I would like to hear a response regarding David Irving. I myself am not a fan of his particular views, however i come to this conclusion w/ a very limited scope of his works.
I’m paraphrasing a bit, but he quotes ole Winston saying, “the truth is so vulnerable, that it needs bodyguards of lies surrounding it.”
Also, i think he claims that after the quick fall of Poland, now being occupied by the Germans in the western half, and USSR the eastern half, there was no reason for the allies to continue the war. (the allied countries excluding USSR at this point)
From the little knowledge i have of D.I., i think he is a Holocaust denier?
I know he has other controversial, or even down-right delusional thoughts (Holocaust) regarding the 2nd great war, but i would love to see the TG crew, and TG communities thoughts on this subject.
Controversial though it may be and at great risk of attracting the nutjobs of the internet, are TG going to do any specials on this sort of thing in the near future, much further down the line or indeed, ever?
Evaluating or analysing World War Two historiography is not something that we can do specials on right now. We want to stick to the history for the foreseeable future. Even though, as historians, we think historiography is very interesting, we simply don’t have the resources to do this at the moment. However, we might do a WW2 Historiography podcast and/or some articles further down the road.
As for David Irving, I have only read parts of his work and can’t really judge beyond my prejudices at the moment.
Mr. Irving has an outspoken and obvious political agenda. He wants to ‘clean up’ the image of the Nazis for reasons of agreeing with their ideology and being an outspoken anti-Semite. This is not an accusation, it is an obvious state of affairs based on his own statements like:
“The terrible thing is that Hitler’s enemies know him better than anybody, and the press – which is of course wholly in Jewish hands – has defamed and ridiculed the man.” David Irving, The War Path
This statement alone disqualifies him from being taken seriously in any way. His litany of anti-Semitic blabber and his extremely intricate efforts to cast doubt on that the Holocaust happened, is fuel to the fires of neo-Nazis, Nazi sympathisers and anti-Semites world-wide.
Thus, Mr. Irving has passed from being a historian to a political agitator in the service of one of the most murderous political ideologies of all time. As we have a hard line on focusing on the best available and most un-biased facts possible we can have nothing to do with him, except perhaps if we would make a programme about the recent history of Naziism or anti-Semitism.
As a quotable source he is useless as you can’t take anything he says at face value given the massive amounts of fallacies, lies, and distortions he salts his nasty creations with. Which means that even when he is right, you cannot use the information, at least not without tainting your own work with his lack of credibility by association.
I read one of his books (“Hitler’s War”) and listened to a couple interviews of him out of curiosity.
He is most definitely an anti-Semite, a simple scroll through his (possibly deleted) facebook page will show that. He used to be very out-spoken about how the holocaust never happened, but he has recently taken on the view that “there were no gas chambers” one far more difficult to actually attack.
It seems most of his views were formed after talking with ex-high ranking NAZI officers and officials while he was writing his book “Hitler’s war”, obviously these ex-NAZIs probably still had very pro-NAZI leanings and he probably figured that their word was accurate (for whatever reason) Of course, I have no idea, I tend to try to figure out why some people have the beliefs they do, especially when they are extreme such as Irving’s.
Nevertheless, his books, starting with “Hitler’s War” should be disregarded, as should many books he wrote before that as well.
Sadly his books are still prevalent and some people believe it is true because it is published. Last year I ran into someone on a market who thought it was a great and then was in disbelief/shock when I told him it was an antisemite. Insidiously misleading books aren’t always easy to recognize.