© Copyright 1993, H. David Kirk
Translator's Introduction:
The Nazi Stake in Faulty History
"I would say that Nazi propaganda is much too
transparent to work, were it not for the fast that
it often does work. I don't know why, unless it
is because people are deceived by its obvious
bluntness ... "
Bella Fromm
Berlin, August 9, 1933
This little book is about Nazi propaganda, six decades after
Bella Fromm wrote the above in her Berlin diary. In 1933
Nazi propaganda was blunt and screamed its anti-Jewish
themes without regard for historical niceties. When in 1945
Germany's war machine was for the second time in 27 years
beaten to a standstill, it was not possible once again to
use the early Nazi line that the defeat had come about
because "the Jews and the socialists had stabbed Germany in
the back." After all, socialists had been politically
eliminated in 1933 and during the war Jewish populations had
been systematically murdered. After the second defeat a more
elegant explanation was needed. The neo-Nazi movement found
it in the re-writing of history. One theme lies bluntly:
"there was no Holocaust"; another, less blatant, says:
"c'est la guerre, that's how it is in war."
How to answer Holocaust deniers when younger people know
little or nothing of that horrible history and can easily be
misled by those who re-write it? It is a big question and
cannot be tackled by one little book. But one little book
can make a contribution to truth.
David Irving's Hitler
builds around two essays by the German historian Eberhard
Jäckel. The essays appeared in 1979 in Germany in a
collection of articles[4] commenting on the TV series
"Holocaust." In Germany the television showings had led to
nationwide outcries and hand wringing, producing numerous
commentaries. Professor Jäckel's essays dealt with Holocaust
issues tangentially, in the context of Holocaust denial. He
focused on a clever re-writer of history, the Englishman
David Irving, in particular his book Hitler's War.
Encountering Jäckel's essays in 1991, I realized they were
not only still timely but, if anything, becoming more so. He
had put his finger on
Irving's Achilles heel, the soft spots
in Hitler's War, errors that have been made into the neo-
Nazi lie about Hitler. Writing in English,
David Irving
makes an impact on English-speaking readers. That is why
Jäckel's essays had to be made available in English. But
Jäckel's German readers had mostly been exposed to the TV
"Holocaust" series and to the uproar that had resulted from
it. They were thus an unusually sensitized readership. A
North American translation, fourteen years later, would
have to provide more background. To do that is the task of
this Introduction.
[Continued]
The
original plaintext version
of this file is available via
ftp.
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