Even the widely accepted figure of 6 million Jewish dead all over Europe has been questioned in recent years by some of the world's most prominent Holocaust scholars. Raul Hilberg and Robert Jan van Pelt, two of the leading authorities, now believe the figure is probably closer to 5.1 million. Still, scholars say, the evidence of a massive extermination campaign that resulted in the deaths of millions of Jews is so exhaustive that it is irrefutable. There is the sheer number of Jews who arrived at the camps and never left, far more than could have fallen victim to disease or starvation, most historians believe. The court apparently was moved, however, by a preface by the former Third Reich general who had commissioned Rudolf to do the research, Otto Ernst Remer, who in 1992 himself was sentenced to prison for incitement to racial hatred.
Scholars tend to award that accolade to each other.
And their scholarship usually consists of sitting in libraries reading each others' books. In the process, Irving said he did not come across a single document or interview that indicated Hitler had ordered a campaign to exterminate the Jews. Others who have come across with something have looser criteria than I do, like the Nuremberg trials. . . . I won't accept that. Irving's numerous critics say he fails to address the fact that the extermination campaign was carried out in deliberate secrecy, without written orders.