Hitler's War

Irving's involvement in the discussion of the Final Solution began only at the end of the 1970s, after he had published Hitler's War, his most successful book.⁵ The aim of the book, according to Irving, was to describe the war from Hitler's point of view, "through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk."⁶ In order to understand the link between Hitler's War and the concept of Holocaust denial adopted by Irving ten years later, one should concentrate on Irving's portrayal of Hitler, which Martin Broszat labelled "the strategy of de-demonization."⁷ The image of Hitler In Hitler's War, as well as in the War Path, published by Irving a year later, is totally different from that of the fanatic dictator portrayed by historians such as Allen Bullock, Karl Dietrich Bracher and Eberhard Jackel. In Irving's book, Hitler is depicted as a realistic, fair-minded leader, who strove to restore Germany's political status as a dominant power in Europe. As a solution to Germany's rapid population growth, he sought to acquire new territories in the East, a goal also motivated by a genuine fear of Bolshevist expansion and by a desire to "mark the ultimate frontier between Asia and the West." Hitler believed that the annexation of new territories in the East was not fundamentally different from the colonialism of other European powers, notably Britain. Moreover, he had no aggressive intentions in the West; on the contrary, he sought to reach an agreement with Britain and was willing to accept painful compromises, and even harsh terms, in order to maintain peace in Europe.⁸

So, what about the Holocaust, the Final Solution? How does the image of a rational Hitler mesh with his obsessive war against the Jewish people and his decision to exterminate European Jewry? Irving resolved this complex question by claiming that Hitler never gave any order to exterminate the Jews, either the Jews of Russia or the Jews of Europe. He allowed that Hitler's anti-Semitic speeches in the 1930s, admits Irving, Hitler created an atmosphere of hatred toward the Jews. Moreover, "his speeches, though never explicit, left a clear impression that 'liquidate' was what he meant."⁹ Irving claimed, however, that Hitler did not cross the line between propaganda and reality. The instructions that he gave were to evacuate the Jews eastward, first to Poland and then to the territories occupied in the USSR. He intended to postpone the solution of the Jewish problem until the postwar era.¹⁰ Thus, "having removed the appalling crime of the deliberate systematic murder of six million Jews, Hitler could be viewed in a much more objective and clinical way," said Irving in an interview to The Guardian.¹¹

It should be noted that in Hitler's War Irving did not deny that the Jews were systematically exterminated, first by squads, later by mobile gas-trucks and eventually in the death camps.¹² The extermination, claimed Irving, began as a consequence of local decisions made by "fanatical Gauleiters in the East who were interpreting with brutal thoroughness Hitler's decree that the Jews must 'finally disappear from Europe'."¹³ These decisions received the support of Heydrich who, according to Irving, was the true initiator of the Final Solution, and eventually of Himmler, without the approval or even knowledge of Hitler.¹⁴ In The War Path, Irving claimed that the distinction between Hitler's more moderate attitude toward the "Jewish problem" and that of fanatic high-ranking Nazi officials was determined before the war. Once Hitler had seized power in 1933, he paid only lip-service to antisemitism and refrained from any involvement with the anti-Jewish policy, which was escalated by Nazi fanatics. Brutal measures, such as Kristallnacht were perpetrated without Hitler's approval and even against his will.¹⁵ Disregard of Hitler's will in relation to the Jewish question became even more blatant during the war. Irving alleged that on 30 November 1941, Hitler instructed Himmler that there was to be "no liquidation of the Jews."¹⁶ Himmler, together with the SS and the party principals, violated this order as "he had disregarded Hitler's veto on the liquidation of the Jews all along."¹⁷

How was it possible that the Jews were exterminated without the approval or even knowledge of the Führer? Irving offers as explanation the theory of the weak dictator: "Hitler was probably the weakest leader Germany has known in this century." The war was his only concern, "[he was] unable to oversee all the functions of his executives acting within the confines of his far-flung empire," and Germany became a "Führer-Staat without a Führer."¹⁸