David Irving
Irving is a journalist-turned-historian. His political work suffers from some of the defects typical of his original profession. These defects are simple to spot and are found elsewhere:
1. The reliance on a few documents (normally obscure) to prove a controversial point. (Regarding the holocaust, Irving dismissed secondary accounts, memoirs, extrapolations from observation teams, etc.)
2. The heavy and obvious employment of sensationalism. (No comment)
3. The total neglect/ selective use of secondary literature. (Irving states himself that he dislikes the work of the experts)
The work of other scholars however read like those of Irving. These texts all tend in an extreme direction that give weight to a particular and radical viewpoint. Most scholars however approach Nazi-Germany or German society from the other angle.
Here are a few examples. Tom Bower, another journalist, writes as if the German race were some kind of "Borg collective" and he consistently refers to Germans as the "warmongering nation". The sociologist Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's controversial conclusion that all Germans, aside from a small number, "were fit to be...Hitler's willing executioners" also stokes the fires of irrational thought. The theologian Fritz Fischer wrote that Germans alone, without any outside input, willed WWI and of course WWII. Even the esteemed historian A. J.P. Taylor wrote that "Germany is not a typical European nation, nor even a typical Great Power; shaped by history, it has acquired a unique character and played a unique role, a role almost entirely aggressive and destructive, an alien body in the structure of European civilization". Really hard stuff. How can anyone prove that all 60-80 million people acted in unison? Where is the quantitative or qualitative evidence?
Even the most simplistic (read near-imbecilic) analyses of German history tend to stress the complexity of events, the clash of multiple interests and the overall multipolar nature of a society marked by widely divergent regional interests. (Ie. Prussians and Bavarians despise each other). The historiography therefore generally condemns the works mentioned--albeit only recently and in varying degrees. For critiques of Goldhagen, yes there are many, just look at the work of Christopher Browning and more importantly Raul Hilberg. Even the Bower-Fischer-Taylor view is sputtering as other scholars focus on complexity and disregard the old tendency to view nations as some kind of amorphous mass.
Regarding Irving, I appreciate many of his texts such as Dresden, the Desert Fox, PQ-17, etc. Michael Howard, the really great military historian, argued that Irving's military work was first-rate. Irving's strength could be found in the massive devotion to document collection and analysis. Even some of his comments and perspectives concerning the political history of 1930s/1940s Europe are equally first-rate.
Why then did he ruin himself with a senseless and stupid attack on the holocaust? I cannot even begin to answer that question. It should however be kept in mind that Irving, for all of his strengths, is not a trained historian. That is, he never experienced the brutality of an undergraduate or graduate degree that forces the student to read all sorts of boring monographs, ask basic epistemological questions, and try to place viewpoints in some sort of framework. Complexity and not simplicity is the name of the game.
The political works of Irving fail to sufficiently explain the complex nature of historical events within the framework of existing opinion. This assertion holds true for Bower and the others. The problem for Irving is that denying the holocaust is a crime. I actually agree with the German and Austrian lawmakers. It does not matter that the Turks deny the Armenian holocaust, or that the world generally ignores the Prussian holocaust. Auschwitz really happened. Millions of Jews were killed in an appalling display of human depravity. Many Germans participated or looked away. And the world should work to stop genocide in general.
Ollie Garchy.
A.J.P Taylor, The Course of German History, p. 7.
Tom Bower, Blood Money, p. 32
Fritz Fischer, Griff nach der Weltmacht.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, p.454.
