Critical responses to David Irving Critical responses to David Irving have changed dramatically as David Irving , a writer on the subject of World War II and Nazism , changes his own public political views , further there are doubts as to how far Irving applies the historical method . This article documents some of these critical responses over the course of his writing career . Overview . Irving was once highly regarded for his expert knowledge of German military archives . Much of his scholarship was disputed by historians to the point that his standing as a historian was challenged from his earliest publications . Contentious in large part for advancing interpretations of the war considered favourable to the German side and for association with far - right groups that advanced these views , by 1988 he began advocating the view that the Holocaust did not take place as a systematic and deliberate genocide , and quickly grew to be one of the most prominent advocates of Holocaust denial , costing him what scholarly reputation he had outside those circles . A marked change in Irving ' s reputation can be seen in the surveys of the historiography of the Third Reich produced by Ian Kershaw . In the first edition of Kershaw ' s book " The Nazi Dictatorship " in 1985 , Irving was called a " maverick " historian working outside of the mainstream of the historical profession By the time of the fourth edition of " The Nazi Dictatorship " in 2000 , Irving was described only as a historical writer who had in the 1970s engaged in " provocations " intended to provide an " exculpation of Hitler ' s role in the Final Solution " Reaction to Irving ' s work ( 1960s – 1970s ) . In a review of 1977 , the British historian Hugh Trevor - Roper wrote that " no praise can be too high for his [ Irving ' s ] indefatigable , scholarly industry " . Trevor - Roper followed up his praise by expressing severe doubts about Irving ' s methodology . Trevor - Roper argued that : " He [ Irving ] seizes on a small , but dubious particle of ' evidence ' ; builds upon it , by private interpretation , a large general conclusion ; and then overlooks or re - interprets the more substantial evidence and probability against it . Since this defective method is invariably used to excuse Hitler or the Nazis and to damage their opponents , we may reasonably speak of a consistent bias , unconsciously distorting the evidence " . Finally , Trevor - Roper commented : " When a historian relies mainly on primary sources , which we can not easily check , he challenges our confidence and forces us to ask critical questions . How reliable is his historical method ? How sound is his judgment ? We ask these questions particularly of a man like Mr . Irving , who makes a virtue of — almost a profession — of using arcane sources to affront established opinions " . Trevor - Roper ended by writing " He may read his manuscript diaries correctly . But we can never be quite sure , and when he is at most original , we are likely to be least sure " . The British historian A . J . P . Taylor called Irving in 1978 an author of " unrivaled industry " and " good scholarship " regarding research in the archives . Taylor criticized Irving ' s double standard with historical judgements , using as an example Irving ' s claim that the lack of a written " Führer " order proves that Hitler did not know about the Holocaust while at the same time claiming that the lack of a written order " proved " that Churchill ordered the " murder " of General Sikorski ( In " Accident " , Irving claimed that there was a written order for Sikorski ' s " murder " , but that Churchill had it destroyed ) . The British historian Paul Addison in 1979 described Irving as a " colossus of research " , but criticized him for his view of " Churchill as wicked as Hitler " and " a schoolboy in judgment " . In a book review published in the " Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung " on 18 June 1979 , the German historian Andreas Hillgruber for the most part offered a highly unfavorable judgment of Irving ' s work . Despite his criticism , Hillgruber ended his review with the comment that Irving ' s work " amounts to an indubitable and in no way small merit of Irving " . In 1979 , the German historian Jost Dülffer wrote that Irving was very good at tracking down and interviewing Hitler ' s former servants , but went on to write that " One can draw no appropriate picture of Hitler from the perspective of his domestic personnel . What kind of importance has a questioning of Hitler ' s valet or of other such persons ? " . Reactions to Irving ( 1980s – 1990s ) . 1980s . In a review of Irving ' s 1988 book " Churchill ' s War " , David Cannadine criticised Irving ' s " double standard on evidence " , accusing Irving of " demanding absolute documentary proof to convict the Germans ( as when he sought to show that Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust ) , while relying on circumstantial evidence to condemn the British ( as in his account of the Allied bombing of Dresden ) " . Writing in 1989 about Irving ' s Göring biography , the German - Canadian historian Peter Hoffmann declared : Hoffman went on to write that though Irving had at one time played a useful role in the historical profession by making outrageous assertions that at least had the benefit of inspiring historians to undertake research to rebut him , the time for that had now passed , and that Irving was simply irrelevant to the study of the Third Reich . In a " feuilleton " published in the " Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung " on 18 October 1989 the German historian Rainer Zitelmann praised Irving for having " struck a nerve " with his provocative style and aggressive assertions . Zitelmann found much to be praised about Irving ' s claim that the lack of a written " Führer " order for the Holocaust suggests that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust , and argued that if that was true , then historians should stop holding the Holocaust against Hitler . Zitelmann ended his article with the claim that " Irving must not be ignored . He has weaknesses [ but he is ] one of the best knowers of sources … [ and has ] contributed much to research " . The British historian John Charmley commented that " Irving ' s sources , unlike the conclusions which he draws from them , are usually sound " , and that Irving " has been unjustly ignored " . 1990s . In 1990 , the American historian Peter Baldwin called Irving a historian who " … has made a career of seeking to shift culpability for the worst atrocities from Hitler and to draw also the Allies into proximity with the outrages of the war " In 1992 , Robert G . L . Waite called Irving ' s work " a calumny both on the victims of Hitler ' s terror and on historical scholarship " . About Irving ' s claims of Hitler ' s ignorance of the Holocaust , Waite commented that " no one but Hitler had the authority to give the orders to murder more than six million people in the mist of war " " . In his 1994 book , " A World At Arms " , the American historian Gerhard Weinberg described Irving as " notoriously unreliable " , and criticized those historians who used Irving to support their arguments Prominent British historian Sir John Keegan wrote in 1996 in his book " The Battle for History " , " Some controversies are entirely bogus , like David Irving ' s contention that Hitler ' s subordinates kept from him the facts of the Final Solution , the extermination of the Jews " . In an 20 April 1996 review in " The Daily Telegraph " of " Goebbels : Mastermind of the Third Reich " , Keegan wrote that Irving " knows more than anyone alive about the German side of the Second World War " , and claimed that " Hitler ' s War " was " indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the war in the round " . During Lipstadt ' s libel trial , Keegan — whom he had subpoenaed to appear as a witness — lambasted Irving by saying : " I continue to think it perverse of you to propose that Hitler could not have known until as late as October 1943 what was going on with the Jewish people " and , when asked if it was perverse to say that Hitler did not know about the Final Solution , answered " that it defies common sense " . In an article in " The Daily Telegraph " of 12 April 2000 , Keegan spoke of his experience of the trial , writing that Irving had an " all - consuming knowledge of a vast body of material " and exhibited " many of the qualities of the most creative historians " , that his skill as an archivist could not be contested , and that he was " certainly never dull " . However , according to Keegan , " like many who seek to shock , he may not really believe what he says and probably feels astounded when taken seriously " . In the 1990s , Irving featured on his Web site a translation of a letter by the prominent German historian Hans Mommsen , praising Irving ' s skill as a researcher . Mommsen , who had written the letter in 1977 , unsuccessfully attempted to have it removed , but did succeed in forcing Irving to feature a second letter from him written in 1998 in which Mommsen completely disavowed his 1977 letter under the grounds that he did not wish to be associated with Irving ' s recent statements about the Holocaust . In a six - page essay in " The New York Review of Books " published on 19 September 1996 the American historian Gordon A . Craig , a leading scholar of German history at Stanford University , noted Irving ' s claims that the Holocaust never took place and that Auschwitz was merely " a labor camp with an unfortunately high death rate " . Though " such obtuse and quickly discredited views " may be " offensive to large numbers of people " , Craig argued that Irving ' s work is " the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War " and that " we dare not " disregard his views . Craig called Irving a " useful irritant " ; a " devil ' s advocate " historian who promoted what Craig considered to be a twisted and wrong - headed view of history , with a great deal of élan , but his advocacy of these views forced historians to make a fruitful epistemological examination about the current state of knowledge about the Third Reich . In his 2000 book " The Holocaust Industry " , Norman Finkelstein cited Craig ' s estimation of Irving as a person who has made an " indispensable contribution to our knowledge of World War II " . Finkelstein favorably quoted Craig ' s testament to Irving ' s value in part thus : " His book " Hitler ' s War " remains the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War and , as such , indispensable for all students of that conflict . . . " In a speech at Yale University in 2005 , Finkelstein said of Irving that " personally , I don ' t like the fellow . . . I think he is a Nazi " , but that he agreed with Craig ' s view of Irving as being useful as a devil ' s advocate . The Hungarian - American historian John Lukacs in his 1997 book " The Hitler of History " has labelled Irving an apologist for Hitler who consistently mishandled historical evidence in Hitler ' s favor . Lukacs maintains that over the years , Irving ' s treatment of Hitler has gone from a barely concealed admiration to a Great Man treatment of Hitler . Lukacs argues that Irving ' s picture of Hitler is defective because of his tendency to confuse asserting that Hitler was a great warlord as being the same thing as proving Hitler was a military genius , which leads to a total neglect of the crucial question of why Hitler took particular decisions at particular times . Lukacs condemned Irving as a historical writer for his " twisting " of evidence ( i . e . labelling Adolf Eichmann ' s statement before an Israeli court in 1961 that he heard from Himmler that Hitler had given a verbal order for the Holocaust as mere " hearsay " ) . Lukacs described Irving in the 1997 American edition of " The Hitler of History " as the most influential of Hitler ' s apologists , and found it " regrettable " that many professional historians cite Irving as a source . Lukacs called Irving ' s historical opinions objectionable and inexcusable , and complained that too many of Irving ' s opinions were supported by footnotes that referred either to sources that did not exist or said something different from what Irving wrote . Some of the examples Lukacs cited in support of his claim was Irving ' s contemptuous statement mocking the Polish cavalry for charging German tanks ( a legend discredited even in the 1970s when Irving wrote " Hitler ' s War " ) , asserting with no source that Hitler refused a lavish banquet prepared for him in Warsaw in 1939 out of the desire to eat the same rations as the ordinary German soldier , for crediting a statement again with no source to Hitler in August 1940 that he would let Churchill live in peace after defeating Britain , for falsely claiming Operation Typhoon , the German drive onto Moscow in 1941 , was forced on him by his General Staff , and for putting his own words in a speech of Hitler in September 1943 implying Churchill was a decadent homosexual ( not something that was in Hitler ' s speech ) . Lukacs asserted too many of the crucial statements by Irving in " Hitler ' s War " — such as his claim that Hitler foresaw Operation Uranus , the Soviet counter - offensive at the Battle of Stalingrad , or his claim that the Hungarian leader Major Ferenc Szálasi wanted to fight to the bitter end in 1944 - 45 ( when he wished for a German - Soviet compromise peace ) — were completely dishonest and untrue statements supported by references to non - existent documents . American writer Ron Rosenbaum questioned Irving about a memoir in his possession that was alleged to have been written by Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s . The precise authenticity of the " Eichmann Memoirs " is in doubt , but parts of the book , according to the German Federal Archives , appeared to be genuine ( though the book was apparently the result of an interview between Eichmann and an Argentine journalist in the 1950s ) . Irving had received the alleged memoir during a visit to Argentina in December 1991 , when it was presented to him after he had spoken at a neo - Nazi rally and was quite proud of his find . In " The Eichmann Memoirs " , Eichmann claimed to have heard from Himmler that Hitler had given a verbal order authorizing the Holocaust , thereby contradicting Irving ' s claim in " Hitler ' s War " that Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust . Irving ' s response to the claim that Hitler ordered the Holocaust in " The Eichmann Memoirs " was to claim that Eichmann wrote his memoirs in 1956 at the time of the Suez War , and was fearful that Cairo , Egypt might fall to Israel . Irving told Rosenbaum that his philosophy of history is a strictly empirical one , and that : " I tried to apply the three criteria that Hugh Trevor - Roper thought were indispensable to reading documents . Three questions you ask of a document : Was it genuine ? Was it written by somebody who was in a position to know what he ' s writing about ? And why does this document exist ? The third one is the crucial one with the Eichmann papers . He ' s writing in 1956 at the time of the Suez crisis ; we know because he refers to it " . Irving ' s reasoning is that if Cairo was taken by the Israeli Defence Forces , then the Israelis might discover the " rat - line " , as undercover smuggling networks for Nazis were known , that had allowed Eichmann to escape to Argentina , and that therefore Eichmann had written his memoirs as a potential defence in the event of being captured by the Israelis . In this way , Irving argued that " The Eichmann Memoirs " were genuine but that the claim that Hitler ordered the Holocaust was false — made only to reduce Eichmann ' s responsibility for the Holocaust . Also in the same interview , Irving claimed wanting acceptance as a scholar by other historians and bemoaned having to associate with what he called the lunatic fringe anti - Semitic groups ; he claimed he would disassociate himself from these groups full of " cracked " people as soon as he was accepted by the historians ' community . Rosenbaum sarcastically wrote in his book " Explaining Hitler " that if Irving wanted to be considered a historian , he was going about it in a rather strange way by denying the Holocaust at neo - Nazi rallies . 21st Century . Holocaust deniers still attend Irving ’ s meetings and tours but others may see him as unbalanced . It ’ s as if everyone has come round to realising that Irving ’ s as pathetic as he ’ s pathological . As one Holocaust survivor succinctly put it : “ I used to really hate him but now I just think he ’ s a nutter . ”