THE drama for David Irving began yesterday when he strode into the Vienna courthouse — where the Nazis once beheaded resistance fighters — clutching a copy of his book Hitler’s War.

“It’s ridiculous that I should be standing trial for something I’m supposed to have done 16 years ago,” he fumed as he held the book aloft. “I’ve got no choice under the law as it stands — I’ve got to plead guilty,” said the 67-year-old British historian, who had been in jail since his arrest at a motorway service area last November.

His grand entry, 20 minutes early, was supposed to seize the initiative in his trial on charges of denying the Holocaust in two speeches in Austria in 1989. It was the kind of showmanship that he deployed during the controversies over the faked Hitler diaries and during the libel case six years ago against Penguin Books. On that occasion, the historian unsuccessfully sued a writer for claiming that he was a Holocaust denier.

“My views have changed. History is a constantly growing tree. The more documents are available the more you learn, and I have learnt a lot since 1989,” he told reporters as he waited.

But Judge Peter Liebtreu did not allow Irving to dominate proceedings. Again and again he encouraged the historian to make a public apology. In the end Irving told the court that his views had changed since the 1989 speeches. He now accepted the existence of the gas chambers at Auschwitz and that the Nazis murdered millions of Jews. The judge read out a quotation from one of the speeches: “It makes no sense to transport people from Amsterdam, Vienna and Brussels 500 kilometres to Auschwitz simply to liquidate them when it can be more easily done 8km from the city where they live.”

Did you say this? asked Judge Liebtreu. “I said exactly that,” replied Irving. “And now?” asked Judge Liebtreu. “It was an error,” said Irving. “Just one?” pressed the judge.

Irving urged the eight-strong jury, consisting mainly of young women, to consider the context. He was talking to 80 or 90 sympathisers in the back of a pub. Outside, leftist demonstrators were demanding his blood. “The atmosphere was heated, very tense,” he said.

The judge cut him down.

“According to police reports, you weren’t under threat at all, you were happily signing copies of your books,” he said.

The jury assisted the three-judge panel in deciding on the sentence of three years’ jail after a seven-hour hearing.

Irving was arrested on November 11 last year in the southern Austrian province of Styria on a warrant issued in 1989 after police had been tipped off about his presence. He was charged under a federal law that makes it a crime to publicly diminish, deny or justify the Holocaust. He had tried to secure bail but the court refused for fear that he might flee before he could be brought to trial.

Irving’s admission that gas chambers really did exist at Auschwitz was a retraction of a key phrase for a historian who has always trivialised the Holocaust. He also said that he “regretted using such a strong formulation” when asked about a statement in which he said Holocaust witnesses needed to see a psychiatrist.

And yet there were limits to Irving’s remorse. He was adamant that Hitler was not involved in the Holocaust and that he had actually helped Jews. Those are the views that he first set out in Hitler’s War, first published in 1977, in which he maintained that Hitler knew nothing of the Nazi slaughter of six million jews until 1943.

His admissions failed to impress the prosecutor. “He’s just putting on a show for you. David Irving is playing the role of repentant sinner,” Michael Klackl said.

Questioned about his views on the gas chambers, Irving told Herr Klackl: “That was no Holocaust denial, that was only (a statement) about a part of the history.” Irving was also accused of saying that the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom against the Jews was not the work of Nazis but of “unknown” troublemakers who had dressed up as storm troopers.

In his own closing statement, he said that he was “very proud of the 30 books I have written”.

Throughout the trial a row of supporters — Austrians, Germans and Britons — nodded their heads enthusiastically when Irving scored an occasional point. Lady Michelle Renouf said that she could not understand the fuss. “The obvious thing would be to exhume the bodies and determine whether they died from typhoid fever or from gas,” she said. When a reporter pointed out that the bodies were now ash, she turned abruptly away. Across the courtroom she flashed a smile at her friend Irving who looked up from his book. He was reading Eggs, Beans and Crumpets by P. G. Wodehouse.