Chatting with the others before the meeting began, Irving remarked on "the unEnglish weather" and said someone should be punished for it."
He regaled us with the time when one of his meetings in Portland Oregon were stormed by the Left. They snatched his list of attendees with their contact details. Unfortunately, they later found their property - cars especially - being vandalised. Such are the violent methods of the illiberal Left.
He then gave us an example of Real History, ie history from primary documents. The sort of history you interpret yourself, without quoting from another historian's prejudice whose misinterpretation and errors you may well be repeating.
Anthony Eden, widely thought to be a bit of a wimp, was in fact party to plots to assassinate Nasser during Suez . Indeed, Irving came across a memorandum at the National Archives in Kew by Eden with three lines blacked out. In the margin was scribbled note by Eden saying "Too secret to record." (We were led to think that it could well be some blacked out order for Nasser's assassination, but of course this can neither be confirmed or disproved. The three lines were in fact indecipherable. Irving said he held it up to the light at the Public Record Office in Kew, but still could not read it.)
This was Real History, he said, not Conformist History.
He gave another example of Real History, when Hitler was recorded to have said: "I want the Final Solution postponed till after the war."
What are we to make of that? Conformist Historians ignores this sort of inconvenient information, but it is typical of the many "square peg in round hole" pieces of information that don't fit the theory that Hitler came to power with the express and sole intention of exterminating all Jewry.
In fact, Hitler was rather chauvinistic about German Jews, whom he thought would be a great help in the war effort, unlike the East European Jews. Hitler viewed German Jews as superior to Russian Jews, whom he regarded as 'rubbish'. Hitler was making a cultural - perhaps even a racial distinction between the two types of Jews
Then rather movingly, he mentioned his daughter Jessica, now 15, whom he used to take to school when he lived in London. On seeing her school, she would let go of her father's hand and break into a run towards school - Connaught House School - because she couldn't wait to go to school. When she asked what she should do when she grew up, he told her to find a calling: "Find what you like and do it," just as he had found his calling as a historian, something to make him get out of bed in the morning.
He then spoke of the loss of Empire. "We gave them love," he said, by building railways and civilising them. "People [he meant British politicians] are not taught to to think in centuries" as historians do.
Its loss was not inevitable, he said, rejecting the arguments of those who claimed that it was. Why was it inevitable, he asked, but did not himself answer the question.
Perhaps he meant the ruinous Second World War made the British too enfeebled to fight for anything any more, including its own territories, when the Empire struck back, after sensing a collective British loss of will.
Perhaps this subsequently made the British more susceptible to the toxic ideologies of liberalism.
But then America, which is now in ruins, did not lose the war and is also a basket case. Most toxic forms of liberalism emanated from there in the first place, so perhaps American decline is explicable by the length of its exposure to this ideological infection?
Neville Chamberlain, he said, was a man of peace, but history has not been kind to him. Churchill was a warmonger, and apparently advocated lynching the top 100 Nazis without even a show trial. It was Stalin who wanted due process.
Firstly, book publishing is controlled by Jews. Secondly, the press - where all reviews of books appear - is controlled by Jews. Third - and most serious of all - nearly all the people that read books in America are Jews. No wonder it raised a laugh. The anecdote was constructed like a good Jewish joke. You can imagine Jackie Mason timing the gag to perfection. But then David Irving told it pretty well too.
He has annoyed the Jews, he admitted in the short term by refusing to shut up. However, in the long term he is doing them a favour, he claimed.
I asked what this might be and the answer was that it was the favour of making them ask themselves why they are so hated.
Could it be that they are perceived to be passive-aggressive? I wondered, in one of my eureka moments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive%E2%80%93aggressive_behavior
On the question of Holocaust Denial, the bombing of Dresden was an interesting parallel. There were so many dead that bodies were heaped up and burnt. British figures say 25,000 died. A German estimate places it at 135,000.
It was not a question of whether it happened but The Scale of It.
Irving does not deny the that many Jews were killed, he merely questions the detail of it, such as the existence of the gas chambers. He described a number of occasions when they were shot en masse.
Auschwitz, he said was a Disneyfied version of it. The four death camps where most of the extermination occurred of which Treblinka was one, had very little left that would attract tourists.
Apparently, SS Officer Karl Wolff heard Himmler fretting about Hitler discovering how badly they had been treated. After Dresden, Hitler was heard to remark that the Jews had been treated with greater humanity than the British had treated the Germans at Dresden.
This rather suggests that the scenario of the left hand not knowing that the right hand was doing was very likely in war-time conditions in Nazi Germany.
When I asked if the Madagascar Plan was not conclusive proof that the Nazis intended to expel rather than exterminate the Jews, he said that the plan to send them there was evidence of the humanity of some of the Nazis. Madagascar is a tropical island known for the clemency of its weather. The Jews would not bother their neighbours and would not be bothered by their neighbours, though it would not be too much of a surprise to find the Madagascans themselves objecting to sharing their island with the Jews, and reacting similarly to the Palestinians, but that was another matter.
Apparently, Hitler was still hoping to implement the Madagascar Plan until as late as 1942.
As for the Japanese, they were desperately trying to negotiate a surrender, but kept being ignored. The Americans were obviously gagging to try out their new bomb and that was what they did in the end.
Britain, America and Russia were all aware that the Japanese were waving the white flag and were doing their level best to negotiate a surrender - completely without success. America wished to test out its bomb on Hiroshima because it was a 'virgin' city, unlike Tokyo. The Allies did not wish the results of their experiment to be confused with earlier bomb damage. 'It made perfect scientific sense', said Irving. 'It is just that it was morally despicable'.
There are still racist wars going on, he said, the racist one being fought by the Israelis against the Palestinians and the racist one in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the victims are destroyed like vermin, because "they do not matter."
The word Holocaust was an invention of the 70s, he said. It appeared to have been dreamt up as a PR exercise. A distinctive word was needed for drama and identity, and, lo, "Holocaust" was coined. It was perfect, with offshoots such as Holocaust Denier, stories about the Holocaust, films about the Holocaust, trials about the Holocaust, films about Nazi-hunters. Perfect for the Holocaust Industry.
'Giving it a name meant they could make money out of it', said Irving, 'which had previously been impossible'.
Irving's greatest triumph was having a Jew admitting to him after reading Hilter's War, that he actually cried, even when he knew what was going to end, ie of Hitler putting a gun to his own head and pulling the trigger.
Irving saw this as an achievement of the craftsmanship with which he had written the book, using the techniques of a novel. In not saying, for example, 'such and such went to see Hitler' but 'such and such came into the room' so that the book appeared to be identified with Hitler's point of view. Irving succeeded so well that a Jewish reader actually identified with Hitler!
I wish I had bought it now.
http://www.fpp.co.uk/books/Hitler/
httpp://www.ihr.org/jhr/v18/v18n5p16_Irving.html
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