The problem with relying on the so called academics is that this subject is so toxic that any Historian who voiced any doubts would have their careers destroyed overnight, the fact that people have been jailed for questioning the accepted version of the holocaust is evidence enough that the story can't stand on it's own.
How many of these so called respected academics ever witnessed a single person being gassed never mind four millions, Raul Hilberg the worlds "leading"authority on the Holocaust had never set foot in concentration camp except for a commemoration ceremony at Auschwitz some years ago , the problem is that a lot of these so called authorities copy each others work without doing any primary research into the subject, as the holocaust is such a sensitive subject they know that what they write will never be subjected to any sort of critical analysis and if it is they scream "denier."
Complete nonsense.
"the fact that people have been jailed for questioning the accepted version of the holocaust "
Actually no, they have been jailed for deliberately and knowingly lying about the Holocaust, in order to advance their own agenda. Any historian and/or academic can publish research that contradicts any accepted fact, as long as they provide supporting evidence, or show that the accepted fact lacks supporting evidence. Regarding David Irving, one such example, I quote from Wikipedia:
"Irving's reputation as a
historian was discredited when, in the course of an unsuccessful
libel case he filed against the American historian
Deborah Lipstadt and
Penguin Books, he was shown to have deliberately misrepresented historical evidence in order to promote Holocaust denial."
You may not like Wikipedia, but unlike neo-Nazis and their hangers on, they give sources so you can check that the above is indeed factually correct. People are not jailed for carrying out research with honest intentions. They are jailed if they can be shown to have deliberately made up or misrepresented evidence.
You might have noticed that the Nazis were quite through in keeping records, many of which survive despite concerted attempts to destroy it by the Nazis at the end of the war.