Adolf Hitler
A failed artist, Adolf Hitler tried for years to become the leader of Germany. He tried and failed a number of times -- cultimating in his imprisonment after the infamous Beer Hall Putsch -- to do this. While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), which detailed his feelings about the world and the races of the people that inhabited it.
Ultimately, Hitler first became the Chancellor, then the Führer of Germany, for over a decade. Hitler stayed true to the racial policies he outlined in Mein Kampf. He ordered the wholesale death of the Jewish people and destruction of the Jewish culture, saying that the “ultimate goal must definitely be the removal of the Jews altogether."
Heinrich Himmler
The planner behind the Holocaust, Himmler lead the dreaded SS from 1929 up until his death (by suicide) in 1945. Himmler was responsible for carrying out the so-called "Final Solution." Initially, Jews were killed with firing squads or gas vans. It was Himmler who suggested that gas chambers be used to 1) speed up the process and 2) protect the mental health of the firing squads. From there, Himmler met with Hitler and another high-ranking SS member called Reinhard Heydrich designed how the Holocaust would progress -- who would be killed, when they would be killed, and how they would be killed.
David Irving
A British author and historian focused on World War II and Nazi Germany, David Irving is one of the worlds most famous Holocaust Deniers.
Famously, Irving sued American author and Professor Deborah Lipstadt for libel in a British court (where the rules favor the plaintiff in such cases, unlike America). The court found that Irving's denial was unfounded, racist, and anti-Semetic. Lipstadt won the libel case.
Fred Leuchter
Fred Leuchter spent much of his career creating execution equipments for states across the United States. However, when a man named Ernst Zündel -- a famous Holocaust denier -- asked Leuchter to go to Auschwitz and prove that the Holocaust did not occur. To that end, he wrote The Leuchter Report, the flawed study which Leuchter and other Holocaust deniers said proved that the Holocaust did not occur.
Leuchter was also the subject of a film called "Mr. Death" by famed documentarian Errol Morris.
