FOR my birthday in 2005, my wife got me a book titled, “Tyrants: History 100 most evil despots and dictators.” I still have it because of the inscription my wife wrote. This book lists 100 men that the author described as despotic.
The book stops in 2003. It was written by Nigel Cawthorne, a British journalist. In the identification of dictators in the 20th century there are only two entries from Europe, none from the United States. European empires conquered and committed genocide in the Global South but there is no modern European leader (except Hitler and Kaiser Wilhelm 11) who is described as a dictator.
France committed unspeakable atrocities in Algeria, but Mr. Cawthorne didn’t find the leader of that country to be a dictator. Mr. Cawthorne left out the white despots of South Africa and the Prime Ministers of Israel who have taken over the Palestinian lands and have thrown thousands of their freedom fighters in jail. There is no mention of Henry Kissenger who was responsible for more deaths around the world than any human at the time.
Mr. Cawthorne’s book is about who writes history for people to read. If the reader inculcates the narrative of only one side, then the mind becomes a sponge. The European empires after the Second World War wrote the history of the world from their perspectives and the psychologies of the colonies were shaped by European epistemology.
Two aspects of what the West handed us are firstly, that it was the West that defeated Nazi Germany in the war and that secondly Hitler was the world’s most brutal dictator. One of the factual edifices of history is that the USSR (now Russia) was pivotal to the defeat of Germany in which the USSR suffered the most casualties.
A brilliant British historian, David Irving, began to question the narrative handed down to the world that Hitler was a maniac. Irving questioned the occurrence of the Holocaust as presented by the West. Irving remains the most prolific historian the world produced, writing about 23 top class books on history and translating three more.
Irving ran into trouble with the entire Western world including Canada and Australia because all those countries passed legislation that no citizen, whether scholar or journalist or ordinary citizen, can deny the Holocaust which was punishable by jail and deportation. Dr. Irving was jailed in Austria and deported from several other countries including Canada. There is no legislation in former European empires barring scholars from denying that slavery and colonialism were not anti-human.
Irving has raised three questions which are not allowed to be debated or written about in the newspapers or in academic papers, whether in journals or books. One is that no document with Hitler’s signature discussing anything relating to killing Jews was ever found. Irving offered a huge reward for anyone finding such a document. Secondly, there is no document that has been found purporting to come from the Germany government about the killing of Jews. To date no such document on both issues has been located by any historian from any country since 1945.
Thirdly, Irving contends that the number of six million Jews is exaggerated. He argues that Germany did not have the resources and space to kill and bury six million people within the space of five years. These are three iconoclastic points by Irving which remain unexplored because the law in Europe prevents any discussion that questions the Holocaust.
Sadly, Dr. Irving is not in good health today and has not been engaged in writing. But in a world where powerful leaders in the Western world are saying terribly anti-human things, horribly anti-human things that Hitler would not have even uttered, it is time that scholars around the world conduct revisionist research on Hitler and his government.
In the dozens of books that Irving wrote on Germany, he has concluded that Hitler was not irrational, mad or had a terrible mind as portrayed by the one-dimensional narrative that the West gave the world after World War 2 and was in fact a very likeable person when you get to know him.
Is there evidence that Hitler was not the horrible person, a portrait that the West forced down our throat? Was Hitler more anti-human than the current Prime Minister of Israel? The answer is no. The bestialities the government and military of Israel have committed against the helpless, unarmed civilians of Gaza have no parallel with Nazi Germany.
In the space of six months, Netanyahu and the armed forces of Israel killed more journalists, aid workers, doctors, nurses, babies and women than the Nazi government did in five years.
Academics around the world need to take a revisionist reflection on Hitler. This column is a contribution to that effort.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.
