Q&A: David Irving, Jocko (+Unraveling), My Favorite Places in Armenia (pic related), and more

Darold Stagner asks: I am curious what you think of assertions that the David Irving defamation trial actually proved Irving correct in that only few and minor errors were identified in his Hitlers War. I will understand if you don’t answer, or simply answer through the program. The “I” word is inflammatory on its own, unfortunately.

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Who’s David Irving?

I kid, I kid… It’s hard to discuss the man, his work, and the Lipstadt defamation trial because people have a tendency to turn it into a referendum on Hitler, the Third Reich, and the war. When Irving brought the defamation case against Lipstadt, her lawyers very consciously used this framing device as their primary defense strategy - essentially shifting the question (in both the courtroom and the media coverage) from whether Lipstadt had defamed Irving to whether or not the Holocaust happened. Not to impugn the honor of a judge, but it’s hard to imagine anyone stepping up to take Irving’s side on the case, regardless of the evidence.

For those unfamiliar with the case, the important thing to know is that it was not brought against Irving for anything he said or wrote, but was brought by Irving against the author Deborah Lipstadt, who, according to Irving, knowingly defamed him as a Holocaust denier among other things. The narrow focus of the trial ought to have been whether Lipstadt’s statements had knowingly smeared Irving, but such a focus would have made Lipstadt’s defense all but untenable. For example, Irving presented proof that Lipstadt had privately admitted on at least two occasions that he was did not deny the atrocities collectively known as the Holocaust. In handwritten lecture notes, Lipstadt stated, “Irving denies that Hitler was responsible for the murder of European Jewry. Rather, he claims that Himmler was responsible. But he does not deny its occurrence.” Also entered into evidence was a research proposal submitted by Lipstadt, which drew a distinction between Holocaust deniers and “those such as David Irving who do not deny that the Holocaust took place but seek to shift the blame to others.” I am not a lawyer, but I think most people would expect that accusing someone of something that you privately admitted was false would meet the criteria for defamation.

Irving’s position (at least at the time) was that approximately 3 million Jews were deliberately murdered by German forces, but that the operations were carried out under the fog of war under the direction of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler. In books and speeches, Irving has often said that 3 million is his best estimate, but that it may have been higher, and may have even been 6 million. He points out that there is no documentary proof that the mass killing was ordered as a systematic, top-down operation by Hitler, and says that the single piece of evidence for it - minutes from a meeting of second-level functionaries based on a secretary’s shorthand notes - is too shaky a foundation on which to base such a fundamental assertion. Nevertheless, Irving says Hitler learned about the extent of the mass killing by 1943 at the latest, but took no action to stop it, and that, as head of state, Hitler bears ultimate responsibility for any crimes committed by his subordinates. Finally, Irving believes (or at least believed that the time, I’m not sure if he has revised his position) that gas chambers were not a primary method of killing, and most of those murdered at Auschwitz and other eastern camps were dispatched by shootings and other methods.