Replies

I went to the trouble of looking up the judgement and seeing exactly what Irving was convicted of. He was never, in fact, even accused of being anti-semite, not even by the woman he claimed slandered her. She called him a Hitler apologist and a Holocaust denier.

Irving appears to take the view that extremely few, if any, people died in the gas chambers. He does acknowledge that many died due to the atrocious conditions in the slave labor camps and that as many 1.5 million died in the forests of eastern europe.

He is also of the opinion that, despite the rabid anti-semitism of his youth, Hitler lost interest in the Jewish question after he took power. In fact, according to him, Hilter actually protected the Jews from the rabid anti-semitism of other Nazis such as Goebbels.

So Irving acknowledges the existence of the Nazi Holocaust and the evil of the Nazis. He does quibble about its magnitude. His revisionism lies in his denial of the gas chambers and his peculiar idea about the role of Hitler.

The evidence provided pretty much proves that Irving is a nut. His theory was slaughtered at the trial. It is therefore true that he was a Hitler apologist and a Holocaust denier.

That does not make him an anti-semite. It is pretty obvious why he brought the suit too. Lipstadt's book simply does not make any distinction between the two.