1 At the lower end of the scale in Hitler enterprise publishing are two books by Infield, Glenn, Eva and Adolf (New York, 1974)Google Scholar and Leni Riefenstahl, the Fallen Film Goddess (New York, 1976). The former purports to be “the true story of Adolf Hitler and his mistress, Eva Braun,” and the latter “the intimate and shocking story of Adolf Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl.” In both works, the writing is so bad and the factual errors so numerous that the superficial and ridiculous conclusions provide comic relief. The eager reader searching for the sizzling details of Hitler's kinky affairs will be disappointed, however, as Mr. Infield is unable to offer any proof of Hitler's alleged sexual depravity—with either Eva Braun or Leni Riefenstahl. The strain these efforts placed on Mr. Infield is most painfully apparent in the Riefenstahl book, where he attempts to translate the title of the anti-Semitic movie Jud Süss as “Sweet Jew” (pp. 191, 272). At the top of this scale are Toland, John, Adolf Hitler (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, and Fest, Joachim C., Hitler (New York, 1974).Google Scholar Mr. Toland's book is predictably inclusive, detailed, and well-written, predictably honest—he admits the volume has no thesis—and predictably marred by the wrong kind of original research, gullibility, and analytical feebleness (see especially the description of the Waffen SS, pp. 799–800n., paperback ed.). Mr. Fest's volume, which suffers from an almost complete absence of original research, is the subject of a lengthy review by Hermann Graml, “Probleme einer Hitler Biographie: Kritische Bemerkungen zu Joachim C. Fest,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 22, no. 1 (Jan. 1974): 76–92. Indirectly, the weaknesses in the Toland and Fest biographies may be their most valuable assets; their deficiencies reemphasize the work still to be done in Hitler studies before anything approaching a complete biography can be undertaken.

2 This particular point deserves serious scrutiny from the historical community, especially in relation to the recent literature attempting to prove that the Jews really were not murdered. A most recent example is A. R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, published in Britain by the Historical Review Press, 22 Ellerker Gardens, Richmond, Surrey. An article addressing the same problem in recent literature in West Germany is Arndt, Ino and Scheffler, Wolfgang, “Organisierter Massenmord an Juden in Nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslagern: Ein Beitrag zur Richtigstellung apologetischer Literatur,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 24, no. 2 (Apr. 1976): 105–35.Google Scholar

3 In West Germany, the Hitler interest appears to have had little impact upon secondary-school children's knowledge of the era. See the feature “Hitler wie er nicht war: Das Geschichtsbild unserer Kinder,” Der Spiegel, Aug. 15, 1977.

4 Among the better documentaries that enlarge upon Hitler's influence upon German and world history is the series of programs The World at War, produced by Thames Television of London. This writer has authored a forthcoming ninety-minute documentary, Adolf Hitler: 1889–1945, based on research in archival film, and developed and produced, with the aid of a grant, for American public television. For a discussion of the Hitler television phenomenon in West Germany, see Sereny, Gitta, “Germany: The ‘Rediscovery’ of Hitler,” Atlantic Monthly, Aug. 1978, pp. 6–14.Google Scholar

5 The most recent and controversial of the motion pictures is Joachim C. Fest's Hitler: A Career, which has already been seen by more than one million theater patrons in Europe and is due to be released in the United States in 1979.

6 Sereny, Atlantic Monthly, pp. 6–14. Among the photo studies are Jochen, von Lang, ed., Adolf Hitler: Gesichter eines Diktators (Hamburg, 1968)Google Scholar, Eng. ed., Adolf Hitler: Faces of a Dictator (New York, 1969); and the same editor's Henry Picker/Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's Tischgesprāche im Bild (Oldenburg and Hamburg, 1969), Eng. ed., Hitler Close-Up (New York, 1973).

7 The Avalon Hill Game Co. of Baltimore, Maryland, is the major manufacturer of the “simulation” games. Simulations Publications, Inc., of New York has a game, The Plot to Assassinate Hitler, which enables participants to stage their own thrilling replay of the events of July 20, 1944.

8 See the witty, incisive reviews of Maser's work by Binion, Rudolph, “Foam on the Hitler Wave,” Journal of Modern History 46, no. 3 (Sept. 1974): 522–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Robert G. L. Waite in this journal 7, no. 1 (Mar. 1974): 90–94; and the compilation of Maser's errata in the German edition Hitlers Briefe und Notizen (Düsseldorf, 1973), listed in “Hitlers Handschrift und Masers Leserfehler,” Vierteljahrshefte fü Zeitgeschichte 21, no. 3 (July 1973): 334–36.

9 See “Son of Hitler?” Time Magazine, Nov. 14, 1977, p. 45.

10 Mr. Irving's publishing career has been crowded with controversy. His first book, The Destruction of Dresden (London, 1963), created an international sensation with its horrifying tale of the massive Anglo-American triple-blow raids on Dresden on February 13–14, 1945, and the carnage of death and fire that engulfed the hordes of refugees packed into the city. Much in Mr. Irving's account of this Allied “atrocity” (whose exaggerated tone he subsequently acknowledged), has been refuted in a more scholarly and objective work by Bergander, Götz, Dresden im Luftkrieg (Cologne, 1977).Google Scholar Two of Mr. Irving's subsequent books, Accident: The Death of General Sikorski (London, 1967) and The Destruction of Convoy PQ 17 (London, 1968), resulted in successful legal actions against him. The first suit was prompted by his contention that the Polish General Sikorski's death in a plane crash at Gibraltar in July 1943 was the probable result of an assassination engineered by Winston Churchill and the British government. The second resulted from his conclusion that negligence by a Royal Navy officer was responsible for the loss of the ill-fated Allied convoy on the Arctic run to Murmansk.

11 In the Introduction (p. xiii), Mr. Irving reasserts what Professor Trevor-Roper has called the “stale and exploded libel” about General Sikorski's “assassination” as if it were an established fact. See Professor Trevor-Roper's analysis of Mr. Irving's career and review of Hitler's War, in the Sunday Times Weekly Review, June 12, 1977. The chronological convenience of Mr. Irving's book (1939–45) spares him the embarrassment of explaining Hitler's role in the murder of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. See especially Weinberg, Gerhard L., The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Diplomatic Revolution in Europe, 1933–36 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 103–5.Google Scholar

12 Many of the descriptive details Mr. Irving dwells upon, such as Dr. Morell's fat, hairy fingers and eyes that closed from the bottom up (pp. 600–601), and the scene Henriette von Schirach created at the Berghof over the deportation of Dutch Jews (pp. 529–30), were recounted earlier in Mr. Toland's Adolf Hitler, paperback ed., pp. 1014, 1016. Mr. Irving's book contains additional similarities to Mr. Toland's in the now tiresomely familiar accounts of the tea parties, strolls, and even the jokes in Hitler's daily routine with his court.

13 Mr. Irving dismisses Joachim Fest as “a German television personality” (p. xvii), and has amplified his disdain for other Hitler biographers in public statements since his book appeared. On a Washington, D.C., radio program with Robert Wolfe of the National Archives, Mr. Irving described John Toland's biography as similar to the effort “of a cripple trying to enter the Olympics. He shouldn't have done it.” He also referred to Professor Walter Lacquer, one of his critics, as a “man known in Britain primarily as head of the Wiener Library… a kind of propaganda agency, anti-Nazi, anti-Fascist, anti-just-about-everything.” On the same occasion, Mr. Irving unintentionally revealed the extent of his ignorance of American scholarship by referring quizzically to “a Professor Waite, who's a psychohistorian? That's something we don't have in Britain yet!” A tape of this interview program, the Fred Fiske Show of WWDC, Washington, for April 17, 1977, was made by the National Archives.

14 A convincing argument that Mr. Irving's devil theory of Hitler historiography has long been dead, or never really existed, is Martin Broszat, “Hitler und die Genesis der ‘Endlösung’: Aus Anlass der Thesen von David Irving,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 25, no. 4 (Oct. 1977): 739–75, esp. p. 745 (hereinafter cited as Broszat).

15 In a passage worthy of a pirate saga (p. xxi), Mr. Irving describes his fruitless search, complete with mine detector and treasure map, through the forests of East Germany for “a glass jar containing stenograms of Goebbels's very last diaries.” That the East Germans assisted Mr. Irving in an effort that would culminate in a revisionist interpretation of Hitler is a fact of real interest—and some amusement if one speculates on the question of who may have been taken in by whom.

16 The forgery claims are suspect. For example, the assertion (p. xx) that the Goebbels diary entries in sSemler, Rudolf, Goebbels: The Man Next to Hitler (London, 1947)Google Scholar, are phoney has been discredited by Professor Trevor-Roper, in “Hitler's Impresario,” New York Review of Books, June 1, 1978, p. 20n.Google Scholar Mr. Irving also disparages the authenticity of the published memoirs of Walter Schellenberg by claiming, in his account of Ribbentrop's bizarre plan to assassinate Stalin (p. 610n.), to have relied on Schellenberg's own handwritten text, rather than the heavily “edited” memoirs. This claim is indeed strange, since his own version (p. 610) is virtually identical to the account in Schellenberg, Walter, Hitler's Secret Service, ed. and trans. Louis, Hagen (New York, 1962), pp. 194–97.Google Scholar

17 Students who have worked through even several hundred pounds of documents among the hundreds of tons of archival records of the Third Reich will doubtless be interested in the dust-jacket revelation that “in his decade of research he [Mr. Irving] discovered that it is indeed a myth that most of the sources have been destroyed,” a claim that Mr. Irving himself advances. Cf. p. xxii.

18 The best example is the insinuation (p. 709n.) that in 1972 he, Mr. Irving, was the first to prove Hitler's death by matching the Xrays of Hitler's head taken in September 1944 with the photo of a jawbone found by the Russians in the Chancellery garden in May 1945 and published by Bezymenski, Lev, The Death of Adolf Hitler (New York, 1968).Google Scholar As early as 1962, Trevor-Roper, H. R., The Last Days of Hitler (paperback, ed., New York, 1962), pp. 38–42Google Scholar, and 40n., had explored thoroughly the subject of the Xrays of Hitler's head, and the overwhelming certainty of his death.

19 An outstanding historiographical-bibliographical essay on Hitler's place in German history is Hildebrand, Klaus, “Hitlers Ort in der Geschichte des Preussisch-Deutschen Nationalstaates,” Historische Zeitschrift 217, no. 3 (Dec. 1973): 584–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Mr. Irving cites neither the essay nor the overwhelming majority of the works listed in Hildebrand's footnotes.

20 See this writer's Soldiers of Destruction: The SS Death's Head Division, 1933–1945 (Princeton, N.J., 1977), p. 36n., for a discussion of the speech, the various documentary versions recording what Hitler said, and the differing scholarly analyses of its contents and meaning.

21 Ibid., pp. 37–42, which is based on the compilation of German Army and SS records detailing SS activities in Poland deposited in the Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, B-162/29, fol. 1, Einsatzgruppen in Polen; and upon the summary report of the SS Death's Head Regiment “Brandenburg's” actions in Poland, written by its commander, SS Colonel Paul Nostitz, and deposited in the U.S. Document Center, Berlin-Zehlendorf, SS Personalakte Nostitz. The Nostitz report is dated Sept. 28, 1939, the day SS “Brandenburg” returned to Germany from Poland.

22 See Himmler's peremptory letter of May 16, 1938, to the Reich Minister of Justice, Dr. Franz Gürtner, on the subject of Gürtner's earlier complaints about SS guards shooting concentration camp inmates. The tone of the letter, Himmler's reference to orders he had already implemented, and his emphasis upon his direct dealings with Hitler about the executions of inmates make it obvious that he considered the Ministry of Justice powerless in matters relating to the SS-run concentration camps. Helmut, Heiber, ed., Reichsführer! Briefe an und von Himmler (dtv ed., Munich, 1970), pp. 65–66.Google Scholar

23 These points are all themes in Helmut Krausnick, Martin Broszat, Hans Buchheim, and Jacobsen, Hans-Adolf, Anatomie des SS Staates, 2 vols. (Olten and Freiburg, 1965)Google Scholar, Eng. ed., Anatomy of the SS State (New York, 1968).

24 Mr. Irving's account of the massacres of Jews in the east during the winter and spring of 1941–42 (pp. 330–31) was recounted more fully and documented more extensively with the same sources over twenty years ago by Dallin, Alexander, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York and London, 1957), esp. pp. 203–9.Google Scholar Dallin, for example, identifies the Kube report of July 31, 1942 (Nuremberg Doc. 3428–PS), that Mr. Irving quotes but does not cite. Professor Dallin's book, based overwhelmingly on original research and still indispensable, does not appear in Mr. Irving's bibliography.

25 This error was first identified by Gitta Sereny and Lewis Chester, in the London Sunday Times, July 10, 1977.

26 For an expert's assessment of Ferdinand's shortcomings, see Guderian, Heinz, Panzer Leader (New York, 1957), p. 238.Google Scholar

27 The Jewish underground in Galicia managed to purchase a few guns from Italian soldiers stationed there, but there is no indication that any of these weapons made their way into the Warsaw uprising. Dawidowicz, Lucy S., The War against the Jews, 1933–1945 (New York, 1975), p. 320.Google Scholar There is also no reference to any such “allied arms sale” in the voluminous reports on the destruction of the Ghetto resistance compiled by the commander of the operation, SS General Jürgen Stroop (Nuremberg Doc. 1061–PS).

28 Only one SS division, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, was subsequently transferred from Russia to Italy, and then only after Mussolini had been overthrown and arrested on July 25, 1943. The other two SS divisions in question, Totenkopf and Das Reich, Hitler kept in Russia as emergency fire brigades in the unsuccessful attempt to contain the Soviet offensives of the late summer and autumn of 1943. Sydnor, Soldiers, pp. 291–92.

29 The full details are in Hoffmann, Peter, The History of the German Resistance, trans. Richard, Barry (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 416, 676–77.Google Scholar

30 To support his argument, Mr. Irving cites Erickson, John, The Soviet High Command: A Military-Political History, 1918–1941 (London, 1962) (p. 844)Google Scholar, while ignoring the same author's more recent book, The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany, vol. 1 (New York, 1975), by far the best history of the first phase of the German-Russian conflict. One of Professor Erickson's major conclusions, after an exhaustive examination of the subject (pp. 50–98), is that the strategic posture of the Soviet Union and the tactical disposition of the Red Army on the eve of Barbarossa were clearly defensive, and designed to halt the Germans as a preparatory step to a counteroffensive against the invaders.

31 Broszat, p. 744.

32 These points come from Andreas Hillgruber, “Die ‘Endlösung’ und das Deutsche Ostimperium als Kemstück des Rassenideologischen Programms des Nationalsozialismus,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 20, no. 2 (Apr. 1972): 133–53, and are in the same author's exhaustive Hitlers Strategic: Politik und Kriegführtmg, 1940–41 (Frankfurt, 1965), esp. pp. 516–35. Neither appears in Mr. Irving's notes or bibliography.

33 The most extensive discussion is Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, “The Kommissarbefehl and Mass Executions of Soviet Russian Prisoners of War,” in Anatomy of the SS State, pp. 507–23. All the relevant documents are reproduced in the German edition, vol. 2, pp. 198–279.

34 National Archives recording of the Fred Fiske Show, Apr. 17, 1977.

35 The only written authorization required was the directive for the “Final Solution” dated July 31, 1941, that Heydrich received from Göring, as Director of the Four Year Plan and Chairman of the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich. This gave Heydrich, as administrator of the Final Solution, authority to use the resources and facilities of the ministries and agencies that would have to contend with the diplomatic, economic, and logistical difficulties created by such an enterprise in wartime. A copy of the Göring directive is in National Archives (NA)/T-120/Reel 780, attached to Heydrich's correspondence with the Foreign Ministry on the subject of what eventually became the Wannsee Conference.

36 Mr. Irving does not cite either Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago, 1960)Google Scholar, or Adler, H. G., Der verwaltete Mensch: Studien zur Deportationen der Juden aus Deutschland (Tübingen, 1974)Google Scholar, both of which document extensively all the steps in the process of deportation and destruction. Professor Broszat, pp. 756–57, also points out that only Hitler's decision in favor of Himmler and Heydrich's transport and logistics demands for extermination—demands which impinged upon the Wehrmacht's crucial requirements at a critical juncture in the war—could have been the authority behind the initiation and subsequent acceleration of the destruction process.

37 NA/T-175/124/2598775–78 contains a copy (typed on the “Führer typewriter”) of the original of the report. NO-1128 is a copy made from one of the carbons. Mr. Robert Wolfe of the National Archives kindly called this writer's attention to the existence and significance of this particular antipartisan report. Mr. Wolfe is now preparing a comprehensive pamphlet on the Holocaust and its documentation, which will be published by the National Archives in the autumn.

38 It should be noted that this piece of evidence does not meet the standards (a document bearing Hitler's signature) that Mr. Irving demands as proof of Hitler's guilt.

39 Broszat, pp. 760–61.

40 Professor Broszat has also demonstrated the likelihood that there was no Hitler-Himmler meeting before the call was made at 1:30 p.m., since Himmler had telephoned Berlin from his special train, on a siding some distance from the Wolf's Lair, only two hours earlier, and then had traveled to Hitler's headquarters for 3 series of afternoon conferences. Broszat, pp. 760–61.

41 Ibid.

42 Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941–1944 (paperback, ed., New York, 1961), p. 111.Google Scholar Professor Broszat, p. 769n., has documented the same alteration.

43 These deletions and changes were first noted by Professor Broszat, pp. 772–73, who relies on the records of the conversations in Andreas, Hillgruber, ed., Staatsmänner und Dipiomaten bei Hitler, 1942–44, vol. 2 (Frankfurt, 1970), pp. 332–33, 245–46, and 256–57.Google Scholar

44 Broszat, pp. 772–74. In the only serious lapse in his excellent review, Professor Broszat, p. 768n., wrongly accuses Mr. Irving of altering a source by adding the word alone to Otto Ohlendor's postwar testimony about Himmler's remarks to the Einsatzgruppen commanders on the subject of responsibility for the massacres of Jews. Robert Wolfe checked the German transcript of Ohlendorf's testimony (IMT, Blue Series, IV, P. 351). against the recording of Ohlendorf testifying (NA/Tape 238/501 and 502, 1034–1108). Both show Mr. Irving to be correct (p. 326), in quoting Ohlendorf's recollection that Himmler told the SS commanders that “he alone, in association with Hitler, carried the responsibility [for the liquidations].”

45 Sereny, and Chester, , London Sunday Times, July 10, 1977.Google Scholar These authors also found in Himmler's handwritten subject list for a meeting with Hitler on October 7, 1942, the word Globus, the nickname for Odilo Globocnik, the SS officer responsible for “Einsatz Reinhard,” the program for the liquidation of the Polish Jews. If Hitler and Himmler met privately to discuss “Globus,” then they almost certainly discussed the extermination of the Jews. In an interview with Sereny and Chester, Mr. Irving tried to explain this away with the comment that Hitler and Himmler may have discussed “whether Globocnik received a promotion that day.” This is highly unlikely, since Globocnik was promoted to SS Gruppenführer (General) on November 9, 1942. Krausnick, Anatomy, p. 583.

46 See Hilberg, pp. 190–97 and 197n., for the SD report (Nuremberg Doc. NO-3145) that Mr. Irving does not footnote, and for Hilberg's conclusion that Jews had not set fire to Kiev—a conclusion the SD itself reached in a subsequent report of October 31, 1941 (Nuremberg Doc. N-4136), describing the fire as the work of a Soviet partisan “annihilation battalion.” By the end of September 1941, the time of the Babi Yar massacre, Einsatzgruppe A alone, operating on the northern sector of the Russian front, had already killed more than 125,000 Jews. Sydnor, Soldiers, p. 323n.

47 The copy of the Wannsee Protocol cited here is in the microfilmed records of the Foreign Ministry files, NA/T-120/Reel 780.

48 NA/Record Group 238/Nuremberg Doc. 1517–PS, “Vermerk über Untcrredung beim Führer am 14.12.1941.”

49 The New Cassell's German Dictionary (New York, 1962), p. 48, translates the verb “extirpate, exterminate, root out, purge, stamp out, destroy,” and the noun “destruction, extermination, extirpation.”

50 This document was kindly provided by Professor Burton F. Schepper of Norfolk State College, Norfolk, Virginia. Professor Schepper's large collection of German-language anti-Semitic books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, handbills, and posters spans the period from the early 1920s to the end of the Third Reich, and is a source of extraordinary value to the serious student of the period.

51 Mr. Irving's contention that in these speeches Himmler was admitting openly that “he had disregarded Hitler's veto on liquidating the Jews all along” (p. 576) has absolutely no basis in fact. This was not the purpose of the speeches, not the context in which they were delivered. Moreover, Himmler's tone and delivery in the portion of the October 4 speech (to SS leaders) that survives in sound recording simply do not have the ring of a man “admitting” anything. A tape copy of this speech is in NA, Tape 238–3941. The text of the October 6 speech to Reich- and Gauleiters is in Bradley, Smith and Agnes, Peterson, eds., Heinrich Himmler Geheimreden, 1933 bis 1945 (Berlin, 1974), pp. 162–83Google Scholar, with notes on pp. 300–303.

52 Hitler's reference in this speech of May 26, 1944 (p. 632), to his prophecy of September 1, 1939, is incorrect. Hitler was mistakenly referring to his speech to the Reichstag of January 30, 1939, in which he “prophesied” that a world war would bring the annihilation (Vernichtung) of the Jews. The sound film portion of this important part of the January 30, 1939, speech, taken from NA, Motion Picture Branch, RG 238.1, is included in this reviewer's documentary Adolf Hitler: 1889–1945.

53 Broszat, pp. 766–67.

54 Sereny, and Chester, , London Sunday Times, July 10, 1977.Google Scholar

55 Mr. Irving cites no archival collections or published documents as sources for this account, and his bibliography does not include either of the studies on the subject: Mastny, Vojtech, The Czechs under Nazi Rule: The Failure of National Resistance, 1939–1942 (New York, 1971)Google Scholar, and Brandes, Detlef, Die Tschechen unter Deutschem Protektorat, pt. 1: Besatzungspolitik, Kollaboration und Widerstand im Protektorat Böhmen u. Mähren bis Heydrichs Tod (1939–1942) (Munich and Vienna, 1969).Google Scholar

56 The only reference Mr. Irving offers to support his analysis of Heydrich's policies is a brief and mysterious comment (p. 849) to the effect that “The transcript of Heydrich's revealing speech of October 2, 1941, is in Czech state archives.” The text of the speech, Heydrich's inaugural address to the German officials in the Protectorate, has in fact existed in published form since 1960, in Václav, Král, ed., Die Vergangenheit warnt: Dokumente über die Germanisierungs- und Austilungspolitik der Naziokkupanten in der Tschechoslowakei (Prague, 1960), pp. 121–32Google Scholar, and in English translation in the same editor's Lesson from History: Documents concerning Nazi Policies for Germanisation and Extermination in Czechoslovakia (Prague, 1961), pp. 113–24. The text of the speech contains nothing similar to Mr. Irving's findings on wooing the Czechs and winning the workers.

57 Mastny, p. 195; Brandes, pp. 228–32. The details of Heydrich's “social policies,” and his own cold-blooded, cynical description of their objectives are contained in the periodic reports he forwarded to Hitler through Bormann. A number of these reports, contained in the records of the Central State Archives in Prague, have been accessioned on microfilm by the National Archives, and, with other materials from Heydrich's tenure as Reichsprotektor, are on NA microfilm reel NNMG, Akten des Stellvertretende Reichsprotektors von Böhmen und Mähren. This writer is indebted to Robert Wolfe for calling attention to these valuable records.

58 A composite film of the Prague crowds, Heydrich's lying-in-state in the Hradschin, and his funeral in the Mosaiksaal of the Reich Chancellery is in the Motion Picture Branch of the National Archives in the Universal International collection of newsreel prints. See also Mastny, p. 214, and Brandes, pp. 258–59.

59 See the discussion of this point in Mastny, pp. 207–10.

60 The subject of Lidice and the probable reasons why the village was chosen for the reprisal are discussed in both Mastny, pp. 214–17, and Brandes, pp. 262–64. A copy of the SD summary report on Heydrich's assassination is deposited in the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, as OCC E-7 (a) 5, “Abschlussbericht, Attentat auf SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich am 27.5.42 in Prag.”

61 Brandes, pp. 260–61.

62 Ibid., pp. 262–63.

63 Ibid., pp. 265–66.

64 Hoffmann, pp. 507–8. It should also be noted that Mr. Irving provides no clue as to how all the wine was transformed into champagne for the orgy.

65 Speer, Albert, Inside the Third Reich (New York, 1970), p. 395Google Scholar, claims that Hitler did see the photographs, as Speer observed the pictures lying on Hitler's conference table on August 18, 1944.

66 Extensive excerpts from the captured film of the People's Court trials were included in the compilation film The Nazi Plan, which was entered into evidence by the prosecution at the Nuremberg trials (Nuremberg Doc. No. 3054–PS). Prints of this film are in NA, Motion Picture Branch, RG 238.1, with footage of the trials in reels 21 and 22.

67 Hoffmann, pp. 526–27.

68 Mr. Irving bases his version of the Führer's alleged rebuke to Freisler on the written recollections of Hitler's personal adjutant, Julius Schaub, his own interviews with SS adjutant Otto Günsche and the servant Heinz Lorenz, and the postwar interrogation of Dr. Immanuel Schäfer of the Propaganda Ministry (p. 890). Their collective testimony simply does not alter what the evidence in the film clearly shows.

69 Mr. Irving cites no source for this quotation in his footnotes (p. 888).

70 Hoffmann, p. 717.

71 Trevor-Roper, H. R., The Last Days of Hitler (London, 1947).Google Scholar

72 All references to Professor Trevor-Roper's book in the notes that follow are to the 3rd ed., Collier Books paperback (New York, 1962).

73 The most important similarities are as follows. Irving, pp. 712–14—Trevor-Roper, pp. 128–31; Irving, pp. 789–90—Trevor-Roper, pp. 159–63; Irving, p. 800—Trevor-Roper, p. 173; Irving, pp. 804–7—Trevor-Roper, pp. 180–89; Irving, p. 809—Trevor-Roper, p. 199; Irving, pp. 810–11—Trevor-Roper, pp. 200–201; Irving, pp. 817–18—Trevor-Roper, pp. 216–21; and Irving, pp. 819–23 seems a condensed parallel of material in Trevor-Roper, chaps. 6 and 7, pp. 225–60. Mr. Irving even has an explanatory footnote (p. 901) on Goebbels's last letter to his stepson Harald Quandt which follows a similar explanatory footnote about the same letter in Trevor-Roper, p. 244n.

74 In his description of the Allied air raids on Dresden (pp. 770–72), Mr. Irving carries his thesis about the influence of Allied bombing on Hitler to its conclusion. Accordingly, the Führer's reaction to Dresden was to cancel Ribbentrop's “peace feelers,” which Mr. Irving treats as if serious enough to have compelled Allied consideration. Only when he saw the photographs of Dresden, however, was Hitler's more moderate inclination to offer peace transformed into a fanatical determination to fight on to the end.

75 In his own version of the familiar tale of Goebbels's horoscope consultations, melodramatic readings from Thomas Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great, and mutual rejoicing with Hitler over the death of Roosevelt, Mr. Irving uncritically repeats the mistakes of his source, the diary of the Reich Finance Minister, Schwerin von Krosigk (p. 789). The errors contained in the source and a more accurate version of the events are in Trevor-Roper, pp. 159–60n.

76 Though he lists both Mein Kampf and Hitlers Zweites Buch in his bibliography, neither appears to have had any influence on the development of Mr. Irving's view of Hitler.

77 Jeremy, Noakes and Geoffrey, Pridham, eds., Documents on Nazism: 1919–1945 (New York, 1974), pp. 678–80Google Scholar, for the text of the testament in English.

78 Mr. Irving has compounded his credibility problems by resurrecting the issue of the abortive 1975 publication of the German edition of Hitler's War, which appeared briefly under the title Hitler und seine Feldherren. Shortly after the book appeared in Germany, Mr. Irving obtained an injunction against his publisher, Ullstein, to halt sale of the book. In the English edition (p. xvii) and on American radio (the Fiske Show), Mr. Irving claims that Ullstein editorially deleted, altered, or reversed many of his arguments without informing him—thus prompting him to sue. Gitta Sereny, however, has obtained and published a letter Mr. Irving received from Ullstein's Managing Editor, Wolf Jobst Siedler, a year before the German edition appeared. According to Sereny, Siedler informed Mr. Irving in detail of the proposed cuts, explained Ullstein's reasons for wanting them, and offered to dissolve the publishing contract if they proved unacceptable. Mr. Irving acknowledged Siedler's letter without objection, Sereny maintains, at a time when he had already been paid a 90,000 dm advance by Ullstein. Sereny, and Chester, , London Sunday Times, July 10, 1977Google Scholar; and Sereny, , Atlantic Monthly, August 1978, pp. 10–11.Google Scholar