Hitler's War
Encyclopedia
Hitler's War is a history book by David Irving
. It describes the Second World War from the point of view of Adolf Hitler
.
It was first published in April 1977 by Hodder & Stoughton
(ISBN 0-340-16747-5) and Viking Press
(hardcover, ISBN 0-670-37412-1). Avon Books reissued it in 1990 (paperback, ISBN 0-380-75806-7). In 2002, Focal Point Publications published a revised illustrated edition, combined together with his The War Path, as a 1024-page hardcover (ISBN 1-872197-10-8).
(the prequel The War Path was published in 1978), had originally been published in German as Hitler und seine Feldherren (Hitler and his Generals) in 1975. Irving's intention in Hitler's War to clean away the "years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument" to reveal the real Hitler, whose reputation Irving claimed had been slandered by historians. In Hitler's War, Irving tried to "view the situation as far as possible through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk". He portrayed Hitler as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent, and who was constantly let down by incompetent and/or treasonous subordinates. Irving's book faulted the Allied leaders, most notably Winston Churchill
, for the eventual escalation of war, and claimed that the German invasion of the Soviet Union
in 1941 was a "preventive war
" forced on Hitler to avert an alleged impending Soviet attack (supported by some, notably Soviet GRU
defector Victor Suvorov, and others; see Icebreaker
). Irving commented that in light of the "preventive war" that he felt Hitler was forced to wage, the Kommissarbefehl
was merely something that Stalin forced on Hitler. He also claimed that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust
; while not denying its occurrence, Irving claimed that Heinrich Himmler
and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich
were its originators and architects. Irving made much of the lack of any written order from Hitler ordering the Holocaust, and for decades afterward offered to pay £1000 to anyone who could find such an order. In addition, citing the work of such historians as Harry Elmer Barnes
, David Hoggan
, and Frederick J.P. Veale, Irving argued that Britain was primarily responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939.
In a footnote in Hitler's War, Irving first introduced the thesis later popularized in the 1980s by Ernst Nolte
that a letter written by Chaim Weizmann
to Neville Chamberlain
on 3 September 1939, pledging the support of the Jewish Agency to the Allied war effort, constituted a "Jewish declaration of war" against Germany, thus justifying German "internment" of European Jews. In 1975, when without Irving's permission the firm Ullstein-Verlag
removed the passages claiming Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust from the German edition of Hitler's War, Irving sued Ullstein-Verlag. Despite his much-vaunted disdain for professional historians (most of whom Irving accused of slandering Hitler), Irving attended a historians' conference in Aschaffenburg
in July 1978 to discuss "Hitler Today - Problems and Aspects of Hitler Research". Irving spent his time at the conference attacking all of the historians present for alleged sloppy research on Hitler, and promoting Hitler's War as the only good book ever written on the Führer. Ian Kershaw
wrote that although Irving's thesis of Hitler's ignorance of the Holocaust in Hitler's War was almost universally rejected by historians, his book was of value in that it provided a huge stimulus for further research on Hitler's role in the Holocaust (which had not been widely explored until then) as a way of rebutting Irving.
, Martin Broszat
, Lucy Dawidowicz
, Gerard Fleming, Charles W. Sydnor and Eberhard Jäckel
wrote either articles or books rebutting what they considered to be erroneous information in Hitler's War. Writing in the Sunday Times, Sereny called Irving's work "closer to theology or mythology" than history, while Broszat labeled Irving a "Hitler partisan wearing blinkers". Lance Morrow
wrote in Time that Irving's picture of the "Führer as a somewhat harried business executive too preoccupied to know exactly what has happening in his branch offices at Auschwitz and Treblinka" was hard to accept. In an article published in the Sunday Times under the title "The £1,000 Question" on 10 July 1977, Sereny and the journalist Lewis Chester examined Irving's sources and found significant differences from what Irving published in Hitler's War. In particular, while interviewing one of Irving's primary informants, Otto Günsche
, the latter stated that "one must assume that he [Hitler] did know" about the Holocaust.
Some historians, such as John Keegan
and Hugh Trevor-Roper, praised the book as well-written and well-researched - although they disputed Irving's claim that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust, and Trevor-Roper was strongly critical of Irving's repeating the "stale and exploded libel" about Churchill ordering the "assassination" of General Sikorski). Keegan wrote that Hitler's War was "Irving's greatest achievement... indispensable to anyone seeking to the understand the war in the round".
's phone log on 30 November 1941, ordering Heydrich to ensure that one train transport of German Jews to Latvia
not be executed on arrival, proved that Hitler was opposed to genocide. Trevor-Roper argued that the message concerned only the people aboard that particular train and was not about all the Jews in Europe. Trevor-Roper noted the contradiction in Irving's argument, based on the assumption that it was Hitler who ordered Himmler to spare the people aboard that train and the claim that Hitler was unaware in the fall of 1941 that the SS were rounding up German and Czech Jews to be sent to be shot in Eastern Europe (the first gassings via gas van
s started on 8 December 1941) Trevor-Roper commented about Irving's claim that Hitler was unaware of the mass murders of Jews carried out by the SS while at the same time intervening to save Jewish lives that: "One does not veto an action unless one thinks that it is otherwise likely to occur". Finally, Trevor-Roper complained about Irving's "consistent bias" for Hitler and that "Mr. Irving's sympathies can hardly be doubted".
writing in The New York Review of Books on 26 May 1977 dismissed Irving's depiction of Hitler as a leader too busy with the war to notice the Holocaust as contrary to all of the historical evidence.
wrote a series of newspaper articles later turned into the book David Irving's Hitler: A Faulty History Dissected, attacking Irving and maintaining that Hitler was very much aware of and approved of the Holocaust. Jäckel attacked Irving for claiming that a note from Heinrich Himmler
's notebook - "Jewish transport from Berlin, not to be liquidated", dated 30 November 1941 - proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen. Jäckel maintained that the order referred only to that train, and argued that if Hitler had ordered the people on that train to be spared, it must stand to reason that he was aware of the Holocaust. Jäckel went on to argue that because the "Final Solution" was secret, it is not surprising that Hitler's servants were ignorant of the Holocaust, and that anyhow, five of Hitler's servants interviewed by Irving later claimed that they believed that Hitler was aware of the Holocaust. Jäckel argued on the basis of Hitler's statements in Mein Kampf
that the Führer was always committed to genocide of the Jews, and that because Hitler later attempted to execute the foreign policy he outlined in Mein Kampf, it is a reasonable assumption that Hitler was always committed to genocide, which in Jäckel's opinion disproves Irving's claim that Hitler was unaware of the Shoah. Jäckel used Hitler's tendency to involve himself in minutiae to argue that it is simply inconceivable that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust. As evidence against Irving, Jäckel used Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of 30 January 1939, where Hitler declared:
Likewise, Jäckel used Himmler's Posen speeches of 1943 and certain other statements on his part in 1944 referring to an "order" from an unnamed higher authority as proof that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust. In the same way, Jäckel used Hitler's order of 13 March 1941, ordering that the Einsatzgruppen
be reestablished for Operation Barbarossa
, as proof of the Führer's involvement in the Holocaust. Jäckel also cited the entry in Joseph Goebbels
's diary on 27 March 1942 - mentioning that the Führer's "Prophecy" of 1939 was coming true - as a sign that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust, and accused Irving of dishonesty in claiming that there was no sign in the Goebbels's diary that Hitler knew of the Holocaust. Finally, Jäckel noted the frequent references to the "Prophecy Speech" in Hitler's wartime speeches as a sign that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust, thereby disproving Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant of the "Final Solution".
In response to Jäckel's first article, Irving announced that he had seen a document from 1942 proving that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust not to occur, but that the document was now "lost" Jäckel wrote that he had "easily" discovered the "lost" document, in which the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers
, wrote to the Justice Minister Franz Schlegelberger
that Hitler ordered him to put the "Jewish Question" on the "back-burner" until after the war. Jäckel noted the document concerned was the result of a meeting between Lammers and Schlegelberger on 10 April 1942 concerning amendments to the divorce law concerning German Jews and Mischling
e Jäckel commented that in 1942, there was a division of labour between the representatives of the Rechtsstaat (Law State) and the Polizeistaat (Police State) in Nazi Germany Jäckel argued that for the representatives of the Rechtsstaat like the Ministry of Justice, the "Final Solution" was a bureaucratic process to deprive Jews of their civil rights and to isolate them, whereas for representatives of Polizeistaat like the SS, the "Final Solution" was genocide. Jäckel argued that Hitler's order to Lammers to tell Schlegelberger to wait until after the war before concerning him about the "impracticable" details of the divorce laws between German Jews and "Aryans" was simply Hitler's way of putting Schlegelberger off. Jäckel maintained that since Hitler expected to win the war, and to complete the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" by killing every single Jew in the world, Hitler would have had no interest in amending the divorce law to make it easier for those in mixed marriages to divorce their Jewish or Mischlinge spouses. Moreover, Jäckel noted that Hitler disliked dealing with the officials of the Justice Ministry, and Schlegelberger in particular. Hitler was to sack him as Justice Minister later in 1942, so it was understandable that Hitler would not want to see Schlegelberger. Jäckel ended his essay arguing that the "lost" document in no way proved that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust, and accused Irving of deceitfulness in claiming otherwise.
in a very unfavourable book review in the 19 August 1977 edition of National Review
called Hitler's War a worthless book while Walter Laqueur
when reviewing Hitler's War in The New York Times Book Review of 3 April 1977 accused Irving of selective use of the historical record in Hitler's favour. Laqueur argued that Hitler's War read more like a legal brief written by a defense lawyer who was attempting to exonerate Hitler before the judgement of history, than a historical work.
Lukacs called Irving an "amateur historian" whose determination to defend Hitler had resulted in an "appalling" book. Lukacs complimented Irving's industry in tracking down hundreds of people who knew Hitler, but went on to note personal recollections are not always the best historical source, and that Irving manufactured battles; for instance, crediting Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner
with a victory in April 1945 against the Red Army
for the control of Ostrava
, a battle which did not, in fact, take place. Lukacs took issue with Irving's language, which he described as conveying moral judgements that were not supported by the facts. Lukacs was very critical of Irving's claims that Poland had planned to invade Germany in 1939 and likewise, that the Soviet Union
was on the verge of attacking the Reich in 1941, in both cases justifying German "preventative wars" against those states.
wrote that:
"euthanasia" program was launched in September 1939 to free up hospital spaces for wounded German soldiers, when in fact the program was launched in January 1939.
In particular, Broszat criticized Irving's claim that because of one telephone note written by Himmler stating "No liquidation" in regards to a train transport of German Jews passing through Berlin to Riga
(whom the SS intended to have all shot upon arrival) on 30 November 1941 that this proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen. Broszat argued that this was not proof that Hitler had given any such order to Himmler to stop the killings of Jews, but rather that the comment "No liquidation" referred only to that particular train, and was mostly likely related to concerns about questions American reporters were asking about the fate of German Jews being sent to Eastern Europe. Broszat questioned whether Hitler had given Himmler any order about the train, given that the phone call Himmler made from the Wolfsschanze
to Heydrich in Prague took place at about 11: 30 A.M., and the records show that Hitler did not get up until about 2: 00 P.M on 30 November 1941.
Likewise, Broszat criticized Irving for accepting the "fantastic" claims of the SS Obergruppenführer
Karl Wolff
that he did not know about the Holocaust (Irving's argument was that if Wolff did not know about the Holocaust, how could Hitler have known), despite the fact that Wolff was convicted of war crimes in 1963 on the basis of documentary evidence implicating him in the Holocaust. Broszat accused Irving of seeking to generate a highly misleading impression of a conference between Hitler and the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy
in April 1943 by re-arranging the words to make Hitler appear less brutally anti-Semitic than what the original notes showed. Along the same lines, Broszat maintained that the picture of World War II drawn by Irving was done in a such way to engage in moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states, leading to Hitler's "fanatical, destructive will to annihilate" being downgraded to being "...no longer an exceptional phenomenon". The criticism by Broszat was considered to be especially damaging to Irving because Broszat had based his critique largely by examining the same primary sources Irving had used for Hitler's War.
was shot by the French in 1923 for opposing the French occupation of the Ruhr
(Irving probably had Albert Leo Schlageter
in mind), and that the 1945 film Kolberg
, which dealt with the theme of a Prussia
n fortress besieged by the French in 1806, was set in the Seven Years' War
. Sydnor also speculated about just what motivated the East German government to allow Irving entry into the German Democratic Republic to search for information about Hitler, commenting "That the East Germans assisted Mr. Irving in an effort that would culminate in a revisionist interpretation of Hitler is a fact of real interest - and some amusement if one speculates on the question of who may have been taken in by whom."
Sydnor was highly critical of Irving's unreferenced statement that the Jews who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
of 1943 were well supplied with weapons from Germany's allies. In the same light, concerning Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust prior to October 1943, Sydnor commented that Hitler had received a SS report in November 1942 which contained a mention of 363,211 Russian Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen
between August-November 1942. Similarly, Sydnor charged Irving with misquotation such as having Hitler say on 25 October 1941 "...with the Jews too I've found myself remaining inactive", thereby implying that Hitler wanted to be "inactive" against the Jews for the rest of the war, when the documents show Hitler's remarks to be "Even with regard to the Jews I've found myself remaining inactive", and that Hitler's remark was referring to the past when Hitler was criticizing himself for his past "inactivity" against the Jews.
Likewise, Sydnor argued that Irving's statement that all previous Hitler biographies were compromised by their hostility towards der Führer is not supported by an examination of said biographies. Sydnor remarked that Irving's statement that the Einsatzgruppen
were in charge in the death camps seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust as the Einsatzgruppen were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps. Moreover, Syndnor noted that Irving falsely claimed that the Einsatzgruppen operating in Poland in 1939 were under the authority of SS General Udo von Woyrsch
, when in fact the Einsatzgruppen were divided into two groups, one of which reported to Heydrich and another to Theodor Eicke
(General Woyrsch commanded a group reporting to Heydrich). Sydnor commented acidly in light of Irving's claim of Hitler's ignorance of the massacres of Poles that Eicke commanded Einsatzgruppe III and the SS Death's Head Regiment Brandenburg during the Polish campaign from Hitler's headquarters train "Amerika"
.
Continuing on the theme of the Einsatzgruppen, Sydnor criticized Irving for his statement that the Babi Yar
massacre of September 1941 was the first massacre carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in 1941, when in fact the Einsatzgruppen had been staging massacres of Soviet Jews since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa
in June 1941. Sydnor charged Irving with offering a false interpretation of Hitler's reaction to Konrad Morgen's report of October 1944 about widespread corruption in the SS as marking Hitler's moral outrage at the Holocaust; Sydnor asserted that Hitler's outrage had nothing to do with the murder of the Jews, and everything to do with the revelation of SS corruption. Concerning Irving's claim that General Friedrich Olbricht
was engaged in an orgy
on the night of 20 July 1944 in reaction to the news of Hitler's apparent assassination, Sydnor noted that Irving does not explain how General Olbricht could have been engaged in directing a putsch at the Bendlerblock
on the night of 20 July while at the same time engaging in an orgy at his home. Sydnor accused Irving of selective quotation from the memoirs of Joachim von Ribbentrop
, noting that Irving quoted the passage: "How things came to the destruction of the Jews, I just don't know...But that he [Hitler] ordered it, I refuse to believe, because such an act would be wholly incompatible with the picture I always had of him", but did not quote the next sentence where Ribbentrop wrote: "On the other hand, judging from his [Hitler's] last will, one must suppose that he at least knew about it, if, in his fanaticism against the Jews, he didn't also order it". Finally, Sydnor argued that Irving's account of the final days of Hitler appeared to comprise little more than a rehashing of Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1947 book, The Last Days of Hitler, only with Hitler as an object of sympathy, rather than scorn.
called Irving an apologist for the Third Reich with minimal scholarly standards. Dawidowicz wrote that she believed that the term revisionist was inappropriate for Irving because revisionism is a legitimate historical method whereas Irving was not entitled to call himself a historian, revisonist or otherwise, and only deserved the label apologist. Dawidowicz maintained that the "No liquidation" message in Himmler's phone log refers not to the German Jews being deported to be shot in Riga
, but rather to a Dr. Jekelius, whom Himmler believed to the son of Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov
, who was also travelling on that train, and whom Himmler wanted to see arrested, but not executed.
complained that of Irving's double standard in Hitler's War of crediting all of the German victories to the Führer while blaming all of the German defeats in the war on Hitler's unworthy and incompetent generals. Craig wrote that in his opinion some of Irving's language was inappropriate, such as Irving's remark that "Hitler was cheated of the ultimate winter victory", and that Irving totally ignored Hitler's own incompetence as a military leader. Craig charged that it was simply wrong on the part of Irving to write that Hitler in October 1941 was in a state of pain over German losses on the Eastern Front with Hitler supposedly thinking "What would be left of Germany and the flower of her manhood?" As a way of rebuttal to this picture of Hitler, Craig quoted Hitler's remark later in 1941 when told of heavy German losses, "But that's what the young people are there for!". Like many other historians, Craig was critical of Irving using the "no liquidation" comment in Himmler's telephone logbook from 30 November 1941 to prove that Hitler was opposed to the Holocaust. Citing Lucy Dawidowicz
, Craig argued the phrase "no liquidation" referred only to Dr. Jekelius. Finally, to prove that Hitler was aware of the Holocaust, Craig quoted Hitler's remark to the Czechoslovak foreign minister in January 1939 that "We are going to destroy the Jews!...The day of reckoning has come!" plus the broad hints that Hitler dropped in his speeches of 30 January 1941; 30 January 1942; 24 February 1942; 30 September 1942, and 8 November 1942 that he knew of the Holocaust Finally, Craig cited Himmler's remark of May 1944 where he stated he had orders from an unnamed higher authority (who Craig argued could only be Hitler) for the "Final Solution"
Because of the controversy Hitler's War generated, it was a best-seller in 1977. In particular, Hitler's War was a best-seller in Germany The American author Gill Seidel summed up the appeal of Hitler's War to Germans as:
David Irving
David John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
. It describes the Second World War from the point of view of Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
.
It was first published in April 1977 by Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton
Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.-History:The firm has its origins in the 1840s, with Matthew Hodder's employment, aged fourteen, with Messrs Jackson and Walford, the official publisher for the Congregational Union...
(ISBN 0-340-16747-5) and Viking Press
Viking Press
Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by the Penguin Group, which has owned the company since 1975. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheim...
(hardcover, ISBN 0-670-37412-1). Avon Books reissued it in 1990 (paperback, ISBN 0-380-75806-7). In 2002, Focal Point Publications published a revised illustrated edition, combined together with his The War Path, as a 1024-page hardcover (ISBN 1-872197-10-8).
Primary theses
Hitler's War, the first published installment of his two-part biography of Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
(the prequel The War Path was published in 1978), had originally been published in German as Hitler und seine Feldherren (Hitler and his Generals) in 1975. Irving's intention in Hitler's War to clean away the "years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument" to reveal the real Hitler, whose reputation Irving claimed had been slandered by historians. In Hitler's War, Irving tried to "view the situation as far as possible through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk". He portrayed Hitler as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent, and who was constantly let down by incompetent and/or treasonous subordinates. Irving's book faulted the Allied leaders, most notably Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
, for the eventual escalation of war, and claimed that the German invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
in 1941 was a "preventive war
Preventive war
A preventive war or preventative war is a war initiated to prevent another party from attacking, when an attack by that party is not imminent or known to be planned. Preventive war aims to forestall a shift in the balance of power by strategically attacking before the balance of power has a chance...
" forced on Hitler to avert an alleged impending Soviet attack (supported by some, notably Soviet GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
defector Victor Suvorov, and others; see Icebreaker
Icebreaker (Suvorov)
Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War?, by Viktor Suvorov is a 1987 documentary book, which alleges that World War II started as a result of Joseph Stalin's ploy to "liberate" the working class of Europe and eventually the whole world.-Suvorov's thesis:Suvorov challenges the widely-accepted...
). Irving commented that in light of the "preventive war" that he felt Hitler was forced to wage, the Kommissarbefehl
Commissar Order
The Commissar Order was a written order given by Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941, prior to Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars...
was merely something that Stalin forced on Hitler. He also claimed that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
; while not denying its occurrence, Irving claimed that Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich , also known as The Hangman, was a high-ranking German Nazi official.He was SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia...
were its originators and architects. Irving made much of the lack of any written order from Hitler ordering the Holocaust, and for decades afterward offered to pay £1000 to anyone who could find such an order. In addition, citing the work of such historians as Harry Elmer Barnes
Harry Elmer Barnes
Harry Elmer Barnes was a prominent American historian in the 20th century. A "progressive who had some classical liberal impulses," he was associated for virtually his entire career with Columbia University.-Early career:...
, David Hoggan
David Hoggan
David Leslie Hoggan was an American historical writer, author of The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed and other works in the German and English languages.-Early life:...
, and Frederick J.P. Veale, Irving argued that Britain was primarily responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939.
In a footnote in Hitler's War, Irving first introduced the thesis later popularized in the 1980s by Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte
Ernst Nolte is a German historian and philosopher. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of Fascism and Communism. He is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 to 1991. He was previously a Professor at the University of Marburg...
that a letter written by Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
to Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940. Chamberlain is best known for his appeasement foreign policy, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, conceding the...
on 3 September 1939, pledging the support of the Jewish Agency to the Allied war effort, constituted a "Jewish declaration of war" against Germany, thus justifying German "internment" of European Jews. In 1975, when without Irving's permission the firm Ullstein-Verlag
Ullstein-Verlag
The Ullstein Verlag was founded by Leopold Ullstein in 1877 at Berlin and is one of the largest publishing companies of Germany. It published newspapers like B.Z. and Berliner Morgenpost and books through its subsidiaries Ullstein Buchverlage and Propyläen.The newspaper publishing branch was taken...
removed the passages claiming Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust from the German edition of Hitler's War, Irving sued Ullstein-Verlag. Despite his much-vaunted disdain for professional historians (most of whom Irving accused of slandering Hitler), Irving attended a historians' conference in Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg
Aschaffenburg is a city in northwest Bavaria, Germany. The town of Aschaffenburg is not considered part of the district of Aschaffenburg, but is the administrative seat.Aschaffenburg is known as the Tor zum Spessart or "gate to the Spessart"...
in July 1978 to discuss "Hitler Today - Problems and Aspects of Hitler Research". Irving spent his time at the conference attacking all of the historians present for alleged sloppy research on Hitler, and promoting Hitler's War as the only good book ever written on the Führer. Ian Kershaw
Ian Kershaw
Sir Ian Kershaw is a British historian of 20th-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich...
wrote that although Irving's thesis of Hitler's ignorance of the Holocaust in Hitler's War was almost universally rejected by historians, his book was of value in that it provided a huge stimulus for further research on Hitler's role in the Holocaust (which had not been widely explored until then) as a way of rebutting Irving.
Reactions and criticism
Reaction to Hitler's War was polarized. Various historians such as Gitta SerenyGitta Sereny
Gitta Sereny is an Austrian-born biographer, historian and investigative journalist whose writing focuses mainly on the Holocaust and child abuse. She is the stepdaughter of the economist Ludwig von Mises....
, Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat
Martin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich. Broszat was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied history at the University of Leipzig and...
, Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
, Gerard Fleming, Charles W. Sydnor and Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.-Career:...
wrote either articles or books rebutting what they considered to be erroneous information in Hitler's War. Writing in the Sunday Times, Sereny called Irving's work "closer to theology or mythology" than history, while Broszat labeled Irving a "Hitler partisan wearing blinkers". Lance Morrow
Lance Morrow
Lance Morrow is professor of journalism and Fellow of the University Professors at Boston University, a writer for Time Magazine, and author of several books. He won the 1981 National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism and was a finalist for the same award in 1991.Morrow joined Time in 1965...
wrote in Time that Irving's picture of the "Führer as a somewhat harried business executive too preoccupied to know exactly what has happening in his branch offices at Auschwitz and Treblinka" was hard to accept. In an article published in the Sunday Times under the title "The £1,000 Question" on 10 July 1977, Sereny and the journalist Lewis Chester examined Irving's sources and found significant differences from what Irving published in Hitler's War. In particular, while interviewing one of Irving's primary informants, Otto Günsche
Otto Günsche
Otto Günsche was a Sturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS and a member of 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler before he became Adolf Hitler's personal adjutant. He was captured by soldiers of the Red Army on 2 May 1945...
, the latter stated that "one must assume that he [Hitler] did know" about the Holocaust.
Some historians, such as John Keegan
John Keegan
Sir John Keegan OBE FRSL is a British military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He has published many works on the nature of combat between the 14th and 21st centuries concerning land, air, maritime, and intelligence warfare, as well as the psychology of battle.-Life and career:John...
and Hugh Trevor-Roper, praised the book as well-written and well-researched - although they disputed Irving's claim that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust, and Trevor-Roper was strongly critical of Irving's repeating the "stale and exploded libel" about Churchill ordering the "assassination" of General Sikorski). Keegan wrote that Hitler's War was "Irving's greatest achievement... indispensable to anyone seeking to the understand the war in the round".
Hugh Trevor-Roper
Trevor-Roper's praise was circumspect. Trevor-Roper commended Irving's "indefatigable, scholarly industry" and wrote "I have enjoyed reading his long work from beginning to end", but he also went on to note that many of the conclusions Irving drew were not supported by the evidence. Trevor-Roper objected to Irving's argument that one entry from Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's phone log on 30 November 1941, ordering Heydrich to ensure that one train transport of German Jews to Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
not be executed on arrival, proved that Hitler was opposed to genocide. Trevor-Roper argued that the message concerned only the people aboard that particular train and was not about all the Jews in Europe. Trevor-Roper noted the contradiction in Irving's argument, based on the assumption that it was Hitler who ordered Himmler to spare the people aboard that train and the claim that Hitler was unaware in the fall of 1941 that the SS were rounding up German and Czech Jews to be sent to be shot in Eastern Europe (the first gassings via gas van
Gas van
The gas van or gas wagon was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill victims of the regime. It was also rumored that analog of such device was used by the Soviet Union on an experimental basis during the Great Purge-Nazi Germany:...
s started on 8 December 1941) Trevor-Roper commented about Irving's claim that Hitler was unaware of the mass murders of Jews carried out by the SS while at the same time intervening to save Jewish lives that: "One does not veto an action unless one thinks that it is otherwise likely to occur". Finally, Trevor-Roper complained about Irving's "consistent bias" for Hitler and that "Mr. Irving's sympathies can hardly be doubted".
Alan Bullock
The British historian Alan BullockAlan Bullock
Alan Louis Charles Bullock, Baron Bullock , was a British historian, who wrote an influential biography of Adolf Hitler and many other works.-Early life and career:...
writing in The New York Review of Books on 26 May 1977 dismissed Irving's depiction of Hitler as a leader too busy with the war to notice the Holocaust as contrary to all of the historical evidence.
Eberhard Jäckel
The German historian Eberhard JäckelEberhard Jäckel
Eberhard Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler's role in German history. Jäckel sees Hitler as being the historical equivalent to the Chernobyl disaster.-Career:...
wrote a series of newspaper articles later turned into the book David Irving's Hitler: A Faulty History Dissected, attacking Irving and maintaining that Hitler was very much aware of and approved of the Holocaust. Jäckel attacked Irving for claiming that a note from Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's notebook - "Jewish transport from Berlin, not to be liquidated", dated 30 November 1941 - proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen. Jäckel maintained that the order referred only to that train, and argued that if Hitler had ordered the people on that train to be spared, it must stand to reason that he was aware of the Holocaust. Jäckel went on to argue that because the "Final Solution" was secret, it is not surprising that Hitler's servants were ignorant of the Holocaust, and that anyhow, five of Hitler's servants interviewed by Irving later claimed that they believed that Hitler was aware of the Holocaust. Jäckel argued on the basis of Hitler's statements in Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
that the Führer was always committed to genocide of the Jews, and that because Hitler later attempted to execute the foreign policy he outlined in Mein Kampf, it is a reasonable assumption that Hitler was always committed to genocide, which in Jäckel's opinion disproves Irving's claim that Hitler was unaware of the Shoah. Jäckel used Hitler's tendency to involve himself in minutiae to argue that it is simply inconceivable that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust. As evidence against Irving, Jäckel used Hitler's "Prophecy Speech" of 30 January 1939, where Hitler declared:
- "I shall once again be your prophet: if international Jewry with its financial power in and outside of Europe should manage once more to draw the peoples of the world into world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the world, and thus the victory of Jewry, but rather the total destruction of the Jewish race in Europe."
Likewise, Jäckel used Himmler's Posen speeches of 1943 and certain other statements on his part in 1944 referring to an "order" from an unnamed higher authority as proof that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust. In the same way, Jäckel used Hitler's order of 13 March 1941, ordering that the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
be reestablished for Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
, as proof of the Führer's involvement in the Holocaust. Jäckel also cited the entry in Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
's diary on 27 March 1942 - mentioning that the Führer's "Prophecy" of 1939 was coming true - as a sign that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust, and accused Irving of dishonesty in claiming that there was no sign in the Goebbels's diary that Hitler knew of the Holocaust. Finally, Jäckel noted the frequent references to the "Prophecy Speech" in Hitler's wartime speeches as a sign that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust, thereby disproving Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant of the "Final Solution".
In response to Jäckel's first article, Irving announced that he had seen a document from 1942 proving that Hitler had ordered the Holocaust not to occur, but that the document was now "lost" Jäckel wrote that he had "easily" discovered the "lost" document, in which the head of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Lammers
Hans Lammers
Dr.jur. Hans Heinrich Lammers was a German jurist and prominent Nazi politician. From 1933 until 1945 he served as head of the Reich Chancellery under Adolf Hitler....
, wrote to the Justice Minister Franz Schlegelberger
Franz Schlegelberger
Louis Rudolph Franz Schlegelberger was State Secretary in the German Reich Ministry of Justice and served awhile as Justice Minister during the Third Reich. He was the highest-ranking defendant at the Judges' Trial in Nuremberg.- Early life :Schlegelberger was born into a Protestant salesman's...
that Hitler ordered him to put the "Jewish Question" on the "back-burner" until after the war. Jäckel noted the document concerned was the result of a meeting between Lammers and Schlegelberger on 10 April 1942 concerning amendments to the divorce law concerning German Jews and Mischling
Mischling
Mischling was the German term used during the Third Reich to denote persons deemed to have only partial Aryan ancestry. The word has essentially the same origin as mestee in English, mestizo in Spanish and métis in French...
e Jäckel commented that in 1942, there was a division of labour between the representatives of the Rechtsstaat (Law State) and the Polizeistaat (Police State) in Nazi Germany Jäckel argued that for the representatives of the Rechtsstaat like the Ministry of Justice, the "Final Solution" was a bureaucratic process to deprive Jews of their civil rights and to isolate them, whereas for representatives of Polizeistaat like the SS, the "Final Solution" was genocide. Jäckel argued that Hitler's order to Lammers to tell Schlegelberger to wait until after the war before concerning him about the "impracticable" details of the divorce laws between German Jews and "Aryans" was simply Hitler's way of putting Schlegelberger off. Jäckel maintained that since Hitler expected to win the war, and to complete the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" by killing every single Jew in the world, Hitler would have had no interest in amending the divorce law to make it easier for those in mixed marriages to divorce their Jewish or Mischlinge spouses. Moreover, Jäckel noted that Hitler disliked dealing with the officials of the Justice Ministry, and Schlegelberger in particular. Hitler was to sack him as Justice Minister later in 1942, so it was understandable that Hitler would not want to see Schlegelberger. Jäckel ended his essay arguing that the "lost" document in no way proved that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust, and accused Irving of deceitfulness in claiming otherwise.
John Lukacs
The American historian John LukacsJohn Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs is a Hungarian-born American historian who has written more than thirty books, including Five Days in London, May 1940 and A New Republic...
in a very unfavourable book review in the 19 August 1977 edition of National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
called Hitler's War a worthless book while Walter Laqueur
Walter Laqueur
Walter Zeev Laqueur is an American historian and political commentator. He was born in Breslau, Germany , to a Jewish family. In 1938, Laqueur left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents, who were unable to leave, became victims of the Holocaust...
when reviewing Hitler's War in The New York Times Book Review of 3 April 1977 accused Irving of selective use of the historical record in Hitler's favour. Laqueur argued that Hitler's War read more like a legal brief written by a defense lawyer who was attempting to exonerate Hitler before the judgement of history, than a historical work.
Lukacs called Irving an "amateur historian" whose determination to defend Hitler had resulted in an "appalling" book. Lukacs complimented Irving's industry in tracking down hundreds of people who knew Hitler, but went on to note personal recollections are not always the best historical source, and that Irving manufactured battles; for instance, crediting Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner
Ferdinand Schörner
Ferdinand Schörner was a General and later Field Marshal in the German Army during World War II.-Early life:Schörner was born in Munich, Bavaria...
with a victory in April 1945 against the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
for the control of Ostrava
Ostrava
Ostrava is the third largest city in the Czech Republic and the second largest urban agglomeration after Prague. Located close to the Polish border, it is also the administrative center of the Moravian-Silesian Region and of the Municipality with Extended Competence. Ostrava was candidate for the...
, a battle which did not, in fact, take place. Lukacs took issue with Irving's language, which he described as conveying moral judgements that were not supported by the facts. Lukacs was very critical of Irving's claims that Poland had planned to invade Germany in 1939 and likewise, that the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was on the verge of attacking the Reich in 1941, in both cases justifying German "preventative wars" against those states.
Bradley Smith
In a review published in the German Studies Review, the American historian Bradley Smith noted that Irving had uncovered some new documents and was correct in arguing against those Germans who sought to place all of the blame for the Holocaust onto Hitler, but went on to note that Irving's determination to tell World War II from Hitler's point of view had apparently led him to totally identify himself with Hitler. Smith noted it was often impossible to tell where Hitler's views ended and where Irving's began.Martin Broszat
In an article first published in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte journal in 1977, Martin BroszatMartin Broszat
Martin Broszat was a German historian specializing in modern German social history whose work has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians as indispensable for any serious study of the Third Reich. Broszat was born in Leipzig, Germany and studied history at the University of Leipzig and...
wrote that:
"He [Irving] is too eager to accept authenticity for objectivity, is overly hasty in interpreting superficial diagnoses and often seems insufficiently interested in complex historical interconnections and in structural problems that transcend the mere recording of historical facts, but are essential for their evaluation".Broszat argued that in writing Hitler's War, Irving was too concerned with the "antechamber aspects" of Hitler's headquarters, and accused Irving of distorting historical facts in Hitler's favour. Broszat complained that Irving was focused too much on military events at the expense of the broader political context of the war, and that he had offered false interpretations such as accepting at face value the Nazi claim that the Action T4
Action T4
Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's eugenics-based "euthanasia" program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were "judged incurably sick, by critical medical examination"...
"euthanasia" program was launched in September 1939 to free up hospital spaces for wounded German soldiers, when in fact the program was launched in January 1939.
In particular, Broszat criticized Irving's claim that because of one telephone note written by Himmler stating "No liquidation" in regards to a train transport of German Jews passing through Berlin to Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
(whom the SS intended to have all shot upon arrival) on 30 November 1941 that this proved that Hitler did not want to see the Holocaust happen. Broszat argued that this was not proof that Hitler had given any such order to Himmler to stop the killings of Jews, but rather that the comment "No liquidation" referred only to that particular train, and was mostly likely related to concerns about questions American reporters were asking about the fate of German Jews being sent to Eastern Europe. Broszat questioned whether Hitler had given Himmler any order about the train, given that the phone call Himmler made from the Wolfsschanze
Wolfsschanze
Wolf's Lair is the standard English name for Wolfsschanze, Adolf Hitler's first World War II Eastern Front military headquarters, one of several Führerhauptquartier or FHQs located in various parts of Europe...
to Heydrich in Prague took place at about 11: 30 A.M., and the records show that Hitler did not get up until about 2: 00 P.M on 30 November 1941.
Likewise, Broszat criticized Irving for accepting the "fantastic" claims of the SS Obergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer
Obergruppenführer was a Nazi Party paramilitary rank that was first created in 1932 as a rank of the SA and until 1942 it was the highest SS rank inferior only to Reichsführer-SS...
Karl Wolff
Karl Wolff
Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff was a high-ranking member of the Nazi Schutzstaffel , ultimately holding the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS. He became Chief of Personal Staff to the Reichsführer and SS Liaison Officer to Hitler until his replacement in 1943...
that he did not know about the Holocaust (Irving's argument was that if Wolff did not know about the Holocaust, how could Hitler have known), despite the fact that Wolff was convicted of war crimes in 1963 on the basis of documentary evidence implicating him in the Holocaust. Broszat accused Irving of seeking to generate a highly misleading impression of a conference between Hitler and the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy
Miklós Horthy de Nagybánya was the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary during the interwar years and throughout most of World War II, serving from 1 March 1920 to 15 October 1944. Horthy was styled "His Serene Highness the Regent of the Kingdom of Hungary" .Admiral Horthy was an officer of the...
in April 1943 by re-arranging the words to make Hitler appear less brutally anti-Semitic than what the original notes showed. Along the same lines, Broszat maintained that the picture of World War II drawn by Irving was done in a such way to engage in moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states, leading to Hitler's "fanatical, destructive will to annihilate" being downgraded to being "...no longer an exceptional phenomenon". The criticism by Broszat was considered to be especially damaging to Irving because Broszat had based his critique largely by examining the same primary sources Irving had used for Hitler's War.
Charles Sydnor
Another equally scathing review was published by the American historian Charles Sydnor who argued that Hitler's War was marred by Irving's efforts to present Hitler in the most favorable light possible. Sydnor commented that Irving wrongly and bizarrely presented SS massacres in Poland in September 1939 as the legitimate response to the British rejection of Hitler's peace offer of October 1939 , and that Irving seemed to imply that Hitler's anti-Semitism was justified by the Anglo-American strategic bombing offensive against German cities. Sydnor noted numerous errors in Hitler's War such as Irving's claim that Andreas HoferAndreas Hofer
Andreas Hofer was a Tirolean innkeeper and patriot. He was the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces....
was shot by the French in 1923 for opposing the French occupation of the Ruhr
Ruhr
The Ruhr is a medium-size river in western Germany , a right tributary of the Rhine.-Description:The source of the Ruhr is near the town of Winterberg in the mountainous Sauerland region, at an elevation of approximately 2,200 feet...
(Irving probably had Albert Leo Schlageter
Albert Leo Schlageter
Albert Leo Schlageter was a member of the German Freikorps. His activities sabotaging French occupying troops after World War I led to his arrest and eventual execution by French forces. His death created an image of martyrdom around him, which was cultivated by German nationalist groups, in...
in mind), and that the 1945 film Kolberg
Kolberg (film)
Kolberg is a 1945 German propaganda film directed by Veit Harlan and Wolfgang Liebeneiner. It opened on January 30, 1945 simultaneously in Berlin and to the crew of the naval base at La Rochelle. It was also screened in the Reich chancellery after the broadcast of Hitler's last radio address on...
, which dealt with the theme of a Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n fortress besieged by the French in 1806, was set in the Seven Years' War
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
. Sydnor also speculated about just what motivated the East German government to allow Irving entry into the German Democratic Republic to search for information about Hitler, commenting "That the East Germans assisted Mr. Irving in an effort that would culminate in a revisionist interpretation of Hitler is a fact of real interest - and some amusement if one speculates on the question of who may have been taken in by whom."
Sydnor was highly critical of Irving's unreferenced statement that the Jews who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
of 1943 were well supplied with weapons from Germany's allies. In the same light, concerning Irving's claim that Hitler was ignorant of the Holocaust prior to October 1943, Sydnor commented that Hitler had received a SS report in November 1942 which contained a mention of 363,211 Russian Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
between August-November 1942. Similarly, Sydnor charged Irving with misquotation such as having Hitler say on 25 October 1941 "...with the Jews too I've found myself remaining inactive", thereby implying that Hitler wanted to be "inactive" against the Jews for the rest of the war, when the documents show Hitler's remarks to be "Even with regard to the Jews I've found myself remaining inactive", and that Hitler's remark was referring to the past when Hitler was criticizing himself for his past "inactivity" against the Jews.
Likewise, Sydnor argued that Irving's statement that all previous Hitler biographies were compromised by their hostility towards der Führer is not supported by an examination of said biographies. Sydnor remarked that Irving's statement that the Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
were in charge in the death camps seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust as the Einsatzgruppen were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps. Moreover, Syndnor noted that Irving falsely claimed that the Einsatzgruppen operating in Poland in 1939 were under the authority of SS General Udo von Woyrsch
Udo von Woyrsch
Udo Gustav Wilhelm Egon von Woyrsch was a high ranking Nazi, who rose to the rank of SS Obergruppenführer and was responsible for numerous murders during The Holocaust.- Early life :...
, when in fact the Einsatzgruppen were divided into two groups, one of which reported to Heydrich and another to Theodor Eicke
Theodor Eicke
Theodor Eicke was a SS Obergruppenführer , commander of the SS-Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS and one of the key figures in the establishment of concentration camps in Nazi Germany. His Nazi Party number was 114,901 and his SS number was 2,921...
(General Woyrsch commanded a group reporting to Heydrich). Sydnor commented acidly in light of Irving's claim of Hitler's ignorance of the massacres of Poles that Eicke commanded Einsatzgruppe III and the SS Death's Head Regiment Brandenburg during the Polish campaign from Hitler's headquarters train "Amerika"
Führer Headquarters
The Führer Headquarters , abbreviated FHQ, is a common name for a number of official headquarters used by the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and various German commanders and officials throughout Europe during World War II...
.
Continuing on the theme of the Einsatzgruppen, Sydnor criticized Irving for his statement that the Babi Yar
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
massacre of September 1941 was the first massacre carried out by the Einsatzgruppen in 1941, when in fact the Einsatzgruppen had been staging massacres of Soviet Jews since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
in June 1941. Sydnor charged Irving with offering a false interpretation of Hitler's reaction to Konrad Morgen's report of October 1944 about widespread corruption in the SS as marking Hitler's moral outrage at the Holocaust; Sydnor asserted that Hitler's outrage had nothing to do with the murder of the Jews, and everything to do with the revelation of SS corruption. Concerning Irving's claim that General Friedrich Olbricht
Friedrich Olbricht
General Friedrich Olbricht was a German general and one of the plotters involved in the attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the Wolfsschanze in East Prussia on 20 July 1944.-Early life:...
was engaged in an orgy
Group sex
Group sex is sexual behavior involving more than two participants. Group sex can occur amongst people of all sexual orientations and genders...
on the night of 20 July 1944 in reaction to the news of Hitler's apparent assassination, Sydnor noted that Irving does not explain how General Olbricht could have been engaged in directing a putsch at the Bendlerblock
Bendlerblock
The Bendlerblock is a building in Berlin, located on the Stauffenbergstraße , south of the Tiergarten. The building was erected between 1911 and 1914 for the Imperial German Navy Offices. During the Weimar Republic it served as the seat of the Reichswehr command and the Ministry of Defence...
on the night of 20 July while at the same time engaging in an orgy at his home. Sydnor accused Irving of selective quotation from the memoirs of Joachim von Ribbentrop
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Ulrich Friedrich Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop was Foreign Minister of Germany from 1938 until 1945. He was later hanged for war crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life:...
, noting that Irving quoted the passage: "How things came to the destruction of the Jews, I just don't know...But that he [Hitler] ordered it, I refuse to believe, because such an act would be wholly incompatible with the picture I always had of him", but did not quote the next sentence where Ribbentrop wrote: "On the other hand, judging from his [Hitler's] last will, one must suppose that he at least knew about it, if, in his fanaticism against the Jews, he didn't also order it". Finally, Sydnor argued that Irving's account of the final days of Hitler appeared to comprise little more than a rehashing of Hugh Trevor-Roper's 1947 book, The Last Days of Hitler, only with Hitler as an object of sympathy, rather than scorn.
Lucy Dawidowicz
In her 1981 book The Holocaust and Historians, the American historian Lucy DawidowiczLucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
called Irving an apologist for the Third Reich with minimal scholarly standards. Dawidowicz wrote that she believed that the term revisionist was inappropriate for Irving because revisionism is a legitimate historical method whereas Irving was not entitled to call himself a historian, revisonist or otherwise, and only deserved the label apologist. Dawidowicz maintained that the "No liquidation" message in Himmler's phone log refers not to the German Jews being deported to be shot in Riga
Riga
Riga is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 702,891 inhabitants Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states, one of the largest cities in Northern Europe and home to more than one third of Latvia's population. The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial,...
, but rather to a Dr. Jekelius, whom Himmler believed to the son of Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Molotov
Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Molotov was a Soviet politician and diplomat, an Old Bolshevik and a leading figure in the Soviet government from the 1920s, when he rose to power as a protégé of Joseph Stalin, to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev...
, who was also travelling on that train, and whom Himmler wanted to see arrested, but not executed.
Gordon A. Craig
The American historian Gordon A. CraigGordon A. Craig
Gordon Alexander Craig was a Scottish-American historian of German history and of diplomatic history.-Early life:...
complained that of Irving's double standard in Hitler's War of crediting all of the German victories to the Führer while blaming all of the German defeats in the war on Hitler's unworthy and incompetent generals. Craig wrote that in his opinion some of Irving's language was inappropriate, such as Irving's remark that "Hitler was cheated of the ultimate winter victory", and that Irving totally ignored Hitler's own incompetence as a military leader. Craig charged that it was simply wrong on the part of Irving to write that Hitler in October 1941 was in a state of pain over German losses on the Eastern Front with Hitler supposedly thinking "What would be left of Germany and the flower of her manhood?" As a way of rebuttal to this picture of Hitler, Craig quoted Hitler's remark later in 1941 when told of heavy German losses, "But that's what the young people are there for!". Like many other historians, Craig was critical of Irving using the "no liquidation" comment in Himmler's telephone logbook from 30 November 1941 to prove that Hitler was opposed to the Holocaust. Citing Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Dawidowicz
Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.-Life:...
, Craig argued the phrase "no liquidation" referred only to Dr. Jekelius. Finally, to prove that Hitler was aware of the Holocaust, Craig quoted Hitler's remark to the Czechoslovak foreign minister in January 1939 that "We are going to destroy the Jews!...The day of reckoning has come!" plus the broad hints that Hitler dropped in his speeches of 30 January 1941; 30 January 1942; 24 February 1942; 30 September 1942, and 8 November 1942 that he knew of the Holocaust Finally, Craig cited Himmler's remark of May 1944 where he stated he had orders from an unnamed higher authority (who Craig argued could only be Hitler) for the "Final Solution"
Because of the controversy Hitler's War generated, it was a best-seller in 1977. In particular, Hitler's War was a best-seller in Germany The American author Gill Seidel summed up the appeal of Hitler's War to Germans as:
"It is not difficult to explain its appeal. The argument of the book may be summed up as: "If only the Führer had known about the murder of the Jews, he would had stopped it'. For...Germans who do not want to face up to the past, it was easy to be persuaded that if Hitler did not know, then neither did the person on the street."