Dublin Opinion

3.2.11. Irving later wrote that he `always spoke as an historian, never as a politician’ to the DVU. Although in the strictest sense Irving spoke on `historical’ topics, the very platform he spoke on (DVU meetings and rallies) gave them an explicitly political character. Added to this is the convolution between the attractions of Irving and his topics to old RWEs and that these same people constituted the bedrock of DVU support. The topics Irving was requested to talk on were both historically and politically tendentious, in the sense stated by the OPC when they talked of the DVU’s playing down of the crimes of National Socialism” (Professor Hajo Funke)

Below is a copy of a report on David Irving by Professor Hajo Funke, professor of politics and culture at the Political Science Institute [Otto-Suhr Institute] of the Free University of Berlin. It was written by Funke at the request of the defendants in the Irving v Lipstadt trial. The report is also available here.

RTE chose to give Irving a platform for his views last week. They treated him as if he was an historian - controversial, yes, but still an historian. Davd Irving is not an historian. He has broken every rule to which historians adhere. He has falsified evidence, damaged archival material, and twisted historical documents to suit his Neo-Nazi agenda. He is a political activist, and yet, RTE got an historian in to debate with him, instead of somebody who knows about the European Neo-Nazi movement. In fact, Irving is returning to Ireland at the end of March, in order to speak at an extremist right-ring meeting. The venue and time are secret, but you can apply for a ticket through his website. The Irish racist group, immigrationcontrolplatform, have posted RTE´s interview with Irving on their YouTube site. Irving’s links with this grouping were completely ignored by the Late Late Show, who fell for the “free speech” straw man.

This is an attempt to redress the imbalance that The Late Late and Pat Kenny gave this country last week.

David Irving, Holocaust denial, and his connections to right-wing extremists and Neo-National Socialism (Neo-Nazism) In Germany
Definition & Concept of Right-wing Extremism

2. The definition and concept of right-wing extremism [RWE], especially in the 1980s

2.1. What constitutes RWE in Germany is well defined by the official institutions set up to defend the constitution of the Fereral Republic of Germany [Bundesrepublikdeutschland - FRG] and also in the political and social sciences.

2.2. The importance and significance of the official definition of RWE are related to the peculiarities of West Germany’s post-war democratic development to a system of values encompassing human and civil rights. As opposed to other classic western democracies, with their long tradition of freedom and rule of law, West Germany had to build a new democratic system of liberty, basic human rights, and a democratic political system, following the terroristic and anti-democratic rule of an ultra- nationalistic right-wing extremist regime between 1933 - 1945. Part of the ideological core of this system had been a deadly friend-foe dichotomy (described amongst others by the professor of constitution and law, Carl Schmitt), and a racist anti-Semitism.

2.3. The Basic Law of 1949 represents the endeavour to return to a (western) liberal tradition of freedom and individual rights. Contrary to some other long-lasting democracies like Britain it laid out explicit standards and values as immediate, direct laws. In other-words, basic human rights are legally binding and written into the Basic Law, the constitution of the FRG. For example the basic human rights of the dignity of man, individual freedom, equality before the law, freedom of belief, conscience and religion, etc: This represents a divergence from some other democratic traditions, but is clearly anchored in the uniqueness of recent German history.

2.4. The constitution’s right to protect itself is also enshrined in the Basic Law. One of the `fathers’ of the German constitution, Professor Carlo Schmid, posed a fundamental question during the debates of the Parliamentary Council charged with drawing up the constitution.

Should equality and liberty be granted absolutely and without any restriction? Should it also encompass those who singularly strive to achieve power and then having done so destroy freedom? I personally believe that the principles of democracy in itself cannot nuttier the means for its removal. Democracy rises to more than a mere: product of usefulness only where courage is found to believe in it as something that is necessary to preserve human dignity. Should this courage be found, then so should the courage to be intolerant of those who abuse democratic principles to destroy it.

2.5 This idea is expressed in the German idea of a `militant democracy’ [streitbare Demokratie]. In article 73 of the Basic Law it is stated that the federal government can exclusively legislate in the defence of constitutional rights to ensure their continuity and the security of the German federation and of the individual federal states. According to article 87.1 a federal law can initiate and establish central offices to collect information necessary to uphold the constitution. Thus state institutions also include a federal office for the defence of the constitution and an executive arm. It aims to guarantee the constitution and protect its enemies. Part of its activities are to monitor extra-constitutional and anti-constitutional activities, individuals, and groups, and to publish its findings.

2.6 The OPC defines as extremist all endeavours aimed at abusing, fully or in part, constitutional law and all efforts to replace it with a totalitarian nationalistic system, efforts often based on ideas of dictatorial order.<5>The principles protected are set out are as follows:

respect towards basic human rights as set out in Basic Law
democratic sovereignty of the people
division of power
accountability of the government
lawfulness of the administration
independence of the judicial system
a multi-party system equal opportunity for all political parties right to build democratic opposition.

2.1. The question of a ban on extremist activities in the German legal system.

2.1.1. Although the definition applied to the protection of the constitution is very clear, the one applied to banning political parties is more diffuse. This is due to the decisive role political parties play within the political system, as defined by the constitution. According to article 21 of the Basic Law, political parties have a special role to play in the realization of the democratic sovereignty of the people. As this privilege is guaranteed by constitutional law, only the Federal Constitutional Court [Bundesverfassungsgericht - BVG] can rule on if a political party violates this law. The initiative to ban a political party can only come from a constitutional institution, for example the federal government, or the upper and lower houses of parliament. The constitutional court has decided to ban a political party only twice since 1949. This was the case with the Socialist Reich Party [Sozialistische Reichsparte - SRP] in 1952 and the German Communist Party [Kommmunistische Partei Deutschland - KPD] in 1956. The argument was essentially that the constitutional law had been infringed by both parties.

2.1.2. To repeat: only constitutional organs are entitled to ask for a ban of a political party. And they in turn are free to decide whether to ask for such a prohibition or not. This means that a party that is not banned, but is nevertheless described as extremist by the OPC, is by no means necessarily democratic. It is therefore wrong to suggest, as Irving does in the case of the DVU, that a party is not extremist if it is not banned. In the case of the DVU the OPC is absolutely clear that the party is extremist and has extremist views (see below).

2.1.3. The procedure involved in banning political groups and associations (as aposed to parties) is different. In practice it is easier for official institutions to prohibit associations and societies that violate the Basic Law. This can be taken at the initiative of the Interior Ministries or ministers, both at a federal or state level. For instance in 1980 the militant military sport group `Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann’ was banned as was the neo-Nazi group `Volkssozialistische Bewegung Deutschlands/Partei der Arbeit’ and it’s youth wing `Junge Front’ in 1982. Michael Kuehnen’s neo-Nazi National Socialist’s Action Front [Aktionsfront Nationale Sozialisten - ANS, later to become the ANS/NA, NA for National Activists] Was likewise banned in December 1983. There were also a series of bans in the 1990s (see below).

2.2 Additional definitions from the political and social sciences.

2.2.1. Although there is a debate as to what the definition of RWE legitimately encompasses, there is wide academic consensus that RWE is essentially anti-democratic, in that it stands contrary to the tradition of human rights and the constitutional state. Ethnocentricity, often in the form of overt racism and nationalism, are at the core of an ideology that claims superiority over all other values. The values of universal human rights (of individual liberty, freedom, equality, respect of human dignity) are despised, rejected, or denied - as well as fundamental rights of freedom of speech, thought, conscience and religion. RWE is directed against parliamentary and pluralistic democratic political values and systems, against the sovereignty of the people and the division of power. RWE aims to achieve an authoritarian, totalitarian and centralized power system, often in the form of a hierarchical anti-democratic one-party movement, ruled by a strong leader.

2.2.2. Uwe Backes and Eckhard Jesse, prominent academic experts on extremism in Germany, define RWE as a collective name for various anti-democratic beliefs and efforts. The core of this doctrine denies the basic claim of equality represented by equal rights. These extremists principally advocate inequality and an aggressive nationalism that breeds resentment against ethnically foreign groups; a phenomenon often leading to an advocacy of naked racism. They seek a strong state that will realize the `objective’ interest of nationalist values, even by military means.

2.2.3. This ideological impulse to fight back is often not confined to mere political rhetoric. Within the framework of political culture and political psychology, the aggressive authoritarianism of RWE presents a specific view of perceiving the world as one surrounded by dangerous enemies, so that fighting back is essentially the only solution to survival (although the perceived enemies are merely scapegoats). As this tendency towards authoritarian aggression against weak scapegoats solves neither the social nor the personal problems of the aggressor, these aggressions have an addictive quality. Consequently right-wing extremists perceive themselves, as recognised by Adorno and Alport, in a paranoid way as `persecuted persecutors’. RWE’s ideology of inequality and denial of human rights leads to advocating violence. RWE is often connected with an ideology and/or a practical tendency towards violence, militancy, and terror (see especially the neo-Nazi groups in eastern Germany).

2.2.4. Thus the belief system inherent in RWE is the perception of dangerous enemies within and without that have to be defeated if their own world and values are to survive. These internal `enemies’ are often migrants, foreigners, or others of different opinion who are perceived as threatening their supposed homogenous society and state system. These foreigners are often the scapegoats for the existing social miseries in society, and as such the targets of political violence. Such racist perceptions of the outer world lead externally to ideas of containing or even conquering this outer world by expansion (a new Reich) or an aggressive foreign policy.

2.2.5. In general RWE tendencies and groups can arise in many forms, not only in Germany, but in Great Britain (the National Front), France (Jean Marie LePen), Austria (Jörg Haider’s Austrian Federal Party - FPÖ) or in Belgium (Vlaams bloc)

2.2.6. However German RWE is particular in its ambivalent relationship to the most extreme form of nationalism in German history - National Socialism [henceforth NS]. Despite the de facto military and moral disaster of NS, the resulting destruction and self-destruction (the genocide of Jews, gypsies and Slavs), many right wing extremists see in NS a point of orientation. In many ways historical NS acts as a model for RWE within the FRG. NS, although tactically criticised, may be fully identified with, its characteristics applauded, and its symbols used as an efficient means of bringing out confrontational behaviour. To serve this purpose various tactics are used to `save’, `rescue’, or rehabilitate the NS ideology (sometimes in the Italian version of fascism) by:

* relativising and playing down the its atrocities
* denying some of these atrocities
* in its most radical form, rehabilitating the system by a form of radical negation and denial, so called `revisionism’ or `denialism.”

2.2.7. These tactics are of interest when analyzing the shape and the format of post-war RWE in Germany. This ideological affinity with NS and the resulting attempts to free NS of the burden of its crimes is of pivotal importance for national and international `networking’ within the RWE scene, both in Germany and elsewhere in Europe and North America.. The revisionist campaign of Auschwitz denial since the late 1980s plays a key ideological and organisational role in this effort.

2.2.8. To summarize. RWE strives towards a hierarchical, anti-democratic, and even totalitarian state, based on cultural or racist subordination, the rejection of `others’, especially so-called inferior races, foreigners, and other scapegoats. Implementation of this ideology of subordination often takes the form of advocating and using physical violence.

2.3. `Old’ and `new’ RWE.

2.3.1. The terms old and new RWE are clearly defined in academic literature. Grosso modo the old RWE (sometimes referred to as the `ewig Gestrigen’ - literally `eternal stick-in-the-muds’) align themselves to more state-orientated modes of extreme nationalism. They identify with the fascist traditions of authoritarianism that were prevalent for example at the end of the Weimar Republic or with traditions of the Weimar Hamburg front, which combined the ultra-nationalists ‘Deutsche Nationale’. with Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers Party [Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei - NSDAP].

2.3.2.The new RWE presents itself as an updated, so-called `modernized’ version of the same basic idea. They pay lip service to a non-racist recognition of `other’ ethnic groups, conceptualized as `ethno-pluralism’, which is de facto ethno-pluralistic racism. They de facto also do not accept principles of Enlightenment and the universality of basic human rights. They have intellectual links to the far right and extreme nationalists within the `conservative revolution’ of the late Weimar Republic (with persons like Ernst Ringer, Carl Schmitt, or Möller van den Bruck). For some of the new RWE, the belief systems encompassed in Judeo-Christianity, Marxism and the idea of basic equality are themselves eliminatory of the Celtic or Nordic traditions, the `justification’ for the `greatest genocide’ in history. Thus the new RWE appeals to the peoples of the world to rejuvenate their unique cultural heritages and demand the basic right to be `different’. The belief propagates animosity towards multi-racial society and other cultures and belief systems.

2.3.3. Parts of the new right try to disguise their RWE affiliations by presenting themselves as the new `democratic’ right, in as far as they fear the attentions of the OPC might oust them from the democratic system. Having styled themselves as democratic these groups can broaden their sphere of influence, using this democratic-stance-to build bridges between national conservatives and RWE. Thus in the late 1980s the RWE parties of the so-called `Republicans’ [die Republikaner] - and the German People’s Union [Deutsche Volksunion’ - DVU] positioned themselves accordingly, Nevertheless they are perceived as anti-constitutional by the OPC.

2.3.4. Part of RWE supports national revolutionary politics, often arguing and agitating for a third way between capitalism and socialism, that of nationalist liberation and a corresponding movement (like the neo-Nazis in the 1990s in eastern Germany). These groups often see parallels between themselves and similar groups in the NS movement of the 1930s, and are avid exponents of a socialist version of a nationalist, racist movement. Examples of this are the present neo-Nazis, the revitalized neo-Nazi youth organization of the German National Democratic Party [Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands - NPD] the Young National Democrats [Jungen Nationaldemokraten - . JN] or the NS-oriented groups centred around Michael Kühnen, Christian Worch and Ewald Althans, with whom Irving had strong ties in 1990 -1993 (see below).

2.3.5. This process of radicalisation within RWE has been particularly militant in the former German Democratic Republic [Deutsche Demokratische Republik - GDR] immediately prior to, during, and after German reunification. This opened a `space’ for neo-Nazi agitation and propaganda. The male youth of eastern Germany has proven particularly recipient to such ideas.

2.4 Features and peculiarities of old and new RWE in Germany after 1945.

2.4.1. After 1945 the RWE world was inhibited for decades by the total political, moral and military defeat of NS. But despite the Allied repression of extremist attitudes, in post-war west Germany the west-German population continued to display anti-Semitic prejudices in one way or another.<15> According to first polls taken by the American occupying forces up to 40 % of the population identified with right-wing, anti-Semitic attitudes. In the late 1970s the well-known Sinus-study considered 13 % of the population as having a full scale RWE belief system. Similarly in the late 1990s according to different polls up to 30 % of the population identified with anti-foreigner sentiments or anti-Semitic beliefs.

2.4.2. Politically the FRG has experienced at least three waves of RWE:

* in the late 1940s (resulting in a ban on the SRP).
* in the late 1960s (centred on the NPD and, after its 1969 election defeat, on Dr. Gerhard Frey’s DVU).
* since the late 1980s with Franz Schönhuber’s newly founded Republicans, the DVU, and NPD, coupled and with militant neo-Nazi activists, operating partially beyond the pale of the `established’ RWE.

2.4.3. According to Richard Stöss RWE secured 1.4 million votes in the 1949 election (that is 5.7 % of the population). During the second RWE-wave in the late 1960s RWE secured 1.4 million votes (that is 4.3 % of the votes). The NPD narrowly failed to get into parliament because of the 5%-hurdle in the German voting system . In 1989 during the third RWE wave the Republicans, together with the DVU and NPD secured 2.5 million votes (that is 8.8 % of the votes in the European parliament’s election).

2.4.4. Official membership of the `organized’ RWE went through ups and downs. First counts in 1954 registered 80,000 persons as members of organized RWE. By the early 1960s this membership had~decreased to 20,000, before the numbers increasing again to 40,000, boosted by NPD memberships. The late 1960s saw an ebb back 20,000. In the early 1990s RWE membership was reckoned at some 40..000 again.

3. David Irving and the right-wing extremist German People’s Union [Deutsche Volksunion - DVU), the German National Newspaper [Deutsche Nationalzeitung - DNZ); Dr. Gerhard Frey.

3.1. Irving’s earlier activities in Germany, 1978 -1981.

3.1.1. Based on his publishing (particularly his biographies of Hitler and Field Marshall Erwin Rommel) Irving’s earlier tours in Germany and Austria had involved such bodies and organisations as banks, bookshops, student fraternities [Burschenschaften], US-Army Corps stationed in Germany, and so on. At the same ‘time Irving became increasingly feted by national-conservative and right-wing individuals and organisations in Germany, some of them RWE.

3.1.2. Foremost was Dr. Gert Sudholt, head of the Druffel Verlag, and his Society for free Communication [Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik - GfP].Sudholt was at the time a member of the NPD in Munich and owner of the Druffel Verlag, that in turn specialised in publishing important NS figures. The GfP had been set up in 1960 by the former Reich deputy-spokesman of the NSDAP, Helmut Siindermann. Although ostensibly a cultural organisation to allow former NS authors an open forum, the GfP vehemently combated what it saw as the `untrue descriptions of the causes and backgrounds to both world wars and the defamation of German soldiery’.

3.1.3. Irving also spoke to other organisations with connections to the GfP, such as the `Collegium Humanum’ in Vlotho,’ the `Deutsches Kulturwerk Europäischen Geistes’, the `Bund Heimattreüer Jügend’, the `Verein für Kultur and Zeitgeschichte’, and Dietmar Munier of the Arndt-Verlag and his group `Sturmwind’. All these groups and individuals can be counted likewise as right-wing and/or with links to the right-wing extremist circles. Some of them were to remain loyal supporters of Irving in the 1990s.

3.2 Irving’s activities for the DVU, 1981-1987.

3.2.1. After the SRP was banned in 1952, RWE had fallen into disarray until in the early 1960s a new collective organisation, the NPD, was formed. The NPD had appointed a moderate leader, Friedrich Thielen, so as to appeal more to national conservatives, although the cadre itself was in fact far more right-wing. Subsequently in state elections they made relative gains (in the mid 1960s up to 9.8 % of the votes). However in 1969 they failed to take any seats in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. After this defeat the NPD faltered despite a change of leadership.

3.2.2. As a result of the NPD’s defeat in 1969 the DVU was formed in 1971, with the aim of gathering together the splinter group’s alienated from the NPD and in an attempt to galvinize a fragmented RWE. The DVU thus constituted a collecting tank for the remnants of the NPD, particularly the so-called `ewig Gestrigen’, the national conservatives and old Nazis who partially or fully still identified with the ideals, ideas, and even practices of NS. Thus this organization led by Dr. Gerhard Frey had within it far right-wingers, and since the 1980s has been considered to constitute the hardcore of old RWE in Germany

3.2.3. The DVU’s effectiveness lay in organizing their members through subscription to Frey’s newspapers, especially the German National Newspaper [Die Deutsche Nationalzeitung - DNZ] which by 1980 had 10;000 subscribers: Another effective organizational instrument was their annual rally, normally in Passau.

3.2.4. In 1986 the DVU and NPD formulated a common election strategy,and put forth..a. joint list for the Bavarian state election and the federal election in 1987. It then became known as the DVU - Liste D [List Germany]. The OPC described this list as having an anti-constitutional goal because the organizations concerned and Dr. Gerhard Frey’s magazines were considered RWE. According to the office, Frey, through his publications, incited anti-Semitism and hatred against foreigners, distorted historical truths about NS, glorified the leading persons of the NS-system, and defamed the present day representatives of democratic parties. In their opinion the party merely paid lip service to its declared belief in democracy and in the constitutional and free democratic basis of the Federal German [`freiheitlich demokratische Grundordnung’] for tactical reasons.

3.2.5. This should be matched against Irving’s statement that the DVU is a long standing democratic party. Neither the OPC nor academic social-science research would accept this opinion. The DVU as well Dr. Gerhard Frey’s DNZ has for decades been declared RWE (or radical right wing) by the OPC. As early as 1971 the OPC stated in a report that Dr. Gerhard Frey’s DNZ had maintained a leading position in radical right-wing journalism. For example the 1985 VSB of Lower Saxony outlined the party platform and its profile as `Hatred against foreigners, anti-Semitism, playing down of the national socialist terror regime and disparagement of democratic institutions and persons.

3.2.6. The contents of the DNZ can be described as a `secondary anti-Semitism’, designed to address the `ewig Gestrigen’ mind-set. For instance Jewish representatives are held responsible not only for the widespread stories about alleged atrocities committed against the Jews, but also for the fact that the Germans have to continually pay a financial, moral, and political price for the Holocaust. This variant of anti-Semitism is often fused with the `old’ one.

3.2.7. So-called revisionism was also identified by the OPC as playing a strategic part in DVU propaganda. Long before the debate on the ‘Auschwitz-lie’ was intensified by the Leuchter Report, Frey tactically relativised or even denied major NS crimes. As early as 1977 the radical revisionist Arthur Butz, who denied the existence of gas chambers in his denialist classic `The hoax of the 20th Century’ was presented with the DNZ honorary award for political victims of persecution. The book was also serialized in the DNZ in the same year. In 1979 the book was officially labelled as one that invoked racial hatred and played down the atrocities of the Nazi regime.

3.2.8. Finally Frey partially co-operated with more militant and extremist fringes of the RWE scene, groups whom in public he criticises for tactical reasons, namely the NPD and even RWE terrorists. For example Frey co-operated with the terrorists of the Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, whom he used as body guards at DVU rallies in 1977. Roland Tabbert, who co-ordinated the DVU’s 1987 election campaign, was later president of the anti-Semitic Anti-Zionist Action [Anti-Zionist Action - AZA] within the neo-Nazi movement. Members of the militant neo-Nazi Free German Workers’ Party [Freiheitliche Deutsche Arbeiter Partei - FAP, banned in 1995] were present at the DVU annual meeting in Munich in 1986. Violent rightwing attacks against foreigners were also executed by DVU members.

3.2.9. Irving’s `soft’ revisionist themes of the 1980s (Winston Churchill as a warmonger, 100,000 to 250,000 dead in Dresden, the debunking of the `myth’ of Erwin Rommel as a hero of the resistance against Hitler, the stylising of Rudolf Hess as a martyr for freedom etc.) were all themes which exercised the German public mind, but in particular found a resonance in national conservative and RWE circles.. ,This corresponded with the DVU’s political attempts to relativise the crimes of NS, particularly the question of Germany’s war guilt and the Holocaust, and overlapped with the DVU’s latent anti-Semitism. In short Irving was an important spokesman for the DVU to win over to their party.

3.2.10. Irving was first informed that he would be welcome to address DVU meetings in 1981, and by 1982 had managed to win Irving’s services as a star speaker for the DVU. In that year Irving spoke for the DVU in 10 German cities on `the unatoned Holocaust - the expulsion of the Germans’ [’Der ungesühnte Holocaust - die Vertreibung der Deutschen’].<40> On 9 May 1982 Irving received the DNZ’s European Freedom Prize [`Europäischen Freiheitspreises der Deutschen National Zeitung’].<41> By the end of 1982 the DVU had apparently paid Irving somewhere in the region of DM100,000 for his speeches and `services’ [`Verdienste’]. A model of blocks of 10 speeches, initially at a fee of DM 2,000 per speech, later reduced to DM 1,500, was to continue until 1987.

3.2.11. Irving later wrote that he `always spoke as an historian, never as a politician’ to the DVU.<44> Although in the strictest sense Irving spoke on `historical’ topics, the very platform he spoke on (DVU meetings and rallies) gave them an explicitly political character. Added to this is the convolution between the attractions of Irving and his topics to old RWEs and that these same people constituted the bedrock of DVU support. The topics Irving was requested to talk on were both historically and politically tendentious, in the sense stated by the OPC when they talked of the DVU’s playing down of the crimes of National Socialism.

3.2.12. For instance Frey wrote to Irving on 23 July 1983, giving him precise instructions for his forthcoming lectures.

… we agreed during our phone-call yesterday, that you should tackle the topic of the guilt of aerial terror in your September lecture series. You might perhaps take the occasion in the various towns to briefly go into the corresponding attacks. Regarding the topic as a whole there is a general interest everywhere in who began when and where with aerial terror and in what way? Which related planning occurred from what reasons and under what conditions when and where? What aerial attacks were allowed for in international law and which break international law? How are the three main accusations against the Germans since then [World War II], namely Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry, to be judged? […] Why were.attacks preferred on working-class areas to attacks on exclusive residential districts? What was the German answer and how did it correspond to the bombardments of allied planes in terms of the number of bombs dropped, the intensity of detonation, the loss of housing and the death rate? How are the Allied bombardments of 1945 to be classified, for example Dresden, when the war had long been decided? How many deaths did the Allied attacks on concentration camps and ships with concentration camp prisoners cause? Perhaps the lecture should finish with-ait examination-.of-the Nuremberg trial and Rudolf Hess. […] Please leave Hitler and the Jews unmentioned.

3.2.13. As well as orchestrating the contents of Irving’s speeches, Frey carefully controlled their timing in order for the DVU to maximum political impact from them. In 1982 an American drama series entitled `Holocaust’ was to be repeated on German television. The first showing in 1979 had been watched by millions of Germans and despite the controversy surrounding it is considered as representing a mile-stone in German public consciousness about the Holocaust. With respect to Irving’s forthcoming lectures Frey wrote to Irving,

I suggest the next series of lectures begin on Friday 12 November [1982] and end on Sunday 21 November (10 meetings) on the same conditions. A theme worth considering could be “Who bears responsibility for the unatoned holocaust of the expulsion?” [i.e. of the Germans from former Reich territories which fell to eastern Europe]. I hope we will formulate this more succinctly and impressively. In the enclosed copy you’ll find the dates for the repeat of the Hollywood-Holocaust soap on “German” television. During these days you will speak, at a different time, about the expulsion holocaust and provide the true historical accompanying music to the,horror-slush..Please again..leave Hitler.and.the Jews out completely.

5. Chronological breakdown.

5.1 1989: `German historians - liars and cowards’

5.1.1. Irving visited Germany three times in 1989: from 8 July to 24 July, 30 September to 7 October, and 2 to 13 November.

5.1.2. From 8 July to 24 July 1989 Irving was ostensibly in Germany as an `consultant historian’ to an American film team on a series entitled `Remembering World War II’, mainly organising interviews with former Nazis. <152> During the visit Irving met Ewald Althans and Karl Philipp, two men who would be decisive in organising many of Irving’s activities in Germany until his expulsion in 1993:

5.1.3. Irving would seem to have first met Althans after a speech in Toronto on. .4 . March 1989. He recorded in his diary, `One of ` [Franz] Schonhuber’s lieutenants there; Ewald —, asked if I would speak for Sch.: jawohl [yes sir]. On 6 March he `…breakfast with Ewald — to discuss if and how I could help Schoenhuber. Handed a letter to him setting out my willingness, and orally told him my terms for a proposed lecture tour.

5.1.4. Initially Irving seems to have had some doubts about Althans on seeing him in London, writing that he seemed `a bit of a Nazi, but helpful.’ A month later Irving was obviously more impressed. ‘Ewald Althans has arrived by plane and is full of plans for a new tour by me of Germany, France and Spain in late February. Althans makes a very good impression, businesslike and ambitious, keen, and organized. He has learned a lot already. Althans was obviously already a requested commodity in revisionist circles as it would seem that he flew to Irving after having visited Pedro Varela, `organiser’ of Irving’s Spanish tour of 17 - 20 November 1989.

5.1.5. On the 15 or 16 July 1989 Irving met Karl Philipp in Germany for the first time `for a meeting’. In his diary he described Philipp as `…a rather rightwing friend of Tony Hancock, he says. (Something makes me suspect he may be a stoolpigeon however). He is willing to arrange an Austrian speaking tour for me in November. On the 22 July Irving met Philipp a second time at Vlotho, in the Collegium Humanum to arrange Irving’s November tour of Austria. At the meeting `with various rightwing gentlemen’ to whom Irving `delivered a ten minute pep talk’, were Professor Haverback of the Collegitun Humanum and Major Otto-Ernst Remer `hero of July 20 1944 in Berlin’. Irving was not loath to use Philipp’s journalistic contacts to neo-Nazi and denialist newspapers like CODE, Sieg, or the Remer Depesche. For instance Philipp later asked Irving to fax him an article from the London Jewish Chronicle to enable Philipp to write up an article on the propaganda campaign against Irving.` The two men likewise enjoyed contacts to Franz Schoenhuber.

5.1.6. The first days of Irving’s October visit to Germany were spent perfecting a protest against the Berlin radio station Transmitter Free Berlin [Sender Freies Berlin - SFB]. Irving had been invited to take part in a round-table discussion with historians.<163> Upon their refusal to take part if Irving attended because of the repugnance of his views, Irving orchestrated a protest in front of the radio offices under the title `German historians - liars and cowards.’

5.1.7. The protest had already been planned in advance with the help of Althans and Philipp. Ernst Zündel had offered to pay DM 500 towards Irving’s flight and provide willing “`Zündelists”‘ for the protest. Irving, conscious of his image in Germany, planned in advance to hold two brief unannounced demonstrations, thus avoiding both illegality and at the same time avoiding incurring a counter demonstration. Irving had also asked the DVU if they could send any demonstrators.On 1 October Irving met Althans and Philips in Berlin. The next day he `…addressed a briefing session for the helpers for tomorrow’s demonstrations. Twenty-three people, some quite rough.’

5.1.8. In the morning of 3 October Irving held a press conference in the Kempinski Hotel. Philipp had previously given publicity in Germany for the original launch of the Leuchter Report in London on 23 June 1989. This time he obliged with a transcript of the press conference in Berlin published in Sieg and CODE. The conference, that ran under the motto `Truth frees’ can be considered a German press launch of the Leuchter Report. Irving told journalists `The result of this report is final: There was no mass murder with poison gas.’ Two-other passages will suffice to give the tenor of Irving’s views.

Journalist: `Mr Irving, you describe the gas chambers as a fairy tale, better said propaganda. In that case who invented this fairy tale or this propaganda?’

Irving: `We, the English, invented it. The Political Warfare Executive had already thought up this propaganda lie in 1942.’

Journalist: `In your opinion what was Auschwitz?’

Irving: `A work camp. One needed forced labour for industry.’

Journalist: `Why is Auschwitz called an extermination camp then?’

Irving: `I don’t. Only you and the German historians. It is a defamation of the German people if one talks of extermination camps or death camps.’

5.1.9. Irving held two brief demonstrations before and after the radio program in an attempt to confront the other participants in the radio show.

5.1.10. On 3 November Irving spoke to a closed meeting organised by Althans in the Bayrischer Hof in Munich. Amongst the 86 guests was Dr. Gerd Sudholt. From the 4-10 November Irving was on a troubled speaking tour through Austria, planned accompanied at times by Philipp and Althans. The tour had been advertised in Sieg, which had announced that Irving would answer the question `if there were gas chambers in German concentration camps for the mass murder of humans with Zyclon-B.’ Of note for the report is a meeting of 7 November. After a Linz restaurant refused to allow Irving to speak there, he and 120 invited guests were allowed to hold the meeting in castle Hochscharten outside Markflecken Waizenkirchen. The castle belonged to Robert Wimmer. When the Austrian police arrived Irving appeared with his mouth demonstratively covered with masking tape.

He was not allowed to speak and had to make do with signing autographs.

Meanwhile some 300 people had packed into the castle’s little schoolroom to hear me, overflowing into the outside rooms. I appeared amongst them with a sticking plaster covering my mouth, and a notice stuck to my back reading: “Sorry, can’t speak - but can sign books!” Ewald [Althans] delivered my lecture, from memory, using notes I had prepared for him. He is a fine speaker, and when he relied on his own material rather than mine he was very good.

5.1.11. On 11 November Irving drove back to Germany with Althans and gave a dinner speech At-the- behest of Lars. de Flon of the Alverlag in Bad Neuenahr. Before the meeting Irving had tea with de Flon `and his old Nazi (S S) friend Woltersdorf.’

5.1.12. The next day Irving drove to Hagenau, Alsace `with Ewald and his skinhead friend –…’, for a revisionist conference organised by Thies Christophersen. To begin with; and despite Irving’s conversion, he seemed to have balked at attending the congress. Irving’s ultimate presence in Hagenau is proof of how far he had swung since the 1970s and 1980s. Christophersen had been long interested in Irving, although Irving less so in him. He had written to Irving in 1979, bringing Irving’s attention to his book `The Auschwitz Lie’ and expressing his admiration for Irving’s form of revisionism…..

You said during your presentation in Kiel when a listener mentioned the Auschwitz lie to you that you did not want to discuss the topic because you were not tired of life. I understand this completely. For this reason I will always continue to defend you. There enough historians today who can disprove the Holocaust. They are all silenced. It would be bad if you too were to be silenced. We are eternally grateful for your influence. You are doing the right thing. Please don’t allow yourself be deterred.

5.1.13. Christophersen had also invited Irving to speak in Antwerp in 1982, mentioning that he and Irving had once met and spoken briefly with one another, and that Christophersen was the person who regularly sent him Die Bauernschaft.

5.1.14. Christophersen himself apparently did not attend the Hagenau conference because of the threat of arrest if he entered France, which could have entailed deportation to Germany to face charges. The conference was attended by amongst others, Robert Faurisson, Ernst Zündel, Arthur Butz, Christian Worch, Karl Philipp, Wilhelm Staeglich, Udo Walendy, and Christa Goerth.

5.1.15. Irving had initially wanted to be the only speaker, `this for optical reasons, but surely understandable to you’ [`dies aus optisch, aber Ihnen sicherlich verstaendlichen, Griinden.’]. Christophersen initially promised him a speaking slot to himself on a separate evening, but later tabled Irving to speak after Faurisson.

5.1.16. There is no direct record of Irving’s speech, but its gist can be reconstructed. After the conference Christophersen wrote to Irving enclosing a reader’s letter for Die Bauernschaft from a disgruntled reader who had attended an Irving speech in Austria. The reader took issue with Irving’s description in his speech of the shooting of 5,000 Jews in Riga on 30 November 1941. Christophersen’s comment on the letter was that `I invited David Irving [to Hagenau] because he has now arrived at the same realisation as us about the gas chambers.’

5.1.17. From a draft of the conference for his newspaper Die Bauernschaft, that Christophersen sent to Irving, it would seem that at Hagenau Irving gave his stock reasons for the lack of gas chambers in Auschwitz (British propaganda, Arno Mayer, the Auschwitz `death-books, etc.) so that `… fewer people died in Auschwitz during the whole war than in a single attack on Hamburg.’ Further,

On the question what happened to the Jews Irving said that certainly some were murdered, but that was the least of them. Many died in flight exactly like the Germans after the expulsion [from eastern Europe]. But many disappeared and live under other names in Israel or New York.

6. Judicial Sanctions.

The OPC differentiates between a wider and narrower (radical) version of revisionism. The wider concept includes all right-wing extremist attempts to relativise NS. The narrower concept concentrates on the denial of the mass murder of Jews in the gas chambers, that is to say on the ‘Auschwitz lie.’ This form of revisionism has been long punishable in Germany under articles 130 [incitement of the people -Volksverhetzung], 185 [slander - Beleidigung] and 189 [disparagement] of the criminal code [Strafgesetzbuch - StGB].

In the 1980s the revisionist campaign led to a sharpening of these laws. The Jews, as former inmates of concentration camps, were insulted by the denialist statements, but such was the burden of their experiences that it was anticipated that many would not want to relive them by bringing a case to court. Subsequently the law was altered in 1985 so that the state could initiate action on the part of the plaintiff. The law was sharpened once again in 1994 when denying the Holocaust (the so-called `Auschwitz-lie’) was expressly forbidden, punishable with up to 5 years imprisonment.

Up until 1988/9 when Irving’s pronouncements on the Holocaust could still be considered as `soft’ revisionism; he could rely on the legal and financial weight of the DVU to decisively quash all commentaries which labelled him a `denialist’ or that he was an exponent of the ‘Auschwitz lie.’ With his whole-hearted embracement of the findings of the Leuchter Report Irving’s legal position, became at once more precarious, although he continued to a degree to exercise the same kind of caution practiced by Frey and the DVU. Although 1989 remained for Irving personally a period of grace as far as legal prosecution went, it was clear that the revisionist campaign initiated by the Leuchter Report was attracting the attentions of the police and courts. In justifying his expulsion from Germany the Munich authorities explained that ‘To begin with your political activities were inconspicuous and largely took place unnoticed by the wider public. But as of summer 1990 you increasingly appeared at meetings of right-wing extremist groups, especially also in the new Federal states.’

It would be beyond the scope of this report to consider in detail all of the speaking bans (partial or complete) Irving received in the period 1990-1993. not to mention the number of meetings banned at the initiative of the local authorities, or cancelled by those who offered premises to Irving’s organisers. It is considered sufficient to examine in detail three exemplary instances of Irving’s conflict with the German judicial system and to detail in the process the German courts’ estimation of Irving’s activities in Germany, leading up to his final expulsion in November 1993.

In light of Irving’s later claims to the contrary, it is worth noting that Irving was fully aware of the laws that both he, and those around him, were infringing in Germany in denying the Holocaust. In the early 1980s the German embassy had written to him confirming that the DVU was not an `illegal organisation’. Nevertheless the Consul General reminded Irving, that as a foreign national he was subject to 6 section 3 of the German Foreigners Act of 1965 concerning political activities which forbade him to endanger the.free democratic constitutional structure of the Federal Republic, or support any parties, groups or directions that did the same outside the purview of the German law. This was the self-same paragraph under which Irving was to receive his first speaking ban in Passau in March 1990. Thus Irving himself had long been aware of the laws he was in danger of infringing with his speeches. In Canada in October 1991 Irving told his audience the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, whom Irving described in the same speech as the `extended arm’of `you know who’ [i.e. the Jewish people]

…wanted to talk to me about certain things I had done and said in Germany. Well what I do and say in Germany unfortunately dös violate the law in Germany. I am well aware of that. And I go round from meeting place to meeting place in Germany now quite voluntarily sticking my neck out, because Germany is one of the most difficult places in the world to speak now.

6.1 Partial speaking ban [Redeverbot] of 8 November 1991.

6.1.1. On 8 November Irving was invited to speak in Lentförden [Segeberg] to the Freundeskreis “Ein Herz Mir Deutschland.” by Ulrich Harder. The Minister of the Interior of Schleswig Holstein ordered a partial speaking ban [`eingeschränktes Redeverbot’], defining particular topics Irving was forbidden to talk on, citing the law governing foreign nationals [Auslaenderrecht] concerning disruption of the public peace [`Störung des öffentlichen Friedens’]. The ban was handed to Irving at the meeting. This seems to have had little effect on Irving. He recorded in his diary that `Police handed me a Verordnung [ordinance] of Kreis Segeburg, what I am not allowed to say, in such detail that I could not reits [Sic] the temptation to read out the whole document, stressing at each paragraph, “I am not allowed to say that either. . . !” Irving later described the meeting as `successful’.

6.1.2. Ulrich Harder was not so glib. He wrote to Irving explaining to him why he had excluded the television teams Irving had brought with him to a meeting in Harburg the night before, and what such a ban might entail.

I know that you don’t think much of law…, but I think it better for your future appearances in Germany if one tries to reverse such rulings. [… ]

A word about Harburg - you will understand my behaviour a little better after Lentförden. Naturally I have known you long enough to know that you would bring with you to the meeting place in Harburg in the end. Otherwise you would not be David Irving. It was clear beforehand that the owner, even if with great reservation, would allow the television into the pub. [… ]

On the other hand the meeting with you was a closed meeting. Let’s. imagine there had been somebody in the hall, or had arrived. from the authorities. Then he would have been able, with the appropriate order in his pocket, to. immediately. dissolve the meeting if the television had. been in the hall from the start or it had been recognisable that they would have come in. In judicial German it would have then `been produced for the public’ and a closed, private meeting would have become a public one and that one would have certainly banned. Therefore also the evasion in the last ten minutes.

To explain all of this to you would have been too long-winded in Harburg. This is why I acted as I did and did not let the television into the anteroom

[…]You are an indescribable positive factor for our country! which we seek to serve in our way. Enough compliments?

6.1.3. Irving then employed [bevolimachtige] Ulrich Harder to raise a objection [`Widerspruch’] to the ban for him, which Harder duly undertook, in co-operation with H.J. Rieger.

6.1.4. In comparison to the judicial wrangling surrounding Irving’s fine of July 1991 (see below) Harder had to convince Irving that the proper course of action was to avoid politics in the courts.

You will hopefully have seen [in the action) I have not argued with the cause but legally. At the moment one dös not get anywhere with the CAUSE itself, only with false application of the law. But I don’t mean a ’secondary theatre of war’, as you say, rather flak cover for: the main thrust. Without resistance the authorities could become over confident. That would damage you as regards the freedom of movement in Germany.

6.1.5. Irving’s protest [Wiederspruch] was considered and rejected on 15 November 1991 with a ruling [Wiederspruchsbescheid] of 12 February 1992, which Irving in turn took action against on 4 March 1992. Irving claimed that his speech was not political but scholarly [Wissenschaftlich] and that the ban infringed his rights as embodied in the civil code [Grundrecht] Article 5. Paragraph 3 protecting freedom of scientific research and teaching. Even if the speech had been political he was protected by Article 5, Paragraph 1 ensuring freedom of expression.

6.1.6. On 25 May 1992 the court ruled against Irving ruling that Irving’s speech had threatened to damage the image of the Federal Republic at a time of flux in Europe and as Germany’s neighbours looked on nervously with fears of a re-birth of a nationalist spirit in Germany. The court ruled that Irving had intended in his speech to influence public political opinion

… your speech is suitable and intended to rake up emotions in the audience to allow clear right-wing extremist statements to be aired in public. The thoughts of your like-minded audience can be further stimulated so that they express Nazi opinions in public, vociferously repeat slogans for a revival of Nazi rule.

And further:

His speeches are not the mere representation of historical events. The statements the plaintiff makes; especially those in which.he refers to the so-called Leuchter Report, are primarily intended to supply points of argument to those social groups in the Federal Republic whose aim is a renewed spreading of National Socialist thought. You offer the psuedo-scientific background which provides right-wing extremist groups a legitimacy and in addition is meant to allow, them. to convince those who are generally openly disposed to right-wing theses, but faced with the crimes of the National Socialists are lost for arguments, of their ideas.

The court ruled that

In calling the racial murder by the National Socialists a lie, he [Irving] deprives the Jews the inhuman fate that they exposed too merely because of their origins. The tendency to free National Socialism from the stigma of the murder of the Jews is very clearly apparent in the plaintiff.

6.1.7. Irving appealed again on 25 June 1992, calling for the original ban to be declared unlawful and the court ruling of 25 May 1992 to be changed. In the final instance before Schleswig-Holstein’s higher administrative court in October 1993 Irving’s appeal was rejected. The court concluded that because of numerous judgements Irving was well aware of legal sanctions against the public denial of the Holocaust, and that his continued statements despite this allowed the conclusion that he was conscious of the degrading character of his opinions.<499>

6.1.8 It added that in as far as Irving supported his case with the Leuchter Report ‘this is completely unsuited to refute the historical fact of the Holocaust.’ Indeed In as far as the plaintiff bases his findings on the so-called Leuchter report it is already very doubtful if his interpretation of history can be called research at all.’

6.1.9. Irving, who had `acquired himself the reputation as a right-wing extremist. writer and historian [’sich den Ruf eines rechtsextremen Schrifstellers and Historikers erworben.’ had committed a ‘considerable disturbance of the public safety and order.’ with his statements on the Third Reich and the Second World War, statements that represented a `mockery’ [`Verhöhnung’] of the victims of National Socialism.

6.2. Irving’s arrest as leader of an illegal demonstration, 21 May 1990 and the consequences.

6.2.1 Following an illegal demonstration to the Feldherrenhalle in Munich after the revisionist congress `Wahrheit macht Frei’ on 21 April 1990 Irving, Ewald Althans, and Christian Worch were the subjects of a preliminary investigation [Ermittlungsverfahren]. Irving was arrested during the investigation and later that night freed on bail.

7. The containment of David Irving’s activities and his shrinking influence since 1993/1994, but ongoing identification with Holocaust denial.

7.1. No sooner back in England after his expulsion, than Irving began to think of ways to make good the effects of the ban. `Karl Philipp phoned twice, from Tony’s and from Gatwick. I suggest I video a speech in German, for distribution. A great idea, he agrees. Working title “Ich komme Wieder.”[”I’ll be back”].`

7.2 On 23 November 1993 Irving wrote to Hajo Hermann

`…in my absence my voice will continue to do service, i.e. I will produce a fairly open video recording in my own Focal Point publishing house with the title I’LL BE BACK, analogous to the video I distributed in Australia (incidentally completely legal). One has to be careful in the FRG because I don’t want in any way to be accused of infringing whatever laws. I intend therefore to supply the videos with something like the following “health warning”:

This video film was filmed and produced in England in accordance with the laws prevailing there. Distribution takes place only for aims of scholarly research. Neither Focal Point publishers or Mr. Irving are responsible for the further distribution inside the FRG or for possible consequences resulting.

Do you have any comments or changes to suggest for this small .text? The preventative nature of the text should be clear to you.

7.3 Irving did of course concern himself with the distribution in Germany, namely through the AV™. Two days earlier he had written to the AVÖ’s Stephan Wiesel

In the coming weeks I will produce a video presentation for Germany with the title “I’LL BE BACK”. You could make good money out of it. I’ll send you the advertising for it in the .next few days. The film will be supplied from England to avoid problems with our traditional enemies.

The slickly produced self promotional video is an interesting document, and a thermometer of Irving’s views and resentments following his expulsion.

7.5 The video, which included Irving’s catch phrase `I can do without Germany, but can Germany do without me?’[`lch kann auf Deutschland verzichten, aber kann Deutschland auf mich verzichten?], included a detailed explanation of the Leuchter Report, Irving adding his own evidence that no gassings had taken place in Auschwitz, and that Auschwitz had been `wrapped in a sort of conspiratorial plot against the truth’ since the end of the war.’

7.6 Despite claiming to see his expulsion as ‘the peak of my success’ [’der Gipfel meines Erfolgs] and that it proved that no one was in a position to refute him. Irving’s pique with the German judicial system was given free reign.

German justice has always been a special case since the beginning of the century, and it really has not changed at all. In the Weimar Republic, in the Third Reich, also in the Federal Republic, the jurists clap their heels together and say “yes sir”. Nothing has changed only that they don’t need to wear armbands anymore.

7.7 He described the judicial measures against revisionism as ‘a terror of opinions in Germany, a police power without parallel.’

I can say that. If I say that as an expert in the history of the Third Reich then that can mean something ladies and gentlemen. As far as I am concerned, one thing is absolutely clear and let it be established right now. During the Third Reich, during the Second World War countless masses of innocent people were murdered on both sides. The Jews were shot in their hundreds of thousands in the East, not only by the Germans, but by the Ukranians and Estonians and Letts and Lithuanians. […] But the death factories did not exist. And whoever claims that [the contrary] puts up a blood-lie against the German people.

7.8 Rather alarmingly, Irving not content with tastelessly comparing his fate and that of his fellow revisionists with that of the Jews under the Nazis, then called on his viewers to draw up lists of people who spread the `blood-lie’.

He must also somehow be called to account. To the viewers who are listening to my words, and who are looking at me in this moment, I call on you to write down the names of these people who go along with this blood-lie, this defamation of the German people. Write the names down because it can not continue for ever. One day the hour of revenge will come when we will avenge ourselves that we have been persecuted for years because we told the truth. And then there really must be compensation. A compensation not just for those who have made money for fifty years from.their own.supposed tragedy. A compensation for the simple school teachers, the lawyers and jurists and judges. The normal people who as patriotic German citizens wanted to establish and spread the truth about their own past and lost everything for it.

7.9 At the time the ban had obviously taken Irving by surprise, and left him trying to tie up loose ends in Germany. On .21 November 1993 he wrote to Stephan Wiesel of the AVO’s Hetzog-Heinrich Buchhandlung in which he had expressed the hope that Wiesel had been able to pick up `all the books etc.’ [`die ganzen Bilcher u.s.w.’] which Irving had left in `the Institute’ in Leonrodstrasse `in time’ [`rechtzeitig’]. He wrote to Wiesel again in December reminding him of the books and asking him `Please ring me up - from a telephone box, so that the commune doesn’t listen in on every word! I’ll then ring you straight back.’

7.10 -,Irving’s ban on-entering Germany had. much wider. recuperations for him in Germany and the world, than Irving had apparently anticipated. In May 1994 he wrote to Hajo Hermann that they had to take legal proceedings. `I can not even visit my publishers!’ More seriously `The German judgement against me has had the rather unexpectedly resulted in a blocking of the whole world to me.’ In July 1994 he told Herrmann that the ban meant that `in the meantime all my business in the FRG are waning.’ In April 1995 Irving repeated the refrain. `No longer in the FRG for two years, all my business with German publishers etc. has come to a standstill because of this, I can’t even complain about my delivered manuscripts.’ As late as 1997 the GfP expressed its sorrow that Irving was unable to attend their congress, but were pleased to accept Irving’s offer of a taped contribution `for example a general contribution to the situation of revisionism…’ [`allgemeinen Beitrag-zur Lage des Revisionismus etwa…’].

7.11 In 1995, under the pretence (see above) that he had been originally fined for claiming that only the gas chamber in the Auschwitz main camp was a dummy, Irving started a postcard campaign against the German authorities. As he explained to an American audience

…we’re fighting back. I have a mailing list of people around the world; now some 3,000 wise and intelligent people of every walk of life, to whom I correspond and to whom, after I’d read this French article, I sent 20.000 postcards for them to mail to the German authoritier.20,000 postcards. In English and in German. All pre-printed. All they had to do was to cut them out, stick a stamp on, add a few words of their own, and then mail them. The post card said, “I understand the French magazine has reported this fact, that what they show the tourists is fake.” In the original French the words are “Tu il est fau,” everything in it is fake. Everything in that gas chamber building is fake. Why is it then that your government fined British historian David Irving $22,000 for saying just that? Alternatively, is it now legal to say this in Germany? If it is legal then what is going to be done about the fine imposed on Mr. I rving? If it is still illegal to tell the truth like this in Germany, then what are you doing to punish the French magazine for publishing that fact, because it was also sold in Germany?”

7.12 Irving exhorted his correspondents to send the postcards to foreign representatives of German newspapers in their own country, to German travel agents, to church dignitaries, and local German authorities.

“Because my postcard isn’t just going to be read by you and the man you’re mailing it to. It’s going to be read by his secretary too. It’s going to be read by the mail carrier. It’s going to be read by the FBI at this end. It’s going to be read by the German FBI at the other end, or wherever in the world it is. Everyone’s going to be asking questions about it.”

7.13 Despite lrving’s claim that `This postcard campaign has caused immense damage around the world to the Holocaust legend’, in the last four to five years Irving’s public presence in Germany has shrunk to a bare minimum. He is still considered by the OPC as a leading revisionist, but as his ban on entering Germany has led to a growing public neglect of him, although his remaining reputation amongst supporters is undiminished.

7.14 His former main-stream publishers have ended their co-operation or are in conflict with him, although a small number of right-wing oriented publishers continue to distribute taped interviews and speeches.

7.15 So the 1994 Hamburg VSB merely stated that Irving was considered a contact person of the neo-Nazi circle around Ernst Zuendel and was one of the authors of the extremist Arndt-Verlag. There was a court order to imprison him because he had not paid his fine. In 1995 he is again recorded as an author of the extremist Arndt-Verlag and as a member of the international revisionist campaign; In 1996 he was listed as one of the authors of the extremist Arndt-Verlag and of the extremist Verlagsgesellschaft Berg. In 1997 he is just named as an international active revisionist without further differentiation.