Initially, St. Martin's resisted. But the pressure increased. Other Jewish authors threatened to pull their books. St Martin's collapsed. Irving may be a controversial figure but some commentators could hardly believe what was going on in the land of the free and the brave.
Any publisher has the right to cancel a book, of course.
But in this case things were being done that Goebbels himself might have been proud of. Even some U.S. critics had second thoughts. It too has now cancelled. In Hitchins' view, Irving is a great historian of Fascism, and St. Martin's has disgraced the business of publishing. No writer has been libelled as much as Irving.