Hitler's War

Hitler's War

Cover of the first edition
Author	David Irving
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	World War II
Published	1977 (Viking Press)
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	926 (first edition)
ISBN

Hitler's War is a biographical book by David Irving. It describes the Second World War from the point of view of Adolf Hitler.

It was first published in April 1977 by Hodder & Stoughton and Viking Press. Avon Books reissued it in 1990. In 2002, Focal Point Publications published a revised illustrated edition, combined together with his The War Path, as a 1024-page hardcover.

Hitler's War, the first published instalment of his two-part biography of Adolf Hitler (the prequel The War Path was published in 1978), had originally been published in German as Hitler und seine Feldherren (Hitler and his Generals) in 1975. Irving's intention in Hitler's War was to clean away the "years of grime and discoloration from the facade of a silent and forbidding monument" to reveal the real Hitler, whose reputation Irving claimed had been slandered by historians. In Hitler's War, Irving tried to "view the situation as far as possible through Hitler's eyes, from behind his desk". He portrayed Hitler as a rational, intelligent politician, whose only goal was to increase Germany's prosperity and influence on the continent, and who was constantly let down by incompetent and/or treasonous subordinates. Irving's book faulted the Allied leaders, most notably Winston Churchill, for the eventual escalation of war, and claimed that the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 was a "preventive war" forced on Hitler to avert an alleged impending Soviet attack (supported by some, notably Soviet GRU defector Victor Suvorov, and others; see Icebreaker). Irving commented that in light of the "preventive war" that he felt Hitler was forced to wage, the Kommissarbefehl was merely something that Stalin forced on Hitler. He also claimed that Hitler had no knowledge of the Holocaust; while not outright denying its occurrence, Irving claimed that Heinrich Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich were its originators and architects. Irving made much of the lack of any written order from Hitler ordering the Holocaust, and for decades afterward offered to pay £1000 to anyone who could find such an order. In addition, citing the work of such historians as Harry Elmer Barnes, David Hoggan, and Frederick J.P. Veale, Irving argued that Britain was primarily responsible for the outbreak of war in 1939.