“Perhaps the extreme caution and timorous silence exhibited by nearly all Western historians on these sensitive elements of World War II and the Bolshevik Revolution should not entirely surprise us given the professional and personal risks they might face if they strayed from orthodoxy.
“Consider the very telling example of David Irving. During the first half of his professional career, his string of widely-translated best-sellers and his millions of books in print probably established him as the most internationally successful British historian of the last one hundred years, with his remarkable archival research frequently revolutionizing our understanding of the European conflict and the political forces behind it. But as he repeatedly demonstrated his lack of regard for official orthodoxy, he attracted many powerful enemies, who eventually ruined his reputation, drove him into personal bankruptcy, and even arranged his imprisonment.
