in 1810!

Also
in "Hitler's War", on page 260, Irving speaks of a "secret meeting" held at the
Kremlin by Josef Stalin on May 5, 1941. Present at this meeting were top members
of his government. In this "secret meeting", Irving claims that Stalin outlined
his plans to attack Hitler.

This
episode was tailor-made by Irving to support his thesis that Hitler did not have
any reason to attack Stalin in 1941. Unfortunately, this "secret" speech (and
another one on the following evening) was not secret and copies of it survive in
the Russian archives.

In
spite of the historical importance of this speech, Irving completely neglects to
credit or footnote it.

Irving,
who once had access to Russian archives, must doubtlessly have seen these files,
which are certainly not secret nor permitted to be viewed by only a select few,
among whom Irving, by inference, includes himself.

If
he ever had such a positive relationship with the Russian archives, it was
quickly terminated when the archive authorities discovered that Irving had been
systematically pilfering their papers and selling them to document collectors.
Irving, in breach of an agreement which he had made and without permission,
removed and transported abroad certain microfiches of Goebbels’ diaries, thereby
exposing them to a real risk of damage; Judgement, Paragraph 4, section 5.
(in Appendix)

The
brilliant historian was promptly jailed and, looking like an unshaven and
sockless refugee from Bosnia, was physically expelled from the country. Once he
had gained the safety of England, one heard his loud cries of Jewish persecution
for his heroic activities in search of the Real Truth, as he likes to term his
pathological flights of fancy.

This
light-fingered, and very profitable lifting, (an original Hitler signature is
worth over a thousand dollars on the autograph market) has not been limited to
the contents of the Moscow archives but extends to the German
Bundesarchiv, the American National Archives and several other prominent
repositories of Third Reich documents.

In
1996, Irving attempted to sell a number of valuable papers from this era to
Charles Hamilton, New York-based autograph expert and dealer.

Hamilton
became suspicious of the origins of these documents and contacted a number of
archives. Discovering that most of them had been stolen, Hamilton informed
various authorities both in Germany and England.

-Letter
from Hamilton to author Gregory Douglas-

From
the Desk of Charles Hamilton

Mr. Gregory Douglas

75 West Alexander Ave., No. 10

Merced,
CA 95348

Dear
Gregory:
August 19, 1995

Like
to take this opportunity of thanking you for the Christian Wirth
signature! This is a scarce one indeed!

The
second volume should be out in a few months and I am now working on the
third. Since the German Army is one of your specialties, would appreciate
anything you might have in the way of signatures.

Just
send these to Roger with a copy to me.

I
thought I would keep you up to the mark on my problems with David Irving.

He
has been sending me quantities of Hitler, and other personalities, papers
for sale in my auctions. So far, until this month at least, no problems
but Irving is really terrible to deal with. No manners and very rude.

The
last batch contained a number of Hitler documents. I had to tell Irving
that some were mechanically signed and he became very abusive…as usual.

I
had my suspicions about the origins of several of these and found a
circular from the former Soviet Archives about stolen Hitler papers. Sure
enough, one of these Irving pieces turned out to be stolen.

Well,
as you know, I am careful about this so I did some more digging and
discovered that all of these Irving pieces had been taken from
various archives over the past few years.

I
naturally informed Irving about this and he became extremely abusive,
telling me that he had no idea (hah!!) that they were stolen
(but all seem to have come from archives that he had visited) and then
absolutely demanding their immediate return!

When
I told him that these pieces were being returned to their legal owners, he
really let fly at me! He demanded their return, threatened to actually sue
me for stealing his (stolen) documents! He also said that if I ever
mentioned his name in connection with all of this, he would also sue me
for defamation!

Of
course he won’t get them back and he will be damned lucky if he isn’t
permanently 86’ed out of these archives.

He
has a bad reputation for selling very, very dubious Nazi relics and now
this!

I
think I made a mistake when I told him off because I said that Pete Stahl
knew all about his diddlings and cons. I am sure he now
hates Stahl and will now turn on him!

I
did blow it but perhaps he will realize that I can no longer have any
dealings with him. (J. Costello told me three years ago that Irving was
stuffing original papers into his briefcase at the NA.)

Thanks
again for your courtesy and I promise not to put your name into this sorry
business.

Yours,

Bud/s/

An
article appearing in a Toronto, Canada, paper of November 9, 1996 was headed:

AUTHOR'S
LONDON HOME RAIDED, bylined by Canadian Press and covered a raid conducted by
British police at the London Mayfair apartment of David Irving wherefrom a large
number of documents allegedly stolen from British, American and German archives
were recovered.

It
is also interesting to note that the raid also uncovered a "considerable
quantity of documents with Nazi letterheads, a folder containing what appears to
be Adolf Hitler's personal note paper, 1940's-era German typewriters, Nazi
document stamps and seals and examples of original signatures of prominent Nazi
officials."

Perhaps
this latter information indicates the source of the oft-repeated comments from
outraged, legitimate historians that if Irving can't find a supporting document,
he makes one.

Irving
has developed an understandably strong interest in the subject of forgeries;
loudly criticizing the authenticity of any documents discovered and utilized by
any other writer whose work refutes his own pet theories and postulations. In
these denunciations, he is shrill, vindictive and completely devoid of
substance, lending some credence to the old saying that it is the kicked dog
that yelps.

Also
in his "Hitler's War", Irving states, on page xxiii, that postwar faked
Mussolini diaries were "perpetuated by two Italian nuns." If Irving had taken
the trouble to research the subject, he would have found that the forgeries,
which fooled all of the recognized experts, had been prepared by an Italian
woman named Amalia Panvini and her eighty-four-year old mother.

At
the time Irving made this statement, the actual and accurate information on
these faked diaries was certainly well-known, especially in England and
reference to it can be found in the highly entertaining book by Robert Harris
entitled "Selling Hitler" which appeared in 1986. The section on the Panvini
fraud can be found on pages 289-290.

This
work also contains a number of uncomplimentary commentaries on Irving’s personal
behavior in the Hitler diary scandal including references to a £26,000 overdraft
on Irving's bank account.

It
is an enormous series of errors of omission and commission that render Irving's
literary excursions into historical fiction as little more than propaganda
pamphlets for the promulgation of the godhead of Adolf Hitler and which have no
place in the history section of any library.

A
compilation of these errata would fill, at the very least, a small book and are
viewed as absolutely appalling by any serious historical researcher, regardless
of whatever point of view they espouse.

Most
of these exposed errata are of such a nature as to very clearly establish that
David Irving is either an ideological fabricator of the worst kind or a grossly
incompetent and thoroughly careless researcher.

His
desperate craving to be noticed, to be the cynosure of all eyes, once led him to
initially attack the authenticity of the Stasi-created "Hitler Diaries" that
caused so much amusing havoc in the publishing world in 1983, and then, seeing
that the tide appeared to be running in the favor of their authenticity, Irving
at once publicly reversed himself and claimed that the terrible fakes were
indeed authentic.

According
to a British writer, Irving was the first to call the documents fake and the
last to authenticate them.

By
doing this, Irving certainly obtained the print media attention that he so
frantically craves, but in the long view, he forever destroyed the tattered
remnants of his professional reputation.

Irving,
who once enjoyed considerable fame and recognition in ideological circles, has
certainly given validity to the statement by Charles DeGaulle that old age is
shipwreck. His extramarital adventures in sundry different arenas cost him his
wife and daughters and his increasingly polarized and erratic political views
resulted in his being banned from Germany, Canada, Australia, Italy, Russia and
New Zealand.

There
is a strong, and hopefully successful, movement now in train to have him
permanently banned from the United States to which he had fled after losing a
libel suit in England and being forced into involuntary bankruptcy. This would
leave only France and England for Irving to sport in.

The
French, it should be noted, revere the actor Jerry Lewis as a brilliant
performer and the British are simply stuck with him.

Being
banned from a county in no way discourages Irving. In August of 1998, Irving
ostensibly came to America to address what he claimed was a "crowd" of thousands
at a meeting in Buffalo, New York. He did indeed travel to Buffalo but instead
of addressing the multitude from the balcony of the city hall in emulation of
the Führer or the Pope on Easter Sunday, he was quietly driven into Canada via
Windsor, and did address a meeting of his Canadian minions in Montreal where he
regaled the house with his daring exploits in swimming across a river in the
dead of night and escaping Canadian border guards and their snarling dogs.

Since
Irving has considerable difficulty getting in and out of his bathtub due to
various infirmities, it is doubtful that he could brave more than a tepid wading
pool at a day care center.

A
head count of the Montreal meeting disclosed that the total number of attendees
was one hundred and five, three less than his biggest house in Los Angeles,
earlier in the year. At the Los Angeles meeting, held in a motel meeting hall by
the Institute for Historical Review, Irving sold an incredible fifteen copies of
his book on Goebbels.

The
impressively titled Institute was once a reputable historical revisionist entity
but was taken over by ideological radicals and now is housed in a rented garage
in a run-down commercial area of Costa Mesa, California. They once produced a
historical journal with a large circulation, but chronic mismanagement coupled
with expensive legal problems has reduced their subscription list to less than
two hundred individuals of the type who once worshipped Irving and their slim
"Journal" appears about as often as Irving's books after the fall.

One
of its two "directors" was once arrested in Germany for defacing a Catholic
church with swastikas and now supplements his income by acting as a shift
manager for a fast food restaurant in South Central Los Angeles and the other
does duty as an automobile mechanic.

A
second “director” abruptly resigned his position after posting on his Internet
site the stunning revelations that he was a space alien whose parents had been
giant turtles.

A
third "director" found it necessary to leave the United States and he now lives
in a small village in Central Mexico and runs a Flying Saucer Research Center.
His own newsletters specialize in well-illustrated articles on anal probes
allegedly conducted by small, pale men with large black eyes. The illustrations
come from a book on proctology and are not recommended for viewing before
eating.

On
this particular trip to Los Angeles, as on many others, Irving was accompanied
by a very young woman who was passed off as a "research assistant." His antics
with her were such that his California host had to remove them from his home and
put them up at a local hotel where the bill for three days of frolic amounted to
over three thousand dollars.

But
still Irving made his presence known to the masses, diminished though their
numbers might be.

Where
once he addressed large crowds of screaming young former East Germans, his later
meetings with his admirers are confined to small rooms with ten or fifteen
strange, pale people of the sort who believe in flying saucers and Martin
Bormann's survival as a fruit stand operator in Brazil.

When
Irving's book on Goebbels was finally rejected by the mainline American
publishing company of St. Martin's Press as being absolutely impossible from a
literary standpoint, Irving lost his last pretense to being a legitimate
historical writer and has been reduced to publishing his own screeds.

However,
as long as vanity presses exist, Irving will always be able to pay someone to
print his increasingly disoriented books.

These
he has dragged around the United States in a rented car, offering them like so
many wilted cabbages to the attendees of Nazi relic shows. Even this avenue has
finally been closed to Irving who was unceremoniously forbidden entrance to the
prestigious American Military Extravaganza show held on a yearly basis in
Pennsylvania and he is now totally dependent on occasional sales to those of his
devoted followers who are still at liberty or above room temperature.

In
England, a photograph was published in a British newspaper in 1984 that showed
Irving, in shabby clothes, selling his book, "The Destruction of Dresden" on the
sidewalk in front of his former apartment house on Duke Street, a practice that
eventually resulted in his being ordered by the police to cease and desist
because of a flood of complaints by his neighbors.

At
the same time he was proffering his books like overripe melons to disinterested
passersby, Irving was also accused by the same police report of making "loud and
incoherent" speeches about his persecutions by "powerful Jewish groups."

Stories
of persecutions, including mythic break-ins at his flat and public assaults, are
part and parcel of Irving's standard speech to his loyalists.

Two
examples of Irving's bizarre pursuit of any kind of public attention he can
obtain are herein dissected.

According
to a number of British newspaper articles, on November 27, 1963, Irving
excitedly informed the media that a number of "dangerous men" attempted to smash
down the door of his flat and assault him. He claimed he drove them off by
physically confronting them.

The
actual truth of the matter, in an article in the "Evening Standard" of
November 28, 1963, was that three men attempted to gain entrance to Irving's
apartment by displaying a stolen government television technician's card. Irving
invited them in, called the police and the three men were arrested for "an
attempt at burglary."

The
police reports indicated that no one attempted to smash down a door. Irving,
needless to say, did not chase the putative burglars away, being genuinely
terrified of anything over ten years of age and not confined to a wheelchair.

Another
incident, often mentioned by Irving in his speeches, is one that occurred in
1992.

Irving
claimed that on Sunday, July 12, 1992, he was having lunch at the Richoux
restaurant in London with his mistress, one Bente Hogh, then 28, a Danish
citizen.

He
again called the press and claimed that he was attacked by an irate mob, which
he was able to drive off although there were "a large number of them, all
armed."

This
got into the press the next day but was immediately refuted by the manager of
the restaurant, along with other witnesses, who stated that the "armed mob"
consisted entirely of a young man having dinner in the expensive Mayfair
restaurant. The diner had addressed several negative remarks to Irving on his
way out of the building.

Irving,
the witnesses stated, immediately jumped up from his table, and his mistress,
and ran into the back of the Richoux in what was described in the police
report as a state of terror, barricading himself in the men's lavatory. He
remained there, inconveniencing other patrons, and wouldn't leave until a
waitress gallantly escorted him out of the establishment through the kitchen. By
mixing both stories together, it is apparent that Irving covered himself with
glory on the one hand and flour on the other.

These
entirely fictional accounts harken to the bombast of the Baron von Münchhausen
and are designed to impress a shrinking legion of the awestruck with the
importance of David Irving.

Irving
constantly alludes to death threats, assassination plots, attempted kidnappings,
avoided beatings, projected arsons and on and on to impress upon others, having
first impressed it upon himself, that he is indeed a man of great importance in
the scheme of things and a heroic and dauntless fighter for what he calls "Real
Truth."

This
small band of fanatical followers continues to fan the dead ashes of his career
with worshipful, if badly scrawled, letters, homemade fruitcakes and small
checks.

If
it were not for this support, Irving and Bente, his young Danish paramour, would
have to go onto public assistance.

Of
course there is a very strong belief in many circles, some official, that Irving
has, in the past, received large amounts of money from various Saudi groups in
order to encourage him to harass and embarrass the Jewish community.

Once
Irving drove a Rolls Royce but now rides a bicycle or takes public
transportation. He lived in an apartment that had one small room set aside as
"David Irving's War Room" and the walls of the entire establishment were covered
with hundreds of pictures of David Irving in various mock-heroic poses as well
as a number of sketches by the late, former Nazi Minister of Armaments, Albert
Speer.

This
interesting individual spent his own declining years making small ink sketches
and passing them off, for considerable sums of money, to true believers and the
gullible as "original Hitler artworks."

It
seems ironic that Irving, whose career has been based on self-delusion,
prevarication and a frenzied campaign of Hitler-worship, would, in the end, have
his apartment walls covered in sacred Hitlerian relics that are as fake as his
own documentary references.

Miss
Hogh was interviewed for an article in the "Spectator" on April 27, 1996, and
her comments on her lover are both amusing and instructive.

The
reporter, Nicholas Farrell, noted that Irving was constantly complaining in his
presence about the fact that his mistress was not keeping the apartment clean
and certainly not ironing his shirts. The interview was then moved to a nearby
cafe where Ms. Hogh explained that Irving was a very moody, unpredictable man,
an egoist who reveled in his disruption of governments and institutions and who
boasted often, long and loudly about his many lawsuits against anyone he
disliked.

And
Irving apparently disliked nearly everyone who did not view him as having a
nimbus surrounding his fundament.

The
interview also disclosed that Irving was obsessive about his eating habits,
demanding that his coffee cup be pre-heated in boiling water, that his beer be
served in a frosted glass and that he refused to cook any meals or perform even
the most simple of household tasks.

This
lack of breeding has manifested itself a number of times over the years when
Irving is engaged in speaking engagements in the United States.

He
has been known to severely criticize his hosts for not serving him the kind of
food he is used to or in neglecting to provide the sort of creature comforts he
deems proper to his station in life.

Also,
Irving, as a rule, will never thank his hosts for their hospitality.

While
Ms Hogh expressed no particular animosity towards Jews, one of Irving's most
obsessive topics, she did indicate that both of them shared a hearty and highly
vocal detestation of individuals of the colored persuasion who have emigrated to
the United Kingdom from its former colonies.

At
one time, Irving founded a political party in England, with a mercifully short
lifespan, that advocated rounding up all the "Coloured people in England",
putting them into detention camps and then deporting them to any country that
would accept them.

It
is obvious from this that Irving has made excellent use of his research into
similar activities during the course of what he firmly believes is his very own
Third Reich.

In
conclusion, Ms. Hogh also stated that her lover was sadistic towards others,
supporting published interviews with Irving himself who stated that he was a
very strong believer in corporal punishment.

Irving
has always denigrated women, claiming that they were intellectually inferior to
men and it has been openly discussed, and published in at least one book, by
Alexander Baron, that Irving was homosexual. Given his frenzy to sue anyone who
publishes even the mildest criticism of him, it is strange that Irving never
filed a suit against Mr. Baron for his published and well-circulated
accusations.

While
Irving takes every opportunity to criticize women, he very publicly and
aggressively drags around an assortment of attractive younger women on his
book-selling tours. One of these, a 22-year old Miami waitress named Charlene
Touhy, a high school dropout, was introduced as his "research assistant" and
shown off to his hosts and admirers in America. Eventually a severely chastened,
and apparently well-blistered, Charlene departed the Irving ménage and has made
a number of very unkind remarks about the world-renowned writer, calling him,
among other printable things, "Mr. Spanky", which needs no further comment.

Mr.
Baron has produced no evidence in support of his accusations but there are a
series of letters that have surfaced between Irving and someone named Diane
Schreiber that might bear on this issue.

Schreiber,
a resident of Keene, New Hampshire, ran a Nazi relic emporium called
"Brandenburg Militaria" and became closely associated with Irving when he was
still permitted to attend the larger militaria shows in America.

After
establishing contact in the mid-90s, Schreiber and Irving have kept in constant
touch with each other by letter, fax, email as well as personal contact.

The
only flaw in what on the surface might appear to be a romantic interlude is that
Diane Schreiber is actually one Frank Russo, a fact that becomes quickly obvious
to any first-hand observer.

It
is doubtful in the extreme that Irving is unaware of the real gender,
cross-dressing and other inclinations of his close associate but perhaps their
shared interests extend well beyond busts of Josef Goebbels and photo albums of
blonde, well-muscled former East German soldiers.

In
the years following his decline and fall, Irving has increasingly sought more
publicity by filing legal actions against as many people as he can identify as
having criticized his inaccuracy, ideological nonsense and general literary
buffoonery.

His
lawsuits, which he files in his own name, being unable, as he falsely claims, to
afford an attorney, are universally thrown out by the courts but only after he
has put his victims through great expense and travail.

On
July 22, 1994, the "Guardian" published a story about Irving receiving
public aid to permit him to file suit against "The Sunday Times." Public
aid, in this case, was granted because Irving was believed to be significantly
below the poverty level.

How
much money Irving has is not known. It is known that he keeps several accounts
in Florida banks in which he hides the money he gets from selling books in
America. Irving does this to avoid the payment of taxes to the British Inland
Revenue and the American IRS.

It
is also known that Irving received money from Syrian Arab sources via a bank in
Lebanon for promoting Arab points of view and for launching attacks against the
Jewish holocaust writers and organizations.

Libel
laws in England are very severe and Irving has delusional hopes that his victims
will pay him off and avoid the expenses of lawsuits. To date, no one has
accommodated him and he has seen case after case thrown out of court by
indignant judges as having no merit whatsoever.

There
is a provision in British law called barratry, which prohibits the continuous
filing of frivolous lawsuits, and the courts in England have repeatedly
threatened Irving with this but to no avail.

Irving
became outraged by negative comments about his activities by American religious
history professor, Deborah Lipstadt, a fanatic holocaust supporter and Jewish
equivalent of David Irving, filing a libel suit against the academic and her
publishers.

Claiming,
in this case rightly, that he had no funds, Irving made the enormous error of
appearing as his own attorney in the case while Lipstedt was ably supplied with
an the services of an excellent firm of British attorneys, paid for by the
Jewish community.

The
outcome was never in doubt and Irving lost his case, the judge finding that he
was not libeled. The court also confirmed that Irving had stolen valuable
documents from the Russian archives in his research into the book on Goebbels.

British
law had a provision that a litigating party in a civil action that loses his
case is responsible for the legal expenses of the winner. In this case, Irving
would owe Lipstedt and her backers over £2,000,000!

In
essence, this defeat means that Irving can never publish, or republish, another
book because all of his advances and royalties are subject to attachment. His
publishers, one must note, are not held to answer for this but any monies
intended for the author are now subject to seizure. Not only was Irving forced
into bankruptcy by the British courts, his copyrights were seized by the same
courts as valuable assets. This means that Irving can no longer publish any of
his previous works without them being immediately attached by the Bankruptcy
Court Trustees and anyone foolish enough to finance such a publishing venture
would lose their investment.

The
British firm of bankruptcy referees, Baker-Tilly in London, have possession of
all of Irving’s copyrights.

Defeated
in his libel action and held accountable for the immense legal fees opposing
attorneys ran up, Irving was pushed into bankruptcy by the courts and
subsequently fled to the United States where he lives, at last report, in a
small rental house on Angela Street in Key West, Florida.

To
his few supporters left in the United States, Irving has revealed his secret
plan of becoming an American citizen and to achieve this worthy goal, he has
gone to ground and refrained from any publishing ventures that would tend to
irritate the American authorities.

As
Irving's star sinks quickly, and mercifully, from the sight of mortal men, the
failed writer had loudly blamed a great catalog of mythic enemies for his
eclipse and obliteration.

He
sets these earth-shattering truths forth in a newsletter for his true believers
called "David Irving's Action Report" which reads like the product of a remedial
middle-school class in beginning journalism and contains such weighty statements
as..."Today a man gave me a ride in a big car"...and shows a picture of a small
child looking at plant life over the caption..."Jessica sees the big leaf." This
occasional publication, printed on yellow paper, covers Irving daily activities,
his travels, his sore feet, waitresses he has met, the weather in various cities
he visits and a plethora of miscellany of endless and boring intensity.

Irving,
in his "David Irving Fighting Fund" newsletter, written and mailed from his
rented beach cottage in Key West, Florida, his "American Battle Headquarters",
produces an endless series of whining requests for funds from the true
believers, the "Inner Circle."

Accompanying
these tearful entreaties is a colored picture of an aging Irving clutching a
very small child. This is presumably his out-of-wedlock daughter but if not, it
makes him appear as an aged poster boy for pedophiles.

Irving
moans that if he does not pay his rising legal bills, bills incurred solely
because of the dismissals by various British courts of his endless and merit
less lawsuits, he will be "driven from the battlefield of Real History forever."

This
is a consummation devoutly to be wished by anyone with a respect for written
history and these feelings include historians of all beliefs and persuasions.

His
Action Report has been filled with paranoid mutterings accusing anyone
criticizing him with being an agent provocateur, a probable Zionist spy and a
functional idiot.

Irving’s
newsletters read like the diaries of a paranoid in the final stages of
disintegration and he sees the hand of Zionism behind every unpleasant episode
in his life, from inflamed piles, electrical problems to his recent eviction
from his London apartment for non-payment of rent.

This
Action Report, sent to his drooling devotees, was seized upon by the Lipstadt
attorneys and used, very tellingly, against Irving in court

Being
what he is, Irving has viewed his crushing defeat as a stunning victory and has
regaled cheering dozens throughout the United States with such idiotic phrases
as “Yes, Irving has scored once more!” and “We certainly showed the other side
who was right and who was wrong, didn’t we?”

A
person like Irving cannot keep silent for long and from his secret Florida
command post, he has issued confidential bulletins to the faithful concerning
his latest book that he feels will be his magnum opus. This, he says,
will be a scathing investigation into Jewish control of American media and
banking institutions and he claims he can show clearly that the American
President is a tool of the Israeli Mossad.

As
a prelude to his literary and political rebirth, Irving has posted on his
internet site, a doctored photograph of concentration camp inmates purported to
have been forged by the California-based Simon Wiesenthal Institute.

This
picture, which shows a chimney belching smoke in the background, has obviously
been doctored but has been in existence long before the Wiesenthal people set up
shop and has been used for years as “absolute proof” by the lunatic fringe of
forgery concerning allegations of mass murder in the German concentration camps.

In
addition to his own lawsuits against others, Irving himself has been sued for
copyright violations and accepting moneys given to him by foolish, small
publishing houses for books that he has not, never will, or can, write for them.

An
article in the "Independent" of February 22, 1994 discussed Irving being
thrown in jail in England because of a lawsuit against him for his refusal to
return a £50,000 advance from a gullible German publisher.

As
Irving loudly claims to have no money, these lawsuits only serve to goad him
into greater frenzies of manic activity.

No
one seems to be successful in halting his increasingly disordered behavior and
the catalog of his baseless charges, complaints, lawsuits and slanders continues
unabated.

One
of his most insistent, and meglomaniacal, charges is that criticism of him and
his scribblings has made him fearful of assassination!

Famous,
public figures like presidents and popes are assassinated but the killing of
David Irving would be far more in the way of euthanasia than assassination.

Instead
of being ashamed of his lunatic antics, Irving boasted of them on what he called
his "Inner Circle" website. This site, which he terms "a confidential location
which I have created for the inner circle of my supporters at
http://www.fpp.co.uk/ Inner/ Circle.html" was a bizarre arena that was a
compendium of whining pleas for money, psychotic and badly written attacks on
everyone whom Irving sees as his enemy and delusional pages about his importance
in the world order.

In
addition to his Internet nuisances, Irving produced a pamphlet that was a color
copy of a cover from the German "Stern" magazine, an institution that loathes
him. This counterfeit printing, which Irving takes very seriously, was filled
with pompous pictures of himself and accompanied by a thoroughly faked cover
story about his greatness, coupled with a fictitious abject apology from the
editorial staff of the German magazine for having defamed him.

There
have appeared, from Irving's hand, a number of his printed speeches, which would
indicate that he addressed a "Clarendon Club" in London. These speeches appear
to be very well received by the audience with a number of textual comments such
as "loud laugher" and "wild cheering" from what one would assume were the
assembled, aristocratic guests.

Unfortunately,
there is no such club. Irving invented it and copyrighted the name so he could
use it for his reportage. The speeches are made not to cheering upper class
Britons but to a tape recorder in his London flat and the background noises are
not loud laughter and wild cheering but the domestic sounds of his
housekeeper-cum-mistress vacuuming his carpets and dealing with a screeching
child.

As
a matter of fact, in reading through these dismal anti-Semitic and anti-black
babblings, the observation could well be made that anyone who would either laugh
at or wildly cheer the speaker's dismal bigotry would have to be either
completely drunk or coked to the gills.

Probably
the most illustrative, and bizarre, example of Irving’s eccentricity is to be
found in a decades-long feud launched by Irving against a minor military
historian, Peter Stahl.

Stahl,
who has published a number of books on German military subjects, met with Irving
in San Jose, California in June of 1980 at Irving’s request. Stahl was a friend
of Dr. Charles Burdick, an academic historian specializing in German military
subjects and as Irving was visiting California, Burdick suggested to Irving that
perhaps Stahl could assist Irving in locating specific Third Reich documents.

Burdick
described Irving to Stahl as “a boorish type” who usually toured with “teenaged
tarts” in tow but was a fairly competent researcher in his genre.

During
the course of the meeting, Irving informed Stahl that he was looking for any
period Third Reich documents that could prove, conclusively, that Adolf Hitler
had no knowledge of the Holocaust. He also indicated that he would pay “most
generously” if Stahl were able to locate such documents.

In
a subsequent conversation with Dr. Burdick, Stahl described the British writer
as overbearing and not overly conversant with his subjects. When he informed
Burdick of Irving’s request, they both laughed because it was highly doubtful if
such documents ever existed, saving in the imagination of David Irving.

Stahl
did, however, contact Agnes Peterson of the Hoover Library at Stanford
University and when queried about the possible existence of the
Hitler-knew-nothing papers in the libraries’ extensive collection, the
librarian, like Burdick, laughed and commented that David Irving had been
frantically searching for something to exculpate his hero for a number of years
and was considered to be a comic figure at the library.

She
also advised Stahl to “keep his distance” from the British writer who, Peterson
said, was a “terrible, rude pest” and highly demanding.

Shortly
after this, Stahl discovered that Peterson was entirely correct in her
evaluation of Irving’s persona. No sooner had Irving returned to London than he
began to telephone Stahl on a regular basis, usually at four or five in the
morning. When advised that the sun had not yet come up in California, Irving
always replied with a giggle that it was certainly after lunch in England and
then demanded to know what progress Stahl was making in his efforts at locating
the desired documents. Since Stahl had quickly abandoned the project as a
thoroughgoing waste of his time, he attempted, without any success whatsoever,
to convince Irving that he was having no success in his searches.

Irving
responded to this by increasing the number of  pre-dawn telephone calls until Stahl
finally had to resort to leaving the telephone unplugged until a more reasonable
hour. This did not deter Irving who merely began his calling regimen very late
in the evening instead of early in the morning.

Stahl
discovered that Irving was totally incapable of comprehending that no
Hitler-exculpating documents had been found and probably never would be.
Irving’s response to this information was to become typically, sarcastic and
verbally abusive, claiming that Charles Burdick had highly recommended Stahl as
a source and urging him to “press forward” in his labors in the vineyards of
what Irving called, the “needs of the most important of all modern historians.”

Finally,
in a thoroughly misguided effort to silence the annoying Irving, Stahl asked a
friend of his who had been a U.S. Army clerk once stationed in Germany, to write
up a fake document in the most atrocious German he could muster. This production
turned out to be a mythical letter from Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, to
Oswald Pohl, the head of the SS Economics Office. The letter claimed that Hitler
had no knowledge of the killing of Jews in the Concentration Camp system and
believed that Jews were being sent to these camps to work for the Reich.

The
next time Irving called, Stahl gleefully advised Irving that he had indeed found
the document Irving was so eager to have. Irving at once demanded that the
document be read to him over the phone and when this was done, Stahl said Irving
was “absolutely ecstatic” and promised to “liberally reward” Stahl.

A
photo copy of the document (see below) was duly sent to a delighted Irving.

As
Irving was very conversant with good German, Stahl naturally thought that Irving
was being sarcastic with his outlandish praise but several days later, he was
called by Dr. Burdick regarding the “remarkable find.” It seems that Irving had
telephoned Burdick, bubbling with high spirits, and advised him that the
redoubtable Peter Stahl was indeed the expert Burdick has so lavishly praised.

Irving’s
“liberal reward” consisted of a wartime propaganda photograph of Field Marshal
Erwin Rommel, worth about twenty dollars on the postcard market.

Burdick,
quite naturally, wanted to know what this miraculous document consisted of and
when Stahl dropped a copy of it off at Burdick’s office at San Jose State
University, Burdick laughed so loudly that his secretary rushed in expecting to
see her employer in the midst of a seizure.

Not
only had Irving swallowed this outrageous practical joke whole, he sent messages
around to his supporters, bragging of his earth-shattering find.

June 21, 1980 (From the
Diaries of David Irving)
(New Orleans)

[…]
7:25 pm
Telephoned Professor Joe Hobbs at Raleigh, North Carolina, and told him
about the Peter Stahl document. He was astonished, and full of admiration
and congratulations. He compared it with Copernicus and said that the
difference was that I was living to see myself vindicated in my lifetime.
He added that a few days ago he had seen a picture book on aerial warfare
with several pages on the Dresden raids and drew the conclusion that even
if I had written only the Dresden book I would have justified my writing
activities for my lifetime. he will be in Washington at the end of next
week and we will probably meet then.

Irving
discusses the fake Himmler letter with one of his colleagues.

Here
we have David Irving in all his self-invented glory: "admiration",
"congratulations", "justified... for my lifetime", repulsively megalomaniacal,
even comparing himself with Copernicus.

In
his 1977 book Hitler's War, he first uttered his thesis that Hitler
didn't know anything about the final solution against the Jews, which stirred up
quite a controversy and was rejected by all reputable historians. In his
(probably invented) diary entry from June 21, 1980 and subsequently posted on
his website, he openly writes that he was searching for corroborating evidence
to support his controversial thesis that Hitler didn't know, a theory that seems
to be supported by the above quoted faked Himmler letter.

In
other words, this entry suggests that Irving is not adjusting his theories
according to the evidence he has at hand, but that he is frantically trying to
find evidence to support his theories; that because of his ideological zeal, he
turned a blind eye for years to the obvious fact that this "document" was an
obvious forgery!

Furthermore,
in his invented diary entries, he never mentioned that (and when) he finally
received a copy of this "document"  (or at least he didn't post it), which
he certainly ought to have immediately recognize it as a very crude forgery and
to expose the evil man "Peter Stahl" who had cost him so much time and effort
and led him on the wrong track.

Such
an outrage must have left traces in his alleged diary, certainly producing the
longest and most vicious attack on "Peter Stahl" to be found in it, but no such
entry exists! (I am sure, though, that after he will have read this, he will
invent this entry and post it immediately). It is not before February 15,
1997--17 years after Irving allegedly wrote down the text of this
"document"!--that he describes this Himmler "letter" as being "phony." But
surprisingly, he does not mention the impossible German language of this
forgery.

The text of the joke
“Himmler letter”

REICHSFÜHRER SS
1 Berlin SW
11              den
20. Oktober 1943.
Prinz Albrecht Straße
8
Feldkommandostelle

SS Obergruppenführer und
General der Waffen SS Oswald Pohl,
SS Wirtschafts- und
Verwaltungshauptamt
Berlin Lichterfelde-West
Unter den Eichen
126-135.

Sehr geehrter Herr
Obergruppenführer,

Der Reichsleiter Bormann hat mehrmals im letzten
Monat eine besondere Interesse an der Degussa-Aktion und Ihr Verhältnis
mit dem KZ-System. Wie Sie wissen, eine solche Interesse seinerseits
völlig überheblich ist und gefährliche Folgerungen haben
können.

Bis jetzt habe ich eine
direkte Gegenüberstellung mit dem Reichsleiter vermieden, aber der
gebraucht natürlich sein je näheres Verhältnis mit dem Führer um diese
Einmischung in KZ-Gelegenheiten zu verlangen. Er hat dem Führer
eingeredet, daß er erlernte Arbeiter von KZ-Insassen herausholen kann, und
hat sogar den Reichsminister Dr. Speer wenigstens teilweise überzeugt von
seine Fähigkeit eine solche Aufgabe durchzusetzen.

Der Führer hat mich gebeten
in dieser Sache den Reichsleiter zu assistieren. Ich bin informiert
worden, daß eine Kommission von fünf Männern der Bormann-Staffel wird in
zwei Wochen das KZ Buchenwald besuchen. Zu dieser Zeit habe ich keine
Liste ihrer Namen bekommen; ich habe gehört, daß ein Buchhalter unter
ihnen sein wird.

Natürlich kann ich nicht
gegen des Führers Wunsches die Erlaubnis für eine Untersuchung verweigern,
aber unter keinen Umständen dürfen diese Einmischer die Akten der
Degussa-Aktion nachprüfen.

Weiter muß die äußerste
Sorgfältigkeit gebt werden, daß irgendeine Nachricht über unsere Methoden
in der Endlösung der Judenfrage den Ohren des Reichsleiters nicht gelangt.
Als der Führer keine Ahnung dieser Endlösung hat und glaubt, die Juden
arbeiten in Übersiedlungsgebieten im Osten, es wäre höchst unratbar, ihn
zu dieser Zeit zu informieren, besonders nicht mittels des Reichsleiters,
der keinen Anlaß hat, uns sonst zu lieben.

Ich verlasse ganz und gar
auf Sie für die Sicherheit dieser Sache und erwarte von Ihnen einen vollen
Bericht alsbald die Kommission abreist.

Herzliche Grüsse und Heil
Hitler
H. Himmler
Reichsführer

REICHSFÜHRER SS
1 Berlin SW
11              den
20. Oktober 1943.
Prinz Albrecht Straße
8
Feldkommandostelle

SS Obergruppenführer und
General der Waffen SS Oswald Pohl,
SS Wirtschafts- und
Verwaltungshauptamt
Berlin Lichterfelde-West
Unter den Eichen
126-135.

Sehr geehrter Herr
Obergruppenführer,

Der Reichsleiter Bormann hat mehrmals im letzten
Monat ein besonderes Interesse an der Degussa-Aktion und ihrem Verhältnis
zum KL-System geäußert. Wie Sie wissen, ist ein solche Interesse
seinerseits völlig unangebracht und könnte gefährliche Folgen
haben.

Bis jetzt habe ich eine
direkte Konfrontation mit dem Reichsleiter vermieden, aber er nutzt
natürlich sein enges Verhältnis zum Führer, um diese Einmischung in
KL-Angelegenheiten zu verlangen. Er hat dem Führer eingeredet, daß er aus
den KL-Insassen ausgebildete Arbeiter  machen kann, und hat sogar den
Reichsminister Dr. Speer wenigstens teilweise von seiner Fähigkeit
überzeugt, ein solche Vorhaben umzusetzen.

Der Führer hat mich gebeten,
den Reichsleiter in dieser Sache zu unterstützen. Ich bin informiert
worden, daß eine Kommission von fünf Männern der Bormann-Staffel in zwei
Wochen das KL Buchenwald besuchen wird. Bisher habe ich keine Namensliste
bekommen. Ich habe gehört, daß ein Buchhalter unter ihnen sein
wird.

Natürlich kann ich die
Erlaubnis für eine Untersuchung nicht gegen den Wunsch des Führers
verweigern, aber unter keinen Umständen dürfen diese Schnüffler die Akten
der Degussa-Aktion prüfen.

Weiterhin muß äußerste
sorgfältig darauf geachtet werden, daß keine Nachricht über unsere
Methoden bei der Endlösung der Judenfrage dem Reichsleiters zu Ohren
kommt. Da der Führer keine Ahnung von der Endlösung hat und glaubt, die
Juden arbeiteten in Übersiedlungsgebieten im Osten, wäre es höchst
unratsam, ihn jetzt zu informieren, insbesondere nicht über den
Reichsleiters, der auch sonst keinen Anlaß hat, uns zu mögen.

Hinsichtlich des sicheren
Ablaufs dieser Sache verlasse ich mich ganz und gar auf Sie und erwarte
von Ihnen einen vollen Bericht, sobald die Kommission abgereist
ist.

Herzliche Grüsse und Heil
Hitler
H. Himmler
Reichsführer

Irving's transcript

Proper
German

A
copy of the actual forgery accepted as genuine by Irving

The
forged Himmler letter to Oswald Pohl, Oct. 20, 1943. In contrast to
Irving's version, this one has no address and a different opening.
(Handwritten additions stem from a German scholar who checked the
document's German language for the author after the latter had
received it. Click on picture to
enlarge.)

There
the matter lay. Copies of the ludicrous forgery quickly found their way, via Dr.
Burdick, into the hands of personnel at both the U.S. National Archives in
Washington as well as the Hoover Library at Stanford University. Irving had
become, very privately, an in-house laughingstock.

In
August, 1995, thanks to the irate indiscretions of handwriting and document
expert Charles Hamilton (reproduced earlier in this study), it came to Irving’s
attention that Stahl had accused Irving of theft and peculation.

From
all accounts, Irving flew into a monumental rage and at once began to attack
Stahl in his little newsletter, accusing him of document forgery (by now Irving
had discovered fifteen years later that the “Himmler letter” was a
grotesque fake).

Shortly
before Irving discovered the terrible joke played on him, author Gregory Douglas
published the first of his books based on the wartime and post war career of one
Heinrich Müller, once head of Hitler’s feared Gestapo and during the post war
period, a CIA employee.

For
reasons that no one but a psychiatrist could determine, Irving became convinced
that the unfortunate Mr. Douglas was actually the evil Peter Stahl and this
resulted in the following alleged letter to the Observer, a British newspaper.
For obvious reasons, the paper, if it ever received it, did not print this,
being subject to strict British libel laws, but Irving later posted it on his
manic website:

Letter
to the Editor of The Observer
[Not
published]

London,
April 23, 1996

Sir,
M
AY I comment on Gitta Sereny's entertaining article (Review, Apr.21). She is
right in exposing "Gregory Douglas," who has crafted the latest historical
forgery -- a book of supposed post-war interrogations of the missing Gestapo
chief Heinrich Müller, as Peter Stahl the well-known American counterfeiter and
forger. I first encountered this impostor in 1980, eight years before Ms.
Sereny, and saw through the documents he was then offering me after making a few
simple cross-checks (in that case with the U.S. Military Academy, West Point,
and the Library of Congress). I have been warning everybody about him since --
including, it is proper to say, Ms Sereny herself who was at first taken in by
Stahl when researching an article about the Nazi mass-murderer Odilo Globocnik
which she published in The Independent on Sunday, Jul 19, 1992; it was no doubt
thanks to the five page letter which I wrote to that newspaper exposing Stahl
that Ms Sereny realised she had been conned.

I
also wrote to the German publishers of this latest book, warning them that many
of the Müller "1945 interrogations" reproduced almost verbatim chunks of Stahl's
1980 conversations with me (which I had taped); the result was a string of abuse
from the publishers accusing me of envy and malice, and they went -- or should I
say forged? -- ahead with their publication plans.

[…]
Yours faithfully,
David
Irving

When
this matter was brought to the attention of Mr. Douglas, he replied as follows:

“In
the 90s, few people in the British media paid any attention to the rantings of
an obviously unbalanced and failing Irving and it is extremely doubtful if he
ever wrote such a letter to any newspaper editor, or that he seriously expected
them to publish it.

This
eruption occurred after Druffel Verlag in Germany had published the first
edition of my series on Heinrich
Müller. The publisher, Dr.Gert Sudholt, advised me that he had
received a frantic letter (mentioned in Irving’s "unpublished letter") from
Irving attempting to convince him that he should not publish anything written by
myself.

Sudholt,
who was well aware that Irving had deliberately and knowingly swindled a number
of German publishing houses by taking money for non-existent manuscripts which
he was unable to even begin writing due to his failing creative abilities, wrote
in response that "…you are obviously envious of the superior writing
ability and research skills of Mr. Douglas… I am fully aware of your dishonest
activities with other publishing houses in Germany and with the numerous
accusations that you have stolen valuable historical documents from private
persons and libraries."

And
further, Sudholt said, "I have been informed by Herr Genoud of Switzerland
that you falsely obtained original Goebbels material from him and then
tried to publish it against his express instructions." Sudholt said later
that Genoud had stopped the publication, in Germany, of Irving’s work on
Goebbels that contained stolen copyrighted material.

Sudholt
continued: "And the German publishing house lost much money because of this,
money you refused to return to them." Irving had been the target of several
lawsuits in England and had been jailed over failure to return a £50,000 advance
from a German publisher.

When
I brought this documented matter to the attention of the St. Martins Press in
New York, to whom Irving was attempting to peddle his book on Goebbels, I was
subsequently informed that they refused to publish Irving’s book on Hitler’s
Propaganda Minister exactly because of his previous legal problems with German
publishers. They were well aware, I was told, that Irving had a "terrible"
reputation for fraud and theft in the trade and that they would never publish
anything coming from him for fear of lawsuits.

It
was also known to them at that time that the so-called "Moscow papers" purported
by Irving to be "original Goebbels diaries" and on which his book was based,
were, in fact, well-known post war KGB political fakes, designed to embarrass
the West German authorities.

I
am well aware of the lunatic writings of Irving in his yellow sheet and I wrote
to Mr. Stahl to see if perhaps we might jointly sue Irving for libel. We hired a
private investigator in England who eventually advised us that Irving was so
deeply embroiled in lawsuits and on the verge of bankruptcy that litigating him
would be absolutely useless. One would have to wait in a very long line and
would have to post a large bond with the courts as foreign litigants.

In
the end, it proved to be pointless. It is felt by everyone I have spoken with
about the Irving babblings that he has reached the end of his sordid career and
attacking him would only be tantamount to kicking a corpse.

The
only other reason that I can determine that could possibly explain his prolonged
hysteria concerning myself is that some years ago, I bought a collection of the
correspondence between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

These
letters were in the Schloss Fischhorn collection and came from a Eugene
Frankenfeld of Philadelphia. Frankenfeld was a CIC operator that was part of a
team that discovered the papers of Hermann Fegelein that were buried at the SS
Riding School at Fischhorn run by his brother, Waldemar. Instead of turning
these letters, and other important historical papers, in to the U.S. Army
authorities, Frankenfeld kept many of them and sold them off to various
collectors.

Irving,
true to form, erroneously believed these documents to be in the possession of a
man named Guiterrez in New Mexico and hounded him for several years in a futile
attempt to get them for publication. When he discovered that I had purchased
them from another party, he called up the seller and screeched like a petulant
florist for nearly an hour.

The
seller, a retired U.S. Army officer, told me later with some humor that Irving
was probably the most obnoxious individual he had ever encountered, was in all
probability a mental case, and wished me well.

It
is interesting to observe a constant thread that runs through all of Irving’s
hysterical outbursts aimed at me. He consistently accuses me and Peter Stahl,
quite falsely and without any evidence to substantiate his claims, of the very
things he himself has been repeatedly accused of, and been charged in court for,
namely fraud,
theft, and dealing in forged and stolen documents and counterfeit Nazi  memorabilia

Most
sincerely,

Gregory
Douglas”

When
Douglas published his book, ‘Regicide’ in 2002, Irving again burst forth with
more psychotic nonsense:

Irving's
grotesque nonsense about Douglas' most recent book
"Regicide"

On
his website, Irving comments on the author's most recent book "Regicide.
The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy." After reproducing most of
the information as posted on the publisher's
website, he makes the following, again completely unfounded,
and often libelous, comments to various points:

CROWLEY
is another alias of Peter Stahl himself. See too Weber's
alert about another mysterious alias, Christopher
Crowles.

Douglas:
Crowley was Assistant Deputy Director of the CIA. Does Irving seriously
believe that the author can make the "Washington
Post" publish a fake obituary? The author is neither identical
with Crowley nor with Crowles. Like the equally eccentric MarcWebber, Irving obviously is completely
paranoid when it comes to alleged pen names of the author.

AMAZING,
or perhaps not, how the career of "Gregory Douglas" dovetails into and
runs parallel with the career of the fraudster and admitted Rodin
counterfeiter Peter Stahl. See the July
22, 1981 diary entry describing my first meetings with Stahl,
who proudly hinted at his own forging of Rodin statues. He was Peter Stahl
then, not Gregory Douglas; [...] As for Odilo Globocnig, see
Stahl's involvement
in furnishing the fake Globocnig documents to Gitta Sereny. It was
not Stahl/Douglas who exposed to the authorities the serious mass theft of
files from the Berlin Document Center, but I! Stahl's participation
appeared, uh, rather to be on the other side of that particular felony.

Response
from Gregory Douglas:
a)
Great Historian Irving isn't even capable of spelling Globocnik's name
properly.
b) Irving can not even read his own alleged diary, since the
entry quoted does not mention that "Stahl" "hinted at his own forging of
Rodin statues", but that he talked about "his theory" on existing
forgeries.
c) Gitta
Sereny has provided no evidence for her claims, and got
fired after she published her false, unsubstantiated and libelous
article.
d) Again, Irving makes accusations of the author or "Stahl"
having been involved in a felony, without any evidence. Fact is that the
author worked together with U.S. and German authorities so that those
responsible for the BDC-theft
ended up in German custody.

"GENUINE?"
Ho-ho, in view of the author's track record it seems a highly pertinent
question. But note how he cites John Costello as his authority.
Costello, a respected if controversial independent historian of the Real
History school, had no time for the phoney Peter Stahl, as he
frequently told me when he visited me in London. He died tragically, in
mid-Atlantic, five years ago and so cannot now expose Stahl for the
cynical fraudster that he is.

Douglas:
There you have it: Irving isn't interested in "Real History", but in
exposing competing authors as "fraudsters".
a) The author has not
quoted Costello as an authority for anything.
b) Whether Costello would
confirm the author's claim how he got in touch with Crowley, must remain
just as open as Irving's claim, Costello allegedly told him repeatedly, he
"had no time" for "Stahl".

Photocopies
-- a familiar Peter Stahl trick. He knows that makes it harder to test the
authenticity of documents (though not impossible). Not many people know
that on orders of the US Treasury Department, every modern colour copier
sold in the US has a digital dot code built into its dot-matrix system
which fingerprints its serial-number, i.e. its identity and exposes
would-be counterfeiters. Stahl had nothing whatever to do with exposing
the infamous Hitler Diaries in 1983.
Note
incidentally his curious preoccupation with
typewriter-authenticity. . !

Douglas:
The background of this alleged "Stahl trick" is very simple: Irving has a
very bad reputation of always wanting to have the originals of all
valuable historical documents he can lay his hands on for “publication”
under his name. He wants them right away, and refuses to pay for these
documents because he thinks, quite in error, that he is the only human
being able to comprehend and publish material on the Third Reich. And when
demanding that someone possessing documents he needs hand over his very
valuable and saleable, originals to Irving, he is extremely rude and
aggressive, rarely even thanking the donor. Irving therefore gets turned
down regularly as his reputation flees before him, and he never sees the
reason for his failure in obtaining publishable material because in his
own eyes, Irving is infallible.

Other
researchers are more modest or civilized and are either happy to have
photocopies, or behave properly and be so doing may even receive the
originals.
Also, Irving's story about the digital dot-code of color
photocopiers is totally unrelated to anything that matters in this regard.
He obviously tries to hide his total lack of evidence for any and all of
his claims by trying to impress people with his alleged competence in
recognizing forgeries.

Considering
that the London Police found Nazi letterheads and typewriters in his
apartment, perhaps Irving’s knowledge of forgeries is based on first hand
knowledge.

Stahl
may have had nothing to do with exposing the Hitler Diaries, but the
author did expose Wolfgang
Schulze
as the brain behind this operation--Konrad Kujau was
merely the writer.

Irving,
on the other hand, true to form, originally claimed the Hitler Diaries
were fakes (because he had not been consulted on the matter) but then,
seeing that they were being accepted, at once and in public changed his
tune. Now, Irving stated at a well-attended press conference in London,
the Diaries were genuine!

Irving
was the first person to call the Diaries fake and the last to authenticate
them!

Anyone
who doubts that David Irving is a sane man needed only visit his "confidential
location" to realize that Irving entertains a strong possibility of eventually
ending up in a padded room, hopefully sooner rather than later, eating cold
beans from a tin tray while someone with a monocle watches him through a
peephole in the door.

Instead
of a diet of bubble-and-squeak, an appalling cockney dish of fried cabbage and
potatoes that Irving regularly indulges in, he will end up gobbling fistfuls of
Thorazine and spending his golden years, tightly wrapped in a sheet and immersed
in a tub of cold water.

Here
he will be able to endlessly chant paragraphs from "Mein Kampf" for the
edification of his West Indian ward attendants and thoroughly soil the tub
water.

Eventually,
as Irving's fortunes descended to somewhat below sea level, he has been reduced
to asking his readers to pay the printer's bill for reprints of his "Hitler's
War." Investors are assured that they will be given a note personally signed by
the Master and will have the rare privilege of purchasing these books (which
they have already paid for in advance) at a special low price. It would be
entirely up to the investor to sell these charitable productions and since
bookstores will no longer handle Irving's works, it is to be assumed that the
investor will have to stand on street corners with a pushcart full of Irving's
books in order to recoup his investment.

As
an added incentive to the tardy of donation, Irving personally offers a color
poster of Adolf Hitler and some of his staff. Heavy investors receive one of
these rare treasures absolutely free but the general public has to pay for them.
Irving's lecture tours are rapidly assuming the general appearance of something
produced by the famous P.T. Barnum who, like Irving, believed that there was a
sucker born every minute. Perhaps future listeners will be entertained by an
Irving-operated Punch and Judy show followed by Irving singing "Knees Up Mother
Brown." while strumming a five-string banjo.

Even
those who espouse a right-of-center philosophy find him to be an acute
embarrassment and spend a good deal of their time in distancing themselves from
his shrill, hysteric mouthings.

In
point of fact, if Irving wishes to view the enemy who has destroyed him he need
only look in the bathroom mirror while shaving.

The
British have a long record of cherishing eccentrics and Irving is precisely the
kind that ends up giving wild and emotional public speeches about his
persecution by mysterious Jewish groups, speeches that would be filled with
dramatic, Hitlerian gestures and what he considers biting sarcasm and wit.

These
speeches are not to crowds of cheering, teen-aged neo-Nazis but to an audience
composed of one small child engaged in picking his nose and a pensioner asleep
on the same bench at London's famed Hyde Park corner. Here he can join legions
of other eccentrics who daily fulminate on Global Warming, Scientology and
Martians who send radio messages to the select via their dental fillings.

Instead
of the cheers of hundreds, the only noises that now greet Irving's rants are the
hootings of passing police vehicles and the rude, but not entirely unfitting,
sounds emitted by a flatulent dog off to one side, and hopefully, downwind.

Should
Irving, by some very remote chance, escape permanent residence in an asylum, and
as his Inner Circle of admirers diminishes due to death or confinement, and the
loss of his copyrights has frightened off putative publishers, he will quite
predictably end his career talking to himself in public transportation and
writing long, rambling screeds, dealing in the main with the Passion of David
Irving, incoherent mumblings that the local newspapers will soon cease to
publish.

Finally, he
will burst a blood vessel when he tries to find a rare, unautographed copy of
one of his earlier books in a second hand book store in Cincinnati, Ohio and
hears a clerk say, "David Who?"

High praise in the British
& American media for England’s finest historian

Cont..