David Irving: Intrepid Battler for Historical Truth

by Mark Weber

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev might have had David Irving in mind when he once warned that historians are dangerous because they have the power to upset everything. German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said that the main thing is not to write history, but to make it. Irving is a man who has been able to do some of both.

He is also living proof that the life of an historian need not be dull. The leftist British daily The Guardian once commented, “If one can overlook his outrageously odious views, Irving-like Hitler-can be a funny man. The humor comes from a hint of self-mockery and an obvious delight in making liberal flesh creep.”

At the Eleventh IHR Conference in October 1992 – as he had in his presentations at the IHR Conferences of 1983, 1989 and 1990 – this good friend of the Institute for Historical Review not only shed new light on important chapters of twentieth-century history, he delighted attendees with humorous updates on some of the new ways he had found to make liberal flesh creep.
In the three decades since he published his first book, Irving has firmly established himself as not only one of the most successful and widely-read historians of our time, but also as one of the most courageous. More