WW2 According to David Irving

[Zardnaar]

One of the peopel I work with at work is reading a book by Irving on PQ17. I've heard both sides supporting/rubbush Irvings books but was wondering if anyone here has read them? Are they worth reading if you don't believe them? I've heard that some of his early books are half decent before he became a Holocaust denier and Nazi revisionist historian.

 

[Case]

One of the peopel I work with at work is reading a book by Irving on PQ17. I've heard both sides supporting/rubbush Irvings books but was wondering if anyone here has read them? Are they worth reading if you don't believe them? I've heard that some of his early books are half decent before he became a Holocaust denier and Nazi revisionist historian.

Irving isn't worth reading. All his work is unreliable, not just the more recent stuff (for instance, the casualty figures he provides in his book on the bombing of Dresden are taken from Nazi propaganda and should have been dismissed in favour of more reliable figures available to him at the time and he lost a libel case over his description of the officers in command of PQ17).

While Irving's non-Nazi supporters argue that if you filter his works to remove his Nazi sympathies they're quite good, he doesn't seem to have produced any works on topics which hadn't already been covered by entirely reliable authors.

I do highly recomend Richard Evans' book 'Telling Lies About Hitler' which describes Irving's fatal failings as a historian in the context of the disasterous libel case he launched against Deborah Lipstadt. The website on the case: www.holocaustdenialontrial.org/ieindex.html is also well worth a look (Evan's expert report and the judgement handed down against Irving are utterly devestating and should leave no doubt that Irving isn't worth reading).

 

[CruddyLeper]

Hmm... occasionally I'll read some radical nonsense just to help me put in perspective all the level headed writers.

So he might be worth reading, just to get a sense of how wrong he is.

 

[Kafka2]

Irving has been proved in court to be a liar and a bad historian, who makes up fictitious sources to back up his sordid views. He hasn't been taken seriously for the past ten years since then.

 

[FriendlyFire]

Irving has been proved in court to be a liar and a bad historian, who makes up fictitious sources to back up his sordid views. He hasn't been taken seriously for the past ten years since then.

Yep some professor ripped him a few new a-holes in court. Apparently he was so badly beaten he broke down and cried.. Serves him right for making up rubbish

 

[YNCS]

The court case was his own fault. Irving sued Lipstadt. If he hadn't sued her, many of the problems with historical writings wouldn't have come to light.

 

[Zardnaar]

Are his books entertaining or easy to read though?

 

[Plotinus]

Judging by the many extracts on the website that Case links to, he's a good writer. That's not really helpful, though, when what he's writing is wrong.

 

[Kafka2]

Are his books entertaining or easy to read though?

He has an undeniable way with words. It's just a pity that he's such an irredeemable bastard.

 

[Sheep]

Perhaps he is trying to make a novel and passing it off as a history.

I also remind you that there is one quote from someone I cant remember that is so true in this case 'History is written by the victors' If the Nazis did win, then what would history look like and would they mirror more Irving's point of view.

While I am not defending Irving I would like to point out that history is laregly an argumentative operation of people 'dicussing' and 'reviewing' what happened in the past, and thus history is always somewhat distorted due to personal views.

 

[Plotinus]

I doubt that if the Nazis had won they would try to argue that all the crimes of the Nazi regime were committed by all the other Nazis and that Hitler was completely innocent of them all!

The point is not simply that Irving's history is biased: it is that he deliberately distorts the evidence or suppresses contradictory evidence of which he is aware. Thus, the court case consisted not of showing that Irving made statements in his books that were wrong - he could, after all, have been mistaken. It's that he made statements that he *knew* to be wrong. So, for example, he quotes a sentence from Goebbels' diary that supports his view and "overlooks" a sentence immediately following that contradicts his view. It is true that all writing of history involves assessing evidence and turning it into a narrative that may or may not be accurate, but good writing of history involves doing this honestly, that is, trying to take into account all relevant evidence and not simply ignoring anything that doesn't accord with your pre-conceived ideas. Thus, Irving doesn't "discuss" or "review" a reconstruction of the past, he simply makes one up and suppresses evidence that contradicts it.

 

[Case]

Perhaps he is trying to make a novel and passing it off as a history.

No, he's just writing deliberetly distorted history which supports his political views.

While I am not defending Irving I would like to point out that history is laregly an argumentative operation of people 'dicussing' and 'reviewing' what happened in the past, and thus history is always somewhat distorted due to personal views.

Not if it's done professionally, which it generally is by people recognised as professional historians. Anyway, Irving goes beyond mearly interpreting history according to his personal views - in his writings he seeks to supress evidence which conflicts with his views.

 

[dannyevilcat]

I've read his biography of Rommel, and thought it was quite good. At least in that work (having never read anything else by him), I didn't notice any crackpot agenda or bias I couldn't find among several other historians trying to make a name for themselves.