David Irving

[Scotty]

No idea why it should be illegal.

Surely people should be able to believe what they like.

I'm gonna assume this piece of slime is doing the organising of these tours in a country that does'nt have holocaust denial laws

surely if he had the courage of his convictions he would go to Poland and organise these tours from there - consequences be damned

 

[Harry Angstrom]

I'm gonna assume this piece of slime is doing the organising of these tours in a country that does'nt have holocaust denial laws

surely if he had the courage of his convictions he would go to Poland and organise these tours from there - consequences be damned

What has that got to do with my point?

 

[Scotty]

What has that got to do with my point?

the point is its illegal in numerous countries because the respective country's governments have decided its illegal

they can think it all they want, they just have to keep their thoughts to themselves

 

[Harry Angstrom]

the point is its illegal in numerous countries because the respective country's governments have decided its illegal

they can think it all they want, they just have to keep their thoughts to themselves

Is this a good thing?

Why should people have to keep their thoughts to themselves?

 

[JumpingAnaconda]

What if it was absolute tosh?

'Absolute tosh' is just a statement with no foundations to support it until you have illustrated it with at least an argument or some basic reasoning and are prepared to have that argument tested.

 

[Narraback]

I think you are illustrating my point here. Imagine you are asked to critique one of Irving's works, and your assessment amounts to 'Absolute tosh'. That does nothing but undermine your own point of view. You can not take things for granted in history. There are no short cuts, it is hard work. You have to look at the arguments presents and carefully critique and take them apart. 'Absolute tosh' just makes people think "This guy has got no argument to come back with".

No, I'll stick with stick with absolute tosh. If you think the work of Irving has made historians (thousands of them by the way) radically change what they have written about one of the most chronicled events in the history of mankind, then my point is valid. The man is a cretin, and educated cretin yes, but a cretin nonetheless.

Why, because people may not like them?

No because it's illegal.

In this country I can quite happily think many terrible things, it's not a crime. If I was to speak about them, or even worse act them out, I'd quite rightly be arrested.

 

[Behind Enemy Lines]

Tbf to Irving I don't think he "denies the Holocaust" in the sense that people belonging to certain groups were clearly rounded up and murdered by the Nazis. IIRC, he questions the number of victims (the plaque at Auschwitz initially stated that 4 million people died there - this has since been amended to 1 million or so). He also questions the existence of gas chambers (or if they existed, whether they were used to kill people en masse) - massively taboo subject of course but the fact remains that no gas chambers stood at the end of the war and there is not much in the way of documentation so historians have to rely entirely on eye-witness testimony - this gives people like Irving the opportunity to ask questions.

Another area of contention regards the purpose of many of the camps set up and how people died in them. Irving will say that most people in these camps weren't killed in gas chambers or executed but died of starvation, disease etc. He argues that this was due to lack of food, medical resources etc in German controlled territory towards the end of the war (supply routes were bombed and so on) - the Germans could barely feed and provide medical care for their own people, never mind people in camps and this is why they died, not because of of a desire by the Nazis to murder them all. It is true that no document has been found where Adolf Hitler "signs off" the Holocaust - again, this gives scope for people like Irving to claim that certain death camps were set up by rogue elements of the SS without the knowledge of Hitler and some of the other higher-ups in the Nazi Party.

So yeah, it's not a case of "how can ppl deny that this happened!!!!1" - it's the details that people like Irving question. As has been said previously in this thread, questioning the details should always be encouraged and provides valuable research in topics like this.

 

[Narraback]

Tbf to Irving I don't think he "denies the Holocaust" in the sense that people belonging to certain groups were clearly rounded up and murdered by the Nazis. IIRC, he questions the number of victims (the plaque at Auschwitz initially stated that 4 million people died there - this has since been amended to 1 million or so). He also questions the existence of gas chambers (or if they existed, whether they were used to kill people en masse) - massively taboo subject of course but the fact remains that no gas chambers stood at the end of the war and there is not much in the way of documentation so historians have to rely entirely on eye-witness testimony - this gives people like Irving the opportunity to ask questions.

Another area of contention regards the purpose of many of the camps set up and how people died in them. Irving will say that most people in these camps weren't killed in gas chambers or executed but died of starvation, disease etc. He argues that this was due to lack of food, medical resources etc in German controlled territory towards the end of the war (supply routes were bombed and so on) - the Germans could barely feed and provide medical care for their own people, never mind people in camps and this is why they died, not because of of a desire by the Nazis to murder them all. It is true that no document has been found where Adolf Hitler "signs off" the Holocaust - again, this gives scope for people like Irving to claim that certain death camps were set up by rogue elements of the SS without the knowledge of Hitler and some of the other higher-ups in the Nazi Party.

So yeah, it's not a case of "how can ppl deny that this happened!!!!1" - it's the details that people like Irving question. As has been said previously in this thread, questioning the details should always be encouraged and provides valuable research in topics like this.

There are thousands of documents from the actual perpetrators of the Holocaust which go into great detail as to how the Nazis managed to execute so many Jews, the confession of Rudolf Höss being one of the most damning. Maybe it was 6 million, maybe it was 4 million, sometimes history cannot be exact.

David Irving is an anti-Semetic, racist, holocaust denier, and a bellend of the highest order.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/p...t-who-has-suffered-financial-ruin-346741.html

I would be deeply suspicious of anyone who took him seriously.

 

[Scotty]

Tbf to Irving I don't think he "denies the Holocaust" in the sense that people belonging to certain groups were clearly rounded up and murdered by the Nazis. IIRC, he questions the number of victims (the plaque at Auschwitz initially stated that 4 million people died there - this has since been amended to 1 million or so). He also questions the existence of gas chambers (or if they existed, whether they were used to kill people en masse) - massively taboo subject of course but the fact remains that no gas chambers stood at the end of the war and there is not much in the way of documentation so historians have to rely entirely on eye-witness testimony - this gives people like Irving the opportunity to ask questions.

Another area of contention regards the purpose of many of the camps set up and how people died in them. Irving will say that most people in these camps weren't killed in gas chambers or executed but died of starvation, disease etc. He argues that this was due to lack of food, medical resources etc in German controlled territory towards the end of the war (supply routes were bombed and so on) - the Germans could barely feed and provide medical care for their own people, never mind people in camps and this is why they died, not because of of a desire by the Nazis to murder them all. It is true that no document has been found where Adolf Hitler "signs off" the Holocaust - again, this gives scope for people like Irving to claim that certain death camps were set up by rogue elements of the SS without the knowledge of Hitler and some of the other higher-ups in the Nazi Party.

So yeah, it's not a case of "how can ppl deny that this happened!!!!1" - it's the details that people like Irving question. As has been said previously in this thread, questioning the details should always be encouraged and provides valuable research in topics like this.

fuck me, do you believe this drivel
so Hitler did'nt personally sign off on the details of the Final Solution, who cares

the chief exec of Durham County Council does'nt personally sign my paycheck but that does'nt mean he's not ultimately responsible for the actions of his staff

...do you want to pretend the Wannsee Conference never happened?

 

[Narraback]

fuck me, do you believe this drivel
so Hitler did'nt personally sign off on the details of the Final Solution, who cares

the chief exec of Durham County Council does'nt personally sign my paycheck but that does'nt mean he's not ultimately responsible for the actions of his staff

...do you want to pretend the Wannsee Conference never happened?

Or Himmler's Posen speeches?

"I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. It's one of those things that is easily said: 'The Jewish people are being exterminated', says every party member, 'this is very obvious, it's in our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, we're doing it, hah, a small matter.' And then they turn up, the upstanding 80 million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all swines, but this particular one is a splendid Jew. But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person — with exceptions due to human weaknesses — has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of. Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble-rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916 and 17 "

The problem is the vast majority of Holocaust deniers are anti-Semites. A more pertinent question would not be why do you deny the Holocaust, but why do you hate all Jews?

 

[Deleted member 35923]

Without David Irving the coverage of the World War II by historians would have been completely different and most likely very superficial. Whether you like it or not, his work has forced other historians to justify their own work to the nth degree. This can only be good. There are instances where Irving's work has fairly and squarely served to moderate the claims of others, many of whom had vested self interests. Even the likes of Deborah Lipstadt, who has had lengthy personal legal battles with Irving, have vehemently opposed the scandalous imprisonment of Irving or attempts to restrict him practicing history. People should should be bloody grateful the man exists and is dedicated to doing one of the most unliked jobs in history. His work means that in the future when nobody is in living memory of what happened, there is a recorded narrative of the arguments, and people can make their own minds up without thinking anything was gerrymandered or concealed. The more fools try to repress the path of academia the more people of the future are unlikely to believe its conclusions.

Every single History degree course that covers the holocaust in this country will have David Irving as required reading. That is not because every History degree is put together by Nazi sympathizers, it is because his work is an essential part of the academic body of work cover the subject and it absolutely critical to understanding the historiography of the subject.

To be honest, I think Irving is covered in historiography modules and he is used as the key example of a discredited academic who employed a poor scholarly apparatus.

 

[yorkyexile]

the point is its illegal in numerous countries because the respective country's governments have decided its illegal

they can think it all they want, they just have to keep their thoughts to themselves

You mean like they did in the days of the gestapo and the Nazis? And later on the nkvd and the stasi? Let them spout their denials all they want, its them that looks daft at the end of theday

 

[Narraback]

You mean like they did in the days of the gestapo and the Nazis? And later on the nkvd and the stasi? Let them spout their denials all they want, its them that looks daft at the end of theday

Come on man.

 

[yorkyexile]

Come on man.

Come on what? We have seen the results of what happens when people have to keep their thoughts to themselves, as i`ve said let them spout on all they want its them that look daft.And another thing how can you possibly show a man he`s wrong on any subject if he has to keep his thoughts to himself? If its out there in the open, thoughts and ideas on subjects can be challenged and shown to be incorrect, rather than fester away inside until we have situations like Nazi ism can gain a foothold

 

[Narraback]

Come on what? We have seen the results of what happens when people have to keep their thoughts to themselves, as i`ve said let them spout on all they want its them that look daft.And another thing how can you possibly show a man he`s wrong on any subject if he has to keep his thoughts to himself? If its out there in the open, thoughts and ideas on subjects can be challenged and shown to be incorrect, rather than fester away inside until we have situations like Nazi ism can gain a foothold

The point I was making was you shouldn't compare the Holocaust denial laws of Germany, Austria etc. with the laws of Nazi Germany or the dark days of the Soviet Union.

 

[JumpingAnaconda]

To be honest, I think Irving is covered in historiography modules and he is used as the key example of a discredited academic who employed a poor scholarly apparatus.

We will have to disagree there. The historiography is there for all to see in the journals and publications and reviews of his work, and it is certainly not people lining up to discredit him. In the main it is people taking him on in genuine historical debate, just like it is with people debating family structure in the Early Modern period or whatever

 

[Scotty]

We will have to disagree there. The historiography is there for all to see in the journals and publications and reviews of his work, and it is certainly not people lining up to discredit him. In the main it is people taking him on in genuine historical debate, just like it is with people debating family structure in the Early Modern period or whatever

His first 2 paragraphs on his wiki entry...it does'nt get any better for him after that

David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English Holocaust denier[1] and author who has written many books on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include The Destruction of Dresden (1963), Hitler's War (1977), Churchill's War (1987), and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich (1996). Though Irving's negationist views of World War II were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was recognized for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents. Irving marginalized himself in 1988 when, based on his reading of the pseudoscientific[2] Leuchter report, he began to espouse Holocaust denial.

Irving's reputation as a historian was discredited[3] when, in the course of an unsuccessful libel case he filed against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, he was shown to have deliberately misrepresented historical evidence in order to promote Holocaust denial.[4] The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist,[5] who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".[5][6] In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of Adolf Hitler's role in the Holocaust in order to depict Hitler in a favourable light.

 

[yorkyexile]

The point I was making was you shouldn't compare the Holocaust denial laws of Germany, Austria etc. with the laws of Nazi Germany or the dark days of the Soviet Union.

No you shouldnt really but it honestly seems to me to be a correlation between stifling thought and ending up with a situation where resentments build up and explode and things like naziism come into being

 

[Deleted member 35923]

We will have to disagree there. The historiography is there for all to see in the journals and publications and reviews of his work, and it is certainly not people lining up to discredit him. In the main it is people taking him on in genuine historical debate, just like it is with people debating family structure in the Early Modern period or whatever

Well Richard Evans and Christopher Browning certainly lined up to discredit both his thesis and his scholarship. That's off the top of my head. Both fairly eminent historians

 

[Harry Angstrom]

Q

No because it's illegal.

In this country I can quite happily think many terrible things, it's not a crime. If I was to speak about them, or even worse act them out, I'd quite rightly be arrested.

Speaking what thoughts would get you arrested?