"An Ecco book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

A personal and scholarly odyssey -- The defense strategy -- Auschwitz : a forensic tour -- Our objective changes -- "All rise!" -- Irving in the box : not a denier but a victim -- The chain of documents -- The Holocaust : random killings or systematic genocide? -- Queues and gas chamber controversies -- An American professor -- Exonerating Hitler, excoriating the Allies -- Fighting words -- Revolting calculations -- Lying about Hitler -- The diary of Anne Frank : a novel? -- Our German contingent -- Cavorting with thugs or guilt by association? -- One-person gas chambers and white people's polkas -- The final scene -- Judgment day : phone chains, psalms, and sleepless survivors -- Enormous thanks -- The "jester's costume."

In her acclaimed 1993 book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt called putative WWII historian David Irving "one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial." A prolific author of books on Nazi Germany who has claimed that more people died in Ted Kennedy's car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Irving responded by filing a libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom -- where the burden of proof lies on the defendant, not on the plaintiff. At stake were not only the reputations of two historians but the record of history itself.