Day 4 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 26.4)
Section 1.1 to 16.23
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Monday, 17th January 2000
5
6 Before:
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY
8
9 B E T W E E N: DAVID JOHN CAWDELL IRVING
10 Claimant -and-
11 (1) PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED
12 (2) DEBORAH E. LIPSTADT
13 Defendants
14 The Claimant appeared in person
15 MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16 Second Defendants
17 MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18 MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19 the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
20
21 (Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell & Company,
Clifford’s Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22 Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23 PROCEEDINGS – DAY FOUR
24
25
26
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1 < DAY 4 Monday, 17th January 2000
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
3 MR IRVING: May it please your Lordship.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think this court is better. I know a lot
5 of work has been put into moving everything and I am very
6 grateful for those who did it.
7 MR IRVING: I am indebted to the solicitors in this action. An
8 added burden falls upon them, my being a litigant in
9 person.
10 May it please the court, I have addressed a
11 letter to the court suggesting that we spend some ten
12 minutes this morning dealing with some minor matters that
13 have come up, and also I wanted to propose that your
14 Lordship should appoint a date when we might have a formal
15 argument, lasting perhaps one half hour for each party, on
16 this important question of what is relevant and what is
17 not.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you talking about Auschwitz now?
19 MR IRVING: About Auschwitz, my Lord, yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did not realize there was a dispute between
21 you as to what is or is not relevant in the Defendants’
22 evidence for that matter.
23 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will remember on the very first day
24 in my opening remarks I did draw your attention to the
25 fact in my view what happened 50 years ago was less
26 important than what happened within the four walls of my
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1 study, as I put it.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That point I fully understood, but I am not
3 sure that knocks out the much of the Defendants’ evidence,
4 but we do not, I think, want to get into that today.
5 MR IRVING: I do not want to get into argument today, but
6 I wonder whether we possibly ought to steer toward having
7 a discussion about it, so we can clarify our minds about
8 the relevance of this. I have seen that the Defendants
9 have made remarks to various foreign newspapers about the
10 Auschwitz lie or about Auschwitz and such. It is not. It
11 is about specific libels as set out in the Statement of
12 Claim.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In this court we are all agreed about that,
14 but, yes, do raise that whenever is a convenient moment;
15 I suspect now is not.
16 MR IRVING: Now is not the right moment.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because we are on another topic. You are in
18 the middle of your evidence.
19 MR IRVING: I suspect we will have to prepare ourselves for
20 it. But if you were to limit it to say half an hour each
21 side maximum. I will try to persuade your Lordship to
22 limit the ambit of the evidence and the argument and the
23 hearing itself which would have a pleasing effect on the
24 length of the trial, but, on the other hand, I am sure
25 that the Defendants would wish to argue in the other
26 direction.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, perhaps the first thing between you and
2 Mr Rampton is to try to agree a time when it might be
3 convenient to raise this issue.
4 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I perhaps intervene at this stage?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: As matters presently stand, I see that I have just
7 been handed something from Mr Irving — I expect your
8 Lordship has it too — containing some sort of a proposed
9 timetable for his witnesses —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
11 MR RAMPTON: — about which I have no comment to make except
12 this, that Professor van Pelt, as Mr Irving knows and has
13 known for some time, is arriving in this country at the
14 end of this week with a view to his giving evidence at the
15 beginning of next — no, sorry not giving evidence being
16 in court while I cross-examine Mr Irving about Auschwitz.
17 It follows from that — perhaps, two things follow; one
18 that that cross-examination will be discontinuous, that is
19 intermediate because of these other people that are
20 coming. I am not going to stand in their way if it is
21 inconvenient for them. I have few, if any, questions to
22 ask them anyway, I suspect. But it does mean that before
23 I start my cross-examination on Auschwitz, if there is a
24 ruling to be made, it would need to be made before the
25 beginning of next week, preferably before Professor van
26 Pelt steps on an aeroplane to come to Europe.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We have proceeded on the basis that we
2 are having two separate issues or two separate chunks of
3 evidence; one related to Auschwitz and the other relating
4 to everything else. You are in the middle of
5 cross-examining on everything else. My impression is you
6 have a little way to go.
7 MR RAMPTON: I have miles to go.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How far to go? We may have to put Professor
9 van Pelt off, may we not?
10 MR RAMPTON: It depends , because what I call the Evans part of
11 the case is not a narrative I tried to keep it started at
12 the end of 41, and so as far I am trying to keep on that
13 track, and I will I hope this week manage to get to the
14 beginning of the autumn of 1942. Maybe I will get a bit
15 further than. But then there are all sorts of what one
16 might call various things such as Dresden, such as
17 Reichskristallnacht, which have nothing to do with the
18 narrative, but everything to do with Mr Irving’s
19 historiography. I shall have to get to those.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think having gone down the road of treating
21 those as separate issues, as being taken together and
22 leaving Auschwitz on one side, we must follow that, must
23 we not? It will be hopelessly difficult for everybody to
24 suddenly switch back to Auschwitz and then resume your
25 cross-examination.
26 MR RAMPTON: Auschwitz is more nearly a part of the narrative
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1 that I am launched on now, chronologically speaking, than
2 for example Reichskristallnacht, which is 1938. I had in
3 mind to lead up to Auschwitz by the questions I shall ask
4 about other matters arising from the Evans report and
5 Browning and Longerich. So Auschwitz would fit neatly in
6 at the end of my cross-examination this week as part of
7 the historical narrative.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think this is quite helpful to
9 debate this through. I had really understood the point
10 you are on at the moment to be part of your case for
11 saying that Hitler knew, if that is what it all goes to,
12 and kristallnacht goes to that, so indeed did the events
13 of 1924.
14 MR RAMPTON: This is all to do to with system — two things,
15 how systematic were the shootings and the gassings —
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How high up did the instruction come from.
17 MR RAMPTON: How high up did it go. Embedded in that all are
18 very specific criticisms about the way in which Mr Irving
19 deals with the material.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course, because that is an aspect of —-
21 MR RAMPTON: The libel.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — your case in relation to whether Hitler
23 knew.
24 MR RAMPTON: Of course.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving has not taken account of all the
26 material.
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1 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, looking at it from my point of view,
3 I would find it helpful to go through all of that in one
4 bite, as it were, and to treat Auschwitz separately. If
5 that is not practical, well, then we will have to live
6 with it.
7 MR RAMPTON: I will find out, obviously, in the light of what
8 your Lordship said, whether it is practical, but I have to
9 say I think at this stage it is going to be very
10 difficult. I know, that Professor van Pelt has a
11 significant or substantial academic appointment to fulfil
12 in, I think, March, is it March — yes.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair way off.
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I know.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have to keep an eye on this not running
16 out of control.
17 MR RAMPTON: I quite agree. We have allocated three months,
18 give or take maybe a week or two. I am very anxious, from
19 my clients’ point of view, we keep to that schedule if we
20 possibly can.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course.
22 MR RAMPTON: One of the key elements in all this is I do not
23 know what Mr Irving’s position on Auschwitz is.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may emerge if we have the debate about
25 how much evidence is really relevant on Auschwitz.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I have two — I make it perfectly clear,
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1 I have always done — main lines of attack so far as
2 Mr Irving and Auschwitz are concerned, which all really
3 amount to the same thing; either he leapt on the Leuchter
4 bandwagon without having bothered to think about it, which
5 is very good evidence of his poor quality as an historian,
6 or else he did think about it and his position is every
7 bit as bad. So for that reason the detail may or may not
8 be relevant, but since I do not know what his position
9 is …
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again, I do not want to get into it too much,
11 but one of the points you make is that there is a lot of
12 evidence, eyewitness evidence, and the like, which, as
13 I understand your case, you contend Mr Irving has not
14 given proper or, perhaps, indeed, any weight to. How does
15 that k– I mean, that must be part of the case still, must
16 it not?
17 MR RAMPTON: Of course it is. I could cross-examine Mr Irving
18 for a month about Auschwitz if he will not concede a
19 single point about the convergent evidence which, as a
20 matter of probability, would satisfy the historian that it
21 happened.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Well, you have put a few markers
23 down. Mr Irving, I think it is helpful just to see the
24 way the wind is blowing. Shall we try to deal with your
25 witnesses?
26 MR IRVING: I will reserve my position on Auschwitz. I have
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1 very powerful material which supports my position. The
2 second point, I am just asking your Lordship to utter a
3 verbal “tut tut” to the Defence as they keep on trickling
4 material at me.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You refer to Professor Evans having
6 submitted a closely typed 18 page list of amendments.
7 MR IRVING: To his already very detailed report.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not totally sure that has reached me,
9 but may I wrong about that.
10 MR IRVING: It is about 5,000 or 8,000 words, I estimate very
11 detailed, probably about 200 separate points.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have, if I may say so, a lot of sympathy
13 with that —-
14 MR IRVING: The accuracy with which he is working, on the other
15 hand, it inflicts an added burden on us.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see that. I am conscious of the heavy
17 burden you are bearing. I am well aware of that.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have I actually got that, Mr Rampton?
20 MR RAMPTON: I do not know, my Lord.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The addendum.
22 MR RAMPTON: If not, I can only apologise on all our behalves;
23 you certainly should have done.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At some stage I am, presumably, going to have
25 to absorb it. I have noted, Mr Irving —
26 MR IRVING: The third point, my Lord. I have suggested a
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1 proposed timetable for witnesses.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before we get to that, could I go back to
3 your point (1)? I am a little concerned you feel part of
4 your case has gone by the board.
5 MR IRVING: Indeed, my Lord. If your Lordship would indicate
6 how and in what manner I would be able to introduce the
7 evidence I propose to lead?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought about that. Your main concern is
9 you are obviously getting it into my head.
10 MR IRVING: Getting it before your Lordship.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Quite. Well, if I may say so, I think you
12 have produced enough in writing and, indeed, to some
13 extent in your opening, in your short evidence-in-chief,
14 in regard to your reputation. I do not think you need be
15 concerned about that. That certainly has not gone by the
16 board, as far as I am concerned. As far as the attempt to
17 destroy your legitimacy as an historian, I know what your
18 case is, but I think I have to remind you that this is
19 actually an action on Professor Lipstadt’ book, so —
20 MR IRVING: I anticipated your Lordship would say that, but in
21 view of the fact that the sources on which that book draws
22 have been part and parcel of this campaign to destroy my
23 legitimacy, as I would have attempted to establish in the
24 evidence that I would have proposed to lead, in that
25 respect I consider it to be relevant to this case.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, up to a point. I think the fact is
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1 that if Professor Lipstadt has jumped on board a sort of
2 bandwagon of critics of yours.
3 MR IRVING: Use that phrase.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: She has to justify what she has adopted from
5 that.
6 MR IRVING: It is very difficult to justify if one knows in
7 advance this particular witness is not proposing to submit
8 herself to cross-examination.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not have to do it by going into the
10 box yourself, you can do it by calling experts, as appears
11 to be the Defendants’ intention. But do not worry about
12 the point about having gone by the board. I know what
13 your case is. I am very well aware of that.
14 MR IRVING: A case that is founded on documents is far better
15 than a case based upon mere verbal allegations.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see that. If I want to try and elicit more
17 from your own expert witnesses when they come to give
18 evidence about your own reputation and, indeed perhaps,
19 about the campaign, well, to a limited extent, of course,
20 you can do that.
21 MR IRVING: What about the historical documents, my Lord? For
22 example, in December 1942, on Friday, we were looking at
23 the December 1942 document — I am sure your Lordship
24 remembers — when Himmler sent a report to Hitler saying
25 the 300,000 Jews shot as partisans, roughly speaking, and
26 this is used as evidence against me, or against my
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1 position. There is a similar document from the same month
2 showing a conference between Himmler and Hitler where
3 Hitler is authorising Himmler to sell Jews to foreigners
4 for foreign currency which would indicate in the other
5 direction that he is not hell bent on destroying every Jew
6 that comes into his possession. How will I be able to
7 submit documents like that to your Lordship’s attention?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is a document not in your discovery at
9 the moment.
10 MR IRVING: It is in the discovery. All these kinds of
11 documents are in the discovery, but unless I — I think
12 there are over 2,000 documents in my discovery, many of
13 them of many pages, and I am sure your Lordship will not
14 have had time to consider them all.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No I do not pretend to.
16 MR RAMPTON: Might I again, I am only trying to help, I have no
17 doubt at all that Mr Irving is correct — I have not
18 looked at it myself but when he says he has disclosed
19 these documents I have no doubt he has. What has happened
20 is, of course, that the files, “bundles” the lawyers call
21 them, which your Lordship has, are ours. Little or no
22 material from Mr Irving’s side, except in so far as we
23 already had and want to use it. What has not happened in
24 this case, I know not why, is there has not, I do not
25 I think, been any request from Mr Irving to have files
26 made up.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow.
2 MR RAMPTON: For submission to the court in the normal way.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving is obviously free where they are
4 relevant to say, well, there are other documents that put
5 a different complexion on it.
6 MR RAMPTON: I do not dispute this at all, what I am
7 uncomfortable about as an advocate is, and I would I think
8 if I were the judge in this case be uncomfortable about,
9 is having documents coming at one with very little notice
10 and at sort of random intervals. I would rather some
11 hearing time or at some time when Mr Irving is not doing
12 something else he could sit down and make a list of all
13 the documents that he wants to refer to rebut our case
14 against his integrity as an historian. Then we will have
15 them made up into files, which would then become the —
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think he would say I cannot really say in
17 advance because it depends very much on what tack you
18 adopt in cross-examination. He will hear what you say.
19 MR RAMPTON: My cross-examination merely follows the scheme of
20 my expert reports. There is nothing — there is
21 nothing — there is no ambushing. It is all there.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I accept that.
23 MR RAMPTON: What is more there were all those written requests
24 for information that we served in October or early
25 November.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you hear what Mr Rampton says, the
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1 problem is time. I mean, you are not going to have a day
2 to sit down —
3 MR IRVING: I agree, I am looking at practicalities.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And do a list. I think the answer must to
5 the extent you want to refer to documents you must be free
6 to do so, but I am not inviting you to produce a sort of
7 steady trickle of odd documents as we go along.
8 MR IRVING: My tactics will be, my Lord, that I will take
9 specific issues, as I intend to this morning for a very
10 few minutes suggest on the basis of documents already in
11 the bundle or otherwise in the discovery that my position
12 is correct, and that the position which they have laboured
13 to establish is incorrect. I was proposing to do that for
14 two or three minutes this morning on two specific issues
15 that we will come to later.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, to the extent you want to introduce
17 documents then I am not going to stop you. What I am very
18 anxious to do is make sure we know where they are landing
19 up. I am intending to put them all in the bundle called
20 “J”. It may be sensible if everybody else does the same,
21 including those documents you produced I think on
22 Thursday. But if you can give Mr Rampton advance notice
23 of any documents that are not already in the bundles then
24 that would be helpful.
25 MR IRVING: I endeavour to do so, my Lord.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Now these dates for Professor Watt and so
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1 on. I have no problem with any of them.
2 MR IRVING: I have established each date with a view to
3 providing sufficient time for adequate cross-examination
4 and, of course, they are flexible to that extent.
5 MR RAMPTON: The first one is this Thursday.
6 MR IRVING: Professor Watt, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton is still going to be
8 cross-examining, that is what he is going to say.
9 MR RAMPTON: I will still, but I do not mind my
10 cross-examination being interrupted in the slightest.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it might in some ways be an advantage.
12 I do not, like you, think there is going to be much
13 cross-examination of these witnesses.
14 MR RAMPTON: I do not even know what Professor Watt is going to
15 say.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is part of the point, is it not? Shall
17 we proceed on the basis these dates are all acceptable.
18 MR IRVING: Professor Watt and Sir John Keegan are appearing on
19 subpoena. This brings up one minor point; Sir John
20 Keegan’s subpoena was dated for a different date than the
21 date we proposed now to call on because —
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is agreed, is it not?
23 MR IRVING: It is agreed. If your Lordship would agree to
24 amend the summons.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I need formally to amend it.
26 It is agreed and accepted —
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1 MR IRVING: — Solicitors are very anxious that they should not
2 be held to be in contempt.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can say now they will not be, as long as he
4 is here on February 7th at 10.30. You want to address the
5 court on the Anne Frank diary entry and on Goebbels diary.
6 MR IRVING: Yes, it is a little bundle of pages I gave you. You
7 will be relieved to hear that I only want to draw
8 attention to five or six passages in them.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment, would you, Mr Irving.
10 What I am going to treat this as being, as your wishing as
11 part of your evidence to amplify some of the answers you
12 gave on Thursday. So I think it is best if you would do
13 it from the witness box.
14 MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may sound a bit of a quibble, but
16 I think that is the right way of doing it. Is there
17 anything else before you go back.
18 MR IRVING: I think we have dealt with point 6 already, that is
19 the point about Auschwitz.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Rampton, there is nothing else you
21 want to raise?
22 MR RAMPTON: Not in this letter, no.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Or at all?
Section 16.25 to 26.4
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, there is. I have another letter from
25 Mr Irving. It came on Saturday. I do not know if your
26 Lordship has it.
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1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have.
2 MR RAMPTON: I will do it, if I may, from memory. It looks
3 like that, it has two paragraphs. A very small point on
4 paragraph 1. Yes, of course, he can show it to people who
5 would help him answer the point, or deal with the point.
6 “I do not know about my friends”, I suppose that means
7 “helpers”. That is a very small point.
8 There is a more serious point in the second
9 paragraph. The last sentence says: “Materials collected
10 for the purposes of testing the witnesses’ credibility and
11 credentials will not be provided. If they are materials
12 which have relevance to credit only, then that is
13 perfectly correct, they need not be provided: If, however,
14 they have relevance to the issues in the case then they
15 must be provided.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving, I think that is right as a
17 matter of law.
18 MR IRVING: Yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know what you are talking about when
20 you refer to these materials.
21 MR IRVING: My Lord, I can be more specific. We have obviously
22 a number of experts who are assisting me with advice.
23 Some of them have submitted lengthy letters to me, others
24 have submitted expertise to me in more a formal form,
25 which is very clearly of a nature designed to test the
26 credit of the witness Professor van Pelt. My
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1 understanding of the law is that if it is designed to test
2 his credit then I do not have disclose it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is right.
4 MR IRVING: But it is very difficult to weed out from these
5 reports what is a test as to credit and what is —
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you have material which suggests that
7 Professor van Pelt is wrong about —
8 MR IRVING: Specific issues.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whatever it may be about maybe points he
10 makes on the Leuchter report, something of that kind, then
11 that plainly has to be disclosed. But if you have some
12 sort of evidence suggesting that Professor van Pelt has an
13 agenda of his own and has misconducted himself in some way
14 as an expert, out of the context of this case,
15 then I think you probably would not have to disclose
16 that. That may not be a very clear guide to you —
17 MR IRVING: We will do so with the utmost reluctance, but if it
18 is the law, then we will do so. But it is rather like
19 playing poker with the other person having a mirror over
20 your head.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The short answer is, if it goes to the
22 accuracy of his observations as an expert, as to what
23 happened at Auschwitz, then I think you ought to disclose
24 it. If it is just prejudicing him as an expert in the
25 general sense, then I think not.
26 MR IRVING: We will do so within 24 hours in that case.
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1 MR RAMPTON: Can I pick up one thing Mr Irving said there, it
2 shows not that he is trying to cheat, I do not mean that
3 at all, but he may be under a misapprehension about the
4 way litigation is conducted nowadays in these courts. He
5 said it is rather like playing poker when your opponent
6 has a mirror over your head, of course, litigation is not
7 poker any more. All the cards have to be on the table
8 anyway. It is like playing, what is the other game,
9 patience.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, my comment on that in any case there are
11 any aspersions being cast on me, I do not think any
12 Defendant or any party in an action has ever made a fuller
13 discovery than I have, including the disclosure of my
14 entire diaries.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is fair, from my impression,
16 I think that is right.
17 MR IRVING: If I am hiding anything, I am hiding it in plain
18 view.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just mention only in passing something
20 you might like to think about, it relates to the Goebbels’
21 diaries, in Moscow, the Moscow archive. That looks as if
22 it is going to be the subject of a certain amount of
23 factual evidence. I have seen the way the pleadings go,
24 and I have see what the Defendants are saying and what
25 they are not saying I. Just wonder whether we are wise to
26 spending very much time on that issue. I say that perhaps
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1 for Mr Rampton perhaps to think about.
2 MR RAMPTON: He has already thought so.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought he might have. In due course he can
4 tell me the result of his thoughts. It is just we have to
5 focus on what matters in this case. I understand your
6 complaint entirely, but in the end is it a matter we want
7 to spend a lot of time in evidence on?
8 MR IRVING: Two minutes is not a lot of time. In view of the
9 fact that the newspapers around the world from here to New
10 Zealand have picked on the alleged discrepancies in the
11 diary of December 13th has been proof once more of how
12 David Irving cheated or suppressed. The Defendants have
13 over the weekend retrieved from me the entire Goebbels’
14 diaries which I obtained from Moscow I. Was going to draw
15 your Lordship’s attention to two pages of the diaries
16 which I produced. We only had the section which I used.
17 We only read that far.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you said that on Thursday. I think you
19 are misunderstanding what I mean by the Goebbels’ diaries;
20 I am talking about the issue whether there was a breach of
21 an agreement by you. I do not understand the Defendants
22 even to be alleging that now. But Mr Rampton is going to
23 think about it, and shall we leave with it him because
24 I think the ball is really in his court. If you would
25 like to come back we will resume your evidence.
26 MR IRVING: Do you wish me to deal with that minor point of
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1 Goebbels’ diaries?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is a matter of evidence because it
3 was raised with you on Thursday and you can do it in your
4 evidence perfectly easily.
5 &MR DAVID IRVING, recalled
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving wants to deal with the point. Can
7 he not deal with it first?
8 MR RAMPTON: I see. This is going to be evidence-in-chief, is
9 it? I will sit down.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is amplification of his answers in
11 cross-examination, I think.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, the first page of that very small bundle is just
13 to show the form in which I had the — this was the bundle
14 which I gave to you this morning, page 1, as numbered at
15 the bottom — this was the form in which I was given the
16 Hans Frank diaries by the Institute of History in Munich
17 some 30 years ago.
18 I draw your Lordship’s attention purely to the
19 little omission in the middle, the elipses. Something has
20 been left out — we do not know what it is — just before
21 the vital paragraph which I quoted. I have provided a
22 translation. If you now proceed, my Lord, to page 4 of
23 that bundle.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So —-
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I marked it.
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — what is actually —-
. P-21
1 A. [Mr Irving]: We do not know what has been left out.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You do not know what the elipses represents?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: That is why one has to be extremely cautious about how one
4 then uses the ensuing lines, in my submission.
5 If you proceed to page 4, my Lord, this is the
6 list made by my assistant in Moscow of the Goebbels’
7 diaries plates as they came to us out of the boxes. My
8 Lord, you will see that they are in total chaos. There is
9 no rhyme or reason in what boxes they are in. If you
10 proceed to page 9, my Lord, the fourth, fifth and sixth
11 lines refer to the specific entry which we found one day
12 relating to Pearl Harbour and the meeting with Hitler on
13 December 13th. There is one plate for December 13th. The
14 next glass plate carries over from December 13th to 14th.
15 You will see notice that it says in German four words ^^
16 “bis vierten zila ^^ gilazin”.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is “zila”?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: It means read until the fourth line.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Fourth line?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, the fourth line of that particular entry. We were
21 working, I had a very good assistant working with me and
22 we were as minutia as that. We kept very detailed records
23 of what we did.
24 On page 11, my Lord, you will see that I sent to
25 the Sunday Times a confidential survey of the unpublished
26 Goebbels’ diaries fragments which were in my possession.
. P-22
1 If your Lordship proceeds to page 14, this is important,
2 right at the bottom, the last two lines, it says:
3 “Among the things which I brought back are 21
4 pages of typescript from dictation” covering those dates,
5 9th to 13th December 1941, which is Pearl Harbour.
6 On page 16, my Lord —-
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just pause a moment. It looks as if you did not touch at
8 all on the entry which straddles 13th?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: We are just coming to that, my Lord.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: 14th?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That is a listing showing that there were 21 pages. That
12 is the significance there. On page 16, my Lord, that is
13 the folder containing the extracts which were provided to
14 the Defendants and you will see they put a yellow post-it
15 on it. That is the thing which I have marked. Item
16 No. 45, copy from pages 1 to 21, my Lord.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: And I have included, if you look at the handwritten
19 numbers on the top, those are the last few pages of the
20 bundle numbered pages 1 to 21 which is the entry for
21 December 13th 1941. If I draw your Lordship’s attention
22 to page 20 — I am sorry the page 20 numbered at the
23 bottom — if I just rapidly translate a couple of lines
24 from line 3 onwards “Nachmittag”, “In the afternoon the
25 Fuhrer speaks to the Gauleiters”. This was the meeting
26 where we find out now that he mentioned his intentions to
. P-23
1 do something.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That was the 12th, was it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: He spoke the previous day. Goebbels always wrote his
4 diary up on the following day. There is a brief summary
5 here at this point in the diary of the conference with
6 Hitler. Then Hitler goes straight on to talk about the U
7 boat war. There is only half a page on this page, my
8 Lord, but it carries on straight over on the next page on
9 about the U boat war.
10 I think the reason why I started a new page was
11 that I was having trouble, as your Lordship will see, with
12 the typewriter, and I have probably got out my screwdriver
13 and fixed it. Your Lordship will see from my Moscow
14 diaries that the typewriter had been pancaked by the
15 airlines.
16 I invited the Defendants on Friday, if they were
17 suspicious about that gap, to contact the library in
18 Germany to whom I donated the entire diaries in 1993 where
19 they could satisfy themselves that that gap is also on the
20 original, my Lord. That is all I have to say on that
21 matter.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You have a gap on page 22 as well.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I think that I can establish, in other words, that all
24 that I had in front of me when I wrote the book was the
25 passage that I had in those diaries, and that what has
26 been published since then is moot, is of no consequence to
. P-24
1 this particular action.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The other thing is the reference “Hitler speaking to the
3 Gauleiter” —-
4 A. [Mr Irving]: This is typical of Dr Goebbels, my Lord.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It is just one sentence and then he goes on to something
6 completely different.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: He goes on to something else. Then later on he will come
8 back and dictate to his secretary, Richard Otte, a more
9 full account.
10 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But you say you did not have the bit where he comes back
11 to it.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: That would have been on a subsequent plate, my Lord, or
13 possibly later on on that same plate, but we only read to
14 the fourth line. So it cannot be held properly against me
15 in this court that I had something in front of me which
16 I should, if I had it in front of me, had used, and at the
17 very end of the bundle, my Lord, you will find four pages
18 which are not numbered which is the latest version of the
19 Adolf Hitler biography which went to press some time ago
20 which contains a perfectly proper treatment of this
21 matter, including all the material now available.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Just let me wait for the transcript to catch up.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I will try to speak more slowly.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, it is all right. Yes, thank you very much. I am
25 going to put this also into the J file.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Either that or you could discard it, my Lord, because I am
. P-25
Part II: Rampton Continues Cross-Examination of Irving [Morning Session] (26.5 to 109.15)
1 sure that you have appreciated the point that I wish
2 to make.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, but I will not keep it in my mind for the next two
4 months.
Section 26.5 to 55.2
5 Cross-examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued
6 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, just so that I understand what you have
7 just been telling us. I am not going to explore it now,
8 but I want to understand what it is that we have got
9 here. These typed pages, 1 to 21, we have not got all 21?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: No, you have not.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We just have the relevant ones.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: The ones that are relevant, yes, for the entry.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They are extracts transcribed by you, is that right, on a
16 typewriter?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Let me be precise. Sitting at the table in Moscow,
18 I indicated to my assistant, I said, “Please dictate from
19 here down to there” from the glass plates. Now let me get
20 this absolutely correct. I read the glass plates,
21 I dictated them, and later on I transcribed them. Either
22 I dictated them or she dictated them. We shared the work
23 on that particular occasion. I think, in fact, she
24 dictated because if you look on page 16, I have 11th
25 December and in square brackets afterwards: “So says
26 Susie”. I was a bit doubtful about whether she had got
. P-26
1 the date right on printed page 17.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Printed page 17?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: And it is on about the seventh line, 11th December, and in
4 square brackets I have put in a little question mark, “So
5 says Susie?”
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Susie is your assistant?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right, because you would have had to go back about
8 40 pages on the glass plates to find out what the actual
9 date of the entry was.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have certainly not seen these glass plates. Even if
11 I should, I doubt I would make much sense of them. Can
12 you tell me about the glass plates? How big is it? There
13 is a point to this. I am not just wasting time.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sure. The glass plates were about four inches by
15 three inches, a regular photographic glass plate,
16 negative.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This sort of thing?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Slightly smaller than a postcard. Some had 25 images on
19 and some had 48 images on, depending on the format.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Each image of those, let us say, is a page, is it?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Each image was either one page in the typescript version
22 because from July 16th 1941 onwards he dictated to a
23 secretary from them until the end of the war, he dictated
24 them, so they were typescript. Until 16th July 1941 they
25 were handwritten and there were two pages photographed at
26 a time in a handwritten diary.
. P-27
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And does each plate represent one day?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: They just filmed continuously and when one plate ran out,
5 they would then put another glass plate in and film the
6 next one. That is why one plate, if you will note on that
7 list, is called December 13th and the next plate is called
8 December 13th to 14th.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can I ask you — I will ask you one more question and then
10 I will ask you to look at something — do you know from
11 memory — you do not seem to have a record of it — how
12 many pages the entry for 13th December 1941 was?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: All right. Well, perhaps I can help you. I do not know.
15 It is a possibility. Could Mr Irving please be given
16 bundle H4(ii)?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid I have not got this, Mr Rampton
18 I am sorry. Thank you.
19 MR RAMPTON: Could you turn to a handwritten FN 156?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: 156?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is about two-thirds of the way through the file. It is
22 what I call a sideways document. You have to turn the
23 file around in order to read it.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I have it, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a German document. It is headed on the right-hand
26 column on page 487, internal page 487, 13th December in
. P-28
1 German 1941, yes?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just glance at this. It runs through — I think it is the
4 whole entry — to page 501. These are double pages. So
5 it does not involve turning over a lot of pages. 501 is
6 where 14th December starts. Now, do you recognize this
7 printed version?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I do. If you look on page FN 156, you find the passage
9 that is on my transcript.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry? They are all 156.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry. It is on printed page, on book page 494. At
12 line 283, 282, you see the sentence beginning
13 “Nachmittags”, “In the afternoon the Fuhrer speaks to the
14 Gauleiters”.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I see that.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the passage which I got.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have got that passage. But you also got more than
18 that, did you not? Where is your U boat war, your boat
19 war?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: In that same paragraph. It continues in that same
21 paragraph on printed page 494, book page 494. It
22 continues about the U boat.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And on the opposite page?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: And on the opposite page.
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I see that, what is puzzling me about this,
26 Mr Irving, is this. I think you translated some of this
. P-29
1 or all of it for the Sunday Times, did you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you turn to page 496?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Dab wir im Osten”, that is the last of your typewritten
6 German passages, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: If you say so, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, it looks the same, does it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Page handwritten 21 of my note?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is the same one. I think that was the last of the
13 passages on this day that you translated for the Sunday
14 Times, was it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: It was all that I had at the time.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. It is all that you brought back with you?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I understood your evidence about that. Can you turn over?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: 498 you probably want, 498.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 498 has disappeared.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it was not 30 or 40 pages further on, it
22 was two pages further on.
23 MR RAMPTON: No, well, that is—-
24 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, when you see these pages, it is printed in the
25 large, I forget the actual technical name for it, but we
26 call it the Fuhrer typewriter, and it is printed with four
. P-30
1 spaces between each line. He has about 100 words on each
2 page, my Lord, so it is very many further pages further
3 on.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, that is what I was trying to find out. In my
5 version it is very few pages further on.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: In your photocopy of the original facsimile?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, in this printed version it is only —-
8 A. [Mr Irving]: It is only a few pages further on, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Three?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the point is that, apparently, in the
11 original diaries it is all very much spread out?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: For your Lordship’s amusement, I will bring one page of it
13 to you tomorrow and you can see what it looks like.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: If anything turns on it, I do not know.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I think Mr Rampton apprehends that this is a major point;
16 it has been flashed around the world that I was wrong
17 again.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, I think you have made the point on Thursday that you
19 did not actually know it was 30 or 40 pages further on
20 because you did not ever read it so you could not tell?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Now we know, my Lord.
22 MR RAMPTON: This is one thing I am concerned about,
23 Mr Irving. You said, and I will read you your words —
24 have you had your transcript —-
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I have.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — for Thursday? His Lordship is right. It was
. P-31
1 something along the lines of 30 or 40 pages further on
2 which is just not right, is it?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: What is not right, the exact phrase?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I will find the exact words.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is page 153.
6 MR RAMPTON: That is right. You said: “Had I read on another
7 30 or 40 pages in the diary for that day, I would probably
8 have come across the full length description of the report
9 Gauleiters’ speech on which Longerich is relying?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Absolutely right. This is probably 30 pages further on,
11 but it shows my guess was absolutely right —-
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 30?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: — without even having seen it.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Tell me, if you will, if you look at — this is edited by
15 Elke Frohlich, is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But it is not any sense edited by having things omitted?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not believe so, no.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a continuous text?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, is there much mileage in this
21 because I think the next day, I mean the next page,
22 I asked, “How do you know it is 30 or 40 pages further
23 on?” and he makes clear that he did not know it was, but
24 he had a glass plate with 45 pages on it and it was on
25 that, so it must have been on the next one?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: It would have been 25 pages on that one, my Lord — no, 48
. P-32
1 single pages.
2 MR RAMPTON: Is this glass plate that you transcribed, or some
3 of it, the only one for that date that you looked at?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, this is the reason why I provided you over the
5 weekend with a list of the actual pages that we looked at,
6 the actual glass plates.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, but do you understand there is a difference — I know
8 you do — between what you transcribed and what you looked
9 at?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: We looked at all the glass plates.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You did?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Quite simply to establish an inventory. I looked through
13 every single glass plate in the 1500 glass plates with
14 this magnifier, established from the title line across the
15 top what period was covered, put a yellow post-it on the
16 glass side, not the emulsion side, of each plate
17 indicating what date it was.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you will have read the passage that Longerich relied
19 on?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: You did not hear what I said. On the top of every page,
21 on the top of every plate there was a title line written
22 in handwriting saying the dates, the actual dates covered
23 by that plate, like 13th to 14th December 1941. You did
24 not have to look actually at the individual pages.
25 I could see straightaway and say this is 13th to 14th
26 December 1941, it is already out of our period of interest
. P-33
1 because we were looking at Pearl Harbour.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How did you make your selection if you did not read the
3 whole thing?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Time made the selection for us. We knew we were only
5 there for a limited length of days. We had a flight to
6 come back to England. You had to make judgment decisions
7 and say, well, Pearl Harbour was December 7th 1941, we are
8 already on December 13th, my commission from the Sunday
9 Times was to get material relating to Pearl Harbour. I
10 had already read as much as I considered was necessary.
11 Had I known that later on in the same entry he would have
12 gone on about the Fuhrer talking to the Gauleiters at
13 greater length, I might have gone on, but you cannot
14 tell…
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have answered my question, I think, which is that you
16 did not read it at the time?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, and it was not before me at the time.
18 Even now, to buy these diaries, you have to lay out more
19 than £1,000. So it is quite an expensive task. I have
20 now purchased them, but they have only just been
21 published.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: While you have that out, can I ask you a little word about
23 something you said on Thursday? I think you told us, if
24 you look at the passage quoted in Longerich, yes?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: The passage quoted in?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, the passage quoted by Longerich is at the bottom of
. P-34
1 page 498 of the Frohlich edition?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, “In connection with the Jewish question, the Fuhrer
3 has decided to make tabula rasa”.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and then it goes on, “He prophesized to the Jews that
5 if they began yet another World War, they would thereby
6 bring about their own destruction”, roughly speaking?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a crude translation, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is reporting there, is he not, either something Hitler
9 said to the Gauleiters on 12th December, or he is
10 reminding himself of what Hitler said on 30th January?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: January.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 1939 in the —-
13 A. [Mr Irving]: You cannot tell from this particular quotation.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You cannot, can you?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: It is the old gramaphone record that Hitler played again
16 and again.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, indeed. Then you say, well, you know from that point
18 on, I think, “Das ist keine Phrase gewesen”, that these
19 are no longer Hitler’s words because it is in direct
20 speech?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: It is in direct speech, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So is the first sentence, is it not? “Bezuglich der
23 Judenfrage ist der Fuhrer entschlossen”?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, that is correct.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is also in direct speech?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: He uses direct speech.
. P-35
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He is reporting that, so far as the Jewish question is
2 concerned, the Fuhrer is determined to make a clean sweep?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That is direct speech, is it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you look over to the other side of the page, the first
7 complete paragraph, the first sentence of the first
8 complete paragraph, “Im Osten sieht der Fuhrer uberhaupt
9 unser kommendes Indien” is in reported speech, is it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: It would be in “osten siehe der Fuhrer”, S-I-E-H-E, would
13 be reported speech, that would be the subjunctive.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is fine. The next sentence is also in direct speech,
15 is it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: That is direct speech.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And so is the next sentence, is it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And the next one, well, this is in the past in the sense
20 that he is reporting that the Germans have overrun and
21 settled in the past?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: The whole paragraph is in direct speech.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And do you say that those are Goebbels’ private thoughts
26 and not a report of what Hitler said?
. P-36
1 A. [Mr Irving]: He is reporting in his own words what Hitler’s opinions
2 and intentions are.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Precisely. So would you care to withdraw your criticism
4 of Dr Longerich for putting what is in direct speech into
5 Hitler’s mouth?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Are you not referring to the same passage, Mr Rampton?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, but it is all part of the same two paragraphs.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: No, the specific allegation that you made was that
9 Longerich was quoting Hitler when, in fact, he was quoting
10 Goebbels which is my comment.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How can you tell that the first paragraph on the
12 right-hand side is not also just Goebbels quoting
13 Goebbels?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: We can refer back to the specific sentence that was the
15 subject of your complaint, because we have now moved on to
16 a different paragraph and you are trying to —-
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What I am suggesting to you, Mr Irving, is very simple.
18 It is simply this. You cannot tell from looking at these
19 two paragraphs which is Hitler and which is Goebbels?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I think that is a very fair comment, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. So if (and we are dealing in probabilities, as
22 I remind you, not certainties) as seems likely, the second
23 of those two paragraphs is, as you have just told us,
24 Goebbels’ version of what Hitler said to the Gauleiters on
25 12th December, then so is it as likely that the first
26 paragraph is in precisely the same case, is it not?
. P-37
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, that is not what I said. I said it is
2 Goebbels’ version of Hitler’s intentions, not what he
3 said.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where do you think that Goebbels derived his impression of
5 Hitler’s intention?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Over a long period of sitting with him and talking with
7 him over many weeks and months.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So this is nothing whatever to do with what Hitler is
9 supposed to have said to the Gauleiters, is that your
10 case?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: When you are writing a diary this is what happens. You
12 put in information from what has just been told to you,
13 but also your own external knowledge of what the person is
14 thinking and saying. You cannot encapsulate individual
15 phrases like that. If it was a shorthand record, it would
16 be different. I prefer using shorthand records or even
17 the table talk which is written in the first person form.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, I do not think I will push it any further,
19 Mr Irving. We have your answer. I certainly do not
20 accept it. I put it to you that it is perfectly clear
21 that this is Goebbels’ version of what Hitler said on 12th
22 December 1941.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I think it is possible that you and I and Dr Longerich
24 have different criteria when we are evaluating documents.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, does it not read very naturally as a direct
26 speech account of the Fuhrer’s thoughts as expressed on
. P-38
1 that occasion?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Which sentence are you referring to?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Any one you like.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I mean, if I give you a general statement of
5 opinion, then you are going to apply it to one particular
6 sentence and say, “Here you have agreed that this sentence
7 is Hitler’s statement on that day” and that is —-
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, look at the second paragraph. Let us leave out the
9 paragraph you do not like.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Let us look at the second paragraph at the top of page
12 499.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “In the East, the Fuhrer sees above all” — you correct me
15 where I go wrong — “our approaching India”.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. “This is colonial territory that we are going to
17 settle”.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. “This is colonial territory that we shall settle.
19 Here great —-
20 A. [Mr Irving]: “Farmsteads”.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Homesteads” — what?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, “he already established great farmsteads for our
23 peasant sons and the” —-
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and what are the “Kapitulanten”?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know what that word means, I must confess.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. “unserer Wehrmacht gesch werden”?
. P-39
1 A. [Mr Irving]: “Created”.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Created”, exactly. It is all part of the same thought
3 process, is it not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: It may be but it may not be. Nowhere does he say, “This
5 afternoon the Fuhrer said”. This is just Goebbels writing
6 down, waffling about what Hitler’s views on the future
7 are, and it is not —-
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry. Finish your answer. I do not mean to
9 interrupt.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: But may I also state and remind the court once more that
11 was material which was not in front of me at the time
12 I wrote the book, so I cannot really see, with respect,
13 I would rise if I was now sitting and say, “What is the
14 relevance of this material?”
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It may in the end turn out to be a small point, but, you
16 see, Mr Irving, you are in the habit, are you not —
17 I drew something to your attention on Thursday — of
18 asserting certainties where all that a cautious and
19 responsible historian would do would be to say “It looks
20 like it”?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree, this is absolutely right and in this particular
22 case a responsible historian would say, “On this occasion
23 Goebbels reported and it may well be that Hitler had told
24 him on this occasion”.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you told on Thursday that it was quite certain that
26 this could not be Hitler, it must be Goebbels in the
. P-40
1 contentious paragraph because the tense changes from the
2 past in the first sentence to direct speech in the second,
3 well, from the —-
4 A. [Mr Irving]: To be more specific, the part that Longerich alleged was
5 Hitler being quoted was not in the subjunctive tense. It
6 was not in the subjunctive.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We went through that in considerable detail
8 on Thursday.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and also we are not referring to this paragraph, we
10 are referring to one specific sentence.
11 MR RAMPTON: Now I want to go back, please, and you will see
12 how it is going to develop as we go along. I give you
13 notice of what I am now going to do.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: If I may just say, what alarms me is the fact that you had
15 from my discovery the documents showing precisely how much
16 of this diary was at my disposable when I wrote the book.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are moving on now, Mr Irving. I take your
18 point.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I appreciate that, but I think it is dishonest for them to
20 have advanced this kind of argument.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is a comment you can make at the end of the case but
22 let us get on now with the questions and answers.
23 MR RAMPTON: You will have that opportunity. What I am going
24 to do is I am going to start with your Kovno train which
25 we dealt with on Thursday of 17th November 1941, and then
26 I am going to use that as a way of opening the door to
. P-41
1 what I call system. Do you understand?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Right.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can we, first of all, start with your Kovno train. Have
4 you that little bundle?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not, but I am quite familiar with the documents.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you take me to it, Kovno train? I am
7 sorry, the significance of that is completely missing to
8 me.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: The train from Bremen to Kovno.
10 MR RAMPTON: Could your Lordship first turn up page 13 of the
11 transcript for Thursday and the other documents, the
12 little Irving documents I call them, are at tab 3 of file
13 J, my Lord, or should be.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
15 MR RAMPTON: I would quite like Mr Irving to have both what he
16 said in court and the Cogno signal.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: It is the intercept – correct?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Has anybody got a spare transcript? Page 5 is the
19 translation, or the transcription, I know not which and it
20 does not matter. Just have that open. Is it possible for
21 him to have a transcript for Thursday?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I think I have the wrong bundle. Are we talking about
23 Cogno?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what is going to happen when you have
25 all these little files knocking around. We must put them
26 all in the same place. I have them in J and I hoped
. P-42
1 everybody else was going to put it in J, tab 3.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I have J 1.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: To save time, could somebody pass up the
4 bundle which has the index on the front of it? It is
5 called bundle C, Himmler.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: This is bundle J 1 again.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is the right bundle. You
8 are talking about the clip that Mr Irving handed in?
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Probably on Wednesday.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has called it Claimant bundle C Himmler.
13 I had hoped everyone was putting it in J but, wherever it
14 is, can somebody hand it up because every minute that goes
15 by is a waste of time.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I am very familiar with the document, if you wish to
17 proceed.
18 MR RAMPTON: I think we can get most of it anyway, Mr Irving,
19 from what you said in the witness box. We will not spend
20 any more time.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I read most of the document out, I believe.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Can I read from line 4 on page 13 of the
23 transcript? “In this particular case what is significant
24 is that the man in Berlin is telling his recipient in Riga
25 on November 17th”, in other words that same day at 6.25
26 p.m., “transport train number blah has left Berlin for
. P-43
1 Cogno or Kaunat” — in fact it is K A U N A S, is it not,
2 and sometimes Mr Irving, pausing there, sometimes in
3 German K A U E N?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the problem. A lot of these towns have three or
5 four different names.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But it is all the same place, is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, Cogno and Kauen.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Cogno is an old fortified, or fortress in the Latvian
9 country side, or is it Lithuania? It matters not perhaps
10 very much. “With 940 or more Jews on board, or 940 more”.
11 In fact it was 944, was it not?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It obviously was. I think that is probably
13 just a mistranscription. Understandable.
14 MR RAMPTON: I think so too. “That was usually the rough size
15 of each train load of Jews, about 1,000 Jews. Transport
16 escorted by two Gestapo and 15 police officers. Transport
17 commander is criminal Ober SS Exner (?), and the man’s
18 name, who has two copies of the transport list with him.
19 Transport provided with …”. We have not got the German
20 of this. What is the German that you translate “as
21 provided with”?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I would not like to hazard a guess.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: All right. “With following provisions”?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Vorversehen (?)
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Provided?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, literally.
. P-44
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: For seeing, as it were?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: We must not mention the word Latin.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Provided with following provisions”, and this is the
4 interesting part, my Lord: “3,000 kilograms of bread, 3
5 tons of bread for a two or three day journey, 2700 (it
6 should read) kilograms of flour, nearly 3 tons of flour,
7 200 kilograms of peas, etc. 300 kilograms of cornflakes,
8 18 bottles of soup spices”, — then continuing in the next
9 message, 52 kilograms of soup powders, ten packets of
10 something or other, we do not know, 50 kilograms of salt,
11 47,200 reichmarks in crates. What do you suppose those
12 were for?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: It was credits, credits.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, for whom?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point of having them on the
17 train? That is really the question.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I imagine it was the same with bomber crews. When they
19 flew to Germany, they carried money with them. One always
20 needed money. You cannot send a train load of people
21 around Europe without money to pay for things.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This money was for the 944 Jews, was it?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think I applied that it was.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am asking you.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: No, presumably not. Presumably it was to cover transport
26 costs.
. P-45
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: All right. Signed Gestapo Headquarters, Berlin, and then
2 this is Mr Irving speaking: “It is quite an interesting
3 document, my Lord. It is the first kind of thing we come
4 across in my view to show that these trains were actually
5 well provisioned. It is a bit of a dent, a tiny dent, in
6 the image we have, the perception as Mr Rampton calls it,
7 of the Holocaust today.” Why do you say that?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The image that we have from the literature is of coal
9 trucks and cattle trucks being filled. I am not saying
10 that this did not happen, but I am saying that the image
11 we have is that all that happened was that these wretched
12 victims were stuffed into trains, with no food and water
13 for three or four days, and shipped across Europe to their
14 deaths, when this and the subsequent telegram which we
15 British intercepted, which I quote, indicates that very
16 substantial quantities of food were put on board these
17 trains for the short journey, and that, in the next
18 telegram, you will remember, it also added the fact that
19 they were carrying their appliances with them, food and
20 appliances. So obviously people were sending them, at
21 least the system that was sending them apprehended that
22 they were going to be doing something at the other end
23 when they got there.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What was German word for the appliances?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Gerat.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And plural gerater?
. P-46
1 A. [Mr Irving]: No. You would use it in the singular form.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That can just as easily mean kitchen utensils, can it
3 not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Could be kitchen sink. If a photographer comes in mit
5 gerat, then he would be carrying his camera and not his
6 kitchen sink. It is the appropriate appliances.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We used to have tinkers in the old days in Scotland, Mr
8 Irving. They would carry utensils with them. Pots and
9 pans.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: The Germans would have a different word for that. It
11 would be klamotten. It would be their things.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Anyway, your immediate interpretation of this document, it
13 is clear now, is that this food was to keep the Jews well
14 fed during the journey?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it certainly was not for just 15 policemen.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, how far is it from Berlin to Cogno, do you
17 know?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Off the top of my head, I would say of the order of a
19 thousand miles.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is about 600, in fact.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Correct. In other words, a two or three day train
22 shipment in wartime conditions.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Those trains went very slowly because they had to keep
24 stopping to give priority to other trains.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. The journeys took three days. We know the train load
26 of Jews on November 27th. It left Berlin on November 30th,
. P-47
1 it arrived at Riga and they were shot. It is a three day
2 journey.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is Riga. That is about 200 miles further East from
4 Cogno?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I am trying to give a sense of space and time.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to ask you some questions. Again, you have
7 leapt to a conclusion. Have you actually stopped to think
8 what the evidence is that this food was to feed these Jews
9 during that journey?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: None whatsoever.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: But it would be perverse to assume that it was not.
13 Excuse me. If a train is provided with provisions, then
14 the provisions are quite clearly for the people on the
15 train. It cannot clearly be for just 15 escort personnel.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, would you not be so hasty. Wait for my next
17 question, please. Do you know how many loaves of bread
18 you can make with 3,000 kilograms and 2,700 kilograms of
19 flour? 500 gram loaves of bread, an average size loaf?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I did exactly the same calculation as you were reading out
21 to me just now, and I thought, if there are a thousand
22 people on a train, they are getting 3,000 kilograms of
23 bread, then this seems to be very substantial provision.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In fact, it is about 6,000 loaves from the loaf figure
25 alone, and about another just less than, it is about 5,400
26 loaves from the flour.
. P-48
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Actually, he is talking about 3,000 kilograms of bread, so
2 that is 3 kilograms of bread per person.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What about the flour? Are they going to make loaves on
4 the train?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Why do we not just stick with the bread for the time
6 being?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, there was flour there too. That is the
8 point.
9 MR RAMPTON: 2,700 kilograms of flour.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I have no idea what they were going to do with the flour.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The point is this, Mr Irving. There is no evidence that
12 this food was going to be eaten by those Jews. I can tell
13 you, if you do the calculation, at half a loaf a person
14 per day, they have enough bread and flour to last them for
15 24 days, 944 people.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but the reason for that is that the people at the
17 receiving end are protesting bitterly. They say, we have
18 food shortages here already and you are dumping these
19 people on us, so the Reich was sending the people not only
20 with the food for the journey, but presumably enough food
21 to get them started when they arrived at the camps they
22 were going to.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is right.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I am speculating here, I do emphasise. I am just trying
25 to give an explanation that may have escaped your
26 attention.
. P-49
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, it had not, you see. I am concerned not with what
2 actually happened, Mr Irving, but your readiness to leap
3 to conclusions in favour of the SS and the Nazis on every
4 single occasion.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I strongly object to that kind of aspersion.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is exactly what you have done here.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I strongly object to that. Here is a British telegram, a
8 British intercept of an SS telegram, which has not been
9 quoted by any of your experts, because of course it does
10 not fit into the perception they are trying to create,
11 which presents a subtly different image of how this
12 deportation programme, brutal and cruel though it was,
13 initially was started by the system. The train loads of
14 Jews were sent off with food for two or three days and, as
15 you quite rightly pointed out, enough food to carry on
16 once they arrived at the other end, enough flour to make
17 their own bread.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They had enough cornflakes for about eleven days, as it
19 happens, at 30 grammes per serving according to Messrs
20 Kelloggs.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: They were going to arrive in the camp, where presumably
22 the provisions would be inadequate.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is right. They must have eaten their cornflakes dry
24 because there is no milk?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: No doubt there were cows in Riga when they got there, or
26 Cogno.
. P-50
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Of course, how long would milk last on board a train for
2 three or four days?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I should have thought in November, in that part of Europe,
4 quite a long time. Would your Lordship excuse me for just
5 one moment?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
7 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I am going to ask you this. I do not
8 normally ask a question to which I do not know the answer,
9 but on this occasion I will. Who paid for this food to go
10 on this train?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do not know?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have assumed, though, from the way in which you
15 characterized it last Thursday, that it was the Nazis, the
16 SS who paid for it?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I can go into some detail on this in fact. Before the
18 Jews were kicked out of Berlin, they were robbed. They
19 were robbed blind.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So one way —-
21 A. [Mr Irving]: The German Finance Office asked them to fill in a form
22 listing all their assets. These assets were formally
23 seized by the German state. Page by page of these
24 documents are still in the Berlin Finance Ministry files.
25 They were robbed blind. I am not sure what the relevance
26 is to your particular question, because I cannot prove
. P-51
1 that happened on this occasion.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The relevance is this, Mr Irving.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I stated that in my books, too.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, the relevance is this. So far from this being
5 a dent in Holocaust, whatever you call it—-
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Perception.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — Perception, it is quite possible, is it not, that, one
8 way or another, directly or indirectly, this food was paid
9 for by the Jews?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Quite possible, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The kindly SS provision the train so far as they have and
12 the camp when they get there at the Jews’ own expense?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: But it is still not the perception we now have of cattle
14 trucks of Jews being shipped across Europe with no food
15 and water for three or four days and arriving half dead at
16 the other end. It may very well have happened in the
17 later phases of the war.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That is the trouble. You are muddling up two
19 pictures are you not, Mr Irving? There is the early stage
20 of the German Jews. They do not even get started on
21 killing the German Jews in a big way until much later on.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: If you wish to talk —-
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And then there is the much later, from the summer of 1942
24 onwards, when we get into cattle truck country, are we
25 not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I remember reading in the private papers of Adolf
. P-52
1 Eichmann, which I found in Argentina, that he describes
2 the steps he took to ensure that the trains were properly
3 provisioned when they left Hungary and his indignation
4 when he found that the Hungarian police officials had
5 embezzled a lot of the money and food and so on so that
6 the trains were not being properly provided. This just
7 goes marginally to what you are saying. Undoubtedly,
8 there was a lot of hardship and cruelty and barbarism.
9 But the point I would wish to make is why is it that your
10 experts have not quoted the documents I have put before
11 the court.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you come across any other intercepts or
13 any other messages referring to the provisioning —-
14 A. [Mr Irving]: There are, my Lord.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: For the transcript, just wait until I have asked the
16 question — any other documents evidencing the
17 provisioning of these transports of Jews?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I have, my Lord, and I have put one or two more into that
19 particular bundle.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I have found one more. I am not sure I have seen more
21 than one.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not strictly relevant, my Lord, to the pleadings,
23 otherwise I would have stuffed the bundle with even more
24 paper.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But there are more?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I intend asking Dr John Fox. He is an expert on these
. P-53
1 police decodes and we can ask him about them.
2 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, tell me why you think my experts paid
3 no attention to these documents?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: I certainly have not seen any reference in expert reports
5 to those intercepts relating to the provisioning of the
6 trains.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why would that have any relevance if these documents do
8 not suggest what you say they assert? What if these
9 documents are no more than they appear to be, records of
10 train loads of Berlin Jews going to the East with
11 provisions on board for whom one knows not, but quite
12 possibly to feed the Jews to some extent when they get to
13 the camp before they are shot? What is so significant
14 about that?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: The relevance is, Mr Rampton, that, if your experts are
16 doing their job conscientiously, then it is incumbent on
17 them, according to their own averments at the end of their
18 reports, to do so impartially without fear or favour to
19 either side. They should also have included any materials
20 like those which go against the notion that this was a
21 systematic programme to exterminate the Jews. If you are
22 going to exterminate Jews, you do not send them to the
23 East on trains properly provisioned with tons and tons of
24 food and appliances with which they can set up a new
25 future in the East when they get there, which is the
26 inference which is clearly to be drawn from those decoded
. P-54
1 messages. I would be interested to see if you can draw
2 any other inference from those messages.
Section 55.3 to 78.21
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is what we are now going to do, as I promised you I
4 was going to do, Mr Irving. Could Mr Irving please be
5 given file H 3 (i)?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. This one I have got.
7 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that is the first volume of Professor
8 Browning’s documents. Could we please turn to footnote
9 8? Again, the document is identified for these purposes
10 not by any stamped or printed or typed number, but by a
11 handwritten F N 8 at the bottom right hand corner of the
12 document.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Very well, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I expect you recognize this document, do you not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: The Jaeger report.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is the Jaeger report. If you turn to its 5th page,
17 blatt 5 at the top of the page, this is a copy of,
18 I suppose, either an original typed or an original carbon
19 copy, I do not know. You do not have any qualms about the
20 authenticity of this document, do you?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: For my benefit, can you say what it is? Is
22 it a report from an Einsatzgruppen.
23 MR RAMPTON: It is a report of one Einsatz commandos, Einsatz
24 Commando 3, which is part of Einsatzgruppe A, and they are
25 in charge. Geographically it runs, A is in Ostland, the
26 Baltic states, and then B is in White Russia, C in the
. P-55
1 Ukraine and D in South Russia, roughly speaking I think.
2 Your Lordship will see at the top of the first page,
3 Mr Irving as well, it has place and date, Kauen um, 1st
4 December 1941. That is perfectly good German, is it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So this makes you wonder about this report, does it?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: You are asking me if it is good German. I would say no, a
8 German would say Kauen den aus December einefurtzig (?)
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you have seen it elsewhere, have you not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I have not.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have. You have seen it on some of the Auschwitz
12 documents, have you not?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Are we going to get into a discussion now on authenticity
14 of documents?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. I just want to know what you say about that little
16 word?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I am saying that it is not regular German.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, but it is a mistake, if it be a mistake, that a German
19 could easily make, is it not?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: It could be a mistake that an ill educated German would
21 make, as would be, for example, on blatt 7, if I may turn
22 to that.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you do that, whereabouts on this page
24 are you, 1st December, Mr Rampton?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Very first line top right.
26 MR RAMPTON: Top right hand corner underneath handwritten 119.
. P-56
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 5.
2 MR RAMPTON: I asked your Lordship to go back to page 1, just
3 to identify it, because your Lordship wanted it
4 identified.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry I missed you. Right.
6 MR RAMPTON: Kauen is one German form of Cogno?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: For Cogno.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 1st December 1941. I am going to look at much more of
9 this in a moment, but it is a report. I cannot read the
10 first one gezundt aus stellung (?), is it?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Gezundt aus stellung.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A full —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Collective presentation.
14 MR RAMPTON: Presentation.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Der imber Reich (?) — What does that mean?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: In the area of.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: E K 3, up to the 1st December 1941, of executions carried
18 out. Is that right?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Do you wish to address briefly the authenticity of
20 this document.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you are denying it, you ought to say so.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: He has asked me would I accept that um ersten (?) December
23 is authentic German and I would say no, it is not. It
24 would be incorrect irregular German.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you say this is not an authentic document?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I am not saying that. I am answering his
. P-57
1 question. I also wish to draw attention on page 7, about
2 15 lines down in the third complete paragraph, das zeil
3 (?), halfway down there, my Lord, you will see that the
4 rank of SS Oberstum Fuhrer and SS is typed as two capital
5 Ss.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: All the high ranking SS officers had typewriter with the
8 SS runes, my Lord. They would not type SS. It would be
9 very rare to find an SS document in which SS is typed as
10 two capital Ss. It is not entirely impossible, but it is
11 very rare.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I am baffled by this. Are you challenging the
13 authenticity of this?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, it is not a document I have relied upon. It is
15 not a document laid before me when I wrote my book and I
16 am quite happy to answer questions on the content of it.
17 But Mr Rampton asked me my opinion about the document and
18 I spotted straight away those two discrepancies just by
19 leafing through it.
20 MR RAMPTON: You may have done, Mr Irving, but that really does
21 not answer his Lordship’s question. I have no doubt that
22 you recognized this document immediately as soon as we
23 opened the file, did you not?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I know what it is about. I have heard about it, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, you recognized it. You said this is the Jaeger
26 report.
. P-58
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, by the date, 1st December 1941.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have never read it?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: No. I have never analysed it in detail, let’s put it like
4 that, and I certainly did not read it when I wrote my
5 books.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Either you have X-ray eyes or you read very quickly
7 because you seemed to have spotted a mistake, as you call
8 it, on blatt 7 immediately.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what I was looking for. That is the real
10 giveaway.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You knew it was there?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: No, my Lord, you would have seen it. When he asked me to
13 look for it, I began leafing through it and looking for
14 SS, which is the first thing you would look for in a
15 document you are suspicious about. But, for the purpose
16 of this morning, I will accept that it is authentic, with
17 reservations.
18 MR RAMPTON: Then we have had an interesting but wholly
19 academic discussion.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, you asked me if I considered it to be
21 authentic.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I asked you whether you accept that this is an authentic
23 document.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, now we all accept it is.
26 MR RAMPTON: Now we know that it is so far as this discussion
. P-59
1 is concerned.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: With reservations.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Page 5?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Under the middle of the page, months of November.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Third line, 25th November of 41, Kauen F 9 is Fort 9. It
8 was divided up into different sort of fortresses, was it
9 not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They kill, execute, 2,934 Jews, Jewesses and Jewish
12 children?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In brackets underneath it says, again roughly speaking:
15 Evacuees from Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you agree that it is likely that that is where your
18 train load of 944 well provisioned Jews wound up?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I would say it is not impossible. It is eight days
20 later. There were several train loads, of course.
21 I cannot speak specifically that that particular train
22 load would have ended up in that particular atrocity.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I can tell you that there are no other references to Jews
24 from Berlin in this document.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: In this document?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and this document is a complete report of the doings
. P-60
1 of that unit or formation.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In that place and all over Cogno up to the beginning of
4 December.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: May I say that this particular page was supplied to me by
6 Dr Gerald Fleming in fact, two or three years ago.
7 I relied on that when I wrote my Goebbels biography.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: This particular page was supplied to me by Dr Gerald
10 Fleming, and I relied on the statistics in it when I wrote
11 my biography of Dr Joseph Goebbels. You will find that I
12 have quoted his statistics.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are looking at it now, Mr Irving, as you no doubt
14 noticed.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I recognized the figures. You will find that page in my
16 discovery.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What you say in the Goebbels book is a little more
18 generous in point of truth or accuracy than what you said
19 just now. You said it was a possibility that it was the
20 same one. In the book you said on page 377: “So much for
21 Minsk”. I do not know what you are saying about Minsk,
22 but it may not matter.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Very much the same.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The train load of Berlin’s Jews sent to Kanas, Cogno, in
25 Lithuania on November 17th probably fared no better”. You
26 cite the Jaeger report and that entry in it.
. P-61
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. How can I be called the Holocaust denyer when again
2 and again I put these statistics in my books, if I may ask
3 the question?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Let’s get the position clear. You keep asking that
5 question rhetorically as though it answered itself,
6 Mr Irving. It does not. So far as the shooting of Jews
7 is concerned, what do you reckon is the total number that
8 were disposed of by shooting? We maybe had this
9 discussion on the first day of the trial, I cannot
10 remember, but tell me again if we have.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Disposed of by shooting? Where? In the East?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Order of magnitude I would say at least half million, and
14 probably as many as one and a half million.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where we part company, Mr Irving, I think, is that you
16 have repeatedly said, have you not, that these were, and
17 you rely for example on the message to Jekiln (?) Of 1st
18 December from Himmler? You have repeatedly said that
19 these words, quasi or not even quasi, were criminal
20 shootings by high Maverick commanders of the SS out in the
21 East?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: The phrase used by Himmler is arbitrary actions.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are coming back to Himmler very shortly.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: And actions against the guidelines.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Your position is that these mass shootings and other
26 shootings in the East were not in any sense part of a
. P-62
1 system, but were local acts of criminality?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: The system ended when the train arrived. The system put
3 the Jews and the other victims on the trains and sent them
4 to the East with the food and equipment to start a new
5 life. Once they arrived on the spot, the system broke
6 down, and the murderers stepped in.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But these reports coming back from the
8 Einsatzgruppen are going to Berlin, are they not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: We do not know, my Lord, because there is no kind of
10 indication on it or initialling on whom it went to.
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Where do you say they were going then?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: They certainly went — unfortunately we do not know, my
13 Lord, because my copy of the report ends on page 9,
14 I think, so it has not even got a signature on it. It has
15 a signature Jaeger, but no address list, so we do not know
16 where it went to. But it would be reasonable to assume
17 that the report went to the Reichzeike heis haufdampt (?)
18 Of Heydrich.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Which is in Berlin?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: In Berlin.
21 MR RAMPTON: Because Mr Irving, in Berlin, in Heydrich’s
22 headquarters, from time to time — I do not know whether
23 they were regular or how frequent they are — but there
24 were these things called areignis meldungen (?)
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which were actually composed in that office in Berlin, and
. P-63
1 many of them carry summaries of this kind of material?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do they not?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So the probability is that that went back to Berlin?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: The probability is that this went back to Berlin, yes, as
7 I said.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is that not evidence of some kind of system operating at
9 the behest of and under the control of the authorities in
10 Berlin?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I draw your attention to the fact this is the very day
12 when the very sharp reprimand went from Hitler’s
13 headquarters, signed by Himmler, to the people carrying
14 out the murders saying these arbitrary actions are to stop
15 forthwith, and the murder of the Jews stopped for many
16 months, the German Jews.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: These Jews?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: The murder of the German Jews stopped for many months, so
19 that is indication that the system had broken down.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you agreed on Wednesday or whenever
21 it was that that message related only to German Jews and
22 these reports cover all other manner of Jews?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: The message did not relate only to German Jews but
24 certainly the effect was German Jews. The killing of
25 German Jews stopped and these are the numbers to which
26 Mr Rampton has drawn attention to, Jews being evacuated
. P-64
1 from Berlin and Munich and other cities, I believe.
2 MR RAMPTON: The shooting of these Jews, Mr Irving, I quite
3 accept, if you are right that there was to be no mass
4 shootings under any circumstances of German Jews, these
5 few, and in the context of this report alas there are few,
6 these few German Jews, probably also the ones from Vienna
7 and Bresslau in the next entry, probably would have
8 infringed the Himmler order if the Himmler order had got
9 to Jaeger in time to save them, which evidently it did
10 not.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the reason why I submit that the system broke down
12 upon the arrival of these train loads of Jews in the East.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: And the people on the spot said: Let us just get rid of
15 them, liquidate them ourselves.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And they had food for a maximum of about three weeks
17 anyway?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: A start up food supply, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I see. So Berlin was expecting the SS in Cogno to feed
20 them indefinitely?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: No. The instructions were to build camps for them. They
22 had to build their own concentration camps to live in.
23 They were expected to build the camps and set up their own
24 work shops there and start a new life in the East,
25 anywhere but Germany. That sounds very nice for the
26 planners in Berlin, but it is less practical on the spot
. P-65
1 when you have got a military disaster looming.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am afraid, Mr Irving, I cannot possibly accept that the
3 planners in Berlin had any such idea in their head by late
4 1941 whatsoever.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, you and I operate from different criteria.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you go on, Mr Rampton, can I just ask
7 this? My impression is — I may be completely wrong about
8 this — that these reports from the Einsatzgruppen
9 continued to come in after the 1st December 1941.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, yes. There is the famous one of December 1942 that we
11 read.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The invasion of Russia.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: That is Russian Jews being liquidated.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Going back to Berlin?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: They are going back to Berlin and Hitler is in East
16 Prussia. I have to keep on reminding the court of this.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: We are not so much concerned so much with Hitler at the
18 moment, but Berlin. Berlin must have known that the
19 shootings were continuing on, as you would accept, a
20 massive scale?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I accept this my Lord, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: To that extent, would you accept it is systematic, or
23 would you say not?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I think to the extent that Mely was systematic, the
25 Vietnamese war was systematic, and these things happen.
26 They are subsequently covered up by the people in charge.
. P-66
1 But it is very difficult to make definitive statements in
2 the absence of any evidence one way or the
3 other. I prefer just to leave the facts to speak for
4 themselves, rather than try and fill in the gaps and join
5 the dots.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
7 MR RAMPTON: Look at the bottom of this document, Mr Irving.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Just above the handwritten “FN8”, you will see Jaeger’s
10 total?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of executions carried out, 137,346?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: From all over the Einsatz commander 3 area, whichever that
15 was?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But it included Kovno and Vilner amongst its places.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you gone done the figures on this report?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: No, but I will walk through them with you if you wish.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, it is going to be easier, of course you will have
22 time to check whether I am right or not, of 137,000
23 roughly speaking, people executed, about 98.5 per cent are
24 identified as having been Jews; men, women and children?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And this report goes back to Berlin?
. P-67
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What happens to Herr Jaeger, whatever his rank might have
3 been? Was he sacked?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: That I do not know.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Imprisoned?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: That I do not know.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Court martialled?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Nothing happened to Jeckeln either, who was told by the
9 chief of the SS he had overstepped guidelines. I would
10 have thought that was about as serious a reprimand as you
11 can get.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is completely at random, really, because one can take
13 any number of examples; the massacre of 33,000 Jews in one
14 go, Jews from Kiev in two days 29th and 30th September
15 19942?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Do you wish to lead evidence on that?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I want to know if you know about it.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: You wanted to?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I want to know if you know about it.
20 A. [Mr Irving]: About Babiyar (?)
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 1941, yes.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know in detail about it. I do not know any
23 forensic detail about it. I know what the perception is.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is contained in one of these Heydrich —
25 A. [Mr Irving]: If you say so.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do not these things jump out at you, Mr Irving? This vast
. P-68
1 number of recorded deaths is being shipped back
2 laboriously, and carefully typewritten reports by the
3 murderers to the head of the security service, call it
4 what you like?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I accept that, but this is of great interest to a
6 Holocaust historian, but not to an Hitler historian, if
7 you appreciate the difference.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not think there is a difference, Mr Irving. There is
9 two reasons, at least, why I — or more than two but the
10 two will do for the present without going the documents
11 out. The first is that letter from Muller to the
12 Einsatzgruppen at the beginning of August 1941, which I am
13 sure you are familiar with?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I think the Fuhrer takes an interest in —-
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, I am saying the Fuhrer will be getting continuous
16 reports on the work of the Einsatzgruppen?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: The Fuhrer has asked to be given.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Or whatever, the Fuhrer has asked to be given continuous
19 reports on the work of the Einsatzgruppen?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Can you remind us when this letter came into the public
21 domain?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving, please do not keep changing the subject.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, this is important, because I am accused of
24 manipulating documents before me when I wrote my books,
25 this letter has only recently come to the attention of
26 historians.
. P-69
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You say, you do accept it as evidence of system, I think
2 this is the effect of your answer, going as far up the
3 tree as Heydrich, but not as far as Hitler?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: There is now evidence from that document that Hitler asked
5 to be kept informed of the activities of the
6 Einsatzgruppen.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I cannot tell you myself when that document first came
8 into the public domain. I will find out. —
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I can tell you from my knowledge, it came when the
10 Moscow archives debouched what they had and historians
11 started going through them.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — you are, however, fully familiar with what we shall
13 certainly propose is one of the progeny of that order,
14 that Hitler should see what the Einsatzgruppen were doing,
15 at least, which is report No. 51 signed by Heydrich
16 Himmler on September 1941?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not accept there is a direct connection between that
18 stray document of August 1941 and the December 1942 stray
19 document, which is one of a long series of reports by
20 Himmler to Hitler on interesting things.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is not a stray document in any sense at all. It is a
22 sheet that actually went straight into the pen. It was
23 destined for Hitler, and as you accepted — I cannot
24 remember which day — Hitler probably saw it.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: December 29th.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
. P-70
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is not a stray document?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I think I referred to in my books. I have given the
4 figures. I have stated the facts and I said it was shown
5 to Hitler. I have not concealed these documents. I am
6 the first person to have found them, and immediately
7 brought them to the attention of the world.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why then do you turn your face so firmly against any
9 possibility that Hitler was at the heart or the root or
10 the origin of this exercise?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, the distinction may be a bit too subtle, but
12 I am not saying that, what I am saying is there is no
13 evidence that he was. Possibly we are on the same side,
14 but I am saying that there is a total shortage of evidence
15 that Hitler was being informed of what was going on in
16 these mass shootings and that when he did know he took
17 steps to stop it, and that there is this one instance of a
18 document going from Himmler to Hitler which obviously has
19 to be brought to the attention of my readers, which I do.
20 But otherwise there is very little evidence to support any
21 contention such as are you trying to make out.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the Muller document, which I understand
23 you did not know about because it had not emerged does now
24 provide some support for the —-
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, I put it in the latest edition of the book, my
26 Lord, because it is clearly a relevant document for people
. P-71
1 to know about. I think so far before the December 1942
2 document it would be adventurous to try and draw a causal
3 link between them.
4 MR RAMPTON: There is no evidence at all that these mass
5 shootings of Jews generally did stop, is there, on account
6 of any order from anybody?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Mass shootings of German Jews stopped for several months.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That, as I said the other day, is common ground between
9 us.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Then they gradually picked up again because of the general
11 criminality of the officers on the Eastern Front who had
12 these victims in their charge.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you are now talking about non-German Jews
14 or Jews who are not German?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think there was any pause in the killing of
16 non-German Jews. I think they were quite happy to get rid
17 of them.
18 MR RAMPTON: As a matter of fact there was. Again this was
19 something which I do not know whether you have seen it
20 before or not, I can tell you in a moment where it came
21 from. Have you got H3(i) there still?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Page?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Could you turn to footnote 50. It is about halfway
24 through the file.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: To what, Mr Rampton.
26 MR RAMPTON: Footnote 50, FN 50. It merely reflects the
. P-72
1 footnote in Professor Browning’s report. This is one of
2 these — I think it is one of these (German spoken) that
3 he tells us that it is. No. 10 for February 1942. No
4 I have given it the wrong name. If you look at its first
5 page, this is a reprint.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which he translates, and no doubt correctly, as activity
8 and situation of the Einsatzgruppen of the security police
9 and the SD in the USSR; do you see that at the bottom of
10 left hand column, Mr Irving?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. If you turn over the page, the right hand column,
13 halfway down the page, at letter C, you see a separate
14 entry; “Juden”?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Will you please, it says: “Nacht… Juden as… kind”;
17 tell me what that means.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: After in the Baltic provinces the Jewish question can be
19 regarded as virtually solved and dealt with.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Carry on.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: The clarification of this problem, the solution of this
22 problem in the remaining occupied territories of the east
23 is continuing, making further steps; do you wish me to
24 continue.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, there is no need for that. That is Heydrich reporting
26 that in the Ostland, that is —
. P-73
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, we do not know that because I have only two pages of
2 this report but. You are saying it is a report by
3 Heydrich.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I do not know, it may not be. That is what Professor
5 Browning tells us. It may be something else, in fact. He
6 says on page 16 of this report in early 1942 Heydrich
7 reported — you can take it up with him if you do not
8 accept it is Heydrich.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: I just do not have the complete document, so I cannot
10 tell.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That means, does it not, in effect this, no need to shoot
12 any more of the Jews in Ostland because they would all
13 have gone, nearly all gone?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: It does not say that. It just —
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is what it means.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: — the problem has gone away —
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I know, look at it as an historian as opposed to a
18 literary critic; that is what it means.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: — I read out what it meant. I gave you the literal
20 translation of it.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not asking for a translation, the input, significance
22 of what you read out is that there is no need to do any
23 more mass shootings in the Ostland because they have all
24 been killed?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: This conclusion can be drawn from it, yes.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Ostland” there is referring to what?
. P-74
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Baltic provinces, three Baltic states.
2 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will see the problem in other
3 Einsatzgruppen areas in a moment.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because the East is sometimes a reference to
5 the front with Russia, is it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Well —
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes, the Ostland is specifically though I think,
8 am I right?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a reference to Baltic provinces.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The Baltic States.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Sometimes “the East” is also a euphemism for something
12 uglier, too as I point out in my books.
13 MR RAMPTON: The very next document, Mr Irving, says Professor
14 Browning, is a protocol, it is a German word, my Lord, it
15 is FN 51, just the next document after the divider,
16 I hope.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
18 MR RAMPTON: The protocol, it is very difficult to read. Of a
19 meeting held, I think, in Minsk on 29th January. You see
20 somebody has also written “um” 29th January, do you see
21 that Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but it is not a date, the formality for writing a
23 date like “London” and December 1st 1941, in German you
24 would always have “dien”.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What does it mean here?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Here it is a sentence, effectively, saying the protocol on
. P-75
1 the sequence of events in the meeting of the main
2 department and department heads on January 29th 1942. It
3 is not the same thing at all. It is not a letter head.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is actually short for “an dien”, is it
5 not?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, thank you very much, my Lord, yes, indeed. But in a
7 letter, the formalities — I would be very surprised if
8 anyone would disagree with me with that. Although I have
9 to say one or two Auschwitz documents also say “um” for
10 letter heads.
11 MR RAMPTON: I have not been able to find in the brief scan
12 I have just given it the actual German quoted by Professor
13 Browning; that is not to say it is not there; simply
14 I have just not picked it up at once. Maybe the best way
15 of dealing with it is to look at the German Professor
16 Browning cites. Could Mr Irving have Professor Browning’s
17 report, please.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: What page of report?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is page 16. Mr Julius — yes, that is interesting
20 while we are trying to find the actual text, Mr Irving, on
21 the first page, at the bottom of the page, the last
22 paragraph?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I see that.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You see that. You have seen what you might call the
25 “anomalous SS”?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-76
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How odd, one in Minsk and the other one in Kovno?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The same illiterate chap with the same rotten typewriter
4 going round from one place to another?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The passage you are looking for is at page
6 1382 at the bottom.
7 MR RAMPTON: I am grateful to your Lordship. It is the third
8 sentence of the last paragraph on page 1382. That is
9 using the stamp on page 3 of the document.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It says, something like this, does it not, a complete
12 liquidation of the Jews is not possible due to frost; and
13 the word which is used for “liquidation” is “liquduren” is
14 it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Absolutely specifically. They do not use “vernichtung”
16 or —-
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because the ground is too frozen to dig pits, which would
18 then be available as mass graves for the Jews. Not much
19 doubt what they are talking about there, is there?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: None at all.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are in January in Minsk, which is in the Ukraine, yes?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Who are the people who are coming to that
24 conclusion? I do not quite know what the document
25 represents.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: It appears to be a session of local department heads and
. P-77
1 their subordinates on the spot out there rather than in
2 Berlin.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, Professor Browning tells us that it
5 is written by somebody called SS Sturmlandfuhrer Hoffman
6 of the Security Service in Minsk and that he explained
7 this to a meeting to officials —
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not see how signature on page 6 can be made to be
9 Hoffman.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — it may be like you, Mr Irving, Professor Browning has a
11 considerable knowledge of this period and this aspect of
12 this period.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: We shall see.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because he knows from extraneous evidence that it is
15 Hoffman who says this.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reference to Adolf Hitler in this document?
17 To the originator of this system, as you call it?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, can I say at once I hope I do not have to
19 invoke help from his Lordship, you will get a chance to
20 make your clever speech at the end of this case, I do not
21 answer questions.
Section 78.22 to 109.15
22 A. [Mr Irving]: It was not a clever speech it, was just an observation.
23 This is a sample of the quality of documents which are now
24 available to historians which go into the most intimate
25 detail about the killing operations going on.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not why I am looking at it at all.
. P-78
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I look at it as a Hitler historian. I try to find anybody
2 saying, it is OK, fellows, the Fuhrer has ordered this.
3 We are covered.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, that is a very literal minded way of looking at
5 things if I may say so.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: A very safe way of looking at things, being literal.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Very literal. If you do not have a Hitler order “shoot
8 all the Jews in the East” signed Adolf Hitler, then you
9 have to look at the circumstantial evidence.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: This is evidence of shooting was going on, which I have
11 never denied.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As a lawyer would, to see what evidence there is which
13 might suggest that this was a centrally organized and
14 approved operation. That is stage one. If you get that
15 far, and then you see a report telling Hitler that 363,000
16 Jews have been caught, have been shot by these people, and
17 put two and two together, and you make four, not five, or
18 three.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a poor substitute for the real thing, and it is the
20 real thing that I have been would have been looking for.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We do not have the real thing, but what is your task as an
22 historian, Mr Irving? It is, is it not to give an
23 objective, fair, interpretation to the cumulative effect
24 of all the evidence, is it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: It is surely not suggested that I have concealed any of
26 that evidence in my book? The evidence is there for
. P-79
1 people to read.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I know. You see you will not draw the obvious conclusions
3 from the evidence before you, simply because you have not
4 got a piece of paper signed by Adolf Hitler saying, “Do
5 it”. Where on the other hand you have a piece of paper
6 which says simply “from Himmler”; it has not got Hitler’s
7 name on it either, which simply says to Heydrich “do not
8 shoot these Berlin Jews, this train load of Berlin Jews”,
9 immediately that becomes incontrovertible evidence that
10 Hitler gave the order. Do you say anything about double
11 standards in that?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: At least there is good quality evidence you advance in the
13 opposite direction and I give both kinds of evidence in my
14 books and I allow my readers to draw their own
15 conclusions. My readers are not stupid, they are capable
16 of drawing their own conclusions from what I write.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not only did that Himmler phonelog become evidence of an
18 order from Hitler that those Jews should not be killed,
19 but it became incontrovertible evidence that Hitler had
20 made an order that no Jews anywhere were to be killed, did
21 it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I think we are testing the patience of the court if you go
23 over this old ground all over again, Mr Rampton.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, not at all.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, we did go over it.
26 MR RAMPTON: I know that, but Mr Irving, my Lord, supposes that
. P-80
1 this evidence is useless, or at any rate not much use
2 without a Hitler order on a piece of paper.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: That is not what I said.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Double standards, Mr Irving.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I said I would expect to find in a document of this kind,
6 where you have people discussing crimes of this magnitude,
7 that one person would have said, would have made reference
8 to … Fuhrer liquidierung or something like that, just so
9 that everyone at the meeting is covered. What the
10 cowardly call a (German spoken), a piece of paper that
11 covers them if things go nasty. And they do not bother to
12 do it.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This puzzles me, you have used this argument in relation
14 to some of the entries in the Goebbels’ diaries, you have
15 used it in relation to entries occurring, for example,
16 27th March 1942, that in some sense Goebbels, by referring
17 to Hitler for the more excessive anti-Semitic sentiments
18 appearing in those diaries, as some kind of alibi; why in
19 March 1942 or here we are in January 1942, should anybody
20 think that they needed an alibi for what they were doing?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Because the war is going very badly at this moment for
22 Germany. All sort nasty things can happen. People here
23 on the Eastern Front can see the writing on the wall.
24 They lost half the German army to frostbite.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Stalingrad is not until the next year, is it?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: The winter of 1941/42 42 was touch and go for Germany
. P-81
1 already. Thinking people if they had any brains would
2 start covering their tracks.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: These are just run of the mill janitorial level, to use
4 your attractive phrase, janitorial level routine military
5 reports back to headquarters in Berlin, we are doing as we
6 are told, here is the number of Jews that we have killed,
7 this is why we do not do it any more in the East land, the
8 reason is we have done it already, does not need doing, we
9 cannot do much in Minsk at the moment because the ground
10 is too hard, but it goes on, does it not —
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I correct one point you said, you said this was a
12 report back to Berlin.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is not right, Mr Rampton?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: — minute of a meeting somewhere in East.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is why this document to me does not seem
16 to carry the issue very much further in terms of whether
17 it was authorised at the highest level.
18 MR RAMPTON: Except for this, Mr Irving, if this was
19 unauthorized, unsystematic, contrary to orders, it would
20 not be reported at all, would it?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: If the calling was unauthorized — I am afraid you escaped
22 my attention there for a moment, my mind wondered.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry. I will repeat it. I will put it in different
24 way. when, what was his name Lieutenant Kalley?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: K-A-L-L-E-Y.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He did what at Mi Li, this is a parable you used yourself,
. P-82
1 so you know what I am talking about.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: In a climate of barbarism he took revenge on a village and
3 wiped out every man, women and child.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Did he or his adjutant or his NCO sit down and write a
5 laborious, typewritten report about it?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I think there were documents, there was a paper trail
7 established at the court martial.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Was there a written report signed by Kalley, “this is what
9 I have done”, and no reports of such atrocities sent back
10 from Vietnam to Washington on a regular basis?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, neither you nor I am is an expert on the
12 Vietnam war and it would be wrong for me to speculate.
13 Can I just point out, my Lord, even if this document had
14 established the kind of evidence Mr Rampton is looking
15 for, I would submit it could not be held against me
16 because it is only recently submerged from the Moscow
17 archives. It could not have been on my desk at the time
18 I wrote my books. I could not have manipulated,
19 mistranslated or distorted it.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You would have known, this document serves three purposes;
21 one it shows it was happening, but we all know that
22 anyway, we do not need this document for that, the other
23 is that somebody thought worth writing about it in a
24 formal written note of a protocol for a meeting. And the
25 other is it gives two very good reasons why there might
26 have been a lull in the Eastern shootings —
. P-83
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Because the ground was frozen.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — yes, and in the Ostlands the job had already been done?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I appreciate that.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You said you did not know about that document, it has only
5 recently come out in Moscow. I am in no position to
6 dispute that. Have you been aware of the EMs, I say that
7 to avoid my awful German; have I got it more or less
8 right?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, commendably so.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you very much. They do go back to Berlin, or rather
11 they are composed in Berlin from information sent from the
12 East by the Einsatzgruppen; have you been aware of those
13 reports?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I am aware of their existence, yes, I have not studied
15 them in detail.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. Have you been aware of those reports, was my
17 question?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Since when?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Certainly since the beginning of this case. Over the last
21 three to five years I would say I have become familiar
22 with them.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have they all come out of Moscow as well?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: They have come out in dribs and drabs. Some turned up in
25 the Nuremberg trial, some of them turned up subsequently.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If they were in the Nuremberg files they were sitting
. P-84
1 there where they could be looked I assume, I do not know
2 where the Nuremberg files are?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: How big they are? A lifetime task.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you see, Mr Irving, if you are looking for evidence
5 both ways, what was known in Berlin about what was going
6 on in the East, and before launching yourself into an
7 assertion that these were their unauthorized crimes of
8 some wicked people in the East, you ought to be looking at
9 things like that if they exist, ought you not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I did indirectly, if you remember I offered a major reward
11 for anybody who could find the kind of evidence. If it is
12 provided, the kind of evidence I am sure people would
13 stepped forward with outstretched hand —
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I think, Mr Irving, you are shortly going to try his
15 Lordship’s patience if you are not careful.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: — that was a short and perhaps cheap answer.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was not an answer to my question. If you assert that
18 these killings were the unauthorized criminal acts of
19 certain wild SS cowboys in the East, then you ought to be
20 looking for evidence both ways before you make that
21 assertion?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Which killings are we taking about, the killings of German
23 Jews, or killings of the rest, if I may put it that way?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will have to do the paper chase after lunch. —
25 A. [Mr Irving]: There is a very significant distinction, I think, in the
26 statement I made that the killings stopped.
. P-85
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — no, Mr Irving, sometimes — I know it is tiring to
2 concentrate hard all the time, I know that, sometimes
3 I think you just do not hear what I say. I am talking
4 about the killings in the East. Leave the German Jews out
5 of it for a moment, because at the beginning they were in
6 tiny minority anyway.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: But my reference to the wild minority carrying on was a
8 reference to German Jews.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. You, I think, have asserted — if I am wrong then
10 I say after the adjournment we will do a paper chase to
11 see whether I am wrong, if you say I am wrong — you have
12 asserted on a number of occasions, have you not, that this
13 sort of thing, like what happened in Kovno, like the sort
14 of thing we have seen in that Minsk document, were not
15 part of policy, they were just things that happened. You
16 said just now about those Berlin Jews, they got to the end
17 of line, that was that and after that they were in hand of
18 the wicked witch?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: The system operated from Berlin out to the East. I think
20 we have conceded this, so far as there was a system. But
21 I think that what you failed to establish, if I may say
22 so, is to establish that the system operated from Berlin
23 outwards to Hitler headquarters as well, and that I should
24 have known about and I ignored it.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No. Do I have now a clear concession that what the SS
26 were doing in the East, whether they were Polish, Russian
. P-86
1 or Berlin Jews, no, leave the Berlin Jews out of it for
2 the moment; what the SS were doing in the East to the
3 Russian Jews, and the Baltic Jews, to a total of perhaps
4 1.5 million, I do not believe the numbers matter, we have
5 a concession now, do we, that that was done on the
6 authority of and with the knowledge of at least Heydrich
7 in Berlin?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, quite clearly.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The buck stopped there, did it, did it go to
10 Himmler as well?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I think quite clearly this August 1941 message to which
12 Mr Rampton probably wants to proceed next is a reference
13 to the overall security activity of Einsatzgruppen in the
14 East, on which Hitler wished to be kept informed, and to
15 try and say this obviously refers to specifically to the
16 killing of Jews and only to the killing of Jews is a very
17 adventurous leap to make. Obviously you have to mention
18 this desire of Hitler to be kept informed, but it is
19 dangerous then therefore to say therefore he must also
20 have been told in great detail about everything else that
21 is going on.
22 MR RAMPTON: I am trying to take it slowly, Mr Irving, because
23 I want to be sure of the bricks which I am building.
24 I have built brick No. One, at long last I have a
25 concession that Heydrich authorized and knew about
26 shootings of these hundreds of thousand of Jews in the
. P-87
1 East.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Which Jews are we talking about? Can we be quite
3 specific. We are talking about the eastern non-German
4 Jews?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: We are talking about the ones the
7 Einsatzgruppen —
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is not a concession because I said it all along.
9 I think the word “concession” is loaded. It implies
10 I said something differently previously.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — that is what I will look for over the adjournment
12 because I believe that you have on numbers of occasions,
13 not in this court, said almost exactly that.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I shall await this revelation with interest.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I may be wrong, if I am wrong I will tell you so.
16 Now I am going to go a stage up from Heydrich.
17 I am going to go to Himmler next. This is a document
18 which I perfectly well accept you did not have at the time
19 when you wrote your books. My Lord, it is Himmler’s note
20 of the 18th December 1941. It is referred to on page 63
21 of the first part of Dr Longerich’s report, and the
22 document itself in one of several versions is at footnote
23 160 of H4(ii).
24 A. [Mr Irving]: While we are looking for that, can I just say this is
25 precisely the kind of document, of course, that falls
26 under my strictures about is it strictly relevant to the
. P-88
1 issues as pleaded? If it was not available to me at the
2 time I wrote the books …
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have been wondering about that and I
4 think —-
5 A. [Mr Irving]: It is of historical interest and I am quite happy to…
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, but just wait a minute, Mr Irving. I think there is
7 a lot of force in what you say, but I do not think I can
8 stop Mr Rampton cross-examining about it because if he
9 were, for example, able to show by producing a document
10 you did not know about when you were writing, that it
11 points unequivocally in whatever direction, and you were
12 to deny it, he might be entitled to say to me at the end
13 of the case, well, that shows that you are not objective
14 when you are shown a new document.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: He is a hard, cold denier, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But I do accept the force of what you say and Mr Rampton
17 may takes these documents perhaps rather than shorter than
18 the ones that were available.
19 MR RAMPTON: I think it is very easy to do that because there
20 is really only one question comes out of it. The trouble
21 is I cannot find it.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I have, of course, used the document in the new version of
23 the book that has now gone to press.
24 MR RAMPTON: It is about three quarters of the way through file
25 4(ii). Has Mr Irving got file 4(ii)?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I am very familiar with what the document says and its
. P-89
1 shape. “Juden frager”…
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I am not, Mr Rampton, so can you show me
3 where I go for it?
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord, footnote 160. This reproduction of
5 the note is the best I have. It comes from that little
6 book, Witte. It is a Himmler manuscript, my Lord. Your
7 Lordship may recognize the handwriting.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR RAMPTON: Before we look at the substance of this,
10 Mr Irving, perhaps it is best to say what it says. We had
11 better just tell everybody what it means. I hope I read
12 it correctly. It is headed: “Fuhrer Hauptquartier”, is
13 it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is the “Fuhrer’s headquarters”. Underneath that we
16 know which headquarters because Himmler tells us, the
17 Wolfsschanze, the Wolf’s Lair.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you say FN 160?
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, 160.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mine is 17th December 1941.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but on the right-hand side it should be the
22 facsimile.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had assumed that was what was being
24 transcribed on the left-hand side.
25 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not, I am afraid. In fact, in the book
26 the transcription is on the next following page behind the
. P-90
1 Himmler note. “Fuhrer Hauptquartier, Wolfsschanze
2 18.12.41 at 1600 hours”, 16H that is?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, that is correct.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Underneath the XII for December, the Roman 12, Himmler has
5 drawn a line or somebody has, have they not? A vertical
6 line?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So the page divides into two columns?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Above the right-hand column underlined is the
11 word “Fuhrer”?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And in the left-hand column Himmler has written — are
14 these written in pen or pencil or what?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Himmler used a green crayon. He or his adjutant,
16 Grothmann, would write a list of topics to discuss with
17 Hitler on the left-hand side of the line, and then on the
18 right-hand side sometimes there would be a one or two word
19 comment usually reflecting what Hitler had decided.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On the left-hand side, this is what you might call the
21 agenda then, correct?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Himmler’s has written “Juden frager”?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: The Jewish question.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And under “Fuhrer” in the right-hand column he has written
26 “aus partizan auszurotten, has he not?
. P-91
1 A. [Mr Irving]: “To be wiped out as partisans”.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. This —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it say “aus surotten”, sorry?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: “Auszurotten”.
5 MR RAMPTON: This, Mr Irving, is an important document?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a document, but, as Trevor Roper said once, because
7 it is new that does not mean it is necessarily true, and
8 also you have to look at every document like that and say
9 because it is new, you have to fit it into the general
10 fabric. It is one mosaic stone that you have to fit into
11 the rest of the mosaic. But I appreciate it is a crucial
12 document, a cardinal document.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When did you first see it?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I could not actually put a date on it. It became common
15 knowledge in, I think, the summer of last year when a
16 young German historian published it in a learned essay and
17 sometime later I obtained the actual facsimile from —-
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That was the first time you had seen it when you saw it
19 last summer?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
21 MR RAMPTON: And the natural meaning or import, implication,
22 significance, call it what you will, for an historian, of
23 course, he has to take everything into account, but at
24 first blush this would suggest that Hitler had told
25 Himmler to wipe out the Jews as partisans? Do you agree?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: This is an interpretation which is put on that document,
. P-92
1 yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the question was, do you agree?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Not in that form, my Lord.
4 MR RAMPTON: Tell me how you read this. I would be very
5 interested.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: “Jewish question”, first of all, the literal translation
7 is: “Jewish question, to be liquidated as partisans”.
8 Once again we are faced with the problem of trying to
9 define which Jews we are talking about, which Jews is
10 Himmler likely to have been talking with Hitler about on
11 that afternoon, on December 16th 1941. Presumably, it is
12 the Jews in the Baltic and on the Eastern front.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Suppose you are right about that —-
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What else?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: — to be liquidated as partisans. I am quite happy to
17 use the word “liquidated” as that translation for “aus
18 hotten” on that occasion. I think it is quite clear that
19 they were going to be, I forget the phrase the Americans
20 use, terminated with extreme prejudice, partisans on the
21 Eastern front were shot, they were executed, and the only
22 question, of course, which hangs over this document is
23 which Jews specifically are being talked about.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have agreed, have we not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: I do not know, I am not an historian —-
. P-93
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, is it German Jews being deported to the East who are
2 falling under that ambit or just all the rest?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you would say no because of the
4 document that we were looking at the other day, “Keine
5 Liquidierung”?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Precisely, my Lord.
7 MR RAMPTON: If may or may not be, Mr Irving, that is not at
8 the moment what we are talking. This is evidence that
9 Hitler gave authority for the massacre at least —-
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Of Jews.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — of Jews in the East?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. That, I think, as I recall, is the view that
14 Dr Longerich takes?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think there is any dispute between the parties on
16 this.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then, low and behold, almost a year later, or just over a
18 year later, comes along a report from the East saying that
19 just that has happened?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A report to Hitler?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: December 29th 1942, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, as a matter of historical fact, Mr Irving, you have
24 always known about report No. 51 on 29th December 1942,
25 have you not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-94
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The probability that Hitler saw that report and was,
2 therefore, what shall we say, implicated in the murder of
3 all those 363,000 Eastern Jews is confirmed, is it not, by
4 our subsequent knowledge of this document?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. There is no contention between us on that point.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, historically speaking, the fact is that the systematic
7 killing of the eastern Jews, whether in Minsk or Kovno or
8 Kiev or anywhere else, was part of a Fuhrer plan?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: As a part of the partisan combating. I am trying to
10 specify exactly what interpretation one can safely put on
11 two rather skimpy documents with 12 months between them.
12 It has to be said that this telephone notice,
13 this agenda, is about as skimpy as one can imagine. One
14 would only wish that Himmler had been more literary in his
15 endeavours and told us precisely what was going on.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would it be wrong to read it that they were
17 to be treated in the same way as partisans were being
18 treated, namely they were going to be shot just as
19 partisans —-
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Precisely, my Lord.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — because they were supporting the —-
22 A. [Mr Irving]: And I know that some people would say, well, the Jews
23 provided the partisan reservoir, but, of course, the
24 obvious argument against that is “and the women and
25 children too” and the answer to that is, of course, they
26 were not. So this was, undoubtedly, part of the majority
. P-95
1 atrocity on the Eastern Front which I have never denied.
2 MR RAMPTON: Well, then please will you look at report No. 51
3 itself? I know we have looked at it before, but these
4 documents are, in our submission, so intimately connected
5 that it is necessary to look at it again. You will find
6 that in (which I hope you have) H3(i) which is the first
7 tranche of Professor Browning’s documents at footnote
8 28(ii). H3(i), do you have?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then if you turn to FN 28(ii) at the bottom right-hand
11 corner of the page, you should have it?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I have it.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is a report — I will not go through it all again —
14 only for a part of the East. It does not say anything,
15 for example, about Ostland. It talks about South Russia,
16 Ukraine and the Bialystok area which is to the west of
17 White Russia, is it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As we noticed before, under paragraph 2, listed as gang
20 helpers, and what was the other word?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: “Partisan accomplices” is the way I would translate that.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, what?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: “Accused of being partisan accomplices or fellow
24 travellers”.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, fellow travellers?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: And suspects.
. P-96
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Or whatever. Some were arrested, some were executed,
2 which is perhaps not very surprising, not in huge numbers,
3 a total under B of 14,000 — well, comparatively not in
4 huge numbers, I should have said. Under C, as a separate
5 entry for heaven knows why, a separate entry, 363,211
6 Jews?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, is it your thesis that Hitler would have been likely
9 to think, “Oh, well, I am sure all those Jews were getting
10 up to no good in the underground or the Resistance or
11 whatever, the subversives, and there were all that many of
12 them so the poor old SS had to shoot them”, is that a
13 realistic scenario, Mr Irving?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: That being sarcastic, presumably?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am being entirely sarcastic.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, of course not.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not to you, but I mean that is not a credible suggestion,
18 is it?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Of course it is not, no, and this document I have printed
20 in several of my books. I think I was probably the very
21 first person to have drawn attention to it. I may be
22 wrong on that.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is important, Mr Irving. So you agree with me that
24 this is just some kind of fiction, really, to put them
25 under band helpers and band whatever the other things,
26 accomplices. This is put, coldly and bluntly, a record of
. P-97
1 the number of Jews deliberately executed for the reason
2 that they are Jews and for another, is it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I have no evidence of that, but that is a reasonable
4 supposition. But I would also continue from that point
5 and say what worries me about this document is that we
6 have no evidence that Hitler took it on board, as we would
7 now say. He never referred in later conferences saying,
8 “I remember back in December we got that document saying
9 we had killed 3,000 Jews, jolly good show!”
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you have had this document for a long time?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the evidence suggests that it was laid
13 before Hitler, does it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree, my Lord, but there is a difference between
15 documents being laid before a Prime Minister or a Head of
16 State at a time when disaster, the world is crashing
17 around his ears, it is the height of the Stalingrad
18 Crisis, and the fact that he actually imbibed the facts
19 and figures contained in it, this may be precisely why
20 Himmler put it to him at that time. This has been known
21 to happen, that people — documents are shovelled in front
22 of them.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: We now know that he did ask to be kept informed about the
24 shootings on the Eastern front.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: 18 months earlier, my Lord, yes — that is not strictly
26 accurate, my Lord. He asked to be kept informed of the
. P-98
1 activities of the Einsatzgruppen. Broadly speaking, their
2 major activity was policing the rear areas and to them
3 fell the task of killing the Jews.
4 MR RAMPTON: Have you any idea of the cost of ammunition at
5 that time in the history of the Reich?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Cost of ammunition?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I would imagine the price per round was relatively low.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So it would not be a huge economic expenditure to kill,
10 let us say, 700,000 Jews by shooting?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It is much cheaper to kill them with bullets than with
12 cyanide gas.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Much noisier too?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I take your word for it.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, bullets, they were not using silencers, were they?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I am afraid you have lost me there.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is more likely to come to public attention, is it not,
18 and it is also, I mean, I do not know how many soldiers
19 they used by per shooting?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I think there were six machine gunners, according to
21 Bruns, was it not?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Who took it in turns. They were relieved.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Evidently, at some stage it became too much for many of
25 the people that had to do it?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I am sure.
. P-99
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Whereas — we will come to the other matters later on.
2 Now, I would like Mr Irving — my Lord, this is the last
3 thing, if I may, that I will do before the
4 adjournment —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: — to have a copy of Professor Evans’ report.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: While it is being fetched, my Lord, can I ask you, do you
8 read the newspaper accounts that are published at all of
9 this action?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not much, no.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Not much?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, if you have been there, there is not much point in
13 reading about it.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I agree, but the newspapers sometimes report things that
15 have not been dealt with in the courtroom.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I know. Why do you mention that at this stage?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, over the weekend I have been studying some of the
18 accounts, and it would disturb me if I thought you were
19 accepting what the press reported about things.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I rely on what I hear here.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: This is the Evans report.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Page?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That will probably take us up to, at any rate, 5 to 1.
25 Page 134. There may be more to come of this after the
26 adjournment when I have done a bit more research, but
. P-100
1 these two little snippets will do for the moment. For the
2 moment, I have not fished out original transcripts,
3 Mr Irving, so I hope you will forgive me. If Professor
4 Evans has mistranscribed what you are alleged to have
5 said, then no doubt, you will tell us. Page 134(c)
6 “Systematic nature of the extermination”. This is
7 Professor Evans: “A refusal to accept that the
8 extermination of the Jews was systematically organised or
9 centrally directed is a major element in the phenomenon of
10 Holocaust denial”?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: As defined by him.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am reading his words. You can cross-examine him about
13 his words, not me. “Where does Irving stand on this
14 issue? Even before he changed his mind on the numbers
15 killed and the use of gassing as a murder technique,
16 Irving was denying that the Nazi extermination of the Jews
17 had been carried out in a systematic manner. Thus, for
18 example, in 1986, two years before his change of mind on
19 these issues, Irving told reporters in Brisbane,
20 Australia: ‘I am not attacking the figure of 6 million.
21 I am not attacking the fact that the Jews were killed, but
22 I am attacking or questioning whether, in fact, it was a
23 tragedy ordered and organized on the very highest German
24 state level, namely by Hitler himself, and I think this is
25 what they find very repugnant’.” Who was “they” in that
26 sentence?
. P-101
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not know.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “‘because if my hypothesis is correct, then it means that
3 all these Jews, and it maybe any figure, I don’t look at
4 the figure concerned, if my hypothesis is'” — sorry, it
5 is difficult to read, “‘if my hypothesis is correct, it
6 indicates that the Jews were the victims of a large number
7 of rather run-of-the-mill criminal elements which exist in
8 central Europe, not just Germans, but Austrians, Latvians,
9 Lithuanians, Estonians, feeding on the endemic
10 anti-Semitism of the era and encouraged by the
11 brutalization which war brought about anyway’.”
12 Then if we go over the page, please, and then
13 there is the bit about these chaps who did it being
14 motivated by revenge for bombing. 135, Professor Evans
15 makes the comments: “Irving did not explain how allied
16 bombing raids on Germany could have turned Latvians,
17 Lithuanians and Estonians against the Jews”. Maybe you
18 just made a slip, did you, Mr Irving?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: It is quite clearly being misread by whoever — Professor
20 Evans has misread that. He is reading into the words
21 I used a much tighter link there. Quite clearly, the
22 people living in the Baltic provinces had their own
23 reasons for hating the Jews. I do not propose to go into
24 them here.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know whether it is a speech; it is a press
26 conference.
. P-102
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It is a verbatim press conference probably.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Paragraph 3?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: But, as far as the German killers and the Austrian killers
4 went, certainly there are very clearly links between some
5 of the killers concerned and what they experienced in the
6 air raids.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I will read the next sentence, paragraph 2, if I
8 may? “He did make it clear, however, that he thought the
9 mass killings of Jews in the Second World War resulted
10 from local initiatives in East Central Europe, not from
11 any overall coordination by the Nazi leadership or,
12 indeed, by any part of it. His view was that these local
13 initiatives were excusable. It comes through clearly as
14 well as he told at an interview in the same month in 1986,
15 the millions of Jews or the hundreds or thousands of Jews,
16 I am not going to name any figure, who were liquidated
17 during the Second World War by the Germans and the
18 Latvians or the Ukrainians or all the rest who carried out
19 liquidations, they were the victims of a large number of
20 nameless criminals into whose hands they fell on the
21 Eastern Front. Mostly around Eastern Europe the
22 liquidations occurred and these men acted on their own
23 impulse, their own initiative, within the general
24 atmosphere of brutality created by the Second World War in
25 which, of course, the allied bombings had played a part”.
26 Mr Irving, that first part, leave the allied
. P-103
1 bombings out of it for a moment because we will get on to
2 Dresden later in the case.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I think I am absolutely right. I think the documents that
4 have come to light have established that a hundred times
5 over.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: The fact that the mindless criminals on the Eastern Front
8 who carried out these killing operations had a motive of
9 their own to do the killing even when they were ordered by
10 Berlin or by Hitler’s headquarters to stop and they
11 carried on with the killing. People like Altemeyer, that
12 young man we talked about earlier, the 22 year old, who
13 sniggered and said, “We have got this order to stop the
14 mass shootings but we are going to carry on anyway so no
15 one sees it”.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be true, Mr Irving, but it is not
17 really the point, is it?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Oh, I am sorry. I must have missed the point that
19 Mr Rampton is asking about.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes, you have missed the point. What you are
21 denying here is system?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, of course.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, and you have readily —-
24 A. [Mr Irving]: The overall system, that link that you are looking for
25 between Berlin and Hitler’s headquarters.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have found it. We have found it easily going to
. P-104
1 Heydrich.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And, no doubt, therefore, to Himmler and now we have found
4 it going to Hitler, have we not?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: There must be something between the lines that I have not
6 been able to read.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Between which lines?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: That you have read out because where is the link to Hitler
9 here?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, sorry, we are at cross-purposes. This will be my last
11 question, I hope. The effect of what you are telling this
12 audience in Australia, or these two audiences in
13 Australia, that this was unauthorized criminality behind
14 or beyond, you know, on the East?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right. I thought we had agreed this morning in court
17 that, in fact, and contrary to what you are suggesting to
18 these people in Australia in 1986, the whole thing was
19 organized and approved by Berlin?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Again which Jews are we talking about?
21 MR RAMPTON; We are talking about the Eastern Jews. I am being
22 consistent.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, non-Berlin Jews.
24 MR RAMPTON: I am using oranges and oranges.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I think we have established quite clearly that that
26 is —-
. P-105
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And that is completely contrary to what you are saying to
2 these Australians, is it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: In 1986?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Where I said mind that it was the mindless killers on the
6 Eastern Front who did the killing?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “These men acted on their own impulse, their own
8 initiative”, that means without orders, does it not?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: When we are talking about the German Jews?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, we are not.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, we are not there.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, we do not know because we have only been given these
13 fragments of a transcript.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, just focus on the question. What is being put is that
15 what you said in 1986 about these men on the Eastern front
16 having acted on their own impulse is at any rate now known
17 by you not to be right because, in fact, it was authorised
18 at the highest level, namely by Hitler?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: What was authorized, my Lord? The killing of Jews, the
20 partisans?
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, you accepted that, I thought, a few minutes ago.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: The Jews to be liquidated as partisans, 16th December, the
23 conversation, yes. If we can expand that very meagre
24 note, that skimpy note, into that interpretation which I
25 think is a legitimate expansion, certainly Hitler
26 sanctioned the killing of the Jews on the Eastern Front,
. P-106
1 all the rest Jews, the non-German Jews, and that has never
2 been a matter contention for me.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I think what is being suggested is that what you said in
4 1986 can now be seen to be wrong because you were
5 suggesting in 1986 that these killings on the Eastern
6 Front of Jews was done on the initiative of the commander?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: They acted on their own impulse and their own initiative,
8 yes, but, clearly, you cannot have the systematic killings
9 without the people on the Eastern Front who are willing to
10 kill. It is no use having a killing system if you have
11 not got mindless killers out there who are prepared to do
12 the killing. This is an attempt, really, to explain the
13 mentality of the people who are doing the killing on the
14 Eastern Front.
15 MR RAMPTON: I will put the question one more time, then I will
16 leave it and I will tell you where to find the full
17 transcript of this press conference or as such of it as we
18 have?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I think I would like to read the whole transcript
20 rather than just fragments.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You should and I tell you so if you want to glance at it
22 overnight?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Because both Evans and Browning have a habit of not even
24 indicating where they have left out whole sentences.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They can answer for themselves in due course.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans on one occasion left out three sentences,
. P-107
1 eight full stops, three semi-colons and 86 words.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to make a joke about that and say “Good Evans!”
3 Maybe we can get on, Mr Irving. My suggestion is this,
4 that those words you used in Australia on those two
5 occasions in 1986 (and it maybe we shall find some others,
6 I do not know) are apt to suggest to the audience that
7 this killing of the Eastern Jews on a vast scale went on
8 without the knowledge or approval of Hitler and his
9 cronies, all of them, in Berlin?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: If that impression is given, it is the wrong impression.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it is.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: By me, quite clearly.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that a convenient break?
14 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, yes, thank you.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 2 o’clock.
16 (Luncheon adjournment
17 MR DAVID IRVING, recalled
18 Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON QC, continued
19 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, can I make one small correction?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I am wrong about one point on that German, the date line,
22 where it says “am”, I am informed that in certain regions
23 of Germany it is proper to use “am”; it is a dialect.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am not surprised to hear you say so,
25 thank you for that correction.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Thank you.
. P-08
Part III: Rampton Continues Cross-Examination of Irving [Afternoon Session] (109.16 to 206.23)
1 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, before lunch we looked at some remarks
2 that you had made to audiences in Australia in 1986.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: 14 years ago.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, 14 years ago. Do you take any point on the fact that
5 those remarks were made 14 years ago?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I just wanted to emphasise the fact these remarks were
7 made 14 years ago.
Section 109.16 to 131.1
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can I now show you something you said in October 1992.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you. My Lord, Mr Irving will need bundle D5(ii),
11 and D3(i).
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry D5 I have not got.
13 MR RAMPTON: Well —
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, have not got here.
15 MR RAMPTON: Thank you, no. My Lord, I think we can supply
16 everybody with a copy.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: D5?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: D5(ii), page 25, I have the copy loose. I think this is a
19 wrong reference, I am afraid.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think it must be.
21 MR RAMPTON: I am looking, Mr Irving, I will tell you what I am
22 looking for. I am looking at the wrong thing anyway.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it a transcription of a speech?
24 MR RAMPTON: No, it should be a letter from Mr Marcellus dated
25 16th January 1992. We cannot —-
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is on page — it is page 141, identified as No. —
. P-109
1 It is in the section after tab 29.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: At page, handwritten bottom right 28.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it is — handwritten at the bottom, 26. . “Dear Tom”.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Has the judge got that?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, not yet.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Alternatively 25, 25 is a longer letter. It is a fax.
9 MR RAMPTON: The reference was right. Does your Lordship have
10 it?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have now.
12 MR RAMPTON: It is a fax, is it not?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I was looking at this very letter only last night, in
15 fact.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Good. I am only interested in the last part of this for
17 the moment. Right at the end, you say this: “My position
18 remains unchanged, that there were certain Mi Li type
19 atrocities by troops in Russia, that the gas chambers and
20 factories of death are Hollywood legends and that there is
21 no wartime evidence of a Hitler order that what I consider
22 in these papers is ‘hearsay’.” This was, was it, in
23 preparation for an IHR conference that year, do you think?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: The second paragraph indicates that I was methodically
25 working my way through the Eichmann papers and evaluating
26 them, planning perhaps to do something with them at this
. P-110
1 Institute of Historical Review, as you know.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, because in D3(i) at I suppose tab 30, there is a
3 transcript, I think we looked at this for another purpose
4 not long ago, page 18, could you turn to, it is marked
5 twice, in tab 30 of this file, we start at the beginning,
6 so we see what it is. It is headed “the suppressed
7 Eichmann and Goebbels papers David Irving presented at the
8 11th IHR conference October 1992″, the date is correct, is
9 it, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now can you turn to the page marked 172 with a stamp or 21
12 in print.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And you say this in the last paragraph: “Now you probably
15 know that I am a revisionist to a degree, but I am not a
16 revisionist to the extent that I say there were no murders
17 of Jews. I think we have to accept”, can I pause there
18 and ask you why you use that form of words, “we have to
19 accept”?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: The general public has to accept.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why should not the general public accept? There is bags
22 of evidence for shootings of Jews, is there not? Do
23 I sense a some feeling of reluctance in that form of
24 words?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not consider a film with Robert Mitchum called “War
26 of Remembrance” to be evidence which the general public
. P-111
1 should necessarily accept.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can I repeat my question “in the form of words I think we
3 have to accept”?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do I sense a note of reluctance in that?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: No, not at all. What you have also to remember I was
7 speaking to an audience largely comprised of revisionists
8 who are loath to accept this kind of thing, so I am saying
9 to them —
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say “we” not “you”?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I am part of this audience, I am part of this — part of
12 this function.
13 MR RAMPTON: You are really meaning, are you not —
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — we, the revisionist movement?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — have, and I insert the words, Mr Irving, reluctantly
18 got to accept —
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me, I did not say “reluctantly got to”.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — you do not accept that is the sense of it?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Not at all. What I am saying quite clearly here is that
22 that let us get one thing quite plain, we have to accept
23 there were these mass murders on the Eastern Front.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So we may not wish to do?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: These are your interpolations —
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, they are —
. P-112
1 A. [Mr Irving]: — manipulations and distortions —
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I was making a suggestion about what was in your mind
3 when you spoke to this like-minded audience.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: — so are you now a mind reader, Mr Rampton.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, you said it was a conference of revisionists?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I assume —
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is made, we have the answer.
8 MR RAMPTON: The more often your Lordship pushes me in that way
9 the happier I shall be.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hope you will not take it unkindly.
11 MR RAMPTON: Of course not. I am, as your Lordship knows, very
12 used to do jury actions and sometimes old habits die hard
13 that is all it is.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is an understandable lack of
15 differentiation.
16 MR RAMPTON: You go on. I think we have to accept there were
17 Mi Li type massacres, where SS officers, the
18 Einsatzgruppen commanders, did machine gun hundreds, if
19 not thousands of Jews — oh hundreds if not thousands,
20 sorry, I must get it right, did machine gun hundreds if
21 not thousands of Jews into pits on the Eastern Front at
22 Riga at Minsk and at other locations, this kind of thing
23 did happen?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: — I think quite clearly this is not hundreds of
25 thousands, I mean this is…
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is not hundreds of thousands?
. P-113
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I mean the evidence I have given is quite clearly we are
2 talking about hundreds of thousands, not just hundreds or
3 thousands in cases —-
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We do not need the hundreds, do we?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Hundreds of thousands.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think Mr Irving is saying it is a misprint
7 or whatever the word is he said and what he meant was
8 hundreds of thousands not if not thousands?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Because if at this meeting I have read out the Bruns’
10 report where alone several thousand people were machine
11 gunned into one pit one could not talk about hundreds.
12 MR RAMPTON: This is one of these speeches, presentations
13 lectures, I do not know, that you will have approved
14 before it went into print in this whatever it is?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: This is correct, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Never mind, it is a small point.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The main point is this, Mr Irving, this is another
19 statement in exactly the same vein as the statements you
20 made at Brisbane in 1986, is it not, Mi Li type massacres?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I am being accused of being consistent, am I?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, you are, you are accused of consistently and
23 knowingly reducing the extent of the responsibility for
24 these massacres?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Very well.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you accept that charge, or not?
. P-114
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Trying to identify the responsibility, yes. On the basis
2 of very meagre evidence.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The words “Mi Li type massacres” mean this, do they not,
4 to any educated or half educated audience, these massacres
5 were done by criminal gangers unauthorized in the East
6 without the approval, consent or knowledge of the people
7 in Berlin?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is correct, and it was wrong, was it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: That was wrong, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And you knew that it was wrong?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I did not, not at this time.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Not in 1992?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: When did you learn that it was wrong, Mr Irving?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I suppose once I began studying the documents for this
17 case in detail, and we started looking at the individual
18 documents of the kind we have been looking at in court
19 today that becomes quite plain.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry. Yes, I did not mean to interrupt.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: It becomes quite plain that there was a co-ordination,
22 there was a degree of direction. For example, the
23 killings in the Eastern territory – in the Baltic
24 provinces which carried out admittedly by the local
25 populations, the SS were told to join in and help and it
26 turned a blind eye. So there was a lot of nodding and
. P-115
1 winking going on in a degree that quite clearly indicates
2 a systematic direction going on between Berlin and the
3 Eastern Front where the killings were taking place.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I missed the last part of that answer, it ended systematic
5 direction, you are saying —
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Systematic direction going on between the Eastern front
7 and Berlin in connection with these killings.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I am grateful to you. It is in this same speech is one
9 of places where you refer to the Bruns evidence, is it
10 not?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: I believe so, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, I am being harassed from all sides. I will
13 try to make both points at once if I possibly can but I do
14 not think I can. Can you turn back, please, to, where is
15 it?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 24. Are you on Bruns?
17 MR RAMPTON: Sorry.
18 MR RAMPTON: You were asked a question on page 23, you will
19 find right hand column under “Questions”: “What do we
20 know about the people who are responsible for the
21 massacres of Jews by firing squad in Minsk and other
22 areas? How high did the responsibility go?” Were you
23 not?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And it was at that point we come to Bruns, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-116
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And as I think we have been through already so I am not
2 going to go through it again, you do not when reporting
3 Bruns’ evidence make any reference to the order which
4 Altemeyer said he had, which were Fuhrer orders, that it
5 should happen, nor to the qualifications and the second
6 conversation that must happen more discreetly?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: If I read it here says, one particular Bruns described to
8 his pals in appalling detail the massacre he himself saw
9 near Riga on November 30th 1941, I am not going to read
10 that out one here, so I did not read out any of it
11 apparently.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But the direct answer to the question, would it not,
13 difficult for you when you said these were “Mi Li type
14 massacres”. This chap Bruns actually said he had been
15 told it was a Fuhrer order? “But I do not think it is
16 probably right” you could have added, of course?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I think we have gone over this point in some detail on a
18 previous occasion.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, we have.
20 MR RAMPTON: I rather agree. I had not spotted the question
21 before, that was all.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, might I just read out ten lines of continuation
23 of that particular speech, because it goes to
24 how unreliable a lot of this evidence is?
25 MR RAMPTON: Where are you, Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: At the top left of page 24. It is just a typical —
. P-117
1 problem we have with eyewitness evidence where apparently
2 equally credible document gives a version of a story which
3 is on the face of it highly unlikely.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, yes, if you want to read it out.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: If it would be a useful exercise, or if your Lordship so
6 directed I would not, of course.
7 MR RAMPTON: I do not object.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is no objection taken, if you want to,
9 then do.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Purely as an exercise in how unreliable evidence can be
11 from prisoners of war. Here is a prisoner of war in a
12 conversation on December 20th. A man called Obergaufreiter
13 Till, who was captured in August 1944. He claimed to have
14 been guarding the railway at Auschwitz in July 1943 when a
15 train load of Greek Jews arrived. This again is an
16 intercepted and overheard conversation. Till said: “The
17 SS man kicked a Jewish woman who was highly pregnant. He
18 kicked her right in the stomach and knocked her down and
19 the unborn baby came almost out. He took hold of it
20 pulled it out, threw it on the ground and told the woman
21 to get up. He put that child on the truck that was
22 standing there to take away the dead people to be
23 burned.” The British officer is then heard asking: “The
24 child was dead, of course?” Till then said: “Yes, and the
25 woman could not get up she was hardly dressed and he
26 grabbed her by the breast. He wanted to pull her up. He
. P-118
1 just ripped her skin and everything out of her breasts.
2 There was a captain there from the army. I think his name
3 was Captain Klug. He went after that SS guy, he took him
4 by the shoulder, turned him round and said: “Are you
5 crazy to do something like that, are you not ashamed of
6 yourself?” And so on.
7 As I comment this is the kind of rubbish that
8 gets into these interrogation reports and part of the job
9 of being a responsible writer or researcher is to sift the
10 wheat from the chaff and try evaluate which ones are
11 credible. It may be that this is an entirely true story,
12 but on the face of it I considered it was not. That is the
13 kind of problem we have, it is all very well in court look
14 at documents which have been singled out by the
15 Defendants, and say, look at this one, look at that one,
16 why have you ignored this? As an historian working in the
17 archives you are confronted with tens of thousands of
18 documents and you have to make your own choice.
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes, Mr Irving. You made a statement to — why
20 did you want to read that out, as opposed to just drawing
21 attention to it, saying this is something you could not
22 believe?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Why did I wish to read it out?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why did you want it read it out?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: It is self- evident. It is material of precisely the same
26 quality as General Brun’s eyewitness account; it comes
. P-119
1 from precisely the same provenance, from the Combined
2 Services Detailed Interrogations Centre transcripts and
3 yet we have to make a value judgment and say this document
4 I believe, that document I do not believe or this document
5 I believe this much, that portion I am less inclined to
6 believe. And on balance, as I think I explained to the
7 court earlier, when it came to Bruns’ recollection of what
8 Altemeyer said about, “we have got the Fuhrer’s order but
9 we are going to disregard it”, I am afraid I attach the
10 value to it which I consider to be proper.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, if I put General Bruns’ Report of Lieutenant
12 Altemeyer’s words in those terms you would have given me
13 the most terrible rocket, would you not? “We are going to
14 disregard it”; he did not say that at all, did he?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon? Disregard —
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He did not say “we are going to disregard it”?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: — no, discount certain elements of it.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I see.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Which on — prima facie less likely than others. We can
20 believe the part where he says he can see the girl in the
21 flame red dress in his mind’s eye because all experience
22 tells us that is the kind of detail people do report.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have done it before —
24 A. [Mr Irving]: We have also dealt with SS braggarts who shoot their
25 mouths off —
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — we have done that one, Mr Irving, I will not pick up
. P-120
1 the conflict again. I would not be allowed it anyway.
2 I want to ask you this about your Mi Li remark,
3 which I have now lost, of course. We have to accept that
4 there were Mi Li types massacres. You have accepted it
5 was wrong. You could have found out that it was wrong
6 before you made it, could you not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: — find out what was wrong?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The characterization of these organized, systematic
9 shootings known to Berlin in the East of the eastern Jews;
10 the characterization of those Mi Li type massacres was
11 wrong, you have accepted it was wrong, and you could have
12 known it was wrong before you made that —
13 A. [Mr Irving]: I think to be more specific, there were Mi Li type
14 massacres.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I am sure there were?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: But there were also others that were clearly on orders
17 from above.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not want to go back over old ground again.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But my question was not that to which you gave an answer;
21 my question was, you had the means of knowing it was wrong
22 before you said it, did you not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: What would those means have been?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You could have done the same research in the EMs going
25 back to Berlin as everybody else has done?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think everybody else does done it for a start;
. P-121
1 secondly, I am not a Holocaust historian, as I keep
2 reminding the court.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then why are you discussing it here and why are you making
4 a categorical assertion that they were simply unauthorized
5 gangster killings?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I am being asked by a member of the audience my opinion on
7 this and I am giving the opinion based on my knowledge at
8 that time.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now I want to come to something different that arises from
10 some things you were saying on Thursday. I promised you
11 that I would come back to it and I will. It is Hitler’s
12 log note, telephone log note, of the 30th —
13 A. [Mr Irving]: November 1941.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — yes. It has to do with the manuscript, not the sense,
15 the manuscript, and your transcription of the
16 word “haben — ”
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This is December 1st?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: November 30th 1941.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: December 1st 1941?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There was a copy of it — December 1st, you are quite
21 right, I got the wrong date. There was a copy of it in
22 your little bundle, my Lord, at the back of J3.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: December 1st.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you got it, Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
. P-122
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We all know it by heart by now?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I know it by heart.
3 MR RAMPTON: No, for this purpose the witness will need the
4 actual copy.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you got that little clip?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: No my Lord I no longer have it.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there a spare copy? Bundle C.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I thought we had passed on from this matter.
9 MR RAMPTON: No, because I promised you that I did not accept
10 that that you made an honest mistake in the transcription
11 of that word “haben” and if I had any more to say about it
12 I would come back to it, and that is what I am now going
13 to do.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 13, I think.
15 MR RAMPTON: It is page 14 is the transcript. Sorry is the
16 photograph and page 13 is the transcript.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I have it.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now I am going to do something else, if I may, Mr Irving.
19 I am going to pass up to you, and to his Lordship a
20 somewhat better copy than the one you gave us.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Which is completely immaterial, of course.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you say, but you may not think that when you have heard
23 how I am going to use it.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we slot this into —-
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — that file?
. P-123
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes. 13A, my Lord, says Miss Rogers. I will just
2 ask you, I am not going to ask you any questions about
3 that at the moment, I want to ask you some preliminary
4 questions. Your copy which we find at page 14 of your
5 little bundle —-
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — was taken from what?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: From a microfilm.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: From a microfilm. Look at the one I have just handed in.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is a copy taken from a microfilm too, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I will take your word for that, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, it looks like it, does it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Except there is a distinction. There is a handwritten
15 No. 318 on the top right-hand corner.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is as may be but the fact that it is —-
17 A. [Mr Irving]: No, that implies that it is taken at a different time and
18 also what looks like a staple in the top left-hand corner.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, but the fact that it is white on black, Mr Irving,
20 suggests that it is a photocopy taken from a microfilm
21 negative, does it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but not from the microfilm that you obtained from me.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How did you make your photocopy that we have here?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I took it to a Messrs Rank Xerox Limited who ran it off on
25 a copy flower machine about 20 years ago.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Ran what off?
. P-124
1 A. [Mr Irving]: The microfilm.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The microfilm?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: They printed it out and then chopped it up and I sent it
4 to be bound.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What I have here, is that as good as it gets or is the
6 original —-
7 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I had the actual bound volume in court with me
8 last week and that was what I operated from. This is a
9 photocopy from that bound volume which is as good as it
10 got. I am quite happy to bring it into court again
11 tomorrow.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, it may not be necessary. I would say I hand up the
13 better copy, only for the purposes of checking it in case
14 you do not agree with what I am going to ask you. Can you
15 have out your English — sorry, your typescript transcript
16 of the manuscript?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: It is the previous page.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Page 13?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Page 13?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I think I am right, am I not, that there are only
21 two words in the whole of this transcript which you have
22 mistranscribed? One is, well, you have altered the
23 “haben” from “Juden”. You have made it into “haben”, you
24 tell us?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have also mistranscribed “truppen” of “truppenschule”,
. P-125
1 have you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Those are the only words you have mistranscribed. The
4 “haben” is now correct?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I have only just spotted the “lappenschule”” was
6 mistranscribed as well, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, that is right. Take the first line. Look at your
8 transcript.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The word is “recrutenzahlen” which is numbers of recruits,
11 perhaps, is it?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now look at the German, the manuscript?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The “U” has a thing like a hockey stick over the top of
16 it, does it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the word, third line, which you transcribe as
19 “ulab vager”?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The small “b” at the end “ulab” looks like a small “b”,
22 does it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Look likes a small B?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it is like an ordinary schoolboy “b”, is it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the “U” in the next line in “tabung”, again it has
. P-126
1 that scallop on top of it, has it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the word in the next entry which is a single entry
4 “flieger mel dingung”?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the “D”; it has a loop on the top, has it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, if you look two lines down, please, at “executionen”,
8 and on “executionen” there appears to be no little hat on
9 the U.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That may be, Mr Irving.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That rather destroys the point you are trying to make.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do not try to always second guess me; it does not really
13 help. It just slows things down.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I am just trying to help court.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Flieger mel dingung” has both the loop on the “D” and the
16 little sign on top of the U, has it not?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not umlaut sign, is it?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it is not. It is to distinguish the “U” from the “N”
19 in handwriting in German.
20 MR RAMPTON: Then the next line where there is an entry against
21 the name of Heydrich in Prague?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Schreibdamen”, you have both the “B” and the “D” there,
24 have you not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The ordinary “B” and the “D” with the loop?
. P-127
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at the last H of “Heydrich”?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It looks like a capital J in English, does it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then the first line of the entry against “Pohl Bezuch”,
7 that has the little scallop on it, has it not?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then “Lappenschuhe”?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: L-A-P-P-E-N-S-C-H-U-H-E?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Both the “H”s look like “J”s, do they not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but they appear to have no scallop on the “Uhe”.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is difficult to tell because the “G”, or whatever it
16 is, of whatever the “zu”, I think it is, the Z loop has
17 come down on to the U, has it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not see any scallop.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Check it against the good copy and you will see that it
20 has. It matters not very much.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I am checking the good copy; but there is no scallop on
22 the “executionen” and quite clearly there is nothing on
23 the “U” on that one.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you have transcribed both those “H”s which look just
25 like “J”s to the English eye correctly as “H”s?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-128
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is no scallop on the word you transcribe as “Juden”?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You must have known the first letter was an “H” and not a
4 “J”, and it must be quite certain that you knew that the
5 third letter was not a “D”?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, this is a sterile exercise. We are looking at
7 a page that was not lying in front of me. The page that
8 was lying in front of me was the one that was in my
9 bundle.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is what I have been looking at. I have been doing
11 this by using your copy.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you had this as a cheat, did you not?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I did not have this as a cheat.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Look at your own copy. Ignore the good copy. That is
16 just so everybody shall not think I am making it up.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This is what we call a cheat.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, you think so?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I would not have given you the good copy in that case.
21 Look at the right-hand column. Look, for example,
22 “fliegemeldung”?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That, even in your fairly poor copy, loop on the “D” is as
25 clear as daylight, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-129
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now look at “schreibdamen”, the “b” and “d” both together?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So if you wanted to be sure what that word was at the
4 beginning of the indent against the “Pohl” entry —-
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — you could tell perfectly well that it must be a “B”
7 and not a “D”.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: You have the great advantage of hindsight, of course. You
9 know what the word should read and now you can read it.
10 I did not know what the word should read. I had this
11 very, very poor copy to work from.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Every time that Heinrich Himmler writes the letter “d” in
13 lower case, he puts that loop on it, does he not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think so; not even on the one at 1315 on the
15 left-hand column. I cannot see the loop on that. But
16 I can only repeat I regard this (and you will disagree
17 with me) as a very sterile exercise. You are looking at
18 the quality of photocopy that was not in front of me.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not. I am looking at this wretched thing that you
20 handed out yesterday.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, indeed, but you had the benefit of this now to tell
22 you which letters are which.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: As a matter of fact, Mr Irving, I had the benefit of
24 somebody who had bothered to learn how to read Heinreich
25 Himmler’s handwriting which you had too. Had you not?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and it is amazing that I was first person who ever
. P-130
1 made use of these.
Section 131.2 to 151.13
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, Mr Irving, great credit for that, but the fact is
3 that you had before you the evidence if you had cared to
4 look at it?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: I disapprove of the word “cared”. Your use of the word
6 “care” implied that I perversely and deliberately and
7 following an agenda misread the word when, quite clearly,
8 I did not. Quite clearly, that is a reasonable reading of
9 that word, and as soon as the improper reading of the word
10 was brought to my attention, I immediately changed it. It
11 is the kind of thing that, unfortunately, happens when you
12 work from original records and not from sitting in book in
13 a book-lined cave which is what most of the academics and
14 scholars do.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, Mr Irving, this is either deliberate or it was a
16 mistake of the most colossal magnitude for a proper
17 historian, was it not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: It was a mistake of a pathetic magnitude, less than 10
19 cents would I give for that mistake, Mr Rampton, less than
20 10 cents on a scale of 1 to $10.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What, when you are trying to exonerate Hitler by saying
22 that Himmler sent an order the next day to say the Jews
23 were to stay where they were? Come on, Mr Irving.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me. This is not that page. This is the page
25 after.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But you run the two together in the same passage in your
. P-131
1 book?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, are you implying that the strength of that
3 paragraph has been diminished by one jot, by one comma, by
4 the omission of this sentence? Of course not.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, the strength of it is increased by the inclusion of
6 that sentence is what my suggestion is.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: But it has not been diminished by the omission of the
8 sentence in any way at all.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not my suggestion.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: In fact, we have even better material to replace it with.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: My suggestion is this, that wherever you can, you distort
12 the material before you so as to put Adolf Hitler in the
13 clear so far as you possibly can. It is quite clear.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: The use of the word “distort” implies that this was a
15 wilful misreading, and that is an interpretation which
16 I reject here most emphatically and under oath.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, issue is well and truly joined on that,
18 is it not, now so…
19 MR RAMPTON: It is, is it not?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: I think, my Lord, I will bring back tomorrow the bound
21 volume of the Himmler diaries on which I worked. I will
22 lay the actual volume before your Lordship.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It will look very similar to page 13, will it
24 not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: It will, indeed, my Lord, but in view of the fact that
26 they appear to hang their whole case on this misreading.
. P-132
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, I do not think I would go that far.
2 MR RAMPTON: No, I do not think you should make that
3 assumption, Mr Irving.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway we have got the —-
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, Mr Rampton keeps on coming back to it like a dog
6 that keeps on digging up an old bone.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — question and the answer.
8 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I have had the great good fortune,
9 Mr Irving, to learn how to read Himmler’s handwriting last
10 night or whenever it was, Friday maybe, which you already
11 knew. Now I want to turn aside or I want to go into the
12 future, rather. Can you have your Hitler’s War book of
13 1991, please?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which part?
15 MR RAMPTON: Part 2, my Lord. Please turn to page 464. My
16 Lord, I had better read from the beginning of where the
17 text comes out of quotation.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
19 MR RAMPTON: “Given his table company”, that is Hitler’s table
20 company, “Himmler, Lammas and Colonel Hanzeitzer on this
21 occasion, this is surely a significant private discourse
22 by the Fuhrer”?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Would it not be more to point to read the paragraph?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not really going to ask you about that, but I will if
25 you want me to?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Please do.
. P-133
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: On January 25th, we are in 1942, are we not? It starts at
2 the bottom of 463, my Lord.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you going to be discussing the Roman Jews
4 at this point?
5 MR RAMPTON: No.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I really do not think, Mr Irving, it is going
7 to be relevant. We will obviously read anything that you
8 think is relevant but I do not think —-
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, it is just a passage that is incompatible with the
10 notion that Adolf Hitler was simultaneously giving orders
11 for the liquidation of Jews.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, well, let us have it. I was
13 trying to save time.
14 MR RAMPTON: We are going to have to come back to it.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course.
16 MR RAMPTON: Because again it is, what shall we say, to put it
17 neutrally at the moment, it is another crass error
18 by Mr Irving —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Another.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — so we say. “Hitler reflected out loud: ‘If I extract
21 the Jews today, our citizens get uneasy, what is happening
22 to him then, but did these same people care one hoot what
23 happened to the Germans”, in italics, “who had to
24 emigrate. We’ve got to get it over fast. It is no better
25 to pull out a tooth a bit at a time over three months.
26 Once it is out, the agony is over. The Jews have got to
. P-134
1 get out of Europe, otherwise we’ll never reach a European
2 consensus. He is the worst troublemaker everywhere and
3 really aren’t I, in fact, terrifically humane? During the
4 … ceremony in Rome the Jews were maltreated. Up to
5 1830 they hounded eight Jews through the city on asses
6 every year. All I say is he has got to get out. If he
7 drops … in the process, I can’t help it. I do see one
8 thing, however, their total elimination, absolute
9 ausrotung, if they won’t leave willingly.
10 “Given his table company, Himmler, Lammas and
11 Colonel Hanzeitzer on this occasion, this is surely a
12 significant private discourse by the Fuhrer. On January
13 27th, he repeated the same arguments over dinner to a
14 different audience, ‘The Jews have got to get out of
15 Europe. The best thing would be for them to go to Russia.
16 I have no sympathy with the Jews’
17 “Three days later speaking in the Berlin Sport
18 Palaste he reminded his audience of his prophetic warning
19 to the world’s Jews in 1939.
20 “Early in March 1942, Heydrich held a second
21 interministerial conference to examine the awkward problem
22 posed by half and quarter Jews. If allowed to remain,
23 they might, perhaps, be sterilised. The top level
24 opinion, i.e. Hitler, is quoted to the effect that they
25 must draw a sharp distinction between Jews and non-Jews as
26 it would not be acceptable for a mini race of semi Jews to
. P-135
1 be perpetuated in law. This classification process would
2 call for a colossal administrative effort, so the idea was
3 shelved. A subsequent memorandum in Reichjustice ministry
4 file cited this highly significant statement by Hans
5 Lammas headed ‘The Reich Chancellory’, ‘The Fuhrer has
6 repeatedly stated that he wants … (reading to the words)
7 … After the war they might be allocated a remote
8 territory like Madagascar as a national home.”
9 Much of that, Mr Irving, we are going to come
10 back to later on. This is the bit. I read that by way of
11 chronological introduction:
12 “Dr Goebbels, agitating from Berlin, clearly
13 hoped for a more speedy and ruthless solution although he
14 held his tongue when meeting his Fuhrer. On March 19th he
15 quoted in his diary only this remark by Hitler: ‘The Jews
16 must get out of Europe. If need be, we must resort to the
17 most brutal methods’. That Goebbels privately knew more
18 is plain from his diary entry on 27th. ‘Beginning with
19 Lublin’, he recorded, ‘The Jews are being pushed out
20 eastwards from the General Government. A barbaric and
21 indescribable method is being employed here and there is
22 not much left of the Jews themselves. By and large, you
23 can probably conclude that 60 per cent of them have to be
24 liquidated while only 40 per cent can be put to work.”
25 “Dr Goebbels recorded further that … (reading
26 to the words) … And the cycle started over again. ‘The
. P-136
1 Jews have nothing to laugh about now’ commented Goebbels,
2 but he evidently, never discussed these realities with
3 Hitler. Thus, this two-faced minister dictated after a
4 further visit to Hitler on April 26th: ‘I have once again
5 talked over the Jewish question with the Fuhrer. His
6 position on this problem is merciless. He wants to force
7 the Jews right out of Europe. At this moment Himmler is
8 handing the major transfer of Jews from the German cities
9 into the eastern gettoes.”
10 Now, you cited two Goebbels’ entries there in
11 part, and you make it clear that it is only in part. The
12 first question, for the entry of 27th March 1942, had you
13 read the whole of the entry?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: I did, and I read it not only in the original paper
15 diaries in the Hoover Library in California where that
16 particular page is now kept, the original, I also read it
17 on microfilm in the American national archive’s version
18 that was microfilmed in 1947 because, obviously, this was
19 a very contentious entry and a lot of right wing radicals
20 tried to make out that this was a fake entry in some way,
21 and that the CIA or the OSS or someone had dumped it, had
22 inserted it into the Goebbels’ diaries. When I went to
23 Moscow, that was one of the first plates I looked for,
24 just to complete the circle of evidence that it was a
25 genuine entry. So I read it many times.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have, so you have read the whole of that entry?
. P-137
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, indeed.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, then could I ask that Mr Irving be given —-
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Of course there is much more to than that.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Can I ask Mr Irving be given Professor Evans’
5 report, please?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You may already have it. I think it is
7 coming up from behind.
8 MR RAMPTON: What about the entry of 26th April?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: You want me to find a particular page in the report first.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think Mr Rampton wants to know whether
11 you have read it?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, of course. I read that one on microfilm because
13 I have the entire diaries that were then available on
14 microfilm since 1970 about, my Lord.
15 MR RAMPTON: I am going to ask you if you will to look at the
16 translation (and the German is set out there too) at page
17 400 of Professor Evans’ report?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Are we going to challenge my translation or just the
19 content?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, do not leap ahead, Mr Irving.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I need to know what I am looking at.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You fall at the fences if you do that. Could you just
23 read to yourself, either way round, it matters not to me,
24 first of all or second of all, the English and the German
25 to yourself. I want you to say whether you think the
26 translation is a fair one.
. P-138
1 A. [Mr Irving]: In other words, the translation?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sure you know the German very well, but I would like
3 you to see whether you agree or not that Professor Evans’
4 translation is a fair one, then we can all get on with the
5 words.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, let us assume that it is a fair translation. If I
7 —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that may save time in the end,
9 I suspect, because you are going to come to particular
10 passages.
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I do not want to ask questions about a
12 passage in English which the witness may dispute. That is
13 all. Your quotation if you still have it open on page
14 464 —-
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — stops, I think, well, as a direct quote it stops,
17 first of all, in the penultimate line of page 464 as a
18 direct quotation?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then you go on to report the next sentence in Goebbels’
21 text?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Carefully and unobtrusively you say Professor Evans that
24 does not work too conspicuously?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not think you have got any of the rest of it?
. P-139
1 A. [Mr Irving]: It is pure Goebbels’ waffle, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: If you have the read Goebbels’ diaries, you know he
4 waffles endlessly. He is dictating to a diligent
5 manservant who takes down everything he dictates. He
6 waffles. If he was writing this in handwriting, he would
7 have done it in half the length. It is the old Goebbels’
8 gramophone record that he is putting on again.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is a reference, if you can go back, please, to
10 Professor Evans’ version, again to the Reichstag prophecy,
11 is there not?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And he says “that prophecy is beginning to realize itself
14 in the most terrible manner”?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “And must not allow any sentimentalities to rule in these
17 matters. If we did not defend ourselves against them, the
18 Jews would annihilate us. It is a struggle for life and
19 death between the areas and race and the Jewish
20 bacillus”?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now, “the Jewish bascillus” was not Goebbels’ ugly concept
23 but Hitler’s, was it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: That is correct. Hitler repeatedly, particularly in 1941
25 onwards, started talking about the Jewish bacillus.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He did indeed.
. P-140
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Which I quoted in my book, of course.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He talked about eliminating the Jewish bacillus on a
3 number of occasions?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, or “combating” the bacillus rather than “eliminating”
5 it.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What? Sometimes he uses the word “eliminierum” which I
7 suppose means “eliminate”. “No other government and no
8 other regime could muster the strength for a general
9 solution of the question. Here too the Fuhrer is the
10 persistent and the word is “Vorkampfer”?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: “Pioneer”, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Pioneer?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is “protagonist” really, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Even better.
15 MR RAMPTON: “Protagonist”?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: And it would be an accurate, a deliberate, 100 per cent —
17 excellent.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And “Wortfuhrer”, is that a spokesman?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: “Champion”.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A “champion”, yes, stronger than “spokesman” of a radical
21 solution of the question — sorry, “of a radical solution
22 which is demanded by the way things are and thus appears
23 to be unavoidable”. You never in this book, or the
24 previous edition of this book, make any reference to that
25 statement by Goebbels about Hitler’s position in this
26 general solution, do you?
. P-141
1 A. [Mr Irving]: This is Goebbels reporting Hitler’s position.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is indeed.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but does it really advance our sum knowledge of what
4 Hitler’s position was?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Indeed it does, indeed it does, Mr Irving. It at least,
6 one might put it like this, might lead one to be a bit
7 cautious, might it not, about saying that Goebbels kept
8 the ghastly truth from his leader, Adolf Hitler?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I have a reason for saying that.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is that?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: The fact that he never records in any of his diaries that
12 he did and whenever he put suggestions to Hitler, then he
13 records it in his diary. This is the subtle distinction.
14 If you read all the diaries and not just one glowing ember
15 which is thrust into your hands by one of your experts,
16 when you are familiar with the entire diaries, then you
17 know how to use them.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Which is how, Mr Irving?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: The way I just described to you. I would have been
20 looking here for a passage where Goebbels then says,
21 “I then put to the Fuhrer the proposal that we do, this,
22 that and the other and Hitler agreed”, but there is
23 nothing of that. This is just Goebbels ranting on,
24 happily coming back in the after glow of having sat with
25 the Fuhrer, and once more the Fuhrer has put the
26 gramaphone record on about the prophecy.
. P-142
1 I mean, if I am an author of a book which has
2 not got to be a two volume book, writing a book that is
3 going to come down to a reasonable economic length, you
4 have to make judgment calls on what you put in and what
5 you take out. If something you are going to leave out
6 does not really advance the argument one way or the other,
7 then you leave it out.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But, you see, your omissions of the Goebbels’ references
9 to Hitler are the omissions of all those references which
10 put Hitler in a bad light?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Let me also put something in a legal sense. This entry
12 can be held against Goebbels’ evidence but not against
13 Hitler, of course.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We are not conducting a legal enquiry when we are writing
15 a history book, Mr Irving, are we?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: We are to a certain extent. The man, the people we are
17 writing about are dead. They are entitled that we should
18 marshal the same kind of criteria that we would in a court
19 of law. We are looking at serious crimes that have been
20 committed, indeed, the worst atrocities this last century.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am about a quarter of the way with
22 you. I think the fact it does not come from the horse’s
23 mouth reduces its weight, but it has weight nonetheless?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Unquestionably it has weight, my Lord, but then you come
25 up against the problems of the other weight, the weight of
26 the tome you are writing; you are already facing a
. P-143
1 problem. I have had to shorten the book already down from
2 the 1977 edition by approximately one-third in order to
3 put the first volume in as well, and you have those weight
4 problems you have also have tempo problems. You do not
5 want to bog the whole text down by repeating yet again
6 with has been said elsewhere. The fact that Adolf Hitler
7 had planned a radical solution for the Jewish problem,
8 whatever he meant by that, has been spelt out innumerable
9 times elsewhere in the book.
10 What is far more interesting in this particular
11 quotation, the real meat of this quotation is Dr Goebbels
12 having learned somehow, presumably from an SS report, that
13 what happened to the Jews in Lublin when they arrived, as
14 I said, beggars all description, as a caption I have used,
15 I believe, in the Goebbels’ biography, where I quoted it
16 at far greater length, my Lord. You will find I quoted it
17 at far greater length in the Goebbels’ biography because
18 in the Goebbels’ biography it is important. The material
19 goes to what Goebbels’ own knowledge was.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Will you forgive me, Mr Rampton, just to ask a couple of
21 questions. If you look at that paragraph at the top of
22 page 465, tell me if I am wrong, but it appears to me the
23 point you are really conveying to readers there is that
24 Goebbels did not discuss the disposal of the Jews or the
25 realities of the disposal of the Jews —-
26 A. [Mr Irving]: With Hitler?
. P-144
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — with Hitler and, secondly, that Hitler was still
2 talking about getting the Jews right out of Europe.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: This is a very important point that I make, and he
4 continues to say this —-
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But if you look — just let me complete the point, then
6 add whatever you like — at what Goebbels’ diary actually
7 records, it includes the phrase “The Fuhrer is the
8 persistent pioneer and spokesman of a radical solution
9 which is demanded by the way things are and thus appears
10 to be unavoidable”?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but what is —-
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And Goebbels has referred earlier to only 40 per cent of
13 the Jews being available for work, the rest being
14 liquidated?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: In my submission, my Lord, the way I used this material
16 was absolutely correct. I quoted the meat of the
17 quotation from the diary, I quoted what we know from the
18 diary about how far his conversation went with Hitler, but
19 I certainly did not try to get cleaver in reading between
20 the lines and suggesting that either he got this
21 information from Hitler, which is most likely, he got it
22 almost certainly in the form of a report, a so called
23 esdebricht, the same as you have got the report from the
24 Bunzig conference and so on; and that he then went to see
25 Hitler and he sat basking in Hitler’s glow for a while.
26 They exchanged anti-Semitic remarks, but Goebbels did not
. P-145
1 venture to put this material to him, and he came back to
2 Berlin, dictated his diary reflecting, “Well, Hitler is
3 after all the champion and protagonist of radical
4 solutions, he is the one”. But at the same time Hitler
5 is, apparently, talking about pushing them out and the
6 Madagascar solution, about pushing them out to Russia and
7 that kind of thing.
8 This is the discrepancy in the records that you
9 are confronted with, as I say in the table talk passage
10 that I insisted should be read out. This is a first
11 person record taken by a qualified stenographer, Heinrich
12 Heime, and the people who are present are the people who
13 are actually conducting the massacre, Heinrich Himmler,
14 and yet here is Hitler apparently saying something which
15 is totally at variance with what is at that very moment
16 happening. This is why it is so significant, my Lord,
17 that how could, unless there is a lot of hypocrisy
18 going on here, but for what purpose? These were Top
19 Secret memoranda, taken down by Heinrich Heim, signed by
20 Martin Bormann and then put in the files, the so-called
21 table talk.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: You see, it is very easy to look at just one diary entry
24 like the Goebbels’ diary and mull backwards and forwards
25 across that without realising that there is a lot of
26 collateral evidence that reinforces the position one takes
. P-146
1 and how one edits it, which is not necessarily perverse
2 and certainly is not manipulation.
3 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it is difficult for me, without having
4 had a response from you to our various reports — it is
5 not a criticism — to know when I am looking at a
6 particular Goebbels’ diary entry whether you have read
7 them or not as your reading seems per force to have been
8 somewhat selective. That is not a criticism either.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, I have read the entire Goebbels’ diaries as
10 they were available on microfilm from left to right twice.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: When?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Once when they arrived in 1970, in other words, when
13 I obtained them from the American archives, and once again
14 when I wrote the Goebbels’ biography in the late 1980s or
15 early 1990s.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, I am not understanding, but I thought we had,
17 unless I have gone completely mad, a discussion this
18 morning about the entry for 13th December 1941?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: That was not available. I am talking about the Goebbels’
20 diaries when they were available. The Goebbels’ diaries
21 only became available, well, they became available in
22 several chunks over the last 50 years.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So this is one you had read?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: March 27th 1942?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-147
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to have to ask you that question every time,
2 you see, when we look at these entries. It is one you
3 have read and you chose not to include the reference to
4 Hitler being the leader and spokesman of the radical
5 solution; instead, you included, if it was a question of
6 space, the last sentence, in your words, “The Jews have
7 nothing to laugh about now”, did you not? You skipped
8 right down —-
9 A. [Mr Irving]: “The Jewry had nothing to laugh about” in Evans’ words,
10 yes. Very similar.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. His translation is slightly better than yours —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Except it is less literate, less literary. Occasionally,
13 when you make a translation for a book that will be
14 published, you have to go for the literary rather than the
15 wooden. This is a slightly more wooden translation.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is not an important point, but it is dangerous, is it
17 not?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I try to avoid wooden translations for documents if I am
19 writing a book for publication. I try to put a literal
20 translation. With Goebbels, it becomes very difficult
21 because his diaries are written in a vernacular — a lot
22 of slang put in them.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You do record fairly enough the diary entry of 20th March
24 and the remark on 19th by Hitler — I have it in here, it
25 is at the bottom of page 464 — “The Jews must get out of
26 Europe. If need be, we must resort to the most brutal
. P-148
1 methods”, do you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I cannot find it in the book.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am so sorry. It is in the last paragraph on page 464.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: On March 19th he quoted in his diary, yes, that is right.
5 OK.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, only this remark.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. “We must resort to the most brutal methods”.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In your first edition, you got the chronology wrong, did
9 you not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: It is possible, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, you did. You said that Dr Goebbels’ meeting with
12 Hitler on 20th came after that entry of the 27th which we
13 have been looking at.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: It is possible.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is not a criticism, it is a fact, so nobody should
16 confuse themselves by looking at the 1977 edition. Then
17 you go on: “That Goebbels privately knew more is plain”
18 —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — etc. What was the evidentiary foundation for the
21 assertion that Goebbels plainly knew more?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Privately knew more.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: That he privately knew more.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, than Hitler did.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: He quoted a remark by Hitler that the Jews must get out.
. P-149
1 He privately knew more because the SD had sent to him,
2 Goebbels, the report on whatever is going on that beggars
3 all description, the killings at 40 per cent, 60 per cent.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, I am sorry about this. I am not trying to
5 rewrite history; I do not have to. I am trying to put
6 myself in the position of an historian who is writing an
7 account of these dark days, and sees that Hitler on 19th
8 when evidently he and Goebbels had had a meeting saying
9 that the Jews must get out of — I will get it right —
10 Europe. “If need be, we”, that is the German government,
11 “must resort to the most brutal methods —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: To get them out.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is the most brutal way of getting somebody out,
14 oustvotting somebody?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: No, it is not. It is being knocked up at 2.00 or 3.00 in
16 the morning by Gestapo hammering on your door and saying,
17 “You have got 15 minutes to pack and come down to a
18 central collecting point and then you are going to be put
19 on a train with the aforementioned three tonnes of bread”.
20 That is a brutal means of getting people out in any
21 language.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a brutal means, but if we are going to be literal
23 minded and go into the school room, we know that “most” is
24 a superlative, do we not?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is the most brutal means of removing people?
. P-150
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Most brutal means of getting people out? Using brute
2 force, getting the Gestapo, dogs.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to see if I can find what word is attributed to
4 Hitler.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know where that diary entry is.
6 MR RAMPTON: I do not either; that is the trouble.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure it is going to matter very much
8 because Mr Irving is making the point that in the end we
9 are talking of getting them out of Europe and not anything
10 else, so it does not really matter what word is used.
11 That is what you are saying, Mr Irving, is it not?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed, my Lord, yes, all that it is safe to say on the
13 evidence.
Section 151.14-169.19
14 MR RAMPTON: What he actually said I think was this or was
15 recorded as having said. One must be careful. This is
16 the Goebbels’ entry: “Wir sprechen zum Schlub noch uber
17 die Judenfrage” which means — if you want to see it, it
18 is on page 405 of —-
19 A. [Mr Irving]: “Finally we speak on the Jewish question”.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. “Hier bleibt der Fuhrer nach wie vor
21 unerbittlich” — relentless, unmerciless, is it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: “Vor unerbittlich”, yes, merciless.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Merciless, yes. “Die Juden mussen aus Europa heraus”?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: “The Jews have to get out of Europe”.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Wenn notig”?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: “If necessary”.
. P-151
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Unter Anwendung der brutalsten Mittel”?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: “With the employment of the most brutal methods” or
3 “means”.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is there in anything that you have seen in the
5 evidence of this time to suggest that Hitler and Goebbels
6 did not discuss the very questions raised by Goebbels’
7 later diary note at that meeting of 19th March?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The fact that Hitler in the table talk which is recorded
9 first person and I have seen the actual original paper,
10 with Martin Bormann signing every single page in the
11 bottom right hand corner as being an accurate record of
12 what had been said, stated in the presence of people like
13 Heydrich and Himmler at their table talk remarks which
14 were only consistent with the knowledge that they were
15 being physically and geographically expelled from Europe.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He was muttering on about Madagascar in late July 1942?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: He was also muttering on here, as you said, about Russia
18 and the marshy swaps.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will come to your marshy swaps entry fairly soon,
20 Mr Irving, but the references to Madagascar and Russia are
21 perhaps in late 1942 are a complete nonsense; they cannot
22 be taken seriously?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: With all that mass of paper that we have, not only taken
24 by Heydrich, but also by Rosenberg’s Adjutant, who also
25 wrote table talks, which I discover in the archives, with
26 all this mass of paper of Hitler talking in private at
. P-152
1 this time I would just ask for one piece of sheet where he
2 is explicitly saying “sure we are liquidating them”.
3 There is nothing. It is this negative mass of evidence,
4 this absence of any evidence I find impressive. Even when
5 he is in private talking to people who are actually doing
6 the killing there is no such mention, on Hitler’s part.
7 I found that very disturbing.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You now know, of course, that is not right,
9 do you not, because of the document we were looking at
10 this morning?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Which document are you referring to, my Lord?
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Killing the Jews as if they —
13 A. [Mr Irving]: December 1942 — my Lord, tomorrow I will bring to you one
14 of these irritating individual documents, 10th December
15 1942, the discussion between Himmler and Hitler on a
16 proposal that they should sell their Jews to foreign
17 customers, and Hitler saying: “Yes, this is quite all
18 right, sell what you want. We want hard currency for
19 them”; which is inconsistent with the desire to liquidate
20 all the Jews at that very same time. It is a document not
21 without evidentiary value in this particular argument.
22 MR RAMPTON: I think we are going to have to look at these
23 table talks, I have quite a lot of them here, in some
24 detail, probably tomorrow, Mr Irving. Your basis for
25 saying that Goebbels privately knew more is simply that
26 there is no document that you know of where Hitler says,
. P-153
1 I too know what Labotznich is doing in the East or
2 whatever or I order him to do it?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: — there is no documentary evidence he derived any
4 information from such reports as has obviously been shown
5 to Goebbels, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I still do not understand how that leads to the positive
7 assertion that Goebbels obviously knew more.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Because there is a negative proof here, we have an absence
9 of documents where there should have been documents to the
10 contrary, with a huge volume of record of Adolf Hitler’s
11 remarks in later years, in 1942, September 1942 onwards,
12 his war conferences were taken down verbatim, just like
13 here. Every word he said and spoken to the shorthand
14 reporters. We have the documents. We have the diaries.
15 We have the table talks. We have Kopen’s records, and yet
16 nowhere is there any reference indicating that Hitler was
17 privy to this kind of information. I say that with
18 absolutely certainty you will not be able to prove me
19 wrong.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I already have, Mr Irving, we have talked at some
21 considerable length already about report number 51, have
22 we not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: That is why I refer to this as being an orphan, because it
24 is so totally impossible to fit it into the general
25 framework of all the other documentation which is of equal
26 evidentiary weight.
. P-154
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Therefore you jettison it?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Not at all. It frequently happens, probably in major
3 court cases of a criminal kind too, that you have one item
4 for which you cannot find a ready explanation, the whole
5 of the rest of picture is — there is this one which item
6 which bothers you for the rest of your life. That item
7 will bother me for rest of my life. But I am quite
8 satisfied that all the other evidence I have; the table
9 talks, the transcripts, the telegrams, the intercepts;
10 which all fit into one general picture flowing one way,
11 I am quite prepared to have one document flowing the other
12 way, but that does not make me change my opinion.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, you have two more now that you did not know
14 about before.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Good.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have the Muller letter of 1st August 1941?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: But that is only of very low evidentiary value purely
18 saying Hitler wants to be told what is going on with
19 Einsatzgruppen.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You cannot put things in isolation, as you keep telling
21 me. You have to put that together with the report No. 51,
22 and you have to put it together with the Himmler note,
23 which is plainly a note of something Hitler said. You have
24 to ask yourself the question; overall in the context of
25 the whole of the evidence?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, if you were proposing —
. P-155
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Wait a minute, does this not lead to the conclusion Hitler
2 probably did know?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: — if you propose to link those two documents that you
4 keep on intending to do, the August 1941 document and the
5 December 1942 document, I would refer you to the German
6 Civil Service practice, that the second document in its
7 reference lines on the top left would automatically
8 say, “Referring to Fuhrer order” such and such a date
9 August 1941 then that would immediately state: “This is
10 in response to that triggering document” even if it was 18
11 months earlier. You will frequently find this in the
12 records, that it will specifically make reference to the
13 document to which the report is issued in response.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Could we try it a different way, Mr Irving; since it clear
15 Hitler knew about the mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen
16 in the East, we can deduce that from report No. 51 —
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, can we phrase that slightly differently? Since
18 Hitler had no reason not to know it may sound quibbling to
19 you —
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I do not mind. You see I am not driven to make any
21 proposals about history, as I said, only about
22 historiography. You have written that the unequivocal,
23 categorical statements about Hitler’s lack of knowledge,
24 not I.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: — but you are not suggesting I did not print that No. 51
26 in the appropriate place in the Hitler biography.
. P-156
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is there somewhere, but you attach no importance to it?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I attach — merely putting the document into the book is
3 not enough?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Most of these documents, or many of them you just put them
5 in the footnotes very often, do you not?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I strongly suspect that is the way it was put to Adolf
7 Hitler in December 1942, as a footnote.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must say that I hesitate to accept, for
9 this reason; it is quite a simple document, and it is
10 referring to the killing by shooting of 300,000 Jews.
11 Well, you have to be quite a man to just pass over that,
12 do you not?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, as is quite evident from a study of the history
14 of that period at this moment in time, December 29th 1942,
15 Hitler’s primary concern was focused on saving the Sixth
16 Army in Stalingrad.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That I accept, but that does not mean, does it, he is not
18 going to notice a document telling him that 300,000, on
19 the face of it, innocent civilians were being shot by his
20 army?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: It could go either way. All I am entitled to do is to put
22 the document in the book in its proper place, not in the
23 way we are looking at it in this court surrounded only by
24 documents about the Holocaust, putting it in the Hitler
25 biography where you have it surrounded by everything else
26 that is happening at that time. That may be described as
. P-157
1 putting in as footnote, but that is precisely the way it
2 probably came to him and Himmler probably slipped it
3 before. But I have not even suggested that. I have just
4 put it in the proper place.
5 MR RAMPTON: Let us, Mr Irving, think about this orphan
6 document for a moment, if we may. Another way of looking
7 at this orphan document is this, is it not, if it is clear
8 enough, as I would suggest to you it is, that this
9 information was conveyed to Hitler and if the result of it
10 was not that a whole lot of people were sacked or put in
11 prison because they had done something illegal, and
12 killing, shooting 363,000 Jews, people, never mind unless
13 they are soldiers, is a fairly remarkable achievement, is
14 it not, and if it had been against Hitler’s policy, surely
15 we would know, would we not, because of the consequences
16 for those that had done it and authorized it?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This was typical Hitler, when people acted in this way he
18 did not move to take recriminations against them, he just
19 allowed things to slide. He was typical (unintelligible)
20 as they say in Latin, he was a procrastinator.
21 I also make this point, which is not
22 unimportant, Mr Rampton, you have seen the agenda,
23 Himmler’s agenda, on which he would go and see Hitler and
24 put reports to him, like this one, or the one a few days
25 previously about the selling off the Jews to the highest
26 bidder, this kind of thing, and you have — can I finish.
. P-158
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Carry on.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: You would then have in the Himmler files a paper trail
3 saying what Hitler’s response had been. We have no such
4 paper trail. We have no response. We have no letter by
5 Himmler writing two or three days later saying “the Fuhrer
6 has studied report 51″, there is nothing like that and
7 that is what I mean when I call it an “orphan”. I am not
8 trying to insult the document’s integrity. I am
9 suggesting that we lack the paper trail which shows it was
10 brought into Hitler’s cognisance.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You accepted not very long ago, last week, he probably had
12 seen it?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: On the balance of probabilities, because of the use —
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am only interested —
15 A. [Mr Irving]: On the top, just the same as these documents are lying in
16 front of me here, that is not to say I know what is
17 written 20 or 30 pages down the heap.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — oh.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Because there is no subsequent paper trail —
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have evidence that the Fuhrer had a stack like this in
21 in his intray, he got to about page 30 and then fell
22 asleep and the next morning he did not bother to read the
23 particular report?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: — you may want to put it as sarcastically as that —
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of course I do.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: — I knew his Adjutants, who are now all dead very well,
. P-159
1 and they would describe to me in very great detail the
2 procedure by which they try to get him to attend to
3 documents and it was precisely that, the same as Winston
4 Churchill, they would have their boxes, Churchill used to
5 read his box in bed in the mornings, Hitler’s box was put
6 outside his bedroom with all the documents in it which he
7 was supposed to read. That is what they mean by
8 “foregelegt”. It means of course that he has other
9 things on his plate that day.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Even for an idiot like me it is an easy word, it means
11 “placed before”?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: No, “lagen” is to lay —
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Laid before, more gently than placed before.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: — something which should be more impressive for me would
15 have been the phrase (German spoken) “the Fuhrer has taken
16 cognisance of”; you will always find that on the
17 documents.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: At all events, I am right it does not have any
19 consequences for the murderers of these 363,000 Jews?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, this is not a hanging document; I think if
21 this document were to be shown to an English jury in a
22 murder case they would say, well, it is interesting and
23 probably the guy did it, but I will not send him to the
24 gallows just on the basis of this one document.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Probably, that is right.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, well, I have allowed that word.
. P-160
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you very much, probably, that is all I need, thank
2 you, Mr Irving, Hitler, as we observed before is not on
3 trial here.
4 Will you have a look with me, please, at an
5 earlier event, which is a table talk of Hitler’s on the
6 25th, it was your remark —
7 A. [Mr Irving]: 25th October 1941?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — that put me in mind. Here I am afraid we are going to
9 get involved in an argument about German grammar, but
10 never mind, I think I can cope. On page 323 of Professor
11 Evans’ report, this comes from page 377 of Goebbels, under
12 letter A. I will read what Professor Evans says:
13 “In his book “Goebbels” Irving comments on the
14 deportation of Jews from Berlin, starting in October
15 1941: ‘Hitler was neither consulted nor informed’.
16 As a matter of fact you know that to be untrue,
17 do you not, Hitler was —
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I was reading Hitler —
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — I am so sorry, I quoted from the book. “Hitler was
20 neither consulted nor informed”.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: — deported the Jews from Berlin — I would need to read
22 the whole paragraph I am afraid in my book before I allow
23 a judgment on that one sentence.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: OK. I will come back to that. That is a minor point.
25 But if you like to we my be just to deal with this
26 quickly. Perhaps we better have the Goebbels book to look
. P-161
1 at. It is page 377. Have you got your own copy there?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: 300 and?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 377, chapter 43 entitled “Exodus”. I will put it in
4 context by reading the top of the first complete
5 paragraph.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: By Holocaust denier, David Irving, right?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, Mr Irving. “His mass expulsion of the Jews from
8 Berlin was beginning. On October 14th 1941 SS General…
9 signed the formal order as National Chief of Police and
10 the deportations began the next day. 500 or 1,000 at a
11 time, family by family, the Berlin Jews were rounded… in
12 synagogue in … loaded aboard passenger trains…
13 freighting to the East.”
14 Then you list some of the trains. “All four
15 were bound for the ghetto at Lodz between October 18th and
16 November 2nd confirmed Speyer’s diaries, some 400,500
17 Jews were’evacuated'” releasing to him… Gauleiter
18 Goebbels one thousand … (reading to the words) …
19 supposedly for bombed out Berliners … went to their
20 closest… Hitler was neither consulted nor informed”;
21 about what, Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: About —
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Was he neither consulted nor informed?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: About this particular deportation phase, this wave of
25 deportations from Berlin.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — can you turn on to page 330 of Professor Evans’
. P-162
1 report.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: 330?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 329. It is a few pages on from where we were, but keep
4 your finger where I was, paragraph 2:
5 “As far as the expulsions are concerned,
6 Goebbels noted in his diary on 19th August 1941 that
7 Hitler had approved them in principle: ‘Apart from…
8 Fuhrer gave me approval to … (reading to the words) …
9 as soon as first possibility of transport offered
10 itself’.” Is that a correct translation of what is in it
11 Goebbels’ diary?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is, it is also in my Goebbels biography.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I did not ask you that, is it a correct translation?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You have answered my second question, and it is an entry
16 of which you were aware?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then says Professor Evans this: “On 18th September 1941
19 Himmler in fact had told his subordinate in the
20 Warthegau”; that would be Griser (?) I suppose, would it?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: The —
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: — well, no, Griser was not Himmler’s subordinate. Griser
24 (?) would have come directly under Hitler.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It does not matter. “Himmler in fact had told his
26 subordinate… Fuhrer wishes the old Reich and the
. P-163
1 Protectorate to be … (reading to the words) … as
2 quickly as possible. I am thus aiming to transport the
3 Jews of the Old Reich and Protectorate if possible before
4 the end of this year into the eastern
5 territories … (reading to the words) … two years
6 ago… as a first step, in order to move them further
7 still to the east next spring.” This is September 1941?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “One month later” says Professor Evans “on September 24th
10 1941 Goebbels noted in his diary that Hitler had made a
11 final decision on the matter.
12 I can bring the Fuhrer… of internal political
13 problems to decide upon: the Fuhrer is of the opinion
14 that the Jews must be taken out of the whole of Germany
15 bit by bit. The first… free of Jews are Berlin, Vienna
16 and Prague… I have the hope that we shall succeed even
17 in the course of this year in transporting a significant
18 portion of Berlin’s Jews off to the East.”
19 Now I suppose you were aware of that entry too,
20 were you not, Mr Irving?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: You suppose wrongly, that was a diary entry which I have
22 not got.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a diary entry you never had?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I have not got it, no, I have never seen it.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then I think one has to look at page 374 of Goebbels. It
26 may not be right.
. P-164
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I thought my memory was correct, September 23rd I have,
2 but not the 24th.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, I think that is right.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: It is difficult for me to remember over the last ten years
5 to remember which entries I have seen and which I have
6 not.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I would accept it in general that is probably right, you
8 have not seen this entry? Had you seen the Himmler note or
9 whatever it is?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: No.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you seen the Himmler document?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: The Griser, yes, of course.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, right. It is very unlikely, is it not, that in the
14 light of these two entries of 19th August by Goebbels and
15 18th September by Himmler that Hitler did not know about
16 the deportation?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, you are right, I should have phrased it differently,
18 I should have said there is no evidence that Hitler was
19 consulted or informed.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Little point in a way, Mr Irving, but again you see these
21 points are cumulative. Perhaps significant, because once
22 again you are giving Hitler a clear acquittal when the
23 evidence is suggestive that he probably did know about it?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: On the contrary, an acquittal of what? I have made it
25 perfectly plain beyond peradventure that Hitler gave the
26 orders for the expulsion of the Jews. And the fact he was
. P-165
1 not informed on a particular phase of it is not
2 exoneration.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So, it is only four trains or whatever it is you are
4 talking about?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: The fact it is now beginning in Berlin, and that it is
6 happening at this moment.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is not a big point in your narrative?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: The fact that I decided to write in the short form rather
9 than the long form part is part of the general tendency to
10 books as short as possible.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a complete non-point, is it not? Why on
12 earth should it matter whether Hitler was informed about
13 these four particular trains?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: It is really a non-point.
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Thank you very much. No, I am sorry,
16 Mr Irving, unusually I have made a concession that
17 I should not have done. You take your Goebbels book
18 again.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is why I need a team of 40 people, because I do not
21 have your memory.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Be glad you do not have my memory.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have not done years of research on this subject, only a
24 few months. 274 of Goebbels.
25 A. [Mr Irving]: 274?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 374, I beg your pardon. After the bit you notice
. P-166
1 September 23rd?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is an asterisk, then there comes this: “Hitler had
4 confirmed to him that little by little all Jews were to be
5 expelled from Berlin Vienna and Prague, note 91″?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Please turn to page 642, note 91, diary September 24th,
8 1941?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Very good. Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Once your memory failed you did it not, Mr Irving?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you had seen this entry?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Shot out of water on that one, I am afraid.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Why if it is not in historical terms a significant
15 event, because you concede that Hitler had ordered the
16 deportations generally from the Outreich and the
17 Protectorate, and indeed from Berlin?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why bother to mention whether or not Hitler was consulted
20 or informed?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: When you write paragraphs you should have a topic
22 paragraph, a topic sentence beginning — it is a
23 literary — not a ploy, a device, a literary device, at
24 the beginning of a chapter you should have a topic
25 paragraph at the beginning of a chapter and a topic
26 sentence at the beginning of a paragraph. It is a way of
. P-167
1 helping the reader, a little clue to reader what is
2 following. So what matters in this paragraph is not that
3 opening floscal (?) as the Germans would say, not that
4 little opening throw away line, but what then follows,
5 which is the quotation from the table talk. I do not
6 blame you for concentrating on a throw away line, but I am
7 going to concentrate on the table talk which now follows.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This was by way of introduction to the table talk,
9 Mr Irving. It is a little point, but I am going to
10 suggest at the end of this case that every time Hitler
11 floats into the picture in your books, it is in order for
12 him to be, as it were, conferred innocence.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Every time? Every time?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: More or less.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Ah.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: There is no point in putting in that sentence except to
17 say “poor old Adolf did not know about this beastly
18 business”, yet again.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, have you ever written books that have to
20 sell?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, as a matter of fact, I have.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not sure how well they sell.
23 MR RAMPTON: Well, they are meant to be sold.
24 A. [Mr Irving]: I had an exceedingly good American editor who taught me
25 will over again how to write books, that is one of the
26 things he taught me, always have a topic sentence at the
. P-168
1 beginning of a paragraph, that is what I would call a
2 topic sentence.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But where does the reader of “Goebbels” learn
4 this was all Hitler policy anyway to transport the Jews
5 out of the Reich?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is a question to you; where does the reader of
8 “Goebbels” learn that this was all Hitler policy anyway
9 to transport the Jews out of the German Reich?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Probably where I quote the Griser telegram —
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I am sure, but where do you —
12 A. [Mr Irving]: — I would have to look in the index.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — do not take time, you do somewhere refer to that
14 document?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I repeatedly say that on Hitler rests the initiative
16 for ordering the expulsion, but what happens when they
17 arrive there is the moot point.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I just does not have the reference in mind.
19 A. [Mr Irving]: I will find it.
Section 169.20 to 206.23
20 MR RAMPTON: It is not an important point, and I apologise if
21 I spent a bit too long on it, but there it is. It is the
22 next part I am truly interested in. “Ten days after the
23 forced exodus began [he, that is Hitler]
24 referred … (reading to the words) … to the way the
25 Jews had started this war. ‘Let nobody tell me Hitler
26 added that despite that we cannot park them in the
. P-169
1 marshier parts of Russia” By the way he added it is not a
2 bad thing that public rumour attributes to us a plan to
3 exterminate the Jews. He pointed out however that he had
4 no intention of starting anything at present. ‘There is
5 no point in adding to one’s difficulties at a time like
6 this.”
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I am ready for you.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You may be ready for me in some sense or another,
9 Mr Irving; first can I ask you this; this is intended to
10 suggest to the reader, is it not, (a) that there is no
11 actual extermination planned at this point, it is only a
12 matter of public rumour; and (b) that to do anything like
13 that at this time would be to add to one’s difficulties,
14 or do you say “yes” simply adding to one’s difficulties at
15 a time like this?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Postpone it to the war is over, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Pardon?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: To postpone it until the war is over to quote
19 Schlegelberger.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you read this passage in Professor Evans’ report?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: No — yes, I have, but that is not the translation I used.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans has his own clever translation of that
24 passage.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of course, he has, because he has done it correctly.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: You are implying I used a deliberately perverse and
. P-170
1 distorted translation?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Oh, yes, indeed so. For one thing there is no reference
3 in what Hitler says to the marshier parts of Russia, is
4 there, actually says?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: What did he say?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He said: (German spoken).
7 A. [Mr Irving]: So you are accusing me of having mistranslated?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, added words.
9 MR RAMPTON: You have added in some words, a small point.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I will have a statement to make about this in a
11 moment.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Pardon?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Shall I make the statement now? You will be familiar with
14 the facts that Weidenfeld & Nicholson published the
15 edition of Hitler’s table talk back in about 1949, with an
16 introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper, a very good volume, it
17 is almost unobtainable now. I read that when I was about
18 14 from cover to cover, and that is the translation I have
19 used.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I remember that.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: The official translation. I have not changed one dot or
22 comma of the official translation as published by Hugh
23 Trevor-Roper.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You mean the Weidenfeld translation?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: This book is published in 1996, “Goebbels”?
. P-171
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is what I read from, page 377.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The German edition, which I am sure you have used at other
5 times and for other purposes of the monologue, has been
6 available since 1980.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: The original German text of that was available to me since
8 much earlier than that, because I had the original Martin
9 Bormann typescript text.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you had it, as you wrote these words you had the
11 original German available?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: But I used official translation by —
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I hear what you say, the question is not whether you did,
14 but why. You had the original German available to you at
15 the time?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: — let me be more specific. When I wrote the Hitler’s War
17 in the 1970s, I had the English text in front of me, when
18 I reissued it in Germany I contacted the Swiss owner of
19 the original Martin Bormann files, who had the original
20 German texts and I obtained from him on that occasion
21 German texts of these passages. But I did not translate
22 it, Mr Rampton. The translation was done by either
23 Trevor-Roper or by Weidenfeld and I have used the exact
24 words.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Why?
. P-172
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I thought you were somebody who did not read other
2 people books, if you have original document why did you
3 not refer to that?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: That was the publication of the original document, this
5 was a published edition of Hitler’s Table Talk and at that
6 time that was the only edition that was available.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What in —
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — sure, but this Goebbels book is published in 1996.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes and I have used exactly the same translation.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I find it an adequate translation.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But it is a terrible translation, Mr Irving.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: By whom?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: By whoever did it. For one thing it has got its tenses
16 all wrong. It has added words. Look at the top of page
17 324 of the Professor Evans’ report.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: 300 and?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 24. The German is set out in footnote 18, I think. This
20 time I do ask that you just read the two one after the
21 after in whichever order you like.
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Which is the part you are saying is the bad translation?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, for example, he pointed out, however, well, there
24 are several appalling translations. There is no reference
25 in the German to a plan to exterminate the Jews. “The
26 fear precedes us that we are exterminating”.
. P-173
1 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Correct?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is a much closer and uglier thing in the original
5 German than in this rather namby-pamby translation which
6 includes references to public rumours and plans?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think so. “Schreiken” is a spook. It is a
8 spook.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A spook. It is a word of fright and fear, is it not?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which is it, because they are quite different
12 in this context?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, the imputation is that I have deliberately
14 mistranslated or distorted.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, adopted what you should have appreciated was a
16 mistranslation, I think is the way it is put.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: At the time I wrote Hitler’s War I only had the original
18 English text.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, but by the 1991 edition you had the German
20 translation?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: And I still accept that my translation is not a serious
22 deviation from that.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You would translate “schreiken” as a spectre or a spook
24 rather than as a fear?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, schreiken is the idea of a childish kind of spook,
26 the idea of a goblin.
. P-174
1 MR RAMPTON: Do you think this is a reliable dictionary?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: It helped us a lot with the word “vernichtung”, did it
3 not?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: OK. “Schreik”, fright, shock, terror, alarm, panic,
5 consternation, dismay, fear, horror?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: What were the first two?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Fright, shock, which is the word I used.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, fright or shock, you see, once again your expert has
9 taken the tertiary or fourth meaning of the word because
10 he prefers to manipulate it in that way.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not mind which of those words you want me to use, but
12 I am certainly not going to use “spook”, still less am
13 I going to use “public rumour”. Not even you would use
14 “public rumour” deliberately, would you, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: I think that Hugh Trevor-Roper is perfectly adequate when
16 he translates like documents like this or the translator
17 employed by George Weidenfeld who was a Jew certainly,
18 could certainly not be accused of having wanted to
19 exonerate Adolf Hitler.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In your pleadings, Mr Irving, my Lord, this is, I do not
21 know but it will probably be in the reply somewhere, we
22 will find it — my Lord, this is page 27 of the reply, no
23 paragraph number at that stage. It is (i) and following
24 on from page 26. You tell us this, Mr Irving, and you are
25 talking about this particular issue and you mention the
26 Trevor-Roper translation, you say this:
. P-75
1 “When the plaintiff”, that is you, “thereafter
2 prepared the German edition and subsequently revised the
3 book, he was the only historian in world to whom the
4 original German texts were made available by their
5 physical owner, namely in October 1977.”
6 A. [Mr Irving]: That is probably from the date stamp on the documents that
7 I received, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: These are your words. I cannot tell you whether that is
11 right or not.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, if I have written that, then it is right.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So you have had the original in your possession since
14 1977?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You could not have used it for the first edition of
17 Hitler’s War?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But thereafter, knowing you, am I wrong to assume that you
20 would ordinarily go back to the original when you come
21 back to this table talk in later books?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: If this had been a delinquent translation I would
23 certainly have done so, but the translation was not so
24 delinquent that I would have wanted to interfere with
25 this. I should explain that one of the reasons the
26 Professor Boischott attacked me very bitterly, as you are
. P-176
1 familiar, in a 50-page attack on the book in 1977 was
2 because he could not recognize my table talk translations,
3 and for this reason I decided it was important not to
4 interfere with the original English if it was in the
5 Trevor-Roper and Weidenfeld edition because I did not want
6 to be subjected to more unfair attacks like that.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But really public rumour is not a correct or
8 even arguably correct translation of “schreiken”. It is
9 fairly elementary that, is it not? It is a common word.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not so widely deviant that I would have wanted to
11 tamper with the original quotation and risk exposure to
12 criticism from other historians who were familiar with
13 Weidenfeld text which was the only one then available. In
14 the German edition of course we used the original German.
15 MR RAMPTON: In fact you did concede, or point out perhaps
16 I should say, in a speech to the International Revisionist
17 Conference in 1983 that, “the German original ‘is
18 completely different from the published English
19 translation'”?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Of this particular one?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Do you remember saying that?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I notice that the English translator had actually allowed
23 himself to put in an entire sentence that was not in the
24 original.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Terror is a salutary thing” he put in?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right.
. P-177
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And it is not there at all?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: That is not there at all.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Nor is the word “plan” in the German, is it?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Well, I think that this is a literary translation again.
5 You are faced with the problems of doing a literary rather
6 than a wooden translation.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Mr Irving, really. It is a question of absolutely crucial
8 substance. “There is a public rumour that we are planning
9 to exterminate the Jews”. That is nasty enough, but
10 consider this sentence: “The public are terrified because
11 we are exterminating the Jews”?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Does he say that? I do not think he says that. I think
13 that the point I am about to make when you have finished
14 chasing this particular hare is to point out that what
15 matters in this quotation is not whether the
16 word “schreiken” is translated as “public rumour” or
17 “fright” or “shock”, but the fact that once again this
18 document shows quite clearly that Hitler had something
19 completely different in mind, and he is telling it to the
20 people who are actually doing it. How do we explain this
21 kind of discrepancy? That is what matters in this
22 document, not whether one word had been mistranslated by
23 Hugh Trevor-Roper or not.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is good if the terror, fright, shock, fear, panic goes
25 before “that we are exterminating Jewry”?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: This is the least important part of the document. Are you
. P-178
1 saying that if that sentence was taken out then that
2 paragraph collapses? On the contrary what matters —-
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not saying that.
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me, let me finish. What matters in this paragraph
5 is Hitler saying: “Let nobody tell us we cannot push them
6 out into the marshy parts of Russia”, that is the first
7 part. The second part which matters is him saying:
8 “Anyway, let’s leave the whole thing until the whole war
9 is over, we have enough problems”.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am coming to that.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what matters.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because that is not what it says either. You see, it does
13 matter. It is not that it would have mattered if that
14 part had been left out. It is that you wilfully used in
15 1991, if it is in Hitler’s War, in that edition, I do not
16 know, but in 1996 in Goebbels where it certainly is, you
17 wilfully used a translation you knew to be rubbish,
18 because it is softer in its effect than the original
19 German?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: No, on the contrary. When I was writing the Goebbels book
21 I would have taken Hitler’s War in English as my source.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, that is only to repeat your earlier error.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: No, not my earlier error, but to reuse the translation of
24 Weidenfeld’s.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But when you wrote Hitler’s War in 1991 you had the
26 original German, you had it since 1977?
. P-179
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I did not write Hitler’s War in 1991. I reissued Hitler’s
2 War in 1991.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is the second edition. It is much more than a reissue,
4 Mr Irving. You rewrote whole passages in that book?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: No, I did not rewrite whole passages. I inserted a lot of
6 fresh material like the diaries of Hitler’s doctor,
7 Hermann Goring’s diaries, papers like that.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And the Holocaust disappeared hook line and sinker, did it
9 not? You had plenty of opportunity between 1977 when you
10 got the original German and doing the rewrite of 1991
11 Hitler’s War to get this right?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: It was not wrong in the first place.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will stop arguing about that, Mr Irving. That sentence
14 is plainly completely wrong.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Even if that sentence is plainly completely wrong, it
16 leaves the other two sentences which are the burden of
17 that paragraph, namely who says we cannot push them out of
18 Germany and park them somewhere nasty, and then he
19 continues to say, “Anyway, let’s leave it until the war is
20 over. We have other more important things to do.”
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we come back to the “we cannot park them
22 in the marshier parts of Russia”, because, this is pure
23 supposition on my part, the phrase about sending them into
24 the marsh looks as if it might be some sort of saying?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: That is what it looks like to me. It is rather like
26 sending somebody, somebody going for a Burton, something
. P-180
1 like that. It is not impossible.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Exactly. Do you know whether that is so or not?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: In schreiken I think it does not have the sense of killing
4 somebody, but it has the sense of rather like sending them
5 to Coventry might be even closer, who knows. But I would
6 have to take advice from a German who is familiar with the
7 vernacular of that particular era.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think Mr Rampton is maybe going to ask you,
9 I am sure he is, where on earth you get “parking them in
10 the marshier parts of Russia” from?
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Weidenfeld has it, my Lord.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I follow, but you have trotted along behind.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: Weidenfeld’s translation, if I may say so, is extremely
14 good and very literate. You are faced constantly with the
15 dichotomy of having a literate translation or a wooden
16 translation, and I would aver that this is not one of the
17 most important parts of that paragraph. The most important
18 part is (a) Hitler saying he is pushing them out
19 geographically, and (b) he does not want to be bothered
20 until the war is over with, this problem, which goes along
21 with my perception of the involvement of Hitler.
22 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I have to put it to you, you just say
23 any old thing to get yourself out of a corner. Have you
24 got Goebbels’ book, page 377?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We have read what you wrote as being the translation of
. P-181
1 the table talk in that paragraph. You see it is footnoted
2 16?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now please turn to page 643.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So far from your having used the rotten old Weidenfeld
7 translation two or three generations down the line, in
8 fact you did use the original. Footnote 16 on page 643:
9 “Heinreich Heinn, note on Hitler’s dinner table talk,
10 October 25th junet papers”, those are —-
11 A. [Mr Irving]: That is where it is now to be found, yes, the original.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And you stuck with the translation that you can see now to
13 be complete rubbish, and bears very little relationship
14 with the original which you actually used?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not complete rubbish, Mr Rampton. It is very close
16 to the original. The colouring is different. The
17 colouring assigned to it by the English translator with
18 whom I have no connection whatsoever. I adopted the
19 colouring adopted by George Weidenfeld and his publisher.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why did you not acknowledge them in the footnote?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Because I in the meantime had the original which is
22 available now to historians.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: You mean you gave a reference —-
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — for a book written in 1996?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-182
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — to some papers from which you had not taken the
2 translation?
3 A. [Mr Irving]: I gave the superior reference. It is a superior
4 reference. I perhaps should have said: “See also
5 Weidenfeld, table talk, Ed Trevor-Roper” and so on.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving. What you should have done, as you know
7 perfectly well, is to have retranslated the thing
8 correctly. You knew it was wrong?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: Let us argue it the other way round. I really do not want
10 to labour this point, Mr Rampton.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not sure how long the Court will allow you to labour
13 this point, Mr Rampton.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is a matter for the Court, Mr Irving.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am getting the hint though.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton, if I were to retranslate that sentence
17 following Mr Evans’ admirable translation to which you
18 refer, would that in the slightest degree alter the
19 arguments which I seek to make in that paragraph?
20 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, it would, because what Hitler is then
21 saying is something very much stronger, much more
22 sinister. He is saying: “It is a good thing that the
23 fear that we are exterminating the Jews goes before us”?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, he says that.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Never mind. We will pass on to the next thing.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: He does say that.
. P-183
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Because here now we come to a huge ellipse in the
2 translation which you have given.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: So you accept that even that translation would not alter
4 the argument that I have made?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Of course it would alter it. It would put much stronger
6 words, threatening words into Hitler’s mouth than you have
7 allowed.
8 A. [Mr Irving]: Use of the word “fear” instead of “public rumour”.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, fear, shock, terror.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we move on to the next passage.
11 MR RAMPTON: And the absence of any plan. I think your
12 Lordship has my point?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do.
14 MR RAMPTON: Good. You jump or your translation jumps, the
15 translation you used jumps from “des Judentung
16 aulsgrotten”, yes?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: To the words, [German spoken], does it not? No, it goes
19 even further. Sorry, that is not right. It goes to
20 [German spoken]. That is where your translation starts
21 again from “aulsgrotten”, does it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now look at what has been missed out. You have missed
24 out —-
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Shall I translate it for you?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, please.
. P-184
1 A. [Mr Irving]: The words which I missed out: “I find myself forced,
2 I have been forced to keep piling up a lot inside me.
3 That does not mean to say that I forget about it without
4 taking cognisance of it, without taking cognisance of it,
5 without showing it immediately.” This is the sense of it.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The sense of it is he does not forget?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He does not necessarily take action at once, but it goes
9 into the account and it stays there.
10 A. [Mr Irving]: It says, “I am keeping it on the books and one day the
11 books are going to be taken out.”
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. It goes into an account, one day the book is taken
13 out?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: That is right, which rather implies that nothing is
15 happening yet.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Wait, now read the next sentence, please.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: This is part I quote, right?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Look at the tense.
20 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, tell me which is the point, which is
21 the sentence that you translate? Show me in the English?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry. It continues: “Vis-a-vis the Jews I also had
23 to remain inactive for a long time. I also had to remain
24 inactive for a long time.”
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Had to”?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-185
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Where do I find that in your text?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not there. The book is already nearly 1,000 pages
3 long.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But it is the critical — it is the critical passage?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: He is throwing them out. He remained inactive and now he
6 is throwing them out. He is sending them to the marshy
7 parts of Russia, the most radical measures.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What it means is — bear with me Mr Irving — what it
9 means is that the time has, he uses the plue perfect we
10 would call it in English, “I had to remain inactive
11 against the Jews for a long time, but that does not mean
12 much because now the book of account has been taken out
13 and the time has come”, is it means?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: He does not actually say that of course. He does not say
15 “The book has now been taken out”.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, it is probably my misunderstanding.
17 Mr Irving, I think you just said that you have not
18 translated that sentence beginning “alt den Juden”, but
19 you did, did you not? Is that not where you write: “He
20 pointed out, however, that he had no intention of starting
21 anything at present”?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: It is bundled up in that sentence. It is precise’d in
23 that sentence.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You use the word “precis”, but you have changed the tense,
25 “missed” stays in the past tense?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the next sentence we are taking up.
. P-186
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No, it is the same sentence, unless I have misunderstood.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: “It has no sense to make additional difficulties for
3 oneself”, he then continues.
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, but go back to the previous sentence. Am I not right
5 in thinking that your rendition of that previous sentence
6 is where you write: “He pointed out, however, that he had
7 no intention of starting anything at present”?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: What he no doubt said, if he was speaking in direct
9 speech, is, “For a long time now I have done nothing,
10 I have been inactive towards the Jews.”
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: In the past?
12 A. [Mr Irving]: In the past, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But that is not the same thing as saying that you have no
14 intention of starting anything at present or in the
15 future?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: At present.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Is there not a real distinction between the two on
18 reflection now?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: No, because the sense of the next sentence, my Lord, where
20 he goes on to say, “I am not looking for difficulties.
21 I am not going to try to make difficulties, there is no
22 point in it, there is no sense in doing it.”
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Look at the tense again. It is “hat”. That may be a bad
24 point.
25 MR RAMPTON: No, my Lord, I do not think it is.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be a neutral point.
. P-87
1 MR RAMPTON: Maybe, but I have a reason why I say it is not a
2 bad point.
3 A. [Mr Irving]: Can I use Professor Evans’ translation?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, please do.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Where he said: “I had to remain inactive for a long time
6 against the Jews too. There is no sense in artificially
7 making extra difficulties for oneself. The more cleverly
8 one operates the better.” In other words, “We are not
9 doing anything for the moment, but the time will come when
10 I get my book out”.
11 MR RAMPTON: No, Mr Irving. You know that is nonsense.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I would not say it was nonsense, Mr Rampton.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am afraid I have to suggest it is nonsense and you know
14 it is nonsense. He is talking actually about what he is
15 going to do with Bishop Galen who is grumbling about the
16 euthanasia programme. That is the context?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Then he goes on to Galen, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, and he uses the past tense to describe his previous
19 inactivity against the Jews to, you miss out the
20 word “ough” also and then he says: “There is no since in
21 artificially making extra difficulties for oneself”.
22 There is no “at this time” as there is in your English.
23 He simply observes, no doubt with some pride, “The more
24 cleverly one operates the better”, and what he is saying
25 is this: “Look, leave Galen for the moment, don’t let’s
26 make extra difficulties for ourselves in relation to
. P-188
1 Galen. I had to remain inactive against the Jews for a
2 long time too”, and then the implied parentheses or
3 sequence, “but the time has now come”?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you are hanging all your proof on this implied
5 parentheses which just does not happen to be in the
6 document, Mr Rampton. It is not hanging document again.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It does not hang Hitler. There are plenty of other ways
8 of doing — I was going to say skinning a cat, but it
9 hangs you as an accurate recorder of German history,
10 because it is a deliberate misuse of a translation which
11 you knew to be wrong, so as to exculpate Hitler and make
12 it appear that on 25th October 1941 he was yet again
13 postponing taking any action against the Jews. You know
14 perfectly well, because the German says it, that that is
15 not what he said?
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I totally disagree with you.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It was a long question.
18 A. [Mr Irving]: I have taken a very lengthy entry of some 20 lines.
19 I have had to condense it into a paragraph of three or
20 four or five lines for that particular passage and I think
21 I have done an adequate job. If I was going to write a
22 book two or three times as long endlessly boring, as the
23 academics write them, then no doubt I could have put in
24 the whole of that quotation undigested, unanalysed.
25 I have had the difficult job that all authors face which
26 is to condense something into a reasonable length while
. P-189
1 not losing any of the essence. You can pick your
2 individual sentences where a word is wrong and take that
3 sentence out and the weight of the sentence remains the
4 same. Hitler says: “I wanted to send them out.” Hitler
5 says: “I have been keeping a little book and one day it is
6 going to come out.” Hitler says: “I don’t believe in
7 looking for problems if we don’t have problems. Look at
8 the case of Galen, that is another one that I am going to
9 put on the back burner.” This is typical Hitler.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “That is what I did do with the Jews. I had to remain
11 inactive for a long time too.”
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Do not forget, Mr Rampton, we have a whole series of
13 documents which lie in my direction and not in yours.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What is worst, Mr Irving, I suggest and then I am going to
15 leave it, what is worst is that not only have you used a
16 translation, not even your translation, a translation by
17 somebody else which you knew to be wrong, but you have
18 given a reference to the original which will make the
19 reader suppose that this is first generation, mint new
20 Irving translation?
21 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not think it says that in the footnotes at all. It
22 is the historian’s job to give the most accurate source
23 reference he can give which will point the reader in the
24 direction of the original document, rather than in some
25 second or third —-
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is a direct quotation of that passage?
. P-190
1 A. [Mr Irving]: If I were to act like your experts and just take books
2 down off a shelf and use those as sources, this would be
3 improper. I would far prefer to point people reading my
4 books to where they can find the original documents so
5 they can check it for themselves.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is exactly what you have done in this case, is it
7 not? You have actually used some rotten old translation
8 by Trevor-Roper or somebody, you have repeated it again
9 and again through your editions. You have the original in
10 your —-
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Indeed in discovery.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — in your office all the time. You do not use it, but
13 you tell the reader you have?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: No. I am satisfied that the translation I use is an
15 accurate representation of the document I have, apart from
16 that one sentence which has obviously been interpolated by
17 the English interpreter which I find absolutely
18 unconscionable to put a sentence into a translation that
19 does not even exist. I know that the other historians are
20 jealous that I have got all these documents and they did
21 not, but they should not start poking fingers and sneering
22 at me because I get these things.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know. We will have this bit of the transcript
24 relayed to, Professor Evans is here, but some of the
25 others are not.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: I am looking forward to when they come.
. P-91
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not to Trevor-Roper because it was not
2 his translation. It was not Trevor-Roper’s translation.
3 MR RAMPTON: Can we take that bit of the transcript out and put
4 in the right —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think in fairness, yes.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: He was the editor actually. It is a very good
7 translation. It is a very flowing translation.
8 MR RAMPTON: Now I want to go back, if I may, because that is
9 where all this started, to Hitler’s War, page 465 in the
10 1991 edition.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Is this where I say: “Upon arrival thousands were
12 simply murdered”? Is this the passage you are referring
13 to?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am sorry, Mr Irving, I have just lost my place because
15 I moved. I have found it. I am just going to ask you one
16 quick question about the top of the page, referring back
17 to the diary entry of 27th March 1942. You write in the
18 middle of the first paragraph on 465:
19 “But he evidently never discussed these
20 realities with Hitler. Thus this two-faced Minister
21 dictated after a further visit to Hitler on April 26th:
22 I have once again talked over the Jewish question with the
23 Fuhrer. His position on this problem is merciless. He
24 wants to force the Jews right out of Europe. At the
25 moment Himmler is handling the major transfer of Jews from
26 the German cities into the Eastern gettoes”.
. P-92
1 Why is it evident that this two-faced Minister,
2 the odious Dr Goebbels, never discussed these realities
3 with Hitler? Is it the same point we discussed earlier?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: Is it what?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The same point as we discussed earlier?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Which point is that?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, you said in the earlier part that we looked at:
8 “That Goebbels privately knew more is plain from his
9 diary entry of 27th”?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: No, the point I am making there is that had Goebbels
11 discussed this kind of thing, what he privately knew, with
12 Hitler, this two-faced Minister, then undoubtedly Hitler
13 would not have been able to make the kind of remarks he
14 did in private conversation with Himmler, Lamus and
15 Bormann which are recorded in the table talks.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Why not?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Then that would have evoked gusts of laughter from
18 Himmler. Himmler would have said: “Mein Fuhrer, don’t you
19 realize what’s going on?”
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Sorry, I am not following that at all.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: Right. We have seen, and we can see until the Court
22 screams for mercy, in the documents, in the table talks,
23 how Hitler repeatedly makes statements which are only
24 reconcilable with the notion that he was familiar with the
25 expulsion, which cannot be brought into conformity with
26 the notion that he knew what was happening when they got
. P-193
1 there, the European Jews.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Suppose, as many people have proposed, I do not know with
3 what persuasiveness, Mr Irving, in your mind, but suppose
4 as they have proposed Hitler was as often as not simply
5 euphemising?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Why should he? He is sitting there at the table with the
7 arch gangsters, with Himmler, Bormann and the rest who
8 know perfectly well what is going on. Why should he
9 euphemise to them when he is sitting with them? This is a
10 secret record. It is never going to be published. They
11 did not know about George Weidenfeld and Hugh
12 Trevor-Roper.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you have a view of who was at which table talk when you
14 read the table talks?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, usually there is a line above the table talks saying
16 who is present as the guests of honour. Usually three or
17 four people are listed. Verna Kopen did the same in his
18 records of the table talks.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am a bit puzzled about this, because if you
20 interpret the table talk as meaning that Hitler really was
21 thinking only in terms of deportation, I know it has been
22 a long day, but how do you reconcile that with your
23 acceptance, because I understand you do accept it —-
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — that he knew all about the shooting on a massive scale
26 on the Eastern Front?
. P-194
1 A. [Mr Irving]: I think your Lordship has grasped the nub of the whole
2 problem.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: What is the answer?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: The answer is I think that he drew a distinction in his
5 own mind between the Eastern vermin, the enemy, and the
6 Germans and the Europeans whom he still regarded as being
7 superior.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is not clear from this passage in your book, is it?
9 A. [Mr Irving]: It will be clear from the other passages that he does draw
10 this distinction, my Lord, and perhaps I ought to look
11 some of these passages out and draw your Lordship’s
12 attention to them. But this is the only way you can
13 explain this very evident dichotomy which does exist in
14 the records, that on the one hand he is saying these
15 things and on other hand he is evidently knowing other
16 things. Also I think you have something which probably
17 only psychiatrists can explain, that people can
18 compartmentalize their knowledge of certain things. There
19 is a kind of Richard Nixon kind of complex comes in
20 saying: “Fellows, do it but don’t let me be told”. I am
21 quite happy to believe that this kind of thing also went
22 on. But in the absence of any evidence it would take a
23 very adventurous writer to set it down, except in the most
24 speculative terms.
25 MR RAMPTON: Well, Mr Irving, I am going to have to ask you to
26 look at some of these table talks, I think, because
. P-195
1 contrary to what you say they are nowhere near as
2 sanitized, I do not believe, as you say they are. We may
3 also have to look at some of the Goebbels’ diary entries.
4 Would your Lordship wish me to start on that exercise now?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we make a bit of a start.
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Would it be useful to start with the very last one, July
7 1942 where Hitler is still talking about Madagascar.
8 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, it would not be convenient to me.
9 When you cross-examine you will find you have a particular
10 order in your head or on your piece of paper.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You must follow your own course.
12 A. [Mr Irving]: I was trying to cut to the bottom line which is a way of
13 speeding things on.
14 MR RAMPTON: One might not agree that it is the bottom line.
15 Can we start, please, I am taking these from Professor
16 Evans’s report because there is a collection in this part
17 of the report which the court might find useful, first of
18 all on page 413, this is the bit we looked at before, in
19 paragraph 15, we read the earlier bit before about the
20 donkeys in Rome or wherever it was, Hitler says:
21 “Ich sage nur, er muss weg”, “I am just saying
22 he”, that is the Jews, “have got to go. If he goes kaput
23 in the course of it I can’t help that. I only see one
24 thing, absolute extermination if they don’t go of their
25 own accord.” The German for “absolute extermination” in
26 English is “absolute Ausrottung”, that is at the bottom of
. P-196
1 the page.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, literally routing out, “Ausrottung”.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, it is a word which may change its sense like so many
4 words in so many languages according to its context.
5 A. [Mr Irving]: And who is speaking it and in what century and in what
6 year.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not have to the Ausrottung argument every time we
8 come across the word.
9 A. [Mr Irving]: We have not had it yet.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is an argument that could go on until next Christmas.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: We the vernichtung argument but not the Ausrottung
12 argument.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have touched on it. Let us move on.
14 MR RAMPTON: I am interested in the words “wenn er dabei
15 kaputt”.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What do you say those words mean?
18 A. [Mr Irving]: If he goes “caput”.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And what does “going kaput” mean?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: The word “caput” is like “going for a Burton”, it is one
21 of those words which is a piece of vernacular, a piece of
22 slang, all the wheels drop off. It is that kind of
23 thing. If a car goes caput the wheels have dropped off.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If I achieve my object of achieving a complete Ausrottung,
25 let us compromise, call is extirpation or annihilation, I
26 do not know, of the Jew, it does not matter to me in the
. P-197
1 slightest if that means death?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I am sure it did not, not to Hitler, no. He did not
3 really apply his mind very much to what happened once they
4 had got out.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then look at the next —-
6 A. [Mr Irving]: You mean by merciless or pitiless?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Let us see how it goes on:
8 “Why should I look at a Jew with other eyes
9 than at a Russian prisoner of war? Many are dying in the
10 prison camps because we have been driven into this
11 situation by the Jews. But what can I do about that? Why
12 then did the Jews instigate the war?”
13 The whole undercurrent Hitler’s, I hesitate to
14 call it thinking, but his ideology seems to have been that
15 somehow the Jews were responsible for having started the
16 war?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I would look at the sentence before where he says: “Why
18 should I look at the Jews differently than from a Russian
19 prisoner of war? Many are dying”, he says, many of the
20 Russians are dying. I think you omitted the emphasis that
21 that sentence needed.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know. I shall get caput, collapses, dies, it
23 does not matter whether you kill them or whether they die,
24 it does not matter, does, it, so long as they are all got
25 rid of?
26 This is Professor Evans: “Hitler came back to
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1 his prophecy of the extermination of the Jews is a
2 widely-transmitted speech in the Reichstag on 30th January
3 1942″, no doubt it was taken to be an anniversary of the
4 speech on the —-
5 A. [Mr Irving]: This is the old gramophone record. He keeps playing it.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: But on the same date two or three years later?
7 A. [Mr Irving]: He does it on various dates, 8th November 1942.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Irving merely comments that in his speech Hitler reminded
9 his audience of his prophetic warning to the world’s Jews
10 in 1939.” That is page 464 of Hitler’s War 1991 which
11 I think, well, is it, it does not seem to be on my page
12 464, but never mind. It might be a different edition
13 I suspect.
14 A. [Mr Irving]: You are looking at the eye for an eye and the tooth for a
15 tooth?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have that. Where is that in Hitler’s War?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: It is not in it.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will read it then: “In fact Hitler was much more
19 explicit. I have already pronounced in the Reichstag tag
20 on 1st September 1939, and I guard myself against
21 premature prophecies, that this war will not end as the
22 Jews imagine, namely that the European Aryan peoples will
23 be exterminated.” The word is?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: “Ausgerottet”.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I cannot find it in the German text?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Line three of the footnote.
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1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. How would you render that?
2 A. [Mr Irving]: Render what?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Ausgerottet” in that context?
4 A. [Mr Irving]: He is clearly not saying that it is going lead to the
5 destruction or killing of all the European Aryan peoples.
6 That is a clear indication that “ausrottung” is a very
7 elastic word. I did not think we wanted to have the
8 argument about “ausrottung” today.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Zondern das Ergebnis dieses Krieges die Vernichtung des
10 Judentums sein wird”, but that the result of this war will
11 be the —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Destruction.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: — annihilation, destruction, extermination, call it what
14 you like, of Jewry. “For the first time the truly old
15 Jewish law being applied this time”, “Aug um Aug, Zahn um
16 Zahn”, yes?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes?
19 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, a rebel-rousing speech to the German Parliament.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A rebel-rousing speech. What is he rousing the rebels to
21 do or approve of, do you think?
22 A. [Mr Irving]: I have no idea, but when people make speeches to
23 Parliament they tend to shoot their mouth off and they say
24 what the people listening want to hear. Quoting the Old
25 Testament, two anti-Semitics is quite effective.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now 25th February.
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1 A. [Mr Irving]: Your criticism is, of course, that I did not quote that
2 particular sentence in my book.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is my consistent criticism that whereas anything that
4 puts Hitler in the least danger of being, what shall we
5 say, done for the murder of the Jews, to put it crudely,
6 you take it out or you leave it out.
7 A. [Mr Irving]: I do not agree. I put in the meat of that which is that
8 once again he repeated his prophetic warning to the Jews
9 that if they started a war they would not survive it,
10 which is the crude way of putting that prophecy of his,
11 and that there is no need to embellish it really with this
12 kind of anti-Semitic jibe that he made in Parliament.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which bit did you not include?
14 A. [Mr Irving]: The bit about the eye for the eye last, the sentence my
15 Lord.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The rest I think you did include?
17 A. [Mr Irving]: The rest I did include, and one has to remember the
18 constraints that are on an author not to overwrite, not to
19 write a book that is twice as long as the publishers are
20 going to accept.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Speaking for myself I would have thought you
22 did get the guts of it, if that is all you left out.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: I appreciate the point Mr Rampton makes.
24 MR RAMPTON: Page 415, I have not run a check to see whether we
25 find all these passages in your books or not at the
26 moment, but on a slightly different tack it is a question
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1 of whether the table talk is really so, what shall we say,
2 unmisstated as you put it, as you suggest.
3 “At Hitler’s table talk on 22nd February 1942,
4 the following statement was recorded: It is one of the
5 greatest revolutions there has ever been in the world.
6 The Jew will be identified! The same fight that Pasteur
7 and Koch had to fight must be led by us today.
8 Innumerable sicknesses have their origin in one bacillus:
9 the Jew. Japan would also have got them”, the bacilli, I
10 think, “if it had remained open any longer to the Jew. We
11 will get well when we eliminate the Jew”, and the word he
12 uses, is reported as having used, is “eliminieren”?
13 A. [Mr Irving]: “Eliminieren”, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is pretty blunt, is it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but there is no suggestion that I have not repeatedly
16 and on every occasion stated when Hitler referred to the
17 Jews as “bascilli” that need to be eliminated. Of course,
18 I did.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What does antibiotic medicine do to bascilli?
20 A. [Mr Irving]: Good Lord! You are not asking me as a medical expert,
21 surely?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Come on, Mr Irving, you are older than I am. I do not say
23 you remember Pasteur and Koch, but, for heaven’s sake, we
24 all know what antibiotics do, they kill germs?
25 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is what Pasteur discovered, was it not?
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1 A. [Mr Irving]: He has not actually talked about antibiotics in here, has
2 he? I do not want to start nit-picking which is the
3 opposite of what you are doing.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: The meaning of this is kill the germs, the Jewish germs,
5 is it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving]: Eliminating them.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: How do you get rid of germs except by killing?
8 A. [Mr Irving]: I have no idea. You can wash your hands in soap and
9 water. There are various different ways of getting rid of
10 germs. That is why he has used word “eliminate”.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is right, you send them to Madagascar or Russia in a
12 plastic bag.
13 A. [Mr Irving]: That is the July 1942 entry which you did not want to have
14 read out.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am coming to that. I do not use the same kind of
16 ellipses, Mr Irving, as I suggest you do.
17 A. [Mr Irving]: I am aware of the fact that we are coming up to the end of
18 the afternoon and you have left the public without some of
19 the best items which are in my favour, if they are going
20 to be mentioned at all.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think we can co-ordinate the
22 evidence. It is a nice idea! Let us have one more, shall
23 we?
24 MR RAMPTON: We are going to have the next one on 24th
25 February.
26 A. [Mr Irving]: Can we not have July 1942?
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1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: We will get to it tomorrow and you can have your audience,
2 but you cannot be my stage manager, I am afraid,
3 Mr Irving.
4 On 24th February 1942 a statement by Hitler was
5 announced to NSDAP party members in Munich which again
6 made a reference to his prophecy.”
7 Before I read it, Mr Irving, I want to know
8 whether you say this is something which was cooked up by
9 party officials without reference to Hitler?
10 A. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to express an opinion on that. It is taken
11 out of Max Demarus’ collection of press clippings,
12 effectively. So it is a published statement, published in
13 the German press. So it actually cannot have a very
14 sinister connotation, surely.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I thought this was top secret what was going on.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I do not know if you read it.
18 “Today the idea of our National Socialist, and
19 that of the fascist revolution, have conquered great and
20 powerful states, and my prophecy will find its fulfilment,
21 that through this war Aryan humankind will not be
22 annihilated, but the Jew will be”, ausgerottet werden
23 wird, will be ausgerottet?
24 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, he has used the fifth or sixth meaning of the word
25 “ausgerottet” rather than the primary meaning.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Well, we might go back to the Langscheite overnight or
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1 some greater authority, I do not know.
2 A. [Mr Irving]: I have a whole shelf of dictionaries.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am not going to do it now.
4 “Whatever the struggle may bring with it or
5 however long it may last, this will be its final result,
6 and only then with the removal of these parasites with a
7 long period of understanding between nations, and with it
8 true peace, come upon the suffering.”
9 Again, it is similar to the reference to the
10 “bacillus”. Of course in one sense it is metaphorical.
11 A. [Mr Irving]: It does not really help us, does it, actually, getting rid
12 of the Jews?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you talk about ridding a house of its parasites —-
14 A. [Mr Irving]: “Beseitigung”, getting rid of, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, or exterminating them —-
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I am thinking of somebody with a broom, like, “get out of
17 here, “get out of here”.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Parasites, no, I think not, Mr Irving. What I am
19 suggesting is that Hitler did not need at his table talk
20 or in his public occasions to talk about gas chambers or
21 shootings, indeed he would not have done, but he is
22 talking in terms of genocide, is he not?
23 A. [Mr Irving]: So he is announcing it in the press, “We are going to be
24 carrying out genocide”? This is a press clipping.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is an announcement to party members?
26 A. [Mr Irving]: It is in the press, the VB in the footnote that has been
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Part IV: Discussion of Next Day and and Adjournment (206.24 to 207.26)
1 printed in the press. It is a public statement, the party
2 policy.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It portrays a state of mind if you put these things
4 together, does it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but, on the other hand, I do emphasise this is a
6 public statement, so he is hardly going to out saying,
7 “yes, we are going to be liquidating all the Jews”.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If we had but this one public statement to say that Hitler
9 intended physical annihilation of the Jews, “biologische
10 vernichtung” but this one document, I would not be
11 suggesting —-
12 A. [Mr Irving]: Excuse me, he does not say “biologische vernichtung” in
13 this document.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Wait, Mr Irving. Sometimes you do not listen.
15 A. [Mr Irving]: That is manipulation again.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: No, Mr Irving, you do not listen. I said if we had this
17 document and this document alone to convict Hitler of an
18 intention to achieve a biologische vernichtung, it would
19 not be very good evidence. Do you see? I do not take
20 documents one by one. I take the cumulative effect.
21 A. [Mr Irving]: This is part of your chain of documents.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you like, Mr Irving, yes.
23 A. [Mr Irving]: This chain against chain.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that a convenient moment? You have
25 finished with that.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord. I am going to come on to one or two
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1 more of these table talks. As I promised I would,
2 tomorrow morning.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At some stage will you be looking, if not,
4 well, so be it, at the very early statements which are
5 pretty much the same.
6 MR RAMPTON: They are very much the same. They are all
7 collected in the first part of Longerich.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That may be sufficient.
9 MR RAMPTON: That may be sufficient.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving may want to comment on whether he
11 takes those into account when he is evaluating Hitler’s
12 knowledge.
13 MR RAMPTON: If I may say so, that is very fair. Perhaps I
14 ought to do that —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not this evening.
16 A. [Mr Irving]: I shall certainly be taking it into account in
17 cross-examination of Longerich, which is probably the
18 proper time to deal with them.
19 < (The witness withdrew).
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 10.30 tomorrow.
21 (The court adjourned until the following day)
22
23
24
25
26
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