Richard Evans’s Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial is a fascinating book. And it’s highly relevant to the question of whether or not it’s a good idea to debate Irving. Holocaust Denial on Trial has Evans’s report for the trial; see for instance his General Conclusion.
… Read the restIrving is a particularly dangerous spokesperson for Holocaust denial because over the years he has consistently portrayed himself as a scrupulous historian with an unrivalled knowledge of the archival sources and an unerring eye for forgeries and falsifications. As we saw in Part I, he has repeatedly claimed that he is waging a ‘campaign for real history’ against legend and myth, truth against falsehood. ‘Real history’, he says, is