didnt expect this from you, my friend.

david irving is inarguably one of the most important scholars of WWII and nazi germany.

literally nobody disputes this--they can't because before they turned him on for (((certain reasons))) they had already praised him as the leading historian writing from primary german sources.

its sad how he cucked on what he knows is the truth but whatever thats what boomers do when they get put in prison. but you can figure it out for yourself.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4284325&forum_id=2#38398698)

but this guy put in work and again, he used to get a ton of respect from mainstream intellectuals until he pointed out the whole holohoax being fake thing.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4284325&forum_id=2#38398741)

every single historian admits they would suck a billion bbcs to have his original raw material. thats just a fact. he had the nazis and they didnt. full stop. he is indispensable.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4284325&forum_id=2#38398762)

I have read Conjuring Hitler and am convinced that this is an important, well documented, and seminal work of historical research. I am sure it will be around to be argued with when much of the academic product in the field has been forgotten and removed from the active shelves of university libraries.

What is particularly impressive is its amassing of citations for unusual facts and assessments, usually suppressed in mainstream narratives, from a number of different perspectives. Take for example the pages 228-55, of particular interest to me because of my past involvement with Poland. The sources cited range from a French first-hand observer, Ambassador André François-Poncet, to the former Stalinist spy, W.G. Krivitsky. Also cited are major works by historians usually considered as being right-wing (Carroll Quigley, David Irving), as well as another major work of history published by the left (Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel).[1]

In addition there is a surprising but in my view valuable digression into the occultist cultural background of Nazism (Ernst Jűnger, Julien Hervier). The discussion of Jűnger helps explain why liberal historiography, conducted according to the guidelines of Lord Acton, has not to this day been able to understand the cultural phenomenon of Nazism and its imitations.

Let me try to consider why this book has aroused controversy. One possible reason could be its tone, which is admittedly passionate to a degree not expected in an academic volume. I confess that this concerned me when I first opened the pages of Conjuring History, and read that “there is something far worse than Nazism, and that is the hubris of the Anglo-American fraternities, whose routine is to incite indigenous monsters to war” (p. xix). As a scholar committed to nonviolence, who had just completed a book on The Road to 9/11, I wondered if the indictment here was not excessive, in both content and affect. After having read Preparata’s book, I now find it impossible not to empathize with his anger.

Conjuring History has been criticized for citing the controversial author David Irving. But even Irving’s enemies give him grudging credit for his standard historical writings. And I believe that to write in this field, it is impossible to ignore what Irving has written.

Carroll Quigley was once equally marginalized; but today, thanks partly to the Internet, his reputation for posterity is relatively secure.[2]

Objection might be made to the scant and dismissive treatment of mainstream historians in the same field of 20th-Century German history, such as Gerald Feldman. Prof. Feldman, a colleague of mine whom I know from a dissertation committee on which we both sat, is certainly (in the usual sense) a less controversial historian than Prof. Preparata. And yet more than one writer has made unpleasant allegations about Prof. Feldman’s financial connections to the German insurance industry and the Goethe-Institut. I mention this, not to suggest that the allegations have any merit, but to point out that Prof. Preparata’s dismissal of Feldman is strictly on the substance of what he wrote, and wholly devoid of the ad hominem nastiness raised by others.[3]

There are two other possible objections to the book that have some degree of legitimacy. The first and most surprising is the relative absence of archival sources (with some exotic exceptions). The second is the use of a number of popular works, by problematic authors such as Charles Higham and Eustace Mullins.[4] On the second score, the problem is the same as with Irving. I know from my own experience that there are relevant facts in Higham and Mullins which it is virtually impossible to find elsewhere.

The last century saw unprecedented increases in official lying, off-the-books secret operations and negotiations, and falsified records. The result represents a serious challenge to the enlightenment hopes of the great liberal historian Lord Acton, that now “all information is within reach, and every problem…capable of solution.”[5] The public record of archival history – a chronological record of events, as reconstructed by archival historians from public records, now needs supplementation from other sources, and Prof. Preparata is to be commended for his efforts to do this.

The book’s great merit is to provide a brilliant synoptic overview of a bitterly contested era, contested not only at the time but in historiography ever since. It would be impossible for so original an effort to be beyond criticism. But it is authentic and important history. I think we can look forward to its growing importance through the years in the Social Science Citations Index, a crude but useful measure of significance. Can we predict the same for the works of the book’s detractors?

Peter Dale Scott

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4284325&forum_id=2#43224088)