PQ17

[cameronian]

Good!

Sigh. He was put in prison and charged with 'challenging the established history of the holocaust and Nazi Germany' and also with 'reactivation'. It is not possible to research WWII and publish anything of merit in either Germany or Austria because of these laws, they are fundamentally illiberal and date (in Austria at least) from the period of soviet occupation. You might be interested to know that any attempt to allocate blame for Katyn to anyone other than the Nazis was also a criminal offence until 1998. I shouldn't be surprised at the attitude of some of the posts above, as our country becomes more 'european' our liberties recede.
Before anyone replies to this, please state which of Irving's books you have actually read.

If Turkey joins the EU the European arrest warrant will permit the deportation, trial and imprisonment of anyone asserting the truth of the Armenian holocaust. Presumably that will meet with your approval also.

[Matt J]

Irvine did not deny the holocaust but he stated that it was exaggerated, the gas chambers a hoax and that Hitler knew little about it.
I haven't read any of his books (nor do I wish to) but that isn't relevant because the charges related to lectures he gave.
I think the guy is just a bit of a plonker and egotistical.

Agreed though the laws are archaic and illiberal (you shouldn't be sent to prison for being an egotistical plonker).

[sebigboss79]

Hmm..same crap another year?

Concerning the holocaust: Yes they/we DID kill that many. We are damn efficient in everything and do keep records.
Having said that I discussed these matters with a friend in another forum. He is in his 70ss now and emigrated as a young boy to Israel. Lost his parents in the Holocaust.
He says I should and as a matter of fact all germans be proud of our country and what we did OUTSIDE these 12 years. He says he certainly is.

The problem is that there are indeed people who use the "You Nazi" argument (a little excessive imho) to justify any kind of opinion upon Germany and Germans. I do hope at least some of you do not feel offnded by my mere existence but the sad truth is some people are (not with me personally).

There are a lot of ignorant bigots on this planet but I believe they can be found in every country, in some to a higher degree than others but stupidity and ignorance a the first globalised issues.

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Well said sir.,

[Techno]

Don't end up falling out gents......please !
Cheers - Phil

[cameronian]

Irvine did not deny the holocaust but he stated that it was exaggerated, the gas chambers a hoax and that Hitler knew little about it.
I haven't read any of his books (nor do I wish to) but that isn't relevant because the charges related to lectures he gave.
I think the guy is just a bit of a plonker and egotistical.

Agreed though the laws are archaic and illiberal (you shouldn't be sent to prison for being an egotistical plonker).

He said that one of the chambers at Auchwitz was a 1948 reconstruct, the Soviets denied it, the Poles subsequently acknowledged it, for this he was prosecuted in Munich. He never, ever denied the Einsatzgruppen shootings, read Hitler's War (excellent and highly critical of Hitler, odd for someone accused of being a Hitler groupie), he puts the numbers at 1.5m plus and he is merciless in his excoriation of these crimes, he also acknowledges that the Reinhardt camps were extermination camps. What he won't do is 'buy' the holocaust uncritically because he knows, any sane person knows, that it has become a game of political poker in which Israel dares anyone to call the facts. He was badly misled by the pseudo science of certain individuals re the chambers, a fault he has freely admitted, but he does continue to ask difficult questions and in some countries that is a crime. Thanks to his revelations in 'Churchill Vol II' we now know Churchill wanted De Gaulle assassinated and was only prevented by Eden and the cabinet, also that Eden arranged the assassination of Admiral Darlan in Casablanca in 1943. What should the term be for these revelations? Life?
 

[sebigboss79]

Now now my friends.

Whereas I DO criticise Israel when applicable I do not make the assumption all israelis are Jews. There is quite a number of Muslims and Christian believers in that country.

Mentioning the darker side of Churchill has merit and he should be seen in his entirety (like everyone else).

Hitler was certainly evil and the good he did (agricultural research, economic policy -profitting from Ebert as well) must be seen in connection with his intention to

-gain Lebensraum
-make Germany independent of world markets
-abolish democracy in favour of a elite-totalitarian system
-remove any power from religious groups
-make Germany the world superpower

Now we argue Churchill was the good guy (because he won?) but I also know he was very fond of concentration camps (Boer War) and had every intention to "nervegas the bastards" who were uprising against British rule in the middle east. Nervegas in particular seems to be one of his obsessions (Sealion, Franco-Spanish wars in Africa).

But as much as I despise him (2014) for this (1900 - 1930s) I do acknowledge that he was able to learn from his mistakes. Read about operation Unthinkable. When told it was impossible to face the Red Army in the field with British/American/French forces he immediately asked what would happen if he re-armed the Germans. If nothing else he was pragmatic, a whitty verbal artist and had some taste (Whiskey, Cigars..)

Real Life is more complex and the German record keeping is pretty accurate on the matter of the Holocaust. As I said, organisational efficiency put into a very bad cause.

[freddy326]

He said that one of the chambers at Auchwitz was a 1948 reconstruct, the Soviets denied it, the Poles subsequently acknowledged it, for this he was prosecuted in Munich. He never, ever denied the Einsatzgruppen shootings, read Hitler's War (excellent and highly critical of Hitler, odd for someone accused of being a Hitler groupie), he puts the numbers at 1.5m plus and he is merciless in his excoriation of these crimes, he also acknowledges that the Reinhardt camps were extermination camps. What he won't do is 'buy' the holocaust uncritically because he knows, any sane person knows, that it has become a game of political poker in which Israel dares anyone to call the facts. He was badly misled by the pseudo science of certain individuals re the chambers, a fault he has freely admitted, but he does continue to ask difficult questions and in some countries that is a crime. Thanks to his revelations in 'Churchill Vol II' we now know Churchill wanted De Gaulle assassinated and was only prevented by Eden and the cabinet, also that Eden arranged the assassination of Admiral Darlan in Casablanca in 1943. What should the term be for these revelations? Life?
 

The Guardian does seem to like him much! My bolding and italics

February 2006: The British revisionist historian and Nazi apologist David Irving was today sentenced to three years in prison after he admitted denying the Holocaust.
An eight-member jury at a court in Vienna convicted Irving, 68, a few hours after it began its deliberations on the first day of his trial.

Irving had pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust in two speeches on a visit to Austria in 1989, but said at the trial that he had later changed his views.

The speeches included a call for an end to the "gas chambers fairy tale", and claims that Adolf Hitler had helped Europe's Jews and that the Holocaust was a myth. The Guardian

Judge Charles Grey in 2000 didn't seem to be overly friendly with him either!

'Excerpts from High Court Judge Charles Gray's ruling in the David Irving libel suit   

"It is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews.

It appears to me to be incontrovertible that Irving qualifies as a Holocaust denier. Not only has he denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz and asserted that no Jew was gassed there, he has done so on frequent occasions and sometimes in the most offensive terms. By way of examples, I cite his story of the Jew climbing into a mobile telephone box-cum-gas chamber; his claim that more people died in the back of Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz; his dismissal of the eyewitnesses en masse as liars or suffering from a mental problem ... I reject as being untrue the claim made by Irving in his evidence that in his denial of the existence of any gas chambers at Auschwitz, he was referring solely to the gas chamber constructed by the Poles after the war for the benefit of visitors to the site or, as Irving put it, as a 'tourist attraction.'

Having grossly underestimated the number who lost their lives in the camps, Irving is prone to claim that a greater number than that were killed in Allied bombing raids on Dresden and elsewhere. He has, moreover, repeatedly claimed that the British Psychological War Executive ingeniously discovered the lies that the Nazis were killing Jews in gas chambers in order to use it as propaganda.

Irving is anti-Semitic. His words are directed against Jews, either individually or collectively, in the sense that they are by turn hostile, critical, offensive and derisory in their references to Semitic people, their characteristics and appearances ... Irving has made claims that the Jews deserve to be disliked; that they brought the Holocaust on themselves. He speaks regularly at political or quasi-political meetings in Germany, the United States, Canada and the New World. The content of his speeches and interviews often displays a distinctly pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish bias. He makes surprising and often unfounded assertions about the Nazi regime which tend to exonerate the Nazis for the appalling atrocities which they inflicted on the Jews. He is content to mix with neo-facists and appears to share many of their racist and anti-Semitic prejudices.

The charges which I have found to be substantially true include the charges that Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti-Semitic and racist and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism."

[Jc]

  Yes the Russian supply convoys were hell. I'm Hull born an bred , as a family we lost my grandfather (chief engineer) atlantic star,- torpedoed, Uncle Bob engineer (george cross- for rescueing  crew by swiming under burning fuel oil, uncle "chucker" radio operator atlantic star for manning a lewis gun under air attack till his tanker sank beneath him, Fred great uncle, engineer,in his 60s had 3 ships torpedoed out from under him atlantic star ww1 vet  sgt major  miitary cross. 96 when he went,and many others who served.Yes it was hell.