1. Introduction
1.1 Purpose of this Report
1.2 Material instructions
1.3 Author of the Report
1.4 Curriculum vitae
1.5 Methods used to draw up this Report
1.6 Argument and structure of the Report
2. Irving the historian
2.1 Publishing career
2.2 Qualifications
2.3 Professional historians and archival research
2.4 Documents and sources
2.5 Reputation
2.6 Conclusion
3. Irving and Holocaust denial
3.1 Definition of ‘The Holocaust’
3.2 Holocaust denial
3.3 The arguments before the court
(a) Lipstadt’s allegations and Irving’s replies
(b) The 1977 edition of Hitler’s War
(c) The 1991 Edition of Hitler’s War
(d) Irving’s biography of Hermann Göring
(e) Conclusion
3.4 Irving and the central tenets of Holocaust denial
(a) Numbers of Jews killed
(b) Use of gas chambers
(c) Systematic nature of the extermination
(d) Evidence for the Holocaust
(e) Conclusion
3.5 Connections with Holocaust deniers
(a) The Institute for Historical Review
(b) Other Holocaust deniers
3.6 Conclusion
4. Irving’s writings on Hitler
4.1 Admiration
4.2 Exculpation
4.3 Historical method: case-studies
(a) Irving’s ‘chain of documents’
(b) Evidence at Hitler’s trial in 1924
(c) ‘Reichskristallnacht’ November 1938.
(d) The expulsion of Jews from Berlin, 1941
(e) The Schlegelberger note
(f) The Goebbels diary entry of 27 March 1942
(g) The Himmler minute of 22 September 1942
(h) The Antonescu/Horthy Meetings with Hitler in April 1943
(j) Ribbentrop’s testimony at Nuremberg and his evidence from his cell in Nuremberg.
5. Irving’s use of evidence
5.1 Introduction
5.2 The Bombing of Dresden in 1945.
(a) Background
(b) Irving’s The Destruction of Dresden.
(c) Misstatement, misrepresentation, misattribution.
(d) Falsification of statistics.
(f) Conclusion.
5.3 The evidence of Hitler’s adjutants
(a) Background
(b) Hitler’s entourage and its post-war evidence
(c) Individuals in the entourage
(d) Hitler’s decision-making process.
(e) Conclusion
5.4 Explaining Nazi Antisemitism
(a) Introduction
(b) Jewish criminality in Berlin
(c) The Boycott of 1 April 1933
(d) Chaim Weizmann’s alleged ‘declaration of war’ on Germany in 1939>
(e) The Eichmann memoirs
(f) The ‘Kaufman plan’.
file description
title statement
publication statement : Lewis H. Beck Center for Electronic Collections and Services, Emory University Atlanta, GA 540 Asbury Circle Woodruff Library Atlanta, GA 30322©Emory University. Permission is granted to download, transmit, or otherwise reproduce, distribute or display the contributions to the work claimed by Emory University for non-profit educational purposes, provided this header is included in its entirety. For inquiries about commercial uses, contact either: Institute for Jewish Studies, Emory University, Atlanta GA 30322 or the Lewis H. Beck Center for Electronic Collections and Services, Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322
2003 http://pid.emory.edu/ark:/25593/13nz2
series statement
Transcribed from the trial documents into HTML by Addison-Wesley, and translated into XML based on the HTML and print editions by the Beck Center staff. An analysis of David Irving’s use of historical sources. Professor Evans tracks David Irving’s footnotes and concludes he does not deserve to be called a historian.
source description
encoding description
project description :Trial transcripts, expert witness documents and other material used in Irving vs. Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt have been encoded in XML using the TEI Guidelines, and made available for scholarly research and educational purposes.
editorial declaration :Obvious errors in spelling or punctuation have not been corrected in any way.
All “smart” quotes have been silently replaced with straight quotes. Block quotes are marked with q or quote elements
The canonical source document is the trial document. In some cases material was added or deleted from the versions of the documents that became the html version, and in other cases, authorial changes were made to the trial documents. These sections are noted with add or addSpan elements for additions or del or delSpan elements for deletions.
Paragraphs including q or quote elements indicate material that is in a block quote. Where the title of a work is italicized, it is marked with a title element, both in the text and in footnotes. Pages are numbered at the top of the page top center blockquote blockquote italic
categorization :
- Collection: Trial Documents
- subset: Defense Documents
- object: Expert Witness document
subjects: (scheme : Library of Congress Subject Headings)
- Irving, David John Cawdell, 1938- –Trials, litigation, etc.
- Lipstadt, Deborah E.–Trials, litigation, etc.
- Penguin (Firm)–Trials, litigation, etc.
- Trials (Libel)–England–London.
- Holocaust denial literature–Great Britain.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)–Historiography.