David Irving

David John Cawdell Irving (born March 24, 1938) describes himself as a self-taught historian who, from the late 1960s to the mid-1980s, was a leading British author on World War II with works such as Hitler?s War and The Destruction of Dresden. Irving is also one of the most accomplished and successful proponents of Holocaust denial. In the mid-1980s, he started openly associating with neo-Nazi and extremist groups, and his reputation began to wane. In the late 1990s, he sued the prominent Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for having listed him as a Holocaust denier in her book Denying the Holocaust. After a much publicized trial, Irving lost the case and was found to be a Holocaust denier by the court.

"The Destruction of Dresden"

Irving soon dropped out of college and went to Germany, where he worked in a Thyssen steel works in the Ruhr area and learned German. He then moved to Spain (at the time under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco) where he worked as a clerk at an airbase near Madrid. Establishing contacts with Europe?s far right, in 1962 he wrote a series of thirty-seven articles on the Allied bombing campaign, Wie Deutschlands Städte Starben, for the German right-wing journal Neue Illustrierte. These served as the basis of his first book The Destruction of Dresden, published in 1963. In it, he examined the Allied bombing of Dresden in February of 1945. By the 1960s, a debate about the morality of the carpet bombing of German cities and civilian population had already begun, especially in the UK. Hence, the public was receptive to Irving?s persuasively written book, illustrated with graphic pictures. The book became an international bestseller.

Related Topics:
Germany - Thyssen - Ruhr - German - Spain - Francisco Franco - Madrid - Europe - 1962 - Allied - 1963 - Bombing of Dresden - 1960s - Carpet bombing - UK

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the first edition of the book, Irving?s figures for deaths in Dresden (which he initially reported as estimated authoritatively at 135,000, and which he himself estimated at between 100,000 and 250,000) were an order of magnitude higher than anyone else?s. Nonetheless, these figures became widely accepted and were repeated in many standard references and encyclopedias. Over the next three decades, later editions of the book gradually modified that figure downwards to a range of 50,000 to 100,000, but during that time Irving also made a number of public statements indicating that 100,000 or more Germans had been killed. It was not until the hearing of Irving?s libel suit against Deborah Lipstadt in 2000 that the figures were publicly discredited. Today, the Dresden bombing casualty figures are estimated as most likely in the range of 25,000 to 35,000 dead, and probably toward the lower end of that range. This is a theme which appears repeatedly in Irving?s writing: overstatement of putative wrongs done to Nazi-era Germany, while understating wrongs done by Nazi Germany.

Related Topics:
Dresden - Deborah Lipstadt - 2000 - Nazi - Nazi Germany

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~