Evans positions himself as a "magnanimous" and "impartial" historian. A review of the book from the 'Evening Standard' tells us:
Another conspiracy theory tactic is to deride historians who don’t accept their views as “official” or “traditionalist” writers who are somehow in hoc to the authorities. It’s nonsense, of course, as Evans makes clear, saying that working out what really happened in history “requires a great deal of hard work.. direct evidence.. a willingness to change one’s mind” and the “abandonment of prejudices and preconceptions” when facts tell against them. By contrast, the conspiracy theorists tend to blow out of all proportion any tiny piece of evidence that appears to support their ideas or try to connect events without any link. Others try to undermine the character or motive of those who oppose them, rather than confronting the actual argument.
Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/the-hitler-conspiracies-by-richard-j-evans-book-review-a4560191.html Archive: https://archive.vn/OhucM
If there was ever a more fitting example of a man throwing stones in glass houses, or the pot calling the kettle black, then I have not seen it. Evan's entire claim to objectivity crumbles to the ground when he was paid a quarter of a million dollars ($200-250,000) to act as "objective" professional historian for Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books in the Irving Libel case of 2000, after which Penguin Books published his hack job 3-volume "history" of the Third Reich. This current book of his was also published by Penguin.
In that case against Irving and the trial against Joel Hayward, Evans did not hesitate to undermine and denigrate the characters of these men, nor did he hesitate in accusing them of malicious motives. Evans went so far as to say all of Irving's work was "worthless", that he was an anti-semitic "Holocaust Denier" and a "racist". The usual claptrap of nonsense words used when one fails to address any arguments.
During the Hayward trial Evan's impropriety was on full display:
I can't make sense of a similar statement Professor Evans made last week during an exchange with another Kiwi academic: "The distinction between dishonest intent and dishonest effect is a fine one but it was one that the Working Party accepted."
EvansNot only is Professor Evans' logic jumbled but the Working Party did not find me dishonest at all. The party rejected Professor Evans' claims to that effect. The party found my research honest and concluded that my thesis could not be stripped from me and that my masters degree could not be downgraded or otherwise changed.
[...]
I could not afford to employ an expert to counter Professor Evans' report, which was in any event severely criticised as "adversarial", "not objective" and "partisan" by Professor Gerald Orchard, one of New Zealand's most highly regarded lawyers.
The Working Party agreed that Professor Evans was a highly partisan contributor to the proceedings.
Joel Hayward's reply to Richard Evans, see:http://www.fpp.co.uk/BoD/origins/Hayward/NZHerald250803.html Archive: https://archive.vn/esJOE
The report of the Working Party of the University of Canterbury had this to say of Evans:
4.5 The Working Party received a submission from Professor G. F. Orchard, counsel for Dr Orange, concerning Professor Evans' report. This submission was principally concerned with the standpoint of Professor Evans; it suggested that he acted not as an objective expert but as a partisan advocate. Professor Orchard cited examples in the Evans report of exaggeration, omission, minimisation and misrepresentation. In its detailed consideration of the thesis set out below, the Working Party has considered Professor Orchard's arguments on particular passages.
4.6 The tone of the Evans report is strongly antagonistic and its highly critical treatment is not restricted to Dr Hayward alone. The supervisor and external examiner have both drawn attention to its polemical character, and have in turn subjected Professor Evans to similar criticism. The Working Party believes that such a response, though understandable, is unproductive. It has itself made every effort to discount Professor Evans' tendency to intemperate expression.
REPORT to the Council of The University of Canterbury: http://www.fpp.co.uk/Legal/Penguin/experts/Evans/NZReportExtract.html Archive: https://archive.vn/fvoPl
Another article, with piercing criticism by other historians makes a mockery of Evans and his hypocrisy when evaluating the kind of people he would otherwise deride as he did Irving and Hayward, had they been Nazi sympathizers and not Stalinist, Communist sympathizers:
If we’re returning now to the subject of Hobsbawm, it’s because another famous historian, Richard J. Evans, FBA, FRSL, FRHistS, FLSW, has published an 800-page biography of him. Evans is best known for his three-volume history of the Third Reich – which has been described as definitive – and for his court testimony defending a writer’s characterization of David Irving as a Holocaust denier. In all his writings on Hitler’s regime, Evans has made it clear that he is not a fan. He sees Nazism for the evil that it is. He does not buy into the notion that, in writing about a Nazi, you can set aside his Nazi beliefs, or contextualize them or relativize them, depicting them as just a minor or incidental part of his personal makeup. You can’t conclude that, his Nazi convictions notwithstanding, the most important thing about him is that he was a devoted husband and father, a good friend and neighbor, a man who loved his pets and was, as the British say, clubbable. No, a Nazi is, first and last, a Nazi. Evans understands that.
Confronted with the case of Hobsbawm and Hobsbawm’s Communism, however, Evans is able to take a totally different approach. In a blistering review of Evans’s book for the June issue of the New Criterion, yet another historian, David Pryce-Jones (who, as it happens, is also an FRSL), laments that Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History makes Evans “look either a dupe or a fool of the higher sort, in any case earning him a reputation no historian would want to have.” Describing Hobsbawm as “the foremost Communist apologist in the Britain of his day,” Pryce-Jones observes that if Hobsbawm had been a Nazi, “Evans surely would have thrown his doctrine back into his face. Instead, he defends the indefensible with this hagiography.” Although Hobsbawm, after joining the Communist Party as a student at Cambridge, “never deviated from the Party line,” Evans “can still write this utter absurdity: ‘there was no sense in which [Hobsbawm] was an active or committed member of the Party.”
A Hobsbawm hagiography, see: https://archive.vn/hysAj
So not only is Richard Evans a disingenuous historical partisan, and bald faced liar - but he's apparently completely oblivious to his own biases and misconduct. Which I personally find hard to believe he is unaware of. He is not in any case, the suitable person to moralise about the virtues of objective and unbiased scholarship. That he is considered to be so, is highly illustrative of the academic corruption that runs rife in the institutions of our "beloved" Liberal Democracies.
The article talks about how one must have "a willingness to change one's mind" and an "abandonment of prejudices and preconceptions". Well, let's see an example of how well Evans dealt with such high virtues that he apparently abides by. The article claims "conspiracy theorists tend to blow out of all proportion any tiny piece of evidence that appears to support their ideas or try to connect events without any link" and I could only think about how Evans went about evaluating the Schlegelberger document, how he himself in this case must be considered a Conspiracy Theorist by his own standards. It the perfect example of how Evans is a liar who doesn't abide by his alleged principles.
The Schlegelberger document reads as follows:
"Mr Reich Minister Lammers informed me that the Führer had repeatedly declared to him that he wants to hear that the Solution of the Jewish Problem has been postponed until after the war is over. That being so, the current discussions are of purely theoretical value, in Mr Reich Minister Lammers' opinion. He will moreover take pains to ensure that, whatever else happens, no fundamental decisions are taken without his knowledge in consequence of a surprise briefing by any third party."
Source: http://www.fpp.co.uk/Himmler/Schlegelberger/DocItself0342.html Archive: https://archive.vn/KGgLp
The document speaks for itself. It isn't vague, and it isn't up for interpretation, yet somehow Evans found a way to interpret the document in such a way that doesn't display any kind of "willingness to change one's mind" when the facts told against him. His interpretation was:
In paragraphs 5.155 and 5.161 of Justice Gray's decision, it is noted that Professor Evans expressed the opinion that the subject matter of the "Schlegelberger note" was probably not the Jewish question generally, but rather the narrower issue of mixed marriages between Jews and Gentiles and the children of such marriages. Consequently, this document cannot be used by revisionist historians to prove there was no Nazi policy to exterminate the Jews, because it does not refer to all Jews, only to a small category of Jews.
Paul Grubach, Hitler, the 'Final Solution,' and the Luther Memorandum: A Response to Evans and Longerich, see: https://codoh.com/library/document/hitler-the-final-solution-and-the-luther/en/ Archive: https://archive.vn/h6Sz9
An absurd conclusion to be drawn from a document that makes no mention whatsoever of mixed marriages between Jews and Gentiles. Perhaps "Final Solution to the Jewish Problem" isn't general enough for Evans? Or maybe the real "Holocaust" was not intended for all the Jews, but only the mixed-race offspring? Evans wouldn't accept that either. So one has to wonder how Evans fashioned such an interpretation.
As I said in another thread: This is how Evans' forces the documentary record to conform to his own lies. This document, obviously contains nothing of which Evans' interpretation could be substantiated. Nothing whatsoever. In fact the document itself, even if accepted in the way Evans interprets it would contradict the Holocaust narrative - for if the goal of the Holocaust was to exterminate all Jews, why on earth would the mischling be left to be dealt with until after the war? It makes no logical sense, even less so from the standpoint of Evans.
But this isn't a case of a "tiny piece of evidence" that's "blown out of proportion". This fact has been substantiated by another document known as the Luther Memorandum:
Even now he could say one thing to him, that at the end of this war all Jews would have to leave Europe. This was an unalterable decision of the Führer and also the only way to master this problem, as only a global and comprehensive solution could be applied and individual measures would not help very much.
(Document NG-2586)
See the full Luther Memorandum here: Arthur Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Castle Hill Publishers, 2015), Pp. 269-279
Paul Grubach, in response to Evan's lie had this to say:
Hitler's orders are perfectly clear. Referring to Jews in general (thus contradicting Evan's claim), the German dictator stated they will still be around after the war is over (as he had no plans to exterminate them en masse), and they will have to emigrate to a new land outside Europe. This decision was "unalterable," that is, not subject to change. And, this Luther memo gives no indication that there was any change in policy during the time between the enunciation of Hitler's Jewish policy to Bulgarian Foreign Minister Popoff in November 1941, and the creation of said memo in August 1942.
Nor can one fall back on Longerich's view that the "Schlegelberger memo" is insignificant, for here we have an important August 1942 memorandum underscoring the Hitler orders of the "Schlegelberger note" of March 1942.
Paul Grubach, Hitler, the 'Final Solution,' and the Luther Memorandum: A Response to Evans and Longerich, see: https://codoh.com/library/document/hitler-the-final-solution-and-the-luther/en/ Archive: https://archive.vn/h6Sz9
Read more of what I wrote about Evans here: https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13533&p=98685#p98685
Evans as we can see isn't fit to make any comments about the character's of anyone, let alone people he considers to be conspiracy theorists as he is very plainly one himself. The article states:
Evans points out for example how conspiracy theories often rely on documents or human sources that can’t be located, never existed, or have conveniently disappeared so that the evidence they supposedly provided can’t be checked. Coincidences aren’t allowed, so events at the heart of a conspiracy theory must have been planned, however much the facts show otherwise.
Source: https://www.standard.co.uk/culture/books/the-hitler-conspiracies-by-richard-j-evans-book-review-a4560191.html Archive: https://archive.vn/OhucM
This is the Holocaust story all over. No documents, only testimony from "witnesses" that have never been questioned or cross-examined. The evidence for the alleged atrocities have all "disappeared" and all the documentation that does exists blatantly contradicts the idea that there was a systematic plan to murder all the Jews in Europe. Yet Evans believes it anyway, as do all his colleagues. None of them, on this issue alone can stand before anyone and claim to be all the things a historian should be according to Richard Evans. And especially not Evans himself. They do not show us any plans, they do not set aside their preconceptions and prejudices, they do not have a willingness to change their minds. If you were to ask Richard Evans (or any historian) whether he would be willing to admit, on the basis of the evidence, that the Holocaust did not happen, what do you think he would say? Would he follow the laws of the "objective" historian? No, he wouldn't even entertain the possibility of such an idea. This shows because he clearly hasn't read any of the Holocaust Handbooks. I wonder if Penguin Books would publish them? Definitely not. Because debate is outlawed, evaluating evidence put forward by the "wrong" people isn't to be tolerated let alone given legitimacy by mainstream publishing houses so historians can engage in honest debate.
The message is clear. There is no honest debate allowed in academia on the Holocaust, or on anything relating to the National Socialists. The outcome is decided before pen is ever put to paper. For Evans to claim otherwise is to display his utterly delusional belief that people are too gullible, too stupid, to see the dagger peaking out from behind his back as he attempts to shake hands.
But perhaps we ought to thank Evans for admitting that he must be a Conspiracy Theorists. If he's not, surely he wouldn't mind contending with real revisionism? But he will never do so. These historians like Evans are Conspiracy Theorists to a criminal degree, where they will arrest, silence, and threaten anyone who speaks out against their slanderous lies.
