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the examination of commonly accepted notions is part of critical thinking, the scientific method and the accurate piecing together of history fact. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/96.49.113.189|96.49.113.189]] ([[User talk:96.49.113.189|talk]]) 21:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> |
the examination of commonly accepted notions is part of critical thinking, the scientific method and the accurate piecing together of history fact. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/96.49.113.189|96.49.113.189]] ([[User talk:96.49.113.189|talk]]) 21:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> |
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::That's right, but I wanna be outspoken on saying that. This article is just a zionist propaganda and, only due this reason, it will be awarded by the camera's mafia inside wikipedia.--[[Special:Contributions/85.144.120.49|85.144.120.49]] ([[User talk:85.144.120.49|talk]]) 21:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC) |
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== irving video == |
== irving video == |
Revision as of 03:57, 6 February 2009
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entire article needs to be rewritten
many contributors are no up to a standard that leads to the production of useful documents. this wiki article reflects a witch hunt mentality which is expressed through weasel words, inaccuracies, bias toward the generally accepted norm. the examination of commonly accepted notions is part of critical thinking, the scientific method and the accurate piecing together of history fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.49.113.189 (talk) 21:11, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
- That's right, but I wanna be outspoken on saying that. This article is just a zionist propaganda and, only due this reason, it will be awarded by the camera's mafia inside wikipedia.--85.144.120.49 (talk) 21:35, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
irving video
there is a video on youtube of irving talking for over an hour. it is very convincing. he is not a denier. maybe someone can look at the video and alter the heading saying "holocaust denial".
Infobox edit war
I am freezing edits until we can discuss what should go in the infobox. Right now it says "Holocaust denial. Another editor wants to put just "WWII military history". I would be okay with revisionist history, but not this obfuscation. We need to discuss this to prevent edit warring. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 17:53, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
I realize that the man has written many famous(?) books since his Holocaust denial days, but he is first and foremost known for this view. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 17:59, 15 October 2008 (UTC)- Got my history backwards: he is even moreso a denier now. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 18:11, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
- Care to explain? His most famous books were written in the 1960s. Only in the late 80s Irving became a "controversial" author. His alleged holocaust denial took place in the 80s (some speeches held by him, but note that he has never denied that Jews were killed by the Nazis, only questioned aspects of the holocaust). He has since changed his opinion on the subject and is certainly not "even moreso a denier now". Also, he has stated that he is not an expert on the topic and that it is not his primary field of interest. Gramsf (talk) 13:34, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what the ethics are of protecting your own Right Version. However, when you do unblock thigns, you may want to consider reversing this edit [1] too.--Peter cohen (talk) 19:25, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
If a person is best known for A and also for B, what is wrong with writing, "Known for A, B". It is generally understood that the first item in an enumeration is the most important one. I would see nothing wrong with stating that Irving is "Known for Holocaust Denial, WW II history."--Goodmorningworld (talk) 14:19, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
David Irving has written 30 books since the 1960s. Some of the them are very famous and were international best sellers. He has not written a single book that is primarily concerned with the holocaust, nor has he done any significant research on the topic. As stated by Irving himself in 2006, he is "not an expert on the holocaust". On the same occasion, he also stated that "The Nazis did murder millions of Jews". Please explain how "The Nazis did murder millions of Jews" is "holocaust denial". Gramsf (talk) 13:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
- And the prevailing military historical opinion is that many of his books are complete rubbish where he gives undue weight, ignores sources, and the like. Most of his life is going around talking about Holocaust Denial, and it's what he's mostly in the news for ... i.e., "known for". -- ₪ Amused Repose Converse! 18:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
- I'm a history major, one of the things we spend most time on is source analysis which bases itself on other people's work, which again bases itself on other people's work and so forth. In nearly every case (and I am not at all talking about World War II here) the authors concerned with the same field accuse each other of ignoring important sources in order to force their view through. It is quite a common thing to see in historic writings, I am sure other history majors will agree with me on that much. I write this to underline that what you argue is typical for historians who believe deeply in their own cause, regardless of the subject. --130.225.243.84 (talk) 00:10, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
- Certainly he does not deny the holocaust, but his views on the methods and his suggestion that to some extent European Jews brought the thing down on their own heads is naturally hard for many to swallow. Since when did judges know anything about history? I think Irving over-argues a thin case too strongly, but by any objective standard he is not a full blown denier. My grandfather died at Auschwitz in December 1944 and so I take an interest in the subject.86.42.219.18 (talk) 08:36, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
- Certainly he does routinely deny the Holocaust. This is clearly stated in scholarly sources and confirmed in various lawsuits. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 08:55, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
- He does not "deny the Holocaust". This is lazy labelling which has no place in an encyclopaedia. He does not use the term or accept "a package" (his expression) but insists on the right to "open it and look inside". He acknowledges that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, including in gas chambers (though not in the reconstruction at Auschwitz). The fact that he can sometimes have an unpleasant turn of phrase, and on occasion attitudes that might be considered anti-Semitic is not justification for misrepresenting his position with this catch-all phrase. 78.146.252.233 (talk) 18:49, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
- Reliable, verifiable sources disagree. The consensus (scholarly, legally, and otherwise) is that he is a Holocaust denier; thus, Wikipedia says he is a Holocaust denier. That's how it works. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 19:26, 30 November 2008 (UTC)
- You haven't cited any. But if Irving has stated consistently that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, what more "reliable, verifiable" source do we need? Unless you believe he is lying, which would seem rather pointless and counter-productive for him, and you would need to show a motive. Someone who believes that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, many of them in gas chambers, and that at least part of this (the Eastern front) was on Hitler's orders, the remainder being organised by Himmler and others, is not a "Holocaust denier". Holocaust deniers exist, and not one of them would accept that position, which is why I called this "lazy labelling", inappropriate for an encyclopaedia. "Holocaust revisionist" may be more accurate, but I am fully aware of the issues surrounding the use of this term. We don't need to use a label. We can say that he accepts the events commonly termed the Holocaust took place, but he does not like the term and questions a number of aspects of the generally-accepted version, including the numbers, Hitler's role and the role of the Auschwitz camp. I think he may have modified his position somewhat over the years, first towards Holocaust denial and later away from it again. If this is the case it is relevant to say so. Wiki's function is to present an objective NPOV picture of an issue. Personal agendas, whether supportive of or in opposition to the subject, have no place. I don't want this article to be supportive of Irving, but I do want it to be factually accurate.
- If you are going to engage with me on this, please do just that: engage in constructive discussion to improve understanding. 78.146.252.233 (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2008 (UTC)
(Karpaten1 (talk) 03:37, 6 January 2009 (UTC)) The Dresden numbers of victims are a bit more complex. Irving was not wrong AT THE TIME, and even today, the 25,000 smack of political accounting a la Great Soviet Encyclopedia. In Germany, modern history is not just history, but reeducation. For more details, http://www.bombenkrieg.net/dresden2.htm
Proposed move
- The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the proposal was No consensus for move. Closed early by request. Not sure who closed it, but not worth finding out.199.125.109.102 (talk) 06:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
Speedy decline. Closed early by Trusilver on November 26, 2008. --Goodmorningworld (talk) 14:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
The proposal was to rename as "Criticism of David Irving". 199.125.109.102 (talk) 06:27, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
- Disagree This a biography and should be named after the subject, not least because that is what people search for. If we were to spinoff a separate criticism section it would be an inappropriate fork, and if the bio remained shorn of any criticism we would be vulnerable to criticisms of censorship. That said, if the reason for suggesting this is that the suggester believes that we have a non-neutral article that breaches wp:bio then please make suggestions on this page as to how we can neutrally but factually write a biography on David Irving. ϢereSpielChequers 14:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Comment Could the person who has proposed the move please provide a rationale for this. As this is a new userid I will be particularly interested to hear why they feel the need to do this as virtually their first edit, or why they have created a new id especially for this purpose. As for the substance of the proposal...
- Disagree As with other people who have been involved in extremist politics and have lost several court cases, both civil and criminal, as a result of their activities, the David Irving article does contain a lot of negative material about him. It also contains biographical material. Making the move would generate a WP:Content fork and would therefore be against policy.--Peter cohen (talk) 14:14, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose move. I don't see a good reason for it. This is the main biographical article on Irving. It contains a lot of criticism because Irving has drawn a lot of criticism in his life. The criticism deals with many aspects of his life and work, and hence cannot easily be factored out - certainly not without omitting important information about Irving. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:30, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Of course not. What a waste of electrons. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 16:26, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose move obviously. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 16:28, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Slam-dunk oppose. Per the arguments given above. (Note: I've moved the Template to the top because the Template Instructions say, "Place this template on the top of the talk page of the article to be moved.") I propose that this discussion be brought to a close by an admin early, like how about 1600 hrs UTC tomorrow?--Goodmorningworld (talk) 16:35, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Early closure fine by me.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:40, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Me too, in fact unless somebody actually makes a case for the move I think another 23 hours would be excessive, I've left a note on an uninvolved admins page. ϢereSpielChequers 16:57, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Early closure fine by me.--Peter cohen (talk) 16:40, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- Oppose. "Criticism of"? Ludicrous. Come on, close it already. Would you guys have a poll if somebody proposed moving George W. Bush to George W. Bush lulz? What a lot of time we waste in this place. Bishonen | talk 17:17, 26 November 2008 (UTC). (The uninvolved admin in question, but terribly butterfingered with the closing gambit, sorry.)
- Oppose pointless disruption. Be careful everybody, the chestnuts in this bag are really hot. I like to hold them in my gloves, to defrost my hands. --Hans Adler (talk) 17:38, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- So, are your hands warmed enough to type in a request for checkuser?--Peter cohen (talk) 17:46, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
- The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
British / English?
Should he not be described as English rather than British in the first sentence? The quote "Unlike the Americans, we English suffered great deprivations ..." clearly shows that he self-identifies as English, not British. 86.133.206.74 (talk) 20:27, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
Reason for templates
I've added the "verylong" template and two "needs sub-sections" templates. At currently 160KB+ in length, the Article is too long to be read comfortably in one sitting. Also, at least the two sections tagged by me are long expanses of text with only paragraph breaks; they need extra sub-section headings or they should be cut down in length. I have not been one of the Article's principal author-editors, and so I think they should be given the opportunity first to perform the size reduction and reformating in line with what they think is best.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 03:07, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
- For the sake of readability, perhaps this could be broken up into some sub-sections. However, through this article is a bit long, I don't it is excessively long. Through I feel that the NPOV rule is a good one (through it is in fact often violated), when it comes to a figure like Irving, one does encounter problems. On one hand, Irving's views (however repugnant they are) do deserve to be presented fairly, objectively and concisely. But here comes the problem that to simply summarize Irving's views and leave it like that would present a false impression that all is reasonable and well with what Irving believes about World War II, Hitler and the Holocaust.
The blunt and hard fact is much what Irving writes about these subjects are not only nonsense, but highly malicious and tendentious nonsense. I don’t mean to sound elitist here (please trust me when I say I am a most humble person), but as someone with some familiarity with the period under question, I am struck by the extraordinarily disingenuous way in which Irving misinterprets history. To take an easy example of what I am talking about, let’s consider Irving’s publicity stunt offer to pay £ 1, 000 to the first person who find the written Führerbefehl (Fuhrer Order) for the Holocaust. This offer, which Irving has repeatedly made since 1977 is nothing than a cheap publicity stunt for the very simple reason that it is 99.99% certain that such a order was not committed to writing. However, most people are not aware of that, and simply assume there was a written order from Hitler for “Final Solution”, so when Irving goes up to various historians under the hot light of the television cameras, waves about £ 1, 000, and says he will pay that amount if the historian in question can find such an order, Irving is simply trading on popular ignorance to score a point.
I don’t think Irving is a stupid man (through I have some doubts about his mental stability, but that is another question), and assuming of course that Irving does indeed possessed the unrivalled knowledge of the Third Reich that he is so fond of claiming, than he must know that there was never a written Führerbefehl for the Holocaust. There are the following reasons against the existence of a written Führer Order. First, historians have searched far and wide for a written Führerbefehl since 1945, and nobody has ever found it. Of course, such an order could have been destroyed, but that seems unlikely. There is plenty of documentary evidence implicating Himmler, Göring and other top Nazi leaders in the Holocaust, and it seems strange that if the Nazi leaders were destroying evidence implicating Hitler in the Holocaust that they somehow forget to destroy the documents implicating themselves. Second, in all of the voluminous documentation relating to the Holocaust, there is not one single reference to any sort of written order from Hitler. Third, hardly any of the Nazi leaders who were brought to trial ever mentioned a written order from Hitler, which is odd considering that the usual defence was that they were just following orders. Instead of a written order, almost always the defendants spoke of an unwritten order from Hitler. It strikes me as odd that men on trial for their lives and who were using the defence of just following orders would neglect to speak of a written order, assuming that one existed. There are two and half exceptions to this, and there are good reasons for suspecting that the defendants were lying.
The first was the trial of the Einsatzgruppen commanders before an American military court in 1947, who claimed to have received a written order from Hitler before Operation Barbarossa ordering them to massacre Soviet Jews, but it has been established quite conclusively that these gentlemen were committing perjury in making that claim. The proof in the pudding about the case of the Einsatzgruppen lies in the written draft orders given to them by Heydrich before Barbarossa, which order them to encourage pogroms against Jews, but say nothing about murdering every single Jewish men, women and child. Indeed, initally the Einsatzgruppen, through involved in immense anti-Jewish violence from June 22nd, 1941 onwards did not seek to exterminate every single Jew they came across. That only started in the late summer-fall of 1941. The reasons for why the change occurred from supporting murderous pogroms in the early summer to a program of genocide by the fall of 41 can probably be better discussed on the Einsatzgruppen page
The second exception was Dieter Wisliceny, who made that claim at this trial in 1947, but again it appear quite likely that Wisliceny was lying about that. The half exception was Hermann Göring, who when he was being interrogated prior to Nuremberg claimed to have seen a written order from Hitler for the Holocaust, but did not repeat that claim when he was on stand during the Nuremberg trials, which is strange given that Göring claimed to be (you guessed it) just following orders. Finally, Hitler disliked writing things down, and always preferred verbal orders to written ones, especially in regards to things that might make him look bad. During all of his 12 years in power, Hitler only ever wrote down one state paper himself, and that was the Four Year Plan Memorandum of August 1936. For an example closer to the field of genocide and mass murder, when Hitler ordered the Action T4 program in January 1939, it was a strictly a verbal command. Not until October 1939 in response to concerns about the program’s directors about the legality of their work, did Hitler reluctantly issue a written order for the T4 program with the false date of September 1, 1939. The people killed under the T4 program were mentally and/or physically disabled Germans, and even then Hitler was most loath to issue a written order, and had to dragged literally kicking and screaming into doing so. Given that the vast majority of the Jews killed in the Holocaust were East European Jews (i.e. not Germans), and the demonical role Jews played in the Nazi imagination, a written from Hitler seems scarcely necessary. I rather strongly suspect that Irving knows all this, but he also knows that most people don’t know this, so he banks on public ignorance to make false and malicious claims about Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust by this clever publicity stunt of offering £ 1, 000 to the first person who find the non-existent Fuhrer order.
Given that millions of people use Wikipedia as a source, I am concerned about presenting Irving’s arguments verbatim without any sort of critical discussion. I ran into the same problem in 2007 with while I was working on an article on Irving’s admirer and follow tiller in negationism, namely the anti-Semitic philiosopher Ernst Nolte. Just as a aside here, I can’t put this into the Nolte article as it would constituted original research, but based on my own reading of Nolte’s corpus, when Nolte criticizes Zionism and Israel, he is clearly using the terms Zionist, Israeli, Zionism and Israel as a synonym for Jews. But all that can be better discussed on the page on Nolte. For the sake of fairness as noted above, a good article should require a summary of the subject’s views. But given the nature of Irving’s views (or Nolte’s for that matter, through he is a Holocaust justifier rather then a denier), that could place one into a position of unwillingly serving as a propagandist for Holocaust denial, which not something I want to do nor this is something for which Wikipedia is for. Nor will the claim that there are two sides to the argument do. In some historical issues, such an approach might work, and indeed given the hotly contested nature of some historical disputes is probably called for. But not in regards to the Holocaust because there is only one side to this argument. The evidence that the German state murdered approximately 6 million European Jews is so overwhelming and massive that there can be no doubt to the veracity of the fact that 6 million Jews did die in the Holocaust. To take an approach that says that there are two sides to this issue implicitly gives Holocaust deniers a degree of creditability that they do not deserve. There is only side to this issue, and that is that the Holocaust happened, and the claims of the Holocaust deniers need be taken no more seriously then the claims of the flat earth theorists. Or in other words, the opinions of the Holocaust deniers are irrelevant to any discussion of the Holocaust.
My solution is simply to present Irving’s views, and the views of his critics as offering the best summary of his views without endorsing them in a reasonably NPOV way. I am not going to present the proof of the reality of the Holocaust because I don’t think that is really necessary. Anybody who believes that the Holocaust was faked by the international Jewish conspiracy is either A) an incredible anti-Semitic bigot and/or B) really incredibly stupid. In either case, if one is that stupid and/or are warped by hatred that they believe something like that, then there is nothing one can do for them. But in regards to more subtler things, where the average reader may not have the necessary background knowledge (indeed the very fact that they are using Wikipedia probably indicates that they don’t have that knowledge), I have included the response of Irving’s many critics to let one know what are the real facts of the matter.
Finally, and this is perhaps just a personal opinion. I would really like this article to the best article on Irving anywhere on the Web. I have not quite reached that point (I am about 75% done on this article), but I have brought in a great deal of information from a lot of sources that 99% of the people out there will never consult. There is much here that is properly referenced from good sources that one can’t find anywhere else on the Web, and I would hate to see all this good information lost.
And if there are any Irving fans reading this, I have apparently caught Irving’s bête noire, Richard J. Evans out in a lie. In a 2004 interview in the History Today magazine, Evans said that he little contact with Irving’s writings before his work for Deborah Lipstadt, but Evans’s 1989 book, In Hitler’s Shadow denounces those like Nolte who depend very heavily on Irving as a source for their arguments as using a very dubious source to make in turn very dubious arguments (For the sake of fairness, Evans is quite right on this point). Moreover, In Hitler’s Shadow contains a page long endnote rebutting Irving’s work. Of course, in Evans’s defence, it could be argued that either he forget about In Hitler’s Shadow or that he does not consider a page long endnote to be of much consequence. A very small point, but when starts to dig into the woodwork, one often finds interesting things. And to round off my argument, those really interested in Irving will probably like the article the way it is, as this article presents a detailed (but over-detailed), well referenced account of Irving and his work. Those readers who only a casual interest will simply scan it. --A.S. Brown (talk) 00:23, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
- A.S., thank you for taking the time to write out your rationale in such detail. You make many good points and I would not want you to get the impression that I am in disagreement with your broad aims in educating the public with a fine encyclopedic article.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/71/UtilityQuantified.svg/400px-UtilityQuantified.svg.png)
- However, there is this curve here which should perhaps also be taken into account. Consider that most readers of Wikipedia never print out an article but start reading it on screen, hoping to be able to finish it in one sitting [citation needed]. If I put myself in their shoes for a moment, I feel my concentration flagging about halfway through. Not every individual piece of information is of equal significance. I believe that some items may be condensed or even excised altogether with very little detriment to the overall impact. Conversely, after about 80 kilobytes in length not only does the marginal utility (incremental increase) begin to diminish, but at some time the total utility also begins to go down. A longer article, paradoxically, then ends up undercutting its own purpose. That is my opinion, based on my own experiences as a writer and reader.
- Perhaps the best way to move forward would be if someone actually selects a few paragraphs for condensation and those changes are then discussed here on the Talk page. If nobody wants to do this, I'd like to give it a try sometime next week.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 01:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
- Addendum: This is from WP:Article size. While I don't believe in slavishly following guidelines, I would give it a read.
Readable prose size What to do > 100 KB Almost certainly should be divided > 60 KB Probably should be divided (although the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time) > 30 KB May need to be divided (likelihood goes up with size) < 30 KB Length alone does not justify division < 1 KB If an article or list has remained this size for over a couple of months, consider combining it with a related page. Alternatively, why not fix it by adding more info? See Wikipedia:Stub.
- Of course, I would not express any disagreements with your sincere desire to keep articles down to manageable size. However, through this article is a bit long, I don’t it is excessively long, and certainly it is readable. Anyhow, as I already mentioned, at least of the length is imposed by the nature of the subject. In fairness to Mr. Irving’s (unfortunately) large fan base, there is probably some truth to the charge that this page is somewhat slanted against him, but given the blatant and malicious falsehoods that he has engaged in over the years, it is hard to see how it could be otherwise. How does one call a liar in a NPOV way? The problem is if one describes just what Irving’s take on various subjects are, and leave it at that, while probably more NPOV, would give Holocaust denial more creditability then what it deserves. Strictly speaking, the page should just say that Irving says that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were built after the war as a “tourist attraction”, and leave it at that. But presenting Irving’s views in such a way would implicitly left the reader with the impression that A) he is right about that or B) that there is a debate about this, that maybe there is something to the (stupendous unbelievable) claim that the Holocaust did not take place. As I have already indicated, this is an approach that I feel most be rejected. The Holocaust did place, and to implicitly place a question mark next to the word Holocaust by blandly describing Irving’s views on the subject does a great disservice to history. Including information that rebuts Irving does make for a longer article, and perhaps not even a totally neutral one, but I can no other way of resolving this problem. Take for example, Irving’s claim that the index books showing who entered Auschwitz and when were released to historians in 1990, and how this was going to reduce the number of Auschwitz survivors in the world. Technically, one should just leave at that, but there is a need for editorial interpolation because what was released to historians in 1990 by the Soviet government were not the index books, but rather the death books recording the weekly death tolls at Auschwitz. Incidentally, that is part of the reason why the figure of 4 million dead at Auschwitz has now be rejected as an exaggeration, and the real figure is probably about 1.5 million (which to be sure, is still an appalling figure, but much less then 4 million). And less anyone could accuse me of doubting the generally accepted figure of six million dead in the Holocaust, it now appears that more Jews were killed at the Operation Reinhard camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, and Majdanek then previously estimated.
Returning to the subject of Irving, I feel that a page should capture the fire, not the embers of the past. Ideally, a page should give one an idea of what this person is like. I can’t put this into the page as it constituted a gross violation of the NPOV and the original research rules, but the one characteristic of Irving’s that stands out to me is his narcissism and his attendant love of publicity. Irving is clearly a man in love with himself who just can’t get enough of the spotlight. He is the Paris Hilton of the neo-Nazi scene. Why else does Irving clash other people’s press conferences and lectures other then all the attention it brings him? In all probability, his decision to sue Lipstadt for libel was probably just another of his publicity stunts, albeit one that boomeranged disastrously against him. Moving beyond his publicity-madness, as a general rule one thing I observed in people is that the quality that the lack is the most is usually the quality that they boost about the most. For an example, the people who tell you how smart they are usually not, the people who tell you about honest they are tended to the more dishonest, and the people who tell how hard they work are more often then not the most laziest.
With Irving, please note his schizoid attitudes towards other historians. On one hand, Irving disparages other historians at every opportunity, grandiosely announcing he and he alone knows anything about the Third Reich, and every other historian in that field is just a fool jabbing away in the dark. But on the other hand, Irving is desperate for the approval of the historians whose skills he denounces with such vitriol. Anytime anybody says anything that remotely smacks of praise, Irving seizes upon such statements as a passionate joy as a validation of his own self-worth. Perhaps this is just me, but I would say that we are dealing with a man whose ego is a fragile and insecure one. Which brings us to the next example of Irving’s schizophrenia. Namely, his desire to be taken seriously as a historian while simultaneously engaging in Holocaust denial. It is almost like he is a Jekyll and Hyde brought to life, at one moment, David Irving internationally respected historian and the next moment turning into David Irving leading light of the Holocaust denial lecture circuit without anybody noticing. Of course, the truth is far more sinister then that. It is because Irving was at one time taken seriously as a historian that he is a star of the Holocaust denial movement, conferring upon that spurious idea the slight degree of credibility that his presence brings, and as a historical writer that Irving’s mission is to rehabilitate the Third Reich, washing away all of the blood to make the Nazis look all shiny and clean. In this regard, his remark in the interview with Ron Ronsenbaum that he is tired of associating with anti-Semitic groups full of “cracked people” (his words, not mine), and he wants be accepted by the historians’ community must be understood. It is too bad I can’t include Rosenbaum’s sarcastic response, which is delivered in a manner that is quite funny, namely if you want be accepted by historians, you are going about in an awfully strange way by engaging in Holocaust denial
There are two strands to this article that are linked, but bear separating. The first is Irving the man, and the Irving the pseudo-historian. Of course, there are one and the same, but it is probably worth to treat separately for the moment. Irving the man can be characterized as a crass publicity-hound with a very sharp tongue who frankly likes and admires Hitler. I realize that Irving’s 1992 remark about there being some sort of mystical connection between him and Hitler is perhaps a detail that this article could do without, but I think it captures well the essence of the man. Likewise, I have included a cross-section of Irving’s remarks from the period 1989-1994 denying the Holocaust (these were the years when Irving was most active on the Holocaust denial lecture circuit). In part, I did this because there is a periodic debate that erupts on this talk-page about whatever Irving is a Holocaust denier or not, and I wanted to put a end to this debate by hanging Irving with his own words. Second, Irving has denied the Holocaust numerous times, and for the sake of fairness, I thought it best to include a summary of his case against the Holocaust. I preferred to use quotes from Irving’s own speeches because even through I could summarize his case up in no less then a paragraph, to do so might led legitimacy to his views. Finally, I think it captures the essential nature of the man, namely his crassness, his total lack of any class, his crudeness, his vulgarity, and his bigotry.
Moving on to an evaluation of Irving the historical writer, merely saying he is a Nazi does not discredit him. Being a Nazi may make one an awful human being, but it does not necessarily make one a bad historian. After all, lots of rotten human beings have also been great historians. To take an example, the German medievalist Percy Ernst Schramm was an ardent Nazi before, during and after the Third Reich and who recalled and wrote about Hitler with open admiration in his 1963 book Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader, yet nobody holds it against his scholarship. Even Norman Cantor, who offered an extremely hostile portrayal of Schramm in his book Inventing the Middle Ages says there is nothing wrong with Schramm’s work on the Middle Ages. So to say that Irving is a Nazi may prove that he is a rotten person, but does not necessarily discredit him as a historian. Through it is distasteful to say this, but it is possible to be a good Nazi and a good historian at once. One does discredit Irving as a historian is his rather peculiar way of handling and evaluating sources, which goes up to forgery and the theft, and beyond. It is for this reason that I have included criticism by various historians of Irving’s distinctive historical methodology, which falls well below accepted scholarly standards. And for the sake of fairness, to avoid giving the false impression that all historians are united against Irving, I have included some words of praise for Irving from various historians.
Finally, through Irving has done immense scholarly damage, indeed in the case of the full version of the Goebbels diary discovered in Moscow in 1992, irreplaceable damage, I would argue that the most damage Irving has done is in the ensuring that the right questions can not be asked about Hitler. The popular image of Hitler is that of the ultimate pantomime villain, a sort of Herr Evil in which is the embodiment of evil, and is blatantly evil in a way that nobody can ever possibly be. In this respect and this respect only, Irving is right to challenge the pantomime villain image of Hitler. Of course, in rejecting one false approach, Irving merely substitutes another by arguing that Hitler was not such a bad guy, and sorry about the Jews, but you know Hitler was a really a nice guy. Please note that in saying this, I can no seeking to rehabilitate Hitler. There was something missing to Hitler, namely any sense of compassion or feeling for anybody else, which combined with overwhelming hate and a fanatical adherence to pseudo-scientific, Social Darwinist worldview that saw the “Aryan race” locked into merciless combat with the “Jewish race” led to the crime known as the Holocaust. So yes, Hitler was evil. Having said that, quite a few people and not all them German at the time actually found Hitler be quite a likeable guy, and nothing at all like the Herr Evil image. This is the same point Irving makes, but I would like to drew a different conclusion. The fact that people found Hitler likeable does not excuse the Holocaust, which the conclusion Irving seems to be drawing. This demonical picture of Hitler does serve any useful purpose. Within Germany, it allows for people to engage in apologetics by blaming everything on the “demon” Hitler while the rest of the German people stood around hapless and passive. Outside Germany, it leads either to the same sort of apologetics or else to the racist “nation of demons” theory (a demonical nation produces a demonical leader) championed by such diverse scholars as A. J. P. Taylor and Daniel Goldhagen. The problem with Irving is that having attacked the Herr Evil picture of Hitler, and instead substituted another apologetic picture of Hitler as a great leader doing his best for humanity, is that now anyone who questions the Herr Evil picture gets attacked as being like Irving. Historians are supposed to get at the truth, and Irving has both directly and indirectly created blocks towards getting at the truth.--A.S. Brown (talk) 18:01, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
- A.S. Brown, I am sorry to say this but I find your response disappointing. A few lines in which you airily dismiss my concerns about length, with identical wording including typos as your previous message in the thread, then reams of text about your general approach to the article, which as far as I am concerned is just preaching to the converted. Maybe you did not know this but I've had my own experiences with someone named Kimberley Cornish at The Jew of Linz, where I fought the author for months to improve the article: diff, and see also the Talk page for that article (Number17 and Goodmorningworld are both me).
- It appears that we're going to some form of dispute resolution over the length of the article. Too bad, you would be by far the best editor to do the trimming thanks to your thorough knowledge of the subject.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 20:19, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
The page isn't quite as big as the raw data would imply. WP:Page size indicates that various material should be discarded from the size calculation. The correct figure is 94K which is big but within the known bounds of pages including FAs.--Peter cohen (talk) 23:29, 3 February 2009 (UTC)