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David John Cawdell Irving (born 24 March 1938) is an English Holocaust denier and author who has written many books on the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany. His works include ''The Destruction of Dresden'' (1963), ''Hitler's War'' (1977), ''Churchill's War'' (1987), and ''Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich'' (1996). Though Irving's negationist views of World War II were never taken seriously by mainstream historians, he was recognized for his knowledge of Nazi Germany and his ability to unearth new historical documents. Irving marginalized himself in 1988 when, based on his reading of the pseudoscientific〔 *"Leuchter and Rudolf have published pseudoscientific reports purporting to show that chemical residues present in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau are incompatible with homicidal gassings." Green, Richard J. ''("Leuchter, Rudolf, and the Iron Blues" )''. Retrieved on 2008-09-11. *"The Leuchter Report, a pseudo-scientific document which allegedly proves that Zyklon B was not used to exterminate human beings, was translated into Arabic and sold at the International Book Fair in Cairo in January 2001." Roth, Stephen. Stephen Roth Institute. ''Antisemitism Worldwide, 2000/1'', University of Nebraska Press, 2002, p. 228. *"The turning point came in 1989, when Irving launched Fred Leuchter's pseudo-scientific Leuchter Report, which made the spurious claim that the absence of cyanide residues in the walls of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and other camps proved that they could not have functioned as mass extermination centres." Brinks, Jan Herman. Timms, Edward. Rock, Stella. ''Nationalist Myths and Modern Media'', I.B. Tauris, 2006, p. 72. *"The Leuchter report, was, indeed, an amateurish report produced by a man with no expertise, either historical or forensic." Hirsh, David. ''Law Against Genocide''. Routledge Cavendish, 2003, p. 134. *"Another common tactic of the deniers is to engage in historical inquiries that on the surface appear legitimate but upon close examination prove to be based on pseudo-science. One prominent example was the investigation of the Auschwitz gas chambers by Fred Leuchter (). Detailed study of the "Leuchter Report" revealed that it was based on erroneous assumptions (cyanide does not penetrate deeply into concrete). It also emerged that Leuchter had falsified his credentials and overstated his expertise. Despite this, his report is still cited by deniers." Cull, Nicholas John. Culbert, David Holbrook. Welch, David. ''Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present'', ABC-CLIO, 2003, p. 168. *"...the institute relied primary on the talents of a California-based publicist named Bradley Smith who packaged and promoted Leuchter's discredited material as if it were the very essence of "scientific research" or at least a tenable "point of view," intrinsically worthy of inclusion in the academic agenda..." Churchill, Ward. ''A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present''. City Lights Books, 1997, p. 24. *"After the trial, both Irving and Zündel published the results of Leuchter's trial research as ''The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth,'' despite the fact that the court rejected both the report and Leuchter's testimony. () The discredited report is popular in the Holocaust denial movement, and one edition features a foreword by Irving." Gerstenfeld, Phyllis B. Grant, Diana R. ''Crimes of Hate: Selected Readings'', SAGE Publications, 2003, p. 201. *"Leuchter's report contained a considerable amount of scientific, or, as it turned out, pseudo-scientific analysis of chemical residues on the gas chamber walls, and similar matters. It was quickly discredited, not least on the basis of Leuchter's failure adequately to defend his findings on the witness stand." Evans, Richard J. ''David Irving, Hitler and Holocaust Denial: Electronic Edition'', Section 3.3c, (The 1991 Edition of ''Hitler's War'' ), Paragraph 13. Retrieved on 2008-09-12.〕 Leuchter report, he began to espouse Holocaust denial. Irving's reputation as a historian was discredited〔 *"In 1969, after David Irving's support for Rolf Hochhuth, the German playwright who accused Winston Churchill of murdering the Polish wartime leader General Sikorski, ''The Daily Telegraph'' issued a memo to all its correspondents. 'It is incorrect,' it said, 'to describe David Irving as a historian. In future we should describe him as an author.'" *"It may seem an absurd semantic dispute to deny the appellation of 'historian' to someone who has written two dozen books or more about historical subjects. But if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian. Those in the know, indeed, are accustomed to avoid the term altogether when referring to him and use some circumlocution such as 'historical writer' instead. Irving is essentially an ideologue who uses history for his own political purposes; he is not primarily concerned with discovering and interpreting what happened in the past, he is concerned merely to give a selective and tendentious account of it to further his own ideological ends in the present. The true historian's primary concern, however, is with the past. That is why, in the end, Irving is not a historian." Irving vs. (1) Lipstadt and (2) Penguin Books, (Expert Witness Report by Richard J. Evans FBA, Professor of Modern History, University of Cambridge ), 2000, Chapter 6. *"State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: 'He's not a historian, he's a falsifier of history.'" *"...Irving has never examined and interpreted facts for the simple reason that he is not a historian. He twists or suppresses evidence to fit a foregone conclusion—the opposite of what any reputable historian does." *Hugh Trevor-Roper: "But I don't regard him as an historian. I don't think he has any historical sense. He is a propagandist who uses efficiently collected and arranged material to support a propagandist line." Cited in Richard J. Evans (2002) . ''Telling lies about Hitler: the Holocaust, history and the David Irving trial''. Verso. p. 261, and Michael Shermer. ("''Enigma'': The Faustian Bargain of David Irving" ), ''Skeptical Inquirer'', 3 May 2005.〕 when, in the course of an unsuccessful libel case he filed against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, he was shown to have deliberately misrepresented historical evidence in order to promote Holocaust denial.〔 The English court found that Irving was an active Holocaust denier, antisemite, and racist, who "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence".〔 In addition, the court found that Irving's books had distorted the history of Adolf Hitler's role in the Holocaust in order to depict Hitler in a favourable light. ==Early life== Irving and his twin brother〔.〕 were born in Hutton, near Brentwood, Essex, England. His father, John James Cawdell Irving, was a commander in the Royal Navy, and his mother, Beryl Irene Newington, an illustrator and writer of children's books. Irving's twin brother Nicholas Irving has said that "David used to run toward bombed out houses shouting 'Heil Hitler!'", a statement which Irving denies. During the Second World War, Irving's father was an officer aboard the light cruiser HMS ''Edinburgh''. On 30 April 1942, while escorting Convoy QP 11 in the Barents Sea, the ship was badly damaged by the German submarine U-456. Two days later she was attacked by surface craft, and now beyond recovery was abandoned and scuttled by a torpedo from HMS Foresight. Irving's father survived, but severed all links with his wife and their children after the incident.〔.〕 Irving described his childhood in an interview with the American writer Ron Rosenbaum as: "Unlike the Americans, we English suffered great deprivations ... we went through childhood with no toys. We had no kind of childhood at all. We were living on an island that was crowded with other people's armies".〔.〕 According to his twin, Nicholas, Irving has also been a provocateur and prankster since his youth. Irving went on to claim to Rosenbaum that his negationist views about World War II dated to his childhood, particularly due to his objections to the way Adolf Hitler was portrayed in the British media during the war.〔 Irving asserted that his "sceptical" views about the Third Reich were rooted in his doubts about the cartoonist caricatures of Hitler and the other Nazi leaders published in the British wartime press.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「David Irving」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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