"Denial:" No Making Nazis Great Again Here

Back in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, there was much controversy in the world about the American role in the Vietnam War, especially about the bombing of North Vietnam and parts of South Vietnam. Part of the questioning of this bombing led back on the Allies in World War Two, and to the heavy aerial bombing by the Americans and British of the German city of Dresden in mid February 1945. Dresden is located in eastern Germany, and a large, but unknown quantity, of German refugees had flooded into the city as the Soviets advanced into Germany from the east (Germany was far larger in area back then). The bombing had been somewhat controversial earlier, but a book by English writer David Irving, "The Destruction of Dresden," brought the issue to a heightened state.* Irving's book became a bestseller, a copy of which I bought in the late '60s (?) in paperback.** Irving "claimed" that there were more Germans killed in the Dresden attacks than had been killed in the nuclear attack on Nagasaki, or likely even in the nuclear attack on Hiroshima. The thing was, I don't recall anyone really challenging Irving's statistics, although Irving did scale back the number of killed in Dresden "a bit" in later editions of his book. 

In the 1970s, Irving published a two part biography of Hitler. With these biographical publications, Irving pursued a course to show "the real Hitler," a man whom Irving felt had been given a bad deal by historians. Irving recounted how he had gone through countless documents from German records (the Allies captured tons and tons of records from the Nazi era), and that he could not find any document where Hitler had ordered a killing of Jews, but, at that point, Irving did not dispute that such killings had taken place. Later, however, Irving began to challenge the overwhelming consensus of historians, let alone survivors of the massacre, as something that had been fabricated, even used by Jews to make money. So a conspiracy theory was pushed out more into open. While many people were appalled, unrepentant old Nazis loved it, as did younger Nazis of the (then) 1980s and 1990s. The most infamous symbol of Nazi murder and horror was Auschwitz, a concentration camp/labor camp complex, that became a death camp, with gas chambers to kill people, and with crematoria to burn the bodies. Often Nazi apologists and deniers of history only admitted that people died there from disease, but not from mass murder. Folks, Auschwitz was the stalking grounds of Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who decided which newly arrived prisoners would live (to work) or die within a short time in the gas chambers. You can't get much lower than that son-of-a-bitch!

As World War Two ground to a conclusion, General Eisenhower, the commander of the Western Allied forces in Europe, made sure the evidence of the concentration camps overrun by his forces was preserved on film and in other documentation, because, he noted, that at sometime in the future, "some bastard will get up and say that this never happened." Folks, David Irving is that bastard! There have been others, too, but Irving chose to take the issue to court, hoping to use the British law to strike a blow at truth.

In 1993, American historian Deborah Lipstadt published a book, "Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory." In her book and in some of her public speeches or interviews, Ms. Lipstadt correctly called David Irving what he was, "a Holocaust denier." Within a couple of years, Irving filed a lawsuit against Lipstadt and the publisher, "Penguin Books," for libel.   

So this is some of the background for the 2016 film, "Denial." It stars Rachel Weisz as Deborah Lipstadt, English actor Timothy Spall as David Irving and English actor Tom Wilkinson as the lead attorney, Richard Rampton. The film is about the libel suit filed by Irving against Lipstadt and Penguin Books. In a libel suit in the UK, believe it or not, the burden is on the accused, not the accuser. Hm, I wonder what the members of Parliament have been smoking? Ah, does this mean I have to prove they've been smoking something? Anyway, the attorneys representing Lipstadt and Penguin decide upon a strategy aimed at making Irving the only issue. Irving will represent himself and he agrees to forego a trial by jury; thus, the ruling will come from one judge who will hear the case. Lipstadt does not like the way her own Holocaust research and the views of actual Holocaust survivors will not be presented by the attorneys, who feel Irving will not spare the survivors any pain in his attempt to win the case. As one attorney tells her, if a witness says there was a door on the left in a certain part of Auschwitz, but it was actually on the right, Irving will say the memory of the witness is unreliable. Lipstadt still presses the attorneys, especially because one survivor tells her that survivors don't want to speak for their own benefit, but they want to give voice to all of those who didn't make it. In spite of such a strong argument, the attorneys stick with their plan. 

As the trial drags on, Irving scores some points, but finally attorney Rampton shows, through video of some of Irving's speeches, and excerpts from his writings, how Irving has been more than just casually on the side of vindicating Hitler and the Nazis in general, but how Irving is a racist, who has espoused anti-Jewish views on numerous occasions. He shows how Irving has manipulated historical records to give added weight to his own published works, rather than to the cause of history. Near the end of the trial, the judge causes some uneasiness by asking about what amounts to a person's freedom of speech and entitlement to hold contrary views to much of society, and wonders if a person holding such views can be a liar, if they really believe what they are saying. So we await the verdict.

Finally the judge writes hundreds of pages to his decision, laying out the evidence presented in the case against David Irving as a racist and as someone who denied clear evidence that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz operated with the intent of killing many thousands of people. (Note: In the actual case, the judge found insufficient evidence that Irving kept a picture of Hitler above his desk. Hm, I wonder if they checked his wallet for photos?)

This movie is a docudrama and an important one, not only because of what it shows about David Irving trying to distort the history of mass murder decades ago, but because of the attack on truth we see going on today. Distortions about an elected president of the United States not being an American citizen, allegations about that American's birth certificate being phony, allegations about Ted Cruz's father being part of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy, claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, also, "I inherited a mess," "Obama had my wires tapped," "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us (sic). They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." Like David Irving, all a bunch of fascist crap!  

* It's good to remember a couple of things here: there was also questioning about the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons. The United States twice used such weapons against Japan in August of 1945. Further, the world, circa 1970, was fraught with the danger of two nuclear superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. A push of a button could lead to mass destruction, or perhaps even the end of humankind.

** In those times, a paperback book likely would cost less than a dollar, but keep in mind, the value of the money was far different then. I bought the book from money I earned working in a men's clothing shop after school and on Saturdays for a dollar and hour. The minimum wage then was $1.60, but it didn't apply to my employer, as he had too few employees.

Photo is from the 2017 Universal Home Entertainment DVD

 WORD HISTORY:
Deny-The ultimate origin of a part of this word is a bit shaky, but the word is really a suffixed form of a compound word. The prefix part, "de-," is a distant relative of "to," as it was derived from Indo European "de/do," which had the notion, "toward;" thus also figuratively, "for such purpose (of)." This gave Latin "de," meaning, "from, away from;" and also, "of, about." Next we have Indo European "n/ne," which meant, "not, no." This gave Latin "nec," which meant "not," which is distantly related to English "no, not," by way of Indo European. The core word is the problem, but it seems to go back to some Indo European form that meant, "to say, to speak, to speak out," and this produced Latin "aiere," meaning, "to affirm." Put all together, Latin had "denegare;" that is, "to refuse;" literally, "to not affirm." This passed into Latin-based Old French as, "deneier," meaning, "to refuse, to deny." English borrowed the word in the first half of the 1300s.