 A two-minute cascade of praise . . . and one dissenter |
| 1: On Hitler’s War: “It was thoroughly researched and employed a variety of themes. . . It also confirmed Irving’s reputation as one of the world’s most thorough researchers and an exciting and readable historian.”
– Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1992, secret report |
| 3: On Hitler’s War: “No praise can be too high for Irving’s indefatigable scholarly industry. He has sought and found scores of new sources, including many private diaries. Mr Irving’s craftsmanship as a writer has improved immensely, and I have enjoyed reading his long work from beginning to end.”
– Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper |
| 4: On Hitler’s War: “This ground is traversed with a sense of immediacy and grasp of detail lacking in many of the recent Führer biographies . . . Mr Irving’s mastery of the German sources is superb.”
– Professor Donald Cameron Watt |
| 5: On Hitler’s War: “DAVID IRVING has ransacked the world’s archives; he has discovered eye-witness accounts; he has unearthed diaries and correspondence which were thought to have been destroyed. . . a narrative which is, for all its inevitable complexities, remarkably comprehensible and, surprisingly readable.”
– Professor J.E. Molpurgo, |
| 6: “British historian, David Irving, perhaps the greatest living authority on the Nazi era”
– Professor Stephen Spender, |
| 7: On Goebbels: “Irving does not deny that Jews were horribly butchered or just kept in such conditions as to die in their millions. Nevertheless, the book has received execration in some American pre-publication reviews for its alleged denials of the Holocaust and exculpations of Hitler. . . . There is no truth in these accusations.”
– Professor Norman Stone, |
| 8: On Goebbels: “David Irving knows more than anyone alive about the German side of the Second World War. He discovers archives unknown to official historians … His greatest achievement is Hitler’s War … indispensable to anyone seeking to understand the war in the round. Irving as usual, knows more than anyone of the details [of the death of the Goebbels family in 1945]. He does not spare us.”
– Professor Sir John Keegan, |
| 9: On Goebbels: “Some critics, including Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, have accused Irving of ‘trying to destroy the memory of those who . . . perished at the hands of tyrants.’ Even a cursory inspection of this new, 700-page plus account [Goebbels] does not support that assertion.”
– Professor Francis L. Loewenheim |
| 10: On Goebbels: “Silencing Mr Irving would be a high price to pay for freedom from the annoyance that he causes us. The fact is that he knows more about National Socialism than most professional scholars in his field, and students of the years 1933 1945 owe more than they are always willing to admit to his energy as a researcher and to the scope and vigor of his publications.
– Professor Gordon A Craig |
| 11: “On Göring: “Irving’s research effort is awesome.”
– Professor Larry Thompson, |
| 12: On Göring: “At the Nuremberg trials he defended himself with vigour and rebutted some of the charges that had wrongfully been made against him. It also came out in matters of art, on which David Irving is rather good.”
– Professor Norman Stone |
| 13: On Göring: “A very readable book, for Irving has always written with verve and energy. . . It tells us a great deal that we did not know. . . Highly interesting. . . Marvellous stuff.… An absorbing account. . . Most intriguing.”
– Professor Gordon A Craig |
| 14: On Churchill’s War: “A vivid portrait accompanied by much striking and original analysis. It is certainly no mere repeat of the usual hagiography. Once again David Irving shows himself a master of documentation.”
– Professor John Erickson |
| 15: “On Göring: “Irving’s research effort is awesome.”
– Professor Larry Thompson, |
| 16: On The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: “… deserves a warm welcome … Mr. Irving has made splendid use of the Milch papers and other German records which he has been able to study.”
– Stephen Roskill |
| 17: On Rommel: “Most of Irving’s books are big, solid works like this. All are well written, exciting, fun to read, and all contain new information based on sensational discoveries.”
– Professor Stephen Ambrose |
| 18: On PQ.17: “David Irving knows how to appraise the unassuming heroism of the ordinary man. From both points of view, his present book on the destruction of convoy PQ.17 is even better than the one which made his name on the bombing of Dresden. It is a melancholy story, with many separate strands leading to disaster.”
– Professor A. J. P. Taylor
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| 19: On Rommel: “”I am tremendously impressed. . . A superb character study and a fine work.”
– Matthew B. Ridgway |
| 20: On The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe: “The result is a biography of Milch, slanted as it were towards the Luftwaffe. . . This one is scholarly, fair and highly informative.”
– Professor A. J. P. Taylor |
| 21: On Rommel: “”A fascinating study of the brilliant Rommel. It enables the reader to experience the emotions of a warrior in battle.”
– Mark W. Clark |
| 22: Rommel: David Irving has been so successful in building up a reputation as The Man You Love To Hate that his merits as an historian are too easily forgotten. . . Professional historians have always envied him his immense capacity for work and his astonishing luck in finding new documents; and they should be grateful to him … But his fellow historians can take nothing but pleasure in [this] work
– Professor Michael Howard |
 On David Irving: “He has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary among historians that he does not deserve to be called an historian at all . . .”
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