page_title: David Irving
section_title: Holocaust denial lecture circuit
hierarchical_section_title: David Irving / Holocaust denial / Holocaust denial lecture circuit
caption_attribution_description: English: Auschwitz II-Birkenau: wooden bunks in the barracks Français&#160;: Auschwitz II-Birkenau&#160;: couchettes en bois dans les baraquements Español: Auschwitz Birkenau Campo nazi alemán de concentración y exterminio (1940-1945) 日本語: アウシュヴィッツ・ビルケナウ　ナチスドイツの強制絶滅収容所（1940-1945） 中文: 前纳粹德国奥斯维辛-比克瑙集中营（1940-1945年） Nederlands: Auschwitz Birkenau - Duits naziconcentratie- en vernietigingskamp (1940-1945) Русский: Концлагерь Освенцим (Аушвиц) العربية: اوشفيتز بيركينو / معسكر الاعتقال والابادة النازي الالماني (1940 – 1945) Română: Lagărul nazist de concentrare Auschwitz II-Birkenau: bărăci cu paturi de lemn
context_page_description: David John Cawdell Irving is an English author and Holocaust denier who has written on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include The Destruction of Dresden, Hitler's War, Churchill's War and Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich. In his works, he argued that Adolf Hitler did not know of the extermination of Jews, or, if he did, he opposed it. Though Irving's negationist claims and views of German atrocities in World War II were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was once recognised for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents.
  Irving marginalised himself from the mainstream of the study of history in the 1970s when he began to claim that Hitler had neither ordered the extermination of the Jews nor known about the Holocaust. He went even further in 1988 when, based on his reading of the pseudoscientific Leuchter report, he began to espouse Holocaust denial, specifically denying that Jews were murdered by gassing at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
context_section_description: In the early 1990s, Irving was a frequent visitor to Germany, where he spoke at neo-Nazi rallies. The chief themes of Irving's German speeches were that the Allies and Axis states were equally culpable for war crimes, that the decision of Neville Chamberlain to declare war on Germany in 1939, and that of Winston Churchill to continue the war in 1940, had been great mistakes that set Britain on a path of decline, and the Holocaust was just a "propaganda exercise". In June 1990, Irving visited East Germany on a well-publicized tour entitled "An Englishman Fights for the Honour of the Germans," on which he accused the Allies of having used "forged documents" to "humiliate" the German people. Irving's self-proclaimed mission was to guide "promising young men" in Germany in the "right direction" (Irving has often stated his belief that women exist for a "certain task, which is producing us [men]", and should be "subservient to men": leading, in Lipstadt's view, to a lack of interest on Irving's part in guiding young German women in the "right direction"). German nationalists found Irving, as a non-German Holocaust denier, to be particularly credible.
  In January 1990, Irving gave a speech in Moers where he asserted that only 30,000 people died at Auschwitz between 1940–45, all of natural causes, which was equal—so he claimed—to the typical death toll from one Bomber Command raid on German cities. Irving claimed that there were no gas chambers at the death camp, stating that the existing remains were "mock-ups built by the Poles". On 21 April 1990, Irving repeated the same speech in Munich, which led to his conviction for Holocaust denial in Munich on 11 July 1991. The court fined Irving DM 7,000. Irving appealed against the judgement, and received a fine of DM 10,000 for repeating the same remarks in the courtroom on 5 May 1992. During his appeal in 1992, Irving called upon those present in the Munich courtroom to "fight a battle for the German people and put an end to the blood lie of the Holocaust which has been told against this country for fifty years". Irving went on to call the Auschwitz death camp a "tourist attraction" whose origins Irving claimed went back to an "ingenious plan" devised by the British Psychological Warfare Executive in 1942 to spread anti-German propaganda that it was the policy of the German state to be "using 'gas chambers' to kill millions of Jews and other undesirables". During the same speech, Irving denounced the judge as a "senile, alcoholic cretin". Following his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving was banned from visiting Germany.
  Expanding upon his thesis in Hitler's War about the lack of a written Führer order for the Holocaust, Irving argued in the 1990s that the absence of such an order meant that there was no Holocaust. In a speech delivered in Toronto in November 1990 Irving claimed that Holocaust survivors had manufactured memories of their suffering because "there's money involved and they can get a good compensation cash payment out of it". In that speech, Irving used the metaphor of a cruise ship named Holocaust, which Irving claimed had "... luxury wall to wall fitted carpets and a crew of thousands ...  marine terminals established in now virtually every capital in the world, disguised as Holocaust memorial museums". Irving went on to assert that the "ship" was due for rough sailing because recently the Soviet government had allowed historians access to "the index cards of all the people who passed through the gates of Auschwitz", and claimed that this would lead to "a lot of people [who] are not claiming to be Auschwitz survivors anymore" (Irving's statement about the index cards was incorrect: what the Soviet government had made available in 1990 were the death books of Auschwitz, recording the weekly death tolls). Irving claimed on the basis of what he called the index books that, "Because the experts can look at a tattoo and say 'Oh yes, 181, 219 that means you entered Auschwitz in March 1943" and he warned Auschwitz survivors "If you want to go and have a tattoo put on yo
caption: Inside a barracks in Auschwitz II Birkenau. In 1992 during his appeal for his conviction for Holocaust denial, Irving called Auschwitz a "tourist attraction".[80]
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