Editing David Irving (section)

===Hitler Diaries===
In 1983, ''[[Stern (magazine)|Stern]]'', a weekly German news magazine, purchased 61 volumes of [[Hitler Diaries|Hitler's supposed diaries]] for [[Deutsche Mark|DM]] 9 million and published excerpts from them. Irving played a major role in exposing the Hitler Diaries as a hoax. In October 1982 Irving had purchased from the same source as ''Stern''<nowiki/>'s 1983 purchase, 800 pages of documents relating to Hitler, only to conclude that many of the documents were forgeries.<ref name="Evans 2001 19">{{Harvnb|Evans|2001|p=19}}.</ref> Irving was amongst the first to identify the diaries as forgeries, and to draw media attention. He went so far as to crash the press conference held by [[Hugh Trevor-Roper]] at the magazine's offices in [[Hamburg]] on 25 April 1983 to denounce the diaries as a forgery and Trevor-Roper for endorsing the diaries as genuine.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=48}}.</ref> Irving's performance at the ''Stern'' press conference where he violently harangued Trevor-Roper until ejected by security led him to be featured prominently on the news: the next day, Irving appeared on the ''Today'' television show as a featured guest.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harris|1986|pp=320–323}}.</ref> Irving had concluded that the alleged Hitler diaries were a forgery because they had come from the same dealer in Nazi memorabilia from whom Irving had purchased his collection in 1982.<ref name="Evans 2001 19" /> At the press conference in Hamburg, Irving said, "I know the collection from which these diaries come. It is an old collection, full of forgeries. I have some here".<ref name="Evans 2001 19" /> Irving was proud to have detected and denounced the hoax material and of the "trail of chaos" he had created at the Hamburg press conference and the attendant publicity it had brought him, and took pride in his humiliation of Trevor-Roper, whom Irving strongly disliked for his "sloppy" work, in not detecting the hoax, and past criticism of Irving's methods and conclusions.<ref name="Pelt 22">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=22}}.</ref> Irving also noted internal inconsistencies in the supposed Hitler diaries, such as a diary entry for 20 July 1944, which would have been unlikely given that Hitler's right hand had been badly burned by the bomb planted in his headquarters by Colonel [[Claus von Stauffenberg]] earlier that day.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|2005|p=19}}.</ref>

A week later, on 2 May, Irving asserted that many of the diary documents appeared to be genuine: at the same press conference, Irving took the opportunity to promote his translation of the memoirs of Hitler's physician [[Theodor Morell]].<ref name="Pelt 22" /> [[Robert Harris (novelist)|Robert Harris]], in his book ''Selling Hitler'', suggested that an additional reason for Irving's change of mind over the authenticity of the alleged Hitler diaries was that the fake diaries contain no reference to the Holocaust, thereby buttressing Irving's claim in ''Hitler's War'' that Hitler had no knowledge of it.<ref>{{Harvnb|Harris|1986|pp=338–339}}.</ref> Subsequently, Irving conformed when the diaries were declared a forgery by consensus. At a press conference held to withdraw his endorsement of the diaries, Irving proudly claimed that he was the first to call them a forgery, to which a reporter replied that he was also the last to call them genuine.<ref name="Pelt 22" />