Hitler's War - David Irving's Website PDF
Preview Hitler's War - David Irving's Website
Introduction i David Irving Hitler’s War and The War Path ‘Two books in English stand out from the vast literature of the Second World War: Chester Wilmot’s The Struggle for Europe, published in 1952, and David Irving’s Hitler’s War’ john keegan, Times Literary Supplement F FOCAL POINT Hitler’s War ii Twenty years still to go: Wealthy benefactor Lotte Bechstein took this snapshot of Adolf Hitler, then , at the balustrade of the villa that became the Berghof, after author’s collection his release from Landsberg prison in ( ) Introduction i A Doctor quotes Hitler on Biographers, in August a foreigner fi , said Hitler, ‘probably nds it easier to pass judgment on a statesman, provided he is familiar with the country, its people, its language, and its archives. ‘“Presumably,” I said, “Chamier didn’t know the Kaiser personally, as he was still relatively young. But his book not only shows a precise knowledge of the archives and papers, but relies on what are after all many personal items, like the Kaiser’s letters and written memoranda of conversations with friends and enemies.” ‘“Hitler then said that for some time now he has gone over to having all impor- tant discussions and military conferences recorded for posterity by shorthand writers. And perhaps one day after he is dead and buried an objective Englishman will come and give him the same kind of impartial treatment. The present generation neither can nor will.”’ – The Diary of Dr Erwin Giesing, on a discussion with Hitler author’s collection about the Kaiser’s English biographer J. D. Chamier ( ) David Irving is the son of a Royal Navy commander. Imperfectly educated at London’s Imperial College of Science & Technology and at University College, he subsequently spent a year in Germany working in a steel mill and perfecting his fluency in the language. Among his thirty books (including three in German), the best-known Hitler’s War; The Trail of the Fox: The Life of Field include Marshal Rommel; Accident, the Death of General Sikorski; The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe; Göring: a Biography , and Nuremberg, the Last Battle . He has translated several works by other authors including the autobiographies by Field-Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, General Reinhard Gehlen, and Nikki Lauda. He lives near Grosvenor Square, London, and has raised five daughters. The Destruction of Dresden In he published . This became a best-seller in many countries. In he issued a revised edition, Apocalypse 1945 Goebbels. , as well as his important biography, Mastermind of the Third Reich Churchill’s . A second volume of War 2001 appeared in and he is now completing the third. His works are available as free downloads on our Internet website at www. fpp.co.uk/books. Hitler’s War ii for Josephine Irving in memoriam ‒ copyright © Parforce (UK) Ltd All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with written permission of the author in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act (as amended). Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. Hitler’s War was first published by The Viking Press (New York) and Hodder & Stoughton (London) in ; The War Path was published by The Viking Press and Michael Joseph Ltd in . Macmillan Ltd continued to publish these volumes until . We published a revised edition of both volumes in . Hitler’s War and The War Path has been extensively revised and expanded on the basis of materials available since then. The volume is also available as a free download from our website at www.fpp.co.uk/books. FOCAL POINT PUBLICATIONS Duke Street, London wk pe British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn Printed and bound in Great Britain by The Bath Press Introduction iii Contents Introduction vii Prologue:The Nugget w Part I: Approach to Absolute Power Dictator by Consent Triumph of the Will ‘One Day, the World’ First Lady Goddess of Fortune ‘Green’ The Other Side of Hitler Whetting the Blade Munich One Step Along a Long Path w Part II: Toward the Promised Land In Hitler’s Chancellery Fifty Extreme Unction The Major Solution Pact with the Devil Entr’acte: His First Silesian War Hitler’s War iv w Part III: Hitler’s War Begins ‘White’ Overtures Incidents Clearing the Decks ‘We Must Destroy Them Too!’ Hors d’Œuvre w Part IV: ‘War of Liberation’ The Warlord at the Western Front The Big Decision The Dilemma Molotov The ‘Barbarossa’ Directive Let Europe Hold its Breath Behind the Door A Bitter Victory Hess and Bormann Pricking the Bubble w Part V: Crusade into Russia The Country Poacher Kiev Cold Harvest A Test of Endurance Hitler Takes Command Hitler’s Word is Law ‘Blue’ The Black Spot for Halder Introduction v Africa and Stalingrad w Part VI: Total War Trauma and Tragedy Retreat Silence of the Tomb Clutching at Straws Correcting the Front Line ‘Axis’ Feelers to Stalin ‘And So It Will Be, Mein Führer!’ Trouble from Providence The Most Reviled w Part VII: The Worms Turn Man with a Yellow Leather Briefcase ‘Do You Recognise My Voice?’ He Who Rides a Tiger Rommel Gets a Choice On the Brink of a Volcano w Part VIII: Endkampf The Gamble Waiting for a Telegram Hitler Goes to Ground ‘Eclipse’ Abbreviations Notes and sources Hitler’s War vi Introduction vii Introduction To historians is granted a talent that even the gods are denied – to alter what has already happened!’ I bore this scornful saying in mind when I embarked on this study of Adolf Hitler’s twelve years of absolute power. I saw myself as a stone cleaner – less concerned with architectural appraisal than with scrubbing years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument. I set out to describe events from behind the Führer’s desk, seeing each episode through his eyes. The technique necessarily narrows fi the eld of view, but it does help to explain decisions that are otherwise inexplicable. Nobody that I knew of had attempted this before, but it seemed ff worth the e ort: after all, Hitler’s war left forty million dead and caused all fi of Europe and half of Asia to be wasted by re and explosives; it destroyed Hitler’s ‘Third Reich,’ bankrupted Britain and lost her the Empire, and it ff brought lasting disorder to the world’s a airs; it saw the entrenchment of communism in one continent, and its emergence in another. In earlier books I had relied on the primary records of the period rather than published literature, which contained too many pitfalls for the historian. I naïvely supposed that the same primary sources technique could within fi ve years be applied to a study of Hitler. In fact it would be thirteen years fi before the rst volume, Hitler’s War, was published in and twenty fi years later I was still indexing and adding to my documentary les. I remember, in , driving down to Tilbury Docks to collect a crate of fi micro lms ordered from the U.S. government for this study; the liner that brought the crate has long been scrapped, the dockyard itself levelled to the ground. I suppose I took it all at a far too leisurely pace. I hope however that this biography, now updated and revised, will outlive its rivals, and that fi more and more future writers nd themselves compelled to consult it for vii Hitler’s War viii materials that are contained in none of the others. Travelling around the world I have found that it has split the community of academic historians from top to bottom, particularly in the controversy around ‘the Holocaust.’ In Australia alone, students from the universities of New South Wales and Western Australia have told me that there they are penalised for citing Hitler’s War; at the universities of Wollongong and Canberra students are disciplined ffi if they don’t. The biography was required reading for o cers at military academies from Sandhurst to West Point, New York, and Carlisle, Penn- sylvania, until special-interest groups applied pressure to the commanding ffi o cers of those seats of learning; in its time it attracted critical praise from the experts behind the Iron Curtain and from the denizens of the Far Right. Not everybody was content. As the author of this work I have had my home smashed into by thugs, my family terrorised, my name smeared, my fi printers rebombed, and myself arrested and deported by tiny, democratic Austria – an illegal act, their courts decided, for which the ministerial culprits ff fl were punished; at the behest of disa ected academics and in uential citizens, in subsequent years, I was deported from Canada (in ), and refused entry to Australia, New Zealand, Italy, South Africa, and other civilised countries around the world (in ). ffi In my absence, internationally a liated groups circulated letters to ff librarians, pleading for this book to be taken o their shelves. From time to time copies of these letters were shown to me. A journalist for Time magazine dining with me in New York in remarked, ‘Before coming over I read fi the clippings les on you. Until Hitler’s War you couldn’t put a foot wrong, you were the darling of the media; but after it...’ ff I o er no apology for having revised the existing picture of the man. I have tried to accord to him the kind of hearing that he would have got in an English court of law – where the normal rules of evidence apply, but also where a measure of insight is appropriate. There have been sceptics who questioned whether the heavy reliance on – inevitably angled – private sources is any better as a method of investigation than the more traditional quarries of information. My reply is that we certainly cannot deny the value of private sources altogether. As the fi Washington Post noted in its review of the rst edition in , ‘British historians have always been more objective toward Hitler than either German or American writers.’
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