COMMENT

---

Did publisher do the right thing in turning down Goebbels book?

Should a major U.S. publisher cancel publication of a biography of Joseph Goebbels, the top Nazi propagandist and virulent anti-Semite, because the book has been described by some advance reviewers as ``repellent'' and ``scurriously misleading,'' and because word of its forthcoming appearance aroused considerable political opposition?

That is the dilemma St. Martin's Press faced with David Irving's Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich, recently published in London.

St. Martin's finally decided not to publish the book, which Chairman Thomas J. McCormack described as ``inescapably anti-Semitic''; its ``subtext was . . . that the Jews brought it on themselves.''

It is no secret that Irving has long specialized in denouncing Allied actions and politics during World War II, while at the same time attempting to defend or minimize those of Hitler and his monstrous regime. Nor is it any secret that Irving has a record of discovering a variety of important historical sources. However distasteful to most of us, his work must not be dismissed out of hand.

In Goebbels, Irving deliberately focuses so closely on his subject that Hitler simply disappears from center stage for extended periods. In other words, his subtitle is grossly misleading. Goebbels knew perfectly well that he was No. 2 after his beloved Fuehrer -- ``he is like a father to me'' -- but was jealously concerned to maintain that position until Hitler made Goebbels chancellor just before their suicide.

Some critics, including Deborah Lipstadt of Emory University, have accused Irving of ``trying to destroy the memory of those who . . . perished at the hands of tyrants.'' Even a cursory inspection of his new, 700-page plus account does not support that assertion.

For example, there are numerous passages about Goebbels' vicious anti-Semitism, the Nazis' mounting anti-Jewish harassment and brutalities, the Kristallnacht burning of synagogues, the deportation of untold numbers of Jews to the East and the mass killings there, although -- in line with Irving's repeatedly stated views -- Auschwitz is downgraded to Heinrich Himmler's ``most brutal . . . slave labor camp and the one with the highest mortality rate,'' an outrageous prettification that will fool no one.

Since the 1980s, Munich's renowned Institute for Contemporary History has been publishing a 15-volume edition of Goebbels' surviving diaries, on which the Irving book is largely based. The last volume to be published appeared earlier this year, and reached me as these lines were being written.

In his introduction, Horst Moeller, the institute's internationally respected director, asks pointedly if such poisonous material full of lies and barbarisms should be published, and he answers with an unequivocal yes.

So, is Irving's new opus, with all its evident distortions, omissions and misrepresentations, a possible threat to our historical health? Any such claim is preposterous.

Irving's work is no more or less dangerous, say, than the seemingly endless parade of books and articles attempting to minimize, or downplay, the unspeakable crimes of communist leaders from Lenin and Stalin to Mao and Castro, and their assorted murderous accomplices.

Francis L. Loewenheim is professor of history at Rice University. With Gordon A. Craig of Stanford University, he edited The Diplomats, 1939-1979 (Princeton, 1994).