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David Irving: Crimes of denial: The David Irvings of the world are a dangerous breed, and Austria had reason to fear him

[Mark Bourrie is an independent journalist and a PhD student in modern Canadian media and European history at the University of Ottawa.]

The Nazi party was in decline when it came to power in 1933. The party's membership numbers were stagnant and its popular vote was beginning to slip. But in the Weimar Republic's Reichstag, moderate centrist and leftist parties could not form a working coalition.

In sheer numbers, the Communists were the fastest-rising threat to the status quo, so, in a compromise coalition that gave Hitler the chancellorship and a couple of ministries, the Nazis got their hands on the government. Arson at the Reichstag gave Hitler the excuse to wipe away the democratic checks and balances. The death soon after of president Hindenburg (who had expected a restoration of the Hohenzollern monarchy after he left the stage) effectively sealed Germany's fate.

But democracy in Germany did not die because the country swung to Nazism. In every free election leading up to Hitler's assumption of dictatorial powers, the Nazis did no better than Canada's NDP, in the low 20 per cent of the popular vote.

Democracy died in Germany because people in most political parties and all classes allowed it to be undermined by thugs, political adventurers, and persistent attacks by psychopaths like Hitler. Free speech, a free press, and real public participation in the political process were given lip service. When the crisis of the Depression came, the veneer of democracy was tossed away in hopes of quick, easy solutions.

Democracy requires more than just a trip to the polling station every few years. It requires public faith and, more importantly, public ownership of the state. In Germany's case, big money, the army, and the poor (this was the depths of the Depression) lost any faith they had that a democratic system could deliver results in a time of crisis.

The Nazis had positioned themselves well, but if the Christian parties or the Social Democrats had been able to convince the German elites they could keep the Communists at bay until the Depression lifted, Hitler and the Nazis would now be an obscure topic of interest only to scholars of the Depression.

That said, the David Irvings of the world are a dangerous breed. They set the stage for the next Hitler by whitewashing the crimes and failings of the Nazis. They foster the belief that Hitlerism failed only because of its extremes, or because it faced a coalition of powers that no regime could defeat....

David Irving lacks the formal training of a historian. His translation of German documents has been proven to be dishonest and disingenuous. As well, he has deliberately provoked governments to punish him in a quest for publicity.

Included in the latter is Mr. Irving's arrest and conviction in Austria. It's pretty clear that he expected to be expelled from Austria, with a penalty of time served and no extra jail sentence. He would be free to enjoy the boom of book sales generated by the publicity, and to take his Holocaust-denial road show to Iran, where they really enjoy that sort of thing.

The three-year term handed down last month does seem to have come as a shock to Mr. Irving. He didn't realize that Austria, a free republic for just 60 years, a Nazi thrall for eight years, and a barely functioning republic for the previous 20 years, has reason to worry.