Most readers know Irving is one of the top, or the top, British WW2
historian so they want to know his beliefs. Most articles either don't
mention or distort them, but a few articles summarize them. Readers want to know more, and the big jump in hits to revisionist sites proves it.

Irving beliefs summarized in a few articles:

(1)  Irving contends Jews were killed by Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

(2) He questions the use of large-scale gas chambers to exterminate the Jews.

(3) He contends most Jews who died at Auschwitz did so from diseases like typhus, not gas poisoning.

(4) he claims the numbers of those who perished are far lower than those generally accepted.

(5) He concludes there is "not one shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jewish population on such a massive scale.

Tom Williams
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3173343,00.html

WHAT DO YOU DO with a "problem" like David Irving? Until a few years ago, the British author of "Hitler's War " was usually described as a "controversial historian." But in April 2000, a British high court judge held that Irving not only had denied the reality of the Holocaust but was an anti-Jewish.

Justice Charles Gray's damning 333-page judgment - which ended Irving's libel suit against academic Jewish Deborah Lipstadt for calling him a "Holocaust denier" - turned Irving from controversial to disgraced. It also cost Irving his London home (in Britain, the loser in a libel case has to pay the winner's costs), leaving him a bankrupt, marginal figure reduced to lecturing credulous audiences of conspiracy enthusiasts and collectors of Nazi memorabilia. Yet for all that, he is still capable of making headlines.

November 11, 2005, it was reported that Irving had been arrested in Austria for giving speeches denying the existence of gas chambers in Nazi death camps. Like Germany, France, Poland, Lithuania, Belgium and Israel, Austria has laws against denying the Jewish the "Holocaust".

There are several odd details about Irving's arrest, starting with the fact that the offending speeches were allegedly made more than 15 years ago; the warrant for Irving's arrest was issued in November 1989. But for Americans, accustomed as we are to the 1st Amendment's robust guarantee of free speech, the mere existence of laws forbidding certain kinds of _expression may invite dismissal of the whole affair as of little relevance to our own concerns. In my view, that would be shortsighted.

Countries that outlaw Jewish Holocaust denial do so because their history is different from ours.

In Germany and Austria Holocaust denial is also banned. Countries where the experience of occupation still rankle have different views than ours.

Understanding, however, need not compel imitation. In 1949, the Supreme Court heard an appeal by Arthur Terminiello, a Catholic priest who'd been fined $100 by the city of Chicago for making a Jew-baiting speech. Justice Robert Jackson, former chief prosecutor at Nuremberg, warned that "if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the Constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact" - an argument echoed today by those who would safeguard our security by abridging our rights.

But Jackson was in the minority. "Almost every generation in American history," wrote the journalist I.F. Stone, "has had to face what appeared to be a menace" frightening enough to justify the sacrifice of basic liberties. Stone, who described himself as "exactly what Terminiello meant … by an 'atheistic, communistic, Zionistic Jew," felt that free speech, though not an absolute value, was worth the risks it carried. I agree.

As for Irving, he seems to me exactly what Pierre Vidal-Naquet meant by "a paper Eichmann." A distinguished classical scholar who lost both parents to the Holocaust, Vidal-Naquet coined the term to describe Irving's French ally, Robert Faurisson. "Confronting an actual Eichmann, one had to resort to armed struggle," wrote Vidal-Naquet. "Confronting a paper Eichmann, one should respond with paper."

The threat of a 20-year prison term, even if it doesn't come to pass, only burnishes Irving's counterfeit credentials as a martyr to free speech.

Irving, a controversial Third Reich scholar who has claimed that Adolf Hitler knew nothing about the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews, is accused of giving two speeches in 1989 in which he denied the existence of Nazi gas chambers during World War II, prosecutor Otto Schneider said.

He was arrested Nov. 11 2005 in the southern province of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison.

Irving, 67, remains in custody in Vienna. His attorney, Elmar Kresbach, said he would decide how to proceed after discussing the charges with his client Wednesday.

A detention hearing will be held to determine whether Irving should be held for up to four more weeks, Schneider said.
 

After his arrest, Irving supporters posted a statement on his website saying he was detained while on a one-day visit to Vienna, where they said he had been invited "by courageous students to address an ancient university association."

Irving in the past has faced allegations of spreading anti-Semitic and racist ideas. He is the author of nearly 30 books, including "Hitler's War," which challenges the extent of the Holocaust.

Besides his claims that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust, he also has been quoted as saying there was "not one shred of evidence" that the Nazis carried out their "Final Solution" to exterminate the Jewish population on such a massi

Irving said he does not deny Jews were killed by the Nazis, but challenges the number and manner of Jewish concentration camp deaths.

He has questioned the use of large-scale gas chambers to exterminate the Jews and has claimed that the numbers of those who perished are far lower than those generally accepted. He also contends that most Jews who died at Auschwitz did so from diseases like typhus, not gas poisoning.

Irving has had numerous run-ins with the law over the years. In 1992, a judge in Germany fined him the equivalent of USD 6,000 for publicly insisting the Nazi gas chambers at Auschwitz were a hoax.

In March, more than 200 historians from around the world petitioned the C-SPAN television network to cancel a project that would have included a speech by Irving as a counterpoint to a lecture by Deborah Lipstadt, a Holocaust expert.

Irving once sued Lipstadt for libel for calling him a Holocaust denier. He lost his case when a British court handling the case in 2000 declared that Irving could be labeled as such, ruling that he was anti-Semitic, racist and that he misrepresented historical information.