Editing David Irving (section)

===Ernst Zündel trial===
[[File:Ernst Zundel.jpg|thumb|Ernst Zündel, whom Irving met in 1986 and became good friends with and collaborated with to distribute Holocaust denial]]
In January 1988, Irving travelled to Toronto, Ontario, to assist [[Doug Christie (lawyer)|Douglas Christie]], the defence lawyer for [[Ernst Zündel]] at his [[R v Zundel|second trial]] for denying the Holocaust.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> Working closely with [[Robert Faurisson]], who was also assisting the defence, Irving contacted Warden Bill Armontrout of the Missouri State Penitentiary who recommended that Irving and Faurisson get into touch with [[Fred A. Leuchter]], a self-described execution expert living in Boston.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 162" /> Irving and Faurisson then flew to Boston to meet with Leuchter, who agreed to lend his alleged technical expertise on the behalf of Zündel's defence.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> Irving argued that an alleged expert on gassings like Leuchter could prove that the Holocaust was a "myth".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 161" /> After work on the second Zündel trial, Irving declared that based on his exposure to Zündel's and Leuchter's theories that he was now conducting a "one-man ''[[wikt:intifada|intifada]]''" against the idea that there had been a Holocaust.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179">{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=179}}.</ref> Subsequently, Irving claimed to the American journalist [[D. D. Guttenplan]] in a 1999 interview that Zündel had convinced him that the Holocaust had not occurred.<ref>{{Harvnb|Guttenplan|2001|p=54}}.</ref>

Between 22 and 26 April 1988, Irving testified for Zündel, endorsing [[Richard Verrall|Richard Harwood]]'s book ''[[Did Six Million Really Die?]]'' as "over ninety percent&nbsp;... factually accurate".<ref name="Pelt 44">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=44}}.</ref>

As to what evidence further led Irving to believe that the Holocaust never occurred, he cited ''The [[Leuchter report]]'' by Fred A. Leuchter, which claimed there was no evidence for the existence of homicidal [[gas chamber]]s at the [[Auschwitz concentration camp]]. Irving said in a 1999 documentary about Leuchter: "The big point [of the Leuchter report]: there is no significant residue of [[cyanide]] in the brickwork. That's what converted me. When I read that in the report in the courtroom in Toronto, I became a hard-core disbeliever".<ref>''Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.''.</ref>{{full citation needed|date=December 2022}} In addition, Irving was influenced to embrace Holocaust denial by the American historian [[Arno J. Mayer]]'s 1988 book ''Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?'', which did not deny the Holocaust, but claimed that most of those who died at Auschwitz were killed by disease: Irving saw in Mayer's book an apparent confirmation of Leuchter's and Zündel's theories about no mass murder at Auschwitz.<ref>{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|pp=47–48}}.</ref>

After the trial, Irving published Leuchter's report as ''Auschwitz, The End of the Line: The Leuchter Report'' in the United Kingdom in 1989 and wrote its foreword.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> Leuchter's book had been first published in Canada by Zündel's [[Samisdat Publishers]] in 1988 as ''The Leuchter Report: The End of a Myth: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Majdanek''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|p=260}}.</ref> In his foreword to the British edition of Leuchter's book, Irving wrote that "Nobody likes to be swindled, still less where considerable sums of money are involved".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> The alleged swindle was the [[Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany|reparations]] money totalling 3 billion DM paid by the Federal Republic of Germany to Israel between 1952 and 1966 for the Holocaust.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" /> In his foreword, Irving praised the "scrupulous methods" and "integrity" of Leuchter.<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 179" />

For publishing and writing the foreword to ''Auschwitz The End of the Line'', on 20 June 1989, Irving together with Leuchter was condemned in an [[Early Day Motion]] of the [[House of Commons of the United Kingdom|House of Commons]] as "Hitler's heirs".<ref>{{Harvnb|Lipstadt|1993|pp=179–180}}.</ref> The motion went on to describe Irving as a "Nazi propagandist and longtime Hitler apologist" and ''Auschwitz The End of the Line'' as a "fascist publication".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180" /> In the Motion, the House stated that they were "appalled by [the Holocaust denial of] Nazi propagandist and long-time Hitler apologist David Irving".<ref name=s32/> In response to the House of Commons motion, Irving in a press statement challenged the MPs who voted to condemn him, writing that: "I will enter the 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz and you and your friends may lob in [[Zyklon B]] in accordance with the well known procedures and conditions. I guarantee that you won't be satisfied with the results!"<ref name="Brinks, Jan Hermann page 107">Brinks, Jan Hermann. ''Children of a New Fatherland'', London: I.B. Tauris, 2000, p. 107.</ref>

In a pamphlet Irving published in London on 23 June 1989, he made the "epochal announcement" that there was no mass murder in the gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.<ref name="Pelt 48">{{Harvnb|Van Pelt|2002|p=48}}.</ref> Irving labelled the gas chambers at Auschwitz a "hoax", and writing in the third person declared that he "has placed himself [Irving] at the head of a growing band of historians, worldwide, who are now sceptical of the claim that at Auschwitz and other camps were 'factories of death', in which millions of innocent people were systematically gassed to death".<ref name="Pelt 48" /> Boasting of his role in criticising the Hitler diaries as a forgery in 1983, Irving wrote "now he [Irving] is saying the same thing about the infamous 'gas chambers' of Auschwitz, Treblinka and Majdanek. They did not exist – ever – except perhaps as the brainchild of Britain's brilliant wartime Psychological Warfare Executive".<ref name="Pelt 48" /> Finally, Irving claimed "the survivors of Auschwitz are themselves testimony to the absence of an extermination programme".<ref name="Pelt 48" /> Echoing the criticism of the House of Commons, a leader in ''[[The Times]]'' on 14 May 1990 described Irving as a "man for whom Hitler is something of a hero and almost everything of an innocent and for whom Auschwitz is a Jewish deception".<ref name="Lipstadt 1993 180" />