Spring offensive

This appeared in my Odysee feed today, and of course I had to watch it immediately. WordPress is once again blocking Odysee links, so please enter without the blank in the browser:
https://odysee. com/@scoobyburn:1/David-Irving—Speaking-Frankly:a

I respect David Irving’s work enormously, and what was done to him is quite simply a crime. But what immediately appealed to me in this… it’s not an interview, it’s more of a monologue or a spoken autobiography… were his comments on the realisation that he was dealing with real people and events. This may seem strange to the average reader, but it’s a phenomenon that probably all authors of historical events encounter. For example, I know exactly what Irving is talking about! It’s that hard-to-describe moment when the research becomes real – when you realise in a very tangible way that the people you’re researching and writing about had lived and were people of flesh and blood. As I said, it’s hard to describe; you have to experience it to really understand it. The difference between scholarship and knowledge, as Abd-ru-shin would say: Knowledge is only that which one has experienced and made one’s own.

A good reminder, especially now that I’ve started doing research again. And I’m so happy about it!
Probably boosted by that feeling of upcoming Spring, I finally pulled myself out of the slump I have been in for what feels like ages and spontaneously started a new biographical research. I have read really good stuff over the past months – research by Margot Metroland, Edward Dutton’s fantastic biography of Churchhill’s headmaster (fantastic because of the exemplary research by the author – that is what I’m always talking about!), Ikuo Suzuki’s book on Anne Frank’s Diary. And despite enjoying all of it immensely, I almost felt depressed for not being out there and doing research myself. So here we go.
I don’t know yet where the threads I’ve picked up will lead me. Perhaps there will be something to write about; perhaps there won’t. The uncertainty is part of the fun.

„What a world we live in when it is news that some DA did the right thing.“

Something strange occurred to me recently: I am mainly interested in books that upset me. It is rare that I find something new I want to read that is wholesome and makes me feel happy. Whereas „fluff“ books don’t appeal to me in the slightest. No wonder I have such a dim view of mankind.

Just now I’m slowly reading my way through David Irving’s phenomenal Nuremberg – The Last Battle. It’s not that easy to find at a reasonable price, because Irving’s name has been smeared and, as usually happens, everyone hurried to distance themselves from him. Only recently, Amazon removed the e-book version from their list of titles. (To be fair, it had compatibility problems.) But if you can get your hands on a copy, read it. It’s excellent, even though I can only manage a few pages before feeling the overwhelming urge to strangle someone – luckily, all those someones are already long dead. And since I believe in karma, they’re being taken care of. Oh yes.

Now, as fate would have it, I came across Die Welt der Literatur of 1964 in the course of my work. It was a weekly newspaper dedicated solely to new books. In it, I found a review of David Irving’s Der Untergang Dresdens, the German translation of The Destruction of Dresden (17 September 1964, p. 455). The issue of 26 November (p. 659) printed a letter by a reader, questioning Irving’s findings in rather harsh words. The issue of 10 December (p. 703) then printed Irving’s reply, as well as an update by Irving’s German publisher, quoting a hitherto unknown document that had just come to light. It’s really an interesting exchange.
Die Welt der Literatur in general is an interesting time capsule. People in 1964 still seemed so much more trusting and innocent. Their world was still much smaller; everything was new and fascinating; a much better, exciting, optimistic world lay before them. I often did not know whether to laugh or to cry.

Irving’s Nuremberg also reinforced something that I addressed in my recent rambling post: Just now there is, especially in the US (but also in Germany, believe me), a discussion about the legal system’s supposed neutrality and de facto lack thereof. Blind Justitia vs. „Lady Justice has taken off her blindfold and become a social justice activist“. And again, I am convinced that these issues go back to Allied behaviour towards a vanquished Germany. Ernst Würzburger claimed so desperately in Der letzte Landsberger that nobody in their right mind disputed the lawfulness of the Nuremberg trials – when in fact many reputable historians and lawyers do. And even back then, the better men in the Allied nations protested against the planned kangaroo court their self-righteous, willfully blind countrymen were convening.
Nowadays, the expression „nemesis“ is erroneously being applied to describe an archenemy. Agatha Christie still knew better when she used the expression in one of her Miss Marple stories. Nemesis was the Greek goddess of balancing justice – karma, the law of action and reaction, reaping what one has sown, Wicca’s law of three, fate; it’s all the same.

Now I really want to re-watch the film. I loved it years ago, of course in particular the great Brian Cox as Hermann Göring. I wonder how I’d see it today.

The protective wall of „service and duty“ is withdrawn at earthly death. [A judge] is absolutely personally responsible for all his decisions and actions, as is every other human being.

(Abd-ru-shin: Questions and Answers)