Day 17 Transcript: Holocaust Denial on Trial
Part I: Initial Proceedings (1.1 to 1.26)
1 IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
1996 I. No. 113
QUEEN’S BENCH DIVISION
2 Royal Courts of Justice
3 Strand, London
4 Tuesday, 8th February 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 (This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
24
25 PROCEEDINGS – DAY SEVENTEEN
26
. P-1
Part II: Professor Christopher Browning, Day 2 (2.1 to 114.3)
Section 2.1 to 21.15
1 <Day 17 Tuesday, 8th February 2000.
2 < PROFESSOR BROWNING, recalled.
3 < Cross-Examined by MR IRVING, continued.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think there is a suggestion that
5 we might at some stage amalgamate the documents really
6 relating to Professor Browning’s evidence which at the
7 moment are in two separate places.
8 MR IRVING: Miss Rogers has very kindly volunteered to do this
9 task and I willingly accept that.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just mentioning it to you in case you
11 had any feelings on the topic, but I think it must be
12 sensible. I wonder whether we might not keep the
13 pagination? Otherwise the transcript will make very
14 little sense. Can I leave that to you? Yes, Mr Irving?
15 MR IRVING: May it please the court, I have given your Lordship
16 a little bundle of documents, on the basis of which I wish
17 to cross-examine the witness this morning.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Let us decide where we are going to put
19 those.
20 MR IRVING: Whatever occurs under the new regime, I think.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Temporarily it had better go into J or L,
22 I do not mind which.
23 MS ROGERS: L.
24 MR IRVING: L. I think the simplest thing to do, Professor
25 Browning, is if we just go through this heap in sequence.
26 You will agree that the first few documents apparently
. P-2
1 come from the Himmler papers, is that correct?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They come from the administrative and economic main office
3 of the SS which is under Himmler.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment, Mr Irving, will you?
6 Yes, Mr Irving.
7 MR IRVING: My Lord, I should explain the purpose of the
8 following questions is to go to the quantum, the figures
9 really. That is all I am looking at. It is Operation
10 Reinhardt. These are documents from a file in Himmler’s
11 papers called Operation Reinhardt. (To the witness):
12 Professor Browning, is it correct that these documents
13 appear to come from the Hoover Library in California, if
14 you look down the slash on the side?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And can you recognize the initials of Heinrich Himmler on
17 the top copy?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, this document is of high level, shall
20 we say?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are Himmler’s initials?
23 MR IRVING: The HH under the word “Hehler” about three inches
24 from the top right-hand side of the document.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
26 MR IRVING: I am purely interested in the very first line of
. P-3
1 the letter under the word “Reichsfuhrer”, where it says:
2 No. 1. Then, when you translate the next sentence, this
3 “Bis 30.4.1943 sind angeliefert”?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Up until the 30th April 1943 had been delivered”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Had been delivered the following”, right?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you look then at the list that follows, it is a number
8 of items, a rather sad list, I suppose, a tragic list, of
9 wristwatches, is that right, for men and women?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Fountain pens?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Razor blades and other valuable items, is that right?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These are all the sort of things that would have been in
15 one’s toiletries or personal possessions, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Where had these items come from?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These were formerly Jewish possessions, but I see nothing
18 so far that says which camps they came from.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can I draw your attention to the reference line at
20 the top of the transcript, the Verwertung, the
21 exploitation of — then comes one of their stock phrases,
22 is it not, “Jewish plundering loot”, is that correct?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In fact, I have not seen that first phrase, but the
24 “Diebesguts”, the stolen goods, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the way that they sought to legitimate what they
26 are doing, is that correct?
. P-4
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, their stance was all that Jewish property had been
2 stolen by Jews originally, so they were repossessing they
3 claimed what was properly German property.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, a very distorted, perverse, kind of thinking, right?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: A rationale that appears.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does this help on numbers?
7 MR IRVING: It helps on numbers, my Lord, because we have
8 numbers of items that had been collected from the victims
9 by April 30th 1943.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not say “from when”.
11 MR IRVING: I am hoping that the witness will assist us on
12 this.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us ask.
14 MR IRVING: Where did these items come from, these valuables?
15 Did they come from victims of Operation Reinhardt?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I see nothing in the document that says Operation
17 Reinhardt.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Can I take you, therefore, to page 4, the
19 handwritten number at the bottom?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you will notice in the third line of the letterhead
22 the initials “Reinh.” in the top left-hand corner?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Reinh”, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you to page 10, and on the same letter head
25 also we have Reinhardt?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Those two documents do have the “Reinh.”.
. P-5
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you. And on the page 12 — I am sorry, it is the
2 same document. So, if these items come from an SS folder
3 which is called Operation Reinhardt and these particular
4 documents have the initials “Reinh.” on them, and they
5 appear to be items stolen from the Jews or from victims,
6 Jewish victims in fact, depending on the subject line, on
7 the face of it, this is a list provided to Himmler of
8 items that have been stolen from the Jews up to April 30th
9 1943. Is that a reasonable interpretation?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In terms of the inventory in the first document where we
11 do not have the reference to Reinhardt, it is at least
12 conceivable this was property taken from German Jews about
13 to be deported, and could easily have been stuck in the
14 same folder. I do not see anything there that would
15 necessarily lead us to conclude that the first inventory
16 came from camps in Poland. It could well be that this was
17 possessed Jewish property taken while Jews were being in
18 the process of being deported from Germany, but stuck in
19 the same folder because it always was relating to Jewish
20 property.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know what happened to these valuables that were
22 collected in Operation Reinhardt? Where did they go
23 initially?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have seen documents that show a wide variety of
25 distribution.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where they overhauled, were they recycled in some way
. P-6
1 before they were parcelled out?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Once collected at the three camps in Poland they are taken
3 to Lublin where you have several camps, the old airport
4 camp, for instance, where some sorting and reconditioning
5 was done. Some of the properties were distributed there
6 to ethnic Germans and any German unit that needs something
7 can come and ask to be given something.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you to document 10?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this say that they have a number of, 20,000, pocket
11 watches and various other valuables at present at
12 Oranienburg, and does the next paragraph say that the
13 watches and fountain pens have been overhauled and are
14 ready to be dispatched?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The topic of the document is watch distribution to members
16 of the SS.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And then below they give you the different kinds. Would
19 you allow me a moment to read the document?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you read the paragraph beginning with the word
21 “Insgesamt”?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. At the moment in Office D there are for repair
23 100,000 hand wristwatches, 39,000 pocket watches, 7,500
24 alarm clocks, 37,000 pens and so forth.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is no indication of any other stocks of valuables of
26 this nature being processed by this central processing and
. P-7
1 overhauling department?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we have all the files, all the documents
3 in the files? I take the point you are making.
4 MR IRVING: This was all the documents in this file. I picked
5 them in California about five or six weeks ago.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the file complete? Is it intact?
7 MR IRVING: I have no way of knowing, of course, my Lord.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the problem. I see what are you
9 getting at. Professor Browning, can you help on that? Is
10 this likely to be a complete record? We have only looked
11 at three documents.
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Since so much was destroyed I think we presume a lot of
13 them are not complete records. I have seen fragmentary
14 records from the archive in Lublin where less valuable
15 materials is distributed there. I think very valuable
16 things like watches and whatever do have to be sent in
17 but, if somebody wants furniture or wants clothing, they
18 can requisition that in Lublin from these camps and they
19 are never sent back to Berlin. Small volume high value
20 items would be sent back. It would be something that
21 would be worth shipping back, such as these particular
22 items.
23 MR IRVING: Do you agree that this document on page 10, which
24 is dated November 29th 1944, and has the heading or
25 subheading Operation Reinhardt in its address list, says
26 that altogether at present there are at Amtsgruppe D at
. P-8
1 present being repaired 100,000 wristwatches, presumably a
2 rounded off number and various other valuables?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: That gives an order of magnitude. It does not indicate
5 there are any other treasure troves of such valuables
6 anywhere else in the SS system, does it?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It says these are the ones that are available for
8 distribution. We have no idea if there are lots of other
9 kinds of valuables that have been sent elsewhere, but at
10 least that much has been taken out for purposes of
11 distribution to the SS.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you back to page 1 again, which is about 18
13 month earlier, is it not, 13th May 1943?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: That says that by April 30th 1943 we have received,
16 effectively there have been delivered to us, 94,000 men’s
17 watches?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it likely that these were taken from the victims in the
20 camps?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Again, it may well be that these were taken in Germany.
22 It could be possible they were taken from the camp. In
23 both, at least in the second case, I would presume that
24 there was a selection of the best ones that they were
25 sending back for repair for the Waffen SS. Cheaper goods
26 in general would not have been worth doing that.
. P-9
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does page 10, Professor, relate entirely to
2 Oranienburg?
3 MR IRVING: Oranienburg, my Lord, was the headquarters was it
4 not? Witness, was not Pohl actually based at Oranienburg,
5 the head of this particular section?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The part of the administrative and economic main office
7 that dealt with concentration camps is in Oranienburg, so
8 Ampt D, which is here, is stationed in Oranienburg, or at
9 least part of it. It says by the Office D in Oranienburg
10 so we know at least they have one office there.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: All the wealthy Holocaust victims, either at the time they
12 were dispatched from their places of residence or upon
13 their arrival in the camps, were systematically robbed of
14 their valuables by Operation Reinhardt, or as part of
15 Operation Reinhardt? Is that correct?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Operation Reinhardt, in a sense, is the last stage of a
17 long process of dispossession because the Jews in Germany
18 were disposed of much of their property for that. When
19 they were put on the trains the last things like rings and
20 valuables and jewellery are taken. These are the small
21 personal possessions they would still have been allowed.
22 Again in Poland Jews are dispossessed of their property
23 and moved into ghettoes and, when they are taken to the
24 camps, the last remaining possessions are taken by
25 Operation Reinhardt. Operation Reinhardt, in a sense, is
26 the last cleaning up of whatever property had not been
. P-10
1 taken already.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not many more questions on this matter, Professor. Would
3 you be able to make any kind of global estimates on these
4 kind of data and say, well, therefore, the number of
5 victims was not less than a certain figure and it was
6 probably not more than a certain figure, on the basis that
7 of course not everybody had valuable wristwatches or
8 valuable fountain pens, but on the other hand not many
9 people wear two wristwatches, shall we say, so it was
10 probably not less than 100,000 people? Can you say that?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say that this would help us with a minimum figure
12 but it would be nowhere close to a maximum figure because
13 they are presumably skimming the cream and taking the very
14 best things. Most Jews would have traded their
15 wristwatches for food and whatever else long before this
16 if they were in desperate straits, which they were. So it
17 does not give us anything approaching a maximum figure.
18 MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene to say that I just have done some
19 arithmetic? It is not obviously an exhaustive figure for
20 whatever reason, but the total under A on this page is
21 200,000 items.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which page are you?
23 MR RAMPTON: Page 10, my Lord, at A. Many of these items may
24 of course come from the same person, one does not know.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I was wondering. You can have a
26 fountain pen and a watch.
. P-11
1 MR RAMPTON: Of course you can.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What was the number?
3 MR RAMPTON: 200,000 precisely.
4 MR IRVING: Exactly, but it is giving orders of magnitude, in
5 my opinion, my Lord. We are really clutching at straws
6 and trying to arrive at figures. Is it not right,
7 Professor, that our statistical database for arriving at
8 any kind of conclusions for the numbers of people who have
9 been killed in the Holocaust by whatever means, we are
10 really floundering around in the dark, are we not? Is
11 that correct?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I would not express it that way. I would say we have
13 a very accurate list of the deportation trains from
14 Germany. In many cases we have the entire roster name by
15 name and we are not floundering. We can tell you, as we
16 have seen in the intercepts, 974 on one train.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: But I interrupt you there and you say in many cases, but,
18 of course, had we got a complete list of all the —-
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Can I finish my answer.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: — trains, then —-
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: May I finish my answer?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him finish. You have been very good,
23 Mr Irving, but let him finish this answer.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In terms again of France, the Netherlands, the countries
25 from which there were deportations from Western Europe, we
26 can do a very close approximation by trains, the number of
. P-12
1 people per train.
2 In the area of Poland, there were at least
3 statistics in terms of ghetto populations and these
4 ghettos were liquidated completely, so we can come to a
5 fairly good rough figure of Polish Jews. We also have a
6 fairly reliable prewar census and postwar calculations so
7 that one can do a subtraction. So, in terms of Holocaust
8 victims from Poland westward, we are not floundering. We
9 are coming fairly close approximation.
10 Where historians differ and where you get this
11 figure of between 5 and 6 is because we do not have those
12 figures for the Soviet Union.
13 MR IRVING: Can I halt you at this point —-
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There is where we are — that the numbers vary greatly.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: But can I halt you at that point and say the fact that a
16 train load of Jews sets out from Amsterdam or from France
17 does not, of course, necessarily mean that they end up
18 being gassed or killed in some other way, does it?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If they are sent to camps like Treblinka or Sobibor or
20 Chelmno or Belzec, yes, they are virtually all
21 exterminated.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the basis of eyewitness evidence?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: On the basis of, yes, what I have presented here. We know
24 that —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which we are coming to later on?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, and they do not come back.
. P-13
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They disappear.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, the Nazis did not want them to come back, but would
4 you accept that large numbers were also the subject of,
5 shall we say, population movements, particularly in the
6 1939/1940 period. You talked about the Jews in Poland?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, this is a move from one area of German control to
8 another. So Jews that are moved from the Warthegau into
9 the General Government are then included in the ghetto
10 population statistics of the various towns in the General
11 Government and those ghettos are then liquidated and they
12 count as part of the disappearance —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you mean “the ghetto is liquidated”, you mean the
14 ghetto is just wound up?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The ghetto is empty. People are put on trains.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Emptied, but the word “liquidated” is rather suggestive
17 that something else is happening?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, that was the German term. “Ghetto liquidierung” is
19 their word, and that these liquidation, ghetto
20 liquidations, also we know the mode in which they were
21 carried out with extraordinary brutality and —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but come back to Poland for a minute. You talk about
23 the fact that we had the prewar population census and the
24 postwar census. We are having a major problem with Poland
25 because the whole of Poland was shifted westwards as a
26 result of the agreements, so what do you mean by Poland?
. P-14
1 This is the first problem. Is that not right?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, you are talking about territory, but the Polish
3 population in terms of number of Jews left at the end
4 really is not changed or altered by a shifting of borders
5 because there were no Jews in either the German or the
6 Polish territory.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: They also have a problem caused by the fact that the
8 Soviet Union arbitrarily declared that everybody who was
9 in the Soviet occupied part of certain parts of Poland
10 became Soviet citizens. After they had entered,
11 I believe, on September 19th or September 17th 1939, did
12 they not arbitrarily declare after that that large number,
13 the citizens who had previously been Polish were now
14 Soviet citizens?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, but those areas ten fall back under the Germans and
16 they are part of the statistics — I mean, the prewar
17 census we have is pre1939.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you saying that the Jews who were in the Soviet part
19 of occupied Poland in 1939 stayed there until the Germans
20 invaded two years later?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think most did. Some did manage to get — those that
22 were saved, for the most part, were the ones that Stalin
23 sent on to Siberia.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right the figure of those who left and were sent on
25 to Siberia was of the order of 300,000?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The total number of Polish Jews in Siberia I do not think
. P-15
1 is even close to that. We know that the estimated number
2 of Jews that fled or were deported from the German zone to
3 the Soviet zone in 1939/1940 was in the magnitude of 200
4 to 300,000. How many for 1941 are, in a sense, caught in
5 the German advance which in these areas, of course, is the
6 very first territories they overcome, that you do not have
7 any indication that very large numbers escaped at all.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: But there is an area of uncertainty, is there not?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The point at which the German documents start saying “The
10 Jewish populations have managed to flee” is when you get
11 much deeper into the Soviet Union where it took longer for
12 the Russian armies to get to and there was more warning.
13 The German documents indicate only then are they beginning
14 to find that the Jews had managed to flee before they
15 arrived.
16 So, while there is certainly a degree of
17 uncertainty, to suggest that significant vast numbers of
18 Jews escaped from these very border territories the very
19 first days occupied by the German Army, I do not think is
20 — it is not one that I can accept.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But is not the evidence, in fact, that the Soviet Union
22 had evacuated large parts of their forward territories in
23 preparation for their attack on Germany, and that when the
24 Germans advanced into these areas in Operation Barbarossa
25 in June 1941 they found the population relatively thin
26 because of these evacuations?
. P-16
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not think so.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we —-
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There were deportations of what they — there were
4 deportations of what they considered political enemies.
5 MR IRVING: So, in other words, I am not right in suggesting
6 there is any area of uncertainty about the figures, in
7 your view?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. What I said is the area of greatest uncertainty is
9 the areas of the Soviet Union and that from that boundary
10 westward we come to a fairly close proximation. After
11 that it varies, estimates vary greatly.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just interrupt because I want to go
13 back to Operation Reinhardt which is where we started and
14 we have rather sort of spread out from there. Can you —
15 Mr Irving, you are probably going to ask this at some
16 stage anyway — put an estimate on the number of people
17 you would say were killed by gassing at the smaller death
18 camps like Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The numbers that the German courts came to in their
20 investigations in which they emphasised that they were
21 using the minimum estimate so that this would not be a
22 controversy between the defence and the prosecution, in
23 the first Treblinka trial, I believe it was 700 or
24 750,000. By the second Treblinka trial, they had upped
25 that figure to 9 or 950,000. Belzec is estimated at about
26 550,000. Sobibor, I believe they estimated 200,000, and
. P-17
1 Chelmno, as a minimum, I think they said 150,000, but they
2 thought it was more likely in the 250,000 area.
3 MR IRVING: When were these estimates made?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These were in the various judgments of the 1960s in German
5 courts.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: 1960s and 1970s or 1960s?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These particular trials, I believe, all — and I think the
8 last one was in 1968/69, so I think all of those concluded
9 before 1970.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say these figures were reached at by agreement between
11 the parties?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These were the figures that were put into the judgment and
13 what the prosecution said — I mean, let me see if I
14 can phrase this right, I want to be very careful on this
15 — that this was the figure that in a sense was in the
16 realm where they had sufficient documentation that it was
17 not contested. Then you have the estimate, possible
18 additional that they did not want to put into the judgment
19 or the indictment because they did not want that to be an
20 obscuring issue or become a detracting issue, “Well, we
21 did not kill 250,000, we killed only 200,000″.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I was going to ask, to put it in common language, was it
23 any skin off anybody’s nose if people added 100,000 more
24 or less? I mean, was anybody going to get a shorter
25 sentence because the numbers were lower or a longer
26 sentence because the numbers were higher? What I am
. P-18
1 getting at is were the figures properly tested in court?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The figures were reached in general by historical expert
3 witnesses that submitted these to the court and they were
4 open to cross-examination by the Defence.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: And these witnesses were German or?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The most, the most active witness was Wolfgang Schafler
7 who was a German historian.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: A German historian?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that the very reputable German historian too.
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: A very reputable German historian, who, in fact, looked
12 at —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you challenge these figures,
14 I think now is the time to do so. I do not know whether
15 you do or you do not.
16 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not in a position to challenge them
17 on a numerical basis, but I do wish to plant or implant
18 doubts in your Lordship’s mind as to the rigour with which
19 the figures have been arrived at, shall I put it like
20 that? All I have to establish, if I have understood it
21 correctly, in your Lordship’s mind is the position that
22 I am entitled, as a writer myself, not to be called a
23 Holocaust denier because I question figures. I can put it
24 as simply as that. Your Lordship has a different take on
25 that, I ought to be told it now perhaps in order that I
26 can —-
. P-19
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure about “ought”, but I understand the
2 way you use this evidence.
3 MR IRVING: I mean, this is not a court of law, criminal law,
4 where they are trying somebody for murder. We are just
5 trying to establish a matter of Holocaust denial really
6 which is a different standard of proof, I think.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Would it be helpful if I said a little bit about how
9 Schafler arrived at his figures?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it might be in the sense that
11 Mr Irving is really saying, “Well, I question the figures”
12 and I think he must by implication be saying, “and I have
13 good grounds for questioning the figures”. So I think if
14 you wanted to add something about the way in which the
15 figures were arrived at, I think that would be helpful.
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, the figures for each of the camps he did by trying to
17 trace the ghetto liquidations at the different periods
18 into which camps they were sent. So we have a very
19 accurate reduction of the Lodz population, which trains
20 went to Chelmno, when, and we can come very accurately to
21 the number of people deported from Lodz to Chelmno, then
22 one is on a little bit less secure grounds for the various
23 other surrounding towns where we do not have a day by day
24 deduction or a train by train calculation, but we do have
25 statistics of what the populations were there before the
26 whole operation began.
. P-20
1 So with some rough estimate of how many would
2 have been selected for labour, he came to a figure for
3 Lodz as a minimum figure and then a more probable but not
4 putting forward as necessarily a somewhat higher figure.
5 He did the same calculations for the other camps.
6 We know how many Dutch transports went to
7 Sobibor. We know which regions were cleared that were
8 directed to Sobibor. We had the figures of the Jewish
9 populations in those ghettos before the liquidation and
10 the number of workers that were shifted to some of the
11 work camps, and it was on the calculation, on that basis
12 that he arrived at his figures.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful.
14 MR IRVING: Yes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do ask anything you want, Mr Irving.
Section 21.16 to 40.20
16 MR IRVING: I think this is probably an appropriate point to
17 ask the witness about the atmosphere in Germany for
18 historians. Is it possible for an historian in Germany
19 now, whether reputable or disreputable historian, to
20 advance opposing hypotheses in any degree of safety?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Oh, absolutely. For instance, in this court earlier I saw
22 in the transcript you said that no one could refer to the
23 Himmler guidelines without risking that — the intercept
24 of the Himmler guidelines, and, of course, Christian
25 Jerloch has published that in Germany, and has suffered
26 absolutely no repercussions and there is no question that
. P-21
1 he would, that there is a very vigorous discussion among
2 German historians on the Holocaust.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But would I be right in saying this discussion is skewed
4 or distorted by the fact that anybody who goes to the
5 other end of the spectrum, shall we say, and starts
6 saying, “I think the figures are much lower because, for
7 example, it was not a systematic liquidation” or anything
8 like that, anybody who accidentally says one of the taboo
9 phrases in Germany is going to end up in trouble, in
10 prison, and that this must certainly cast apprehensions in
11 the mind of somebody about which side of the debate he
12 takes?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that is nonsense. For instance, Hans Monson
14 shares your view that Hitler did not give an order.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you tell the court who Hans Monson is?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Hans Monson is a very notable historian at the University
17 of Bochum, now retired boss tonne.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is not a Holocaust denier, is he?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You asked me with taboos and one of the things that has
20 generally been seen that you have been identified with is
21 the argument that Hitler did not make the decision. Hans
22 Monson and Martin Broszat have accepted or have argued
23 that Hitler did not give an order or a decision—-
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I just halt you there? It would be useful if you
25 would—-
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am still talking.
. P-22
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are interrupting a little bit,
2 Mr Irving. Try and restrain yourself until the end of the
3 answer.
4 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will know why I want to interrupt
5 there.
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Far from being thrown in jail or fearing, Hans Monson
7 currently is the Shapiro Visiting Scholar at the United
8 States Holocaust Museum. There is a wide of range of
9 debate covering a wide spectrum of opinion. There is in
10 Germany a law that outlaws Holocaust denial, but I know of
11 no German historian that I have come across that has lost
12 a night’s sleep worrying that this prevents him from
13 arguing from documents and from carrying out a full
14 academic discussion.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you heard of Dr Reinhard Seitelmann?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have heard of Dr Reinhard Seitelmann. I know him.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the course of his career after he
18 made certain statements? Was he originally a historian at
19 the free university in Berlin?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think this is a digression
21 really.
22 MR IRVING: Very well. Would you explain to the court then who
23 Professor Martin Broszat was? Was he an eminent German
24 historian?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. He was the head of the Institute for Contemporary
26 History in Munich.
. P-23
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: His opinion on my hypothesis that Hitler did not issue an
2 order or that there is no Hitler order, are you familiar
3 with that?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He takes your view that Hitler did not know of this, or
5 that it was kept secret from him, or he would not have
6 authorized it. That it was done by others behind his back
7 he does not accept. He does not think that Hitler gave an
8 order for or made a decision for the Final Solution, but
9 that rather he —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: It just happened?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He encouraged it, he instigated it in the sense that he
12 made known his feelings and that others clamoured, or
13 strove to gain Brownie points to get credit by realising
14 the programme that Hitler hinted that he wanted to see
15 done.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the word Verliegenheitslosung, a way
17 out of an awkward solution, a way out of an awkward
18 problem?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He used the phrase that it was a way out of a Sackgasse,
20 out of a dead end.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: He picked up this word from the introduction to my book
22 and said this was probably correct. Are you familiar with
23 that?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know if he picked that expression up from your
25 book, but he did. In so far as the issue of the Hitler
26 order, Monson and Broszat have argued for a long time, as
. P-24
1 you have, they do not think that Hitler gave an explicit
2 or formal order.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: It would be a grave injustice to call either of those two
4 professors Holocaust deniers, would it not?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. The argument over whether Hitler gave an order or not
6 is not commonly part of the issue of Holocaust denial.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you very much for saying that. Hans Monson, would
8 you identify him? Is he a Professor at the Royal
9 university in Bochum?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, he was. He is retired.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: A very eminent historian, is that correct?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. I hope your Lordship pardons me for having
14 made that little excursion?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You picked up the answer that Professor
16 Browning gave about whether denying Hitler’s having given
17 an order was an aspect of Holocaust denial, but I do not
18 think the Defendants really say that it is.
19 MR RAMPTON: We do not.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was checking your summary of case.
21 MR RAMPTON: The Hitler exculpation, exoneration, apology part
22 of the case has nothing to do with Holocaust denial at
23 all. They may have a similar motive at the end of the day
24 but that is completely different. We have focused on
25 Hitler’s exoneration to prove what we call distorted
26 history.
. P-25
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think what you do say is that it is
2 part of Holocaust denial to deny that there was a
3 systematic programme.
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not the same as denying that it was
6 Hitler who instigated that programme.
7 MR RAMPTON: That is right. It is number 3, no systematic
8 programme of exterminating Europe’s Jews, whether on the
9 part of Hitler or the Nazi leadership.
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that Professors Monson and Broszat would say that
11 Hitler instigated it in various ways. They would simply
12 say there was no formal order or decision in the sense
13 that we understand that is the way —-
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say that yourself.
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
16 MR IRVING: Is this the debate between the intentionalists and
17 the functionalists?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is one aspect of that debate.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: By instigating it, would you say that Hitler instigated it
20 by raising the climate of anti-semitism in Germany, or was
21 it more specific than that?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that was the beginning of it, but it gets also
23 more specific than that when one continually indicates
24 that you want this whole problem to disappear, that you
25 want a settlement to this. You prophesy a disappearance
26 of the Jews, which is in a sense to set the climate in
. P-26
1 which people are to come forward to you with proposals
2 which you then can approve or not. We know the pattern
3 that Himmler comes to Hitler in mid September with the
4 proposals for the ethnic cleansing of western Poland.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: September 1939?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He comes to Hitler. They bring the Madagascar plan to
7 Hitler. They bring proposals about marking and
8 deportation to Hitler. In terms of concrete proposals
9 Hitler is not the micromanager, but the proposals are a
10 response to the signals that he gives of what he wants and
11 wants done, and this is what I would say we would call
12 instigation.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You refer to his prophesy, that was the speech of January
14 30th 1939?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is one example.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: That was January 30th 1939. Did the killings start
17 immediately?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. That is a prophesy that could be realised in a number
19 of ways.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Nothing really happened for about three years, did it?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I would not interpret that as understood yet as total
22 destruction. But when this does not work and there still
23 needs to be — that is, expulsion, ethnic cleansing, does
24 not work, the reservation plans prove to be impractical,
25 then the demand that something be done is still there, and
26 then one brings more extreme points.
. P-27
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: How realistic was the Madagascar plan to which you just
2 referred?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Do I think they took it seriously? Yes, I do think they
4 took it seriously. It is fantastic but of course
5 Auschwitz is fantastic, too.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: In what way is Madagascar a fantastic plan?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Fantastic in the sense that one is bizarre, the notion
8 that you could take 4 million Jews and put them on ships
9 and send them to Madagascar, and that anything other than
10 the vast bulk of them would die under the conditions of
11 being dumped into the jungle of Madagascar. Even that a
12 plan that clearly in its implications involved vast
13 decimation, they still talked in these words of
14 resettlement.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this not exactly what happened with the state of
16 Israel? Millions of these people were taken and dumped in
17 Israel, so to speak, although they did it voluntarily? It
18 was an uprooting and a geographical resettlement.
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The number of people coming into Israel of course came in
20 gradually and there was a structure and an organization to
21 arrange for and assist their reception.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen in the German files references to the
23 planning for the Madagascar settlement? In other words,
24 the necessary retraining, the agricultural specialists and
25 everything being set up by the Foreign Ministry and by the
26 German Navy, the Naval staff?
. P-28
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I did not see some setting up retraining. I saw them
2 planning to take all the property and who would be in
3 charge of gathering the Jews, and that it would be an SS
4 state at the other end, but I certainly did not see, as
5 part of the files on Madagascar, retraining. There was
6 some toleration of Zionist groups in Germany setting up
7 agricultural camps in the prewar period when they were
8 trying to encourage the emigration of Jews, be it to
9 Palestine or anywhere else.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Adolf Hitler repeatedly referred to the Madagascar
11 solution, did he not, from 1938 in the Goebbels diaries
12 right through until July 24th 1942 in the table talk?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The Madagascar plan is a concrete plan, in which people
14 are actually working on it. It is the period of June to
15 September 1940, but there are references to Madagascar
16 earlier and later. It is an idea that had floated in a
17 number of anti-semitic pamphlets and the Jewish expert of
18 the German Foreign Office in fact, who sort of arrived at
19 this on his own, claimed that he got the idea from reading
20 one of these pamphlets, so it was an idea in the air.
21 This was one of the sort of anti-semitic fantasies that
22 this problem would disappear if all of these Jews could be
23 sent to the most distant island they could conceive of.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Out of mind, out of sight. Would you agree that it was
25 Hitler’s pipe dream?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would not call it pipe dream, because I think, if
. P-29
1 England had surrendered, they would have tried to do it.
2 They would have tried to implement it just as they tried
3 to implement the Lublin reservation plan and just as they
4 tried and succeeded in implementing the death camp plans.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen indications in the negotiations with France
6 over the peace settlement with France, the armistice
7 negotiations, that there was an attempt by the Germans to
8 secure permission for the Madagascar plan because
9 Madagascar was a French territory?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought it was British.
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, French.
12 MR IRVING: Madagascar was French but it became British after
13 May 26th 1942, my Lord, or thereabouts, when we did the
14 usual thing.
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They sent people to the French colonial ministry to get
16 information on Madagascar. They certainly did not need
17 French permission, and I am not sure how much this was a
18 topic in armistice negotiations that were going on after
19 the armistice, I do not know how much that was a topic
20 between them.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think it was a totally impracticable proposition, the
22 idea of sending 6 million Jews, or whatever it was, to an
23 island the size of Madagascar?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think they would have attempted it, and I think the
25 results would have been disastrous.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would they have been disastrous?
. P-30
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Because I think a large percentage of the people sent
2 there would have perished.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think that the Jews are a very sturdy people. They have
4 shown that by their forthrightness in Palestine, have they
5 not?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think the conditions under which they arrived there, an
7 island which the documents said clearly was to be an SS
8 state, would not have been anything remotely similar to
9 the conditions of an attempted and organized reception of
10 refugees in Palestine after 1945.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: The population of Madagascar at that time was about 1
12 million?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I could not say.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: The population of Madagascar now is over 13 million?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I could not say.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it could have housed that number of people quite
17 easily? It is a country the size of Germany, is that
18 correct?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It would depend on the circumstances and indeed bringing
20 Jews in, and all of their property taken, and under SS
21 custody, I do not think one could say that they would have
22 been housed easily. I think it would have been lethal.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: If Hitler’s intention was to exterminate all the Jews
24 systematically, then why would he have had a pipe dream of
25 sending the Jews to a country like Madagascar where they
26 would have survived?
. P-31
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is where we get to the interpretational issues of the
2 intentionalist and functionalist. I do not believe at
3 that point that he intended to destroy the Jews
4 systematically. He wanted a problem to disappear.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: When did the intention then develop? This is important
6 I think.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Let us get on to that.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: As I say in my report, my feeling is that there were two
9 separate phases of decision making. Both of them stretch
10 out over a period of time.
11 MR IRVING: With particular reference to Hitler, please?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is an incremental decision making process. We have in
13 the Spring of 1941, in preparation for Barbarossa, a
14 number of his statements about what kind of war this is
15 going to be, a war of destruction, a killing of what he
16 calls Judao- Bolshevik intelligentsia and this kind of
17 thing. This results in proposals coming to him, one of
18 which is the creation of the Einsatzgruppen in its
19 arrangement with the army or logistical support, the
20 Commissar order, and that in the opening weeks of the war
21 this led to the selective killing of adult male Jews in
22 the regions that the Einsatzgruppen enter.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I halt you there for a moment and say, when he talks
24 about the Judao-Bolshevik enemy, which half of that
25 adjective weighs strongest in his mind, the Bolshevik or
26 Judao?
. P-32
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think for him it is a package deal, but in terms of what
2 is wrong with Bolshevism is that it is the latest
3 manifestation of the Jewish threat, so the Jewish issue is
4 the prime one and the Bolshevik is the current
5 manifestation of this Jewish threat as he understands it,
6 because he has seen previous manifestations are the French
7 revolution and the liberals. Christianity is the first
8 Jewish threat.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: There have been more recent manifestations, have there
10 not, for example in the Spanish Civil War?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, this is getting a bit discursive.
12 Can we just pin it down a little bit?
13 MR IRVING: I am trying to pin it down.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, I know we are
15 interrupting an answer and I want you to resume it, but
16 can we just anchor it to particular dates? The date that
17 is in my mind, and I would be interested to see the
18 document if possible, is the 25th May, and I think it was
19 1940 rather than 41.
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The May 25th document is the Himmler guidelines for the
21 treatment of the peoples of Eastern Europe, in which he
22 wants to reauthorize the ethnic cleansing from the western
23 territories, which Frank and Goring had managed to whittle
24 down.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that not, in a sense, the start of it all?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, that is still in the ethnic cleansing phase. That is
. P-33
1 the document in which Himmler is still referring to a
2 total extermination as unGerman and impossible.
3 MR IRVING: I was going point that out, yes.
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is the following year, 1941 in the spring, when Hitler
5 begins to talk about this war of destruction in the East,
6 the destruction of the Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia,
7 that leads to the selective killing of adult male Jews in
8 the opening five or six weeks of Barbarossa.
9 MR IRVING: Can I halt you there and say which documents? Are
10 you referring to the Kommissar order then?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at some of these documents?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We are referring to a collection of documents, the
13 agreement between the military and the Einsatzgruppen in
14 which the Einsatzgruppen will get its instructions from
15 the SS but its logistic support from the military.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not possible to argue that these are purely military
17 measures at this time?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at the document? I really do
19 want to look at this document, the Kommissar order.
20 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will excuse me for interrupting.
21 You will find three relevant documents cited, or rather
22 utterances by Hitler in a military or a semi-military
23 context on pages 55 and 56 of Dr Longerich’s first
24 report. They are all three of them in March 1941 before
25 Barbarossa starts. Perhaps Professor Browning might be
26 given that, so that he can see it.
. P-34
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is quite important because, if
2 this is too broad brush, it is perhaps not as helpful as
3 it could be.
4 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, because I shall want to draw
5 attention to the military nature of these orders.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do so please, but let us do it by reference
7 to the documents.
8 MR IRVING: They are criminal, there is no question, and they
9 are Draconian, but they are military.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that. So 55 and 56 of the first
11 part of Longerich, Mr Rampton?
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes, my Lord.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. I think, if we look at the very first one, in fact
15 he makes clear that his campaign has both a military and
16 an ideological side. As he says, the coming campaign is
17 more than just a struggle of arms. It will also lead to a
18 confrontation of two world views. Then he goes on, it is
19 does not suffice to defeat the enemy army, Jewish and
20 Bolshevik intelligentsia must be eliminated. So this
21 campaign from the very beginning is to be conceived as
22 more than a conventional war between armies. It has a
23 strong ideological element and that ideological element
24 relates to race, and particularly to Jews, and that tenor
25 I think is very strong in his spring of 1941
26 declarations. As I say, when we then look at what was the
. P-35
1 result of that, if one looks at the Einsatzgruppen
2 reports, the overwhelming bulk of the victims who were
3 shot in the first five or six weeks are —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Described as Jews?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — as male Jews. They kept some communist
6 functionaries. They regret, in a sense, most of the
7 communist functionaries seem to have disappeared, the Jews
8 have not, and that these then are the main target group.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: If this document refers to the Judao-Bolshevik
10 intelligentsia, this does not explain why large numbers of
11 thousands of ordinary Jews are being taken off trains or
12 taken out of the towns and taken out of the country side
13 and machine gunned into pits They are not the
14 intelligentsia in any way. This document covers the
15 intelligentsia.
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No one is saying that this is a hands on micromanaged
17 order. This is a speech by Hitler in which he is
18 declaring a set of expectations, and then there are
19 various preparations made and proposals brought forward
20 that, in a sense, cast his vision of a war of destruction
21 into concrete terms.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I could rephrase that document, if this was going the
23 other way and the Russians were saying, we are going to
24 invade Washington and we are going to destroy the
25 capitalist intelligentsia, and subsequently very large
26 atrocities took place and millions of ordinary Americans
. P-36
1 being machine gunned into pits, you would not link those
2 two facts, would you?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think one could, in the sense that one would say —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just Americans with bank accounts or otherwise fitted?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, one, it sets a mood in which destruction of civilian
6 populations, killing will not be limited to armed
7 soldiers.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would I be right in suggesting that this order
9 effectively created a killing field, and that anybody else
10 who fitted the title of Jew who came within that killing
11 field was therefore at risk, put it that way?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This certainly creates an atmosphere in which clearly
13 there will be lots of killing and it will not be
14 restricted to military combat, that there will be killing
15 of those that are seen to be an ideological and racial
16 enemy, as well as military. I think, when we look at, in
17 a sense, the kinds of proposals that are brought forward,
18 very revealing are not only the Kommissar order and the
19 agreement between the military and the Einsatzgruppen, but
20 the economic plans that come forward, such as the May 2nd
21 meeting of the State secretaries, in which they say, for
22 Germany to be blockade proof, we must take lots of
23 material out of the Soviet Union, and we must be very
24 clear that, when we do this, umpteen million Russians are
25 going to starve to death. So we have an atmosphere of a
26 war of destruction in which civilian life is going to be
. P-37
1 totally cheap.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: He does not say, as a result of our taking economic goods
3 out of the country, millions of people, preferably Jews,
4 are going to die. That is just any Russians?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is that lots of Russians will die, lots of civilians
6 will die. Then, of course, if we cast that, as an
7 historian, to put it into the wider context, you would not
8 disagree with that, I think.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The wider context basically is where people have been
11 shot, Jews have been shot in larger percentages than
12 others, where people have starved, the Jews have starved
13 first. So, if you have a programme of shooting and
14 starving, one can begin with the fact that there is going
15 to be a large loss of Jewish life, that this would be
16 clear to anyone in the context of Nazi Germany in the
17 spring of 41. That is not yet. That is not yet an
18 explicit order for the killing of Soviet Jewry. It is a
19 creation of, we might say, a hunting licence. No one will
20 get into trouble killing Jews. One will get credits
21 rather than anything against them.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I agree entirely, but the focus is at this stage on this
23 document strictly, shall we say, the upper 10,000? It is
24 the Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia and their hierarchy,
25 all the way down to the Kommissars, is that right?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The focus is selective killing and indiscriminate
. P-38
1 starvation.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: The emphasis is on this as a measure of war? This is the
3 kind of war we are going to be fighting?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. The emphasis is on measure of a war that is
5 understood to be both military and ideological and racial.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: A war to the death, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, where do you get
8 indiscriminate starving from?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is a document I believe is not one that I cited. It
10 is a protocol of a meeting of the State secretaries on May
11 2nd 1941. It is a Nuremberg document, in which the
12 protocol is that we all agree that, when we take out of
13 the Soviet Union what is necessary to make Germany
14 blockade proof, we must be perfectly clear that this will
15 mean the mass starvation of umpteen million Russians. So
16 it is a document that speaks to what was clear to
17 everybody involved in the planning process, that this war
18 of destruction was going to mean a vast loss of life.
19 Given what had happened in Poland, I would argue, everyone
20 understood that, in a vast loss of life, Jewish life was
21 even cheaper than other life. That is what I would call
22 the beginning of this first phase of the decision making
23 process. It sets up a genocidal atmosphere, it does not
24 yet set up a systematic plan for total liquidation.
25 MR IRVING: Can I leap forward —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am going to highlight that.
. P-39
1 I am also going to suggest — the questions have been fast
2 and furious this morning. That is not a criticism.
3 I suspect you would quite welcome a break and I am sure
4 the transcriber would. It has been actually quite
5 intensive this morning.
6 MR IRVING: Can I have one short question? On that point we
7 shall round it off and let us say that this kind genocidal
8 order, is it not almost identical to the Morgantower
9 decision of September 1944, where the Americans said, let
10 us do this to the Germans, we do not care how many starve?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would have to look at that document before I could say
12 whether it was similar or not. What we do know of course
13 is that that document never was implemented.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was signed by both Roosevelt and Churchill, was it
15 not?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would have to see such a document.
17 MR IRVING: Thank you.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think five minutes is enough just to have a
19 breathing space.
20 (Short Adjournment).
Section 40.21 to 62.3
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can we just identify the Kommissar
22 document you refer to? I am not sure I know where that
23 is.
24 MR IRVING: The Kommissar order is in May 1941, I believe,
25 about May 7th or May 5th. These March 1941 documents,
26 I believe I am right in saying, are the kind of working
. P-40
1 level papers, are they not? I do not know exactly what is
2 before the witness. I do not have copies of these
3 documents.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I only mention it and perhaps we can locate
5 it in due course.
6 MR IRVING: The Kommissar order is important because it was
7 dictated by Hitler to General Jodl, I think, so it very
8 clearly represents Hitler’s thoughts. That would be
9 useful if I do obtain a copy and bring it into court
10 tomorrow.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we can at some stage, yes.
12 MR IRVING: May I ask what this particular document was that
13 you were quoting from?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The State secretary’s meeting.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, the actual one with the references to the
16 Judao-Bolshevik intelligentsia?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is footnote 137 from page 55 from the opinion by
18 Peter Longerich.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: And there are two more documents that Mr Rampton wished
20 you to consider, I believe?
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes. They are just summarized on pages 55 and
22 56. There in fact may be four, paragraphs 15.1, 15.2, two
23 documents, and 15.3 on page 56, all in March of 1941.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you very much. Professor
25 Browning, looking at those further documents, they do not,
26 as it were, perhaps add anything, but they maybe confirm
. P-41
1 what you have already said in relation to the 3rd March
2 document. Is that fair?.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. What I think they confirm is that Hitler does not see
4 this, and does not want his generals and others to see it,
5 as a conventional war, but that it has a very strong
6 ideological dimension to it, and that the enemy to be
7 destroyed is not just the Soviet army and its power to
8 resist, but what he considers to be Judao-Bolshevism,
9 communism, he uses different phrases.
10 MR IRVING: Would it be right to say that at this time Hitler
11 had knowledge of the manner in which the Soviet Union
12 fought its wars, both its colonial wars as in Spain, for
13 example, and also in the Finnish winter war of 1939 to
14 1940?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: What picture the German intelligence portrayed of the
16 Soviet Union in all of this, is an area that others have
17 studied, it is not an area that I think I could speak with
18 authority.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would he be familiar with the activities of the Russian
20 Kommissars within the Red Army hierarchy?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is very likely he would have been given even a more
22 lurid description than maybe would have been historically
23 accepted but that is just speculation on my part. As
24 I say, I cannot think of any documents at the moment that
25 I could speak from with authority.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Soviet Commissart system was a political agitator, am
. P-42
1 I correct, within each Army unit to make sure that they
2 pointed their guns in the right direction, roughly?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It was to establish, in a sense, a dual control of
4 military units, someone who would be there with military
5 expertise and someone with political, what they called
6 reliability.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did these Commissarts have an NKBD rank?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That I do not know.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you estimate for the court approximately what
10 percentage of these Commissarts were, in fact, Jewish?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have absolutely no idea.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: No idea. Very well. But if a substantial percentage were
13 either Jewish or were perceived by the Nazis to be Jewish,
14 would that justify the kind of language that Hitler used
15 in these military plannings for the coming Russian
16 campaign?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not see that Jews who were part of the NKBD, in a
18 sense, often were totally secular Jews separate from the
19 Jewish religious communities in these towns, that they had
20 given up, in a sense, their Jewish identity. They were
21 often all part of the Jewish communities that were going
22 to face the onslaught of the genocide. So if you ask me
23 is there a justification, my answer would be absolutely
24 not.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware that, in fact, the Jewish community formed
26 the backbone of the Red Army and of the NKBD?
. P-43
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am certainly not aware of that and I doubt that that is
2 the case.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that 300 heroes of the Soviet
4 Union of General’s rank were Jewish?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know the number, but I do not know that it is
6 relevant.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Welt, I am just trying to establish the fact there may
8 have been a military reason for Hitler to have used this
9 kind of language in preparing his Generals for the very
10 ugly war that was to come.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If that were so, I just wonder, Professor
12 Browning, whether the word “intelligenzija” would have
13 been used? It is an odd word if one is talking in terms
14 of talking military combat, is it not? Is that right or
15 wrong?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I think for Hitler he equates Bolshevism and the
17 Communists with Jews, and in a sense he is talking about
18 — he sometimes used “leadership”, sometimes he uses
19 “intelligenzija” and in his mind these are intertwined.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: The point I was really putting to you is if one is talking
21 about military extermination, if that is a fair way of
22 putting it, one would expect to find a reference to not
23 “intelligenzija” but “senior military personnel” or
24 something of that kind?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I mean, and that I think is there as well, but the
26 fact that he adds these others would again reinforce the
. P-44
1 point I am making that there is a strictly ideological
2 racial dimension as well as a military dimension.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: More than a struggle of arms?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 MR IRVING: Is it not right, however, also to say that in
6 defeating the Soviet Union, he would not only have to
7 defeat the Red Army, he would also have to defeat the
8 Soviet hierarchy, the bureaucracy; he would have to
9 eradicate that as well in order to implement the German
10 colonial rule on those regions?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Have to eradicate what?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: The bureaucracy, the entire Bolshevik hierarchy?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That certainly was his goal, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the Nazis frequently used the phrase “Jewish
15 Bolshevik”; it had become a bit of a slogan, had it not?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It was more than a slogan. It was a reflection of their
17 mentality.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I think we have taken that question as far as we
19 can go, unless your Lordship has further questions on
20 those particular documents?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, not at all.
22 MR RAMPTON: May I just add this? It may save time later on.
23 Your Lordship was asking about the guidelines —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR RAMPTON: — for Barbarossa, conduct of troops. The date
26 is 19th May 1941 and the relevant part is summarized in
. P-45
1 and translated on page 5 of part 2 of Longerich.
2 MR IRVING: Yes. This is not a Commissart order, but it is
3 very much a parallel document.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. That is very helpful.
5 MR IRVING: It effectively says that ordinary court procedures
6 will not apply and this kind of thing.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much, Mr Rampton. I was not
8 aware of that at all.
9 MR IRVING (To the witness): Are you familiar with those
10 guidelines of May 19th 1941? Can you answer questions
11 about it, roughly, were they specifically anti-Jewish in
12 nature?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There are, I would say, three key orders, one is the
14 Commissart order, one is the order concerning military
15 jurisdiction and then there is the troop, guidelines for
16 the troops, in which “Jews”, simply the term “Jews”, is
17 put in the same line with saboteurs, guerrillas, so that,
18 in effect, Jews are created as a class that can be equated
19 on the basis of who they are with other targets who are
20 defined by what they do. This, of course, is the essence
21 of a racial genocide.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the origins of these three documents
23 you have mentioned?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you mention them in your own report
25 actually, do you not?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am not sure if I mention the three documents.
. P-46
1 MR IRVING: I have not come across them in this witness report.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Paragraph 4.2.1, I thought it was.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I may have mentioned them briefly.
4 MR IRVING: I would have remembered them if — I think they
5 must be in the Longerich report, my Lord.
6 MR RAMPTON: It is in Longerich.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is certainly there, but this is another
8 guideline, is it not, at 4.21?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: 4.2.1, the Heydrich order of July 2rd, which we discussed
10 yesterday, is his summary to the higher SS and police
11 leaders of his oral instructions to the Einsatzgruppen
12 leaders on June 17th, five days before the invasion. This
13 is when he includes among those to be shot will be Jews in
14 state and party positions.
15 MR IRVING: This is the document your Lordship wanted
16 translated yesterday.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: These are guidelines at that stage?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. This is the guidelines of early July — in fact, the
19 guidelines of late June, prior to the invasion, because he
20 is summarising what was already given to the
21 Einsatzgruppen on the eve of the invasion.
22 MR IRVING: This is Heydrich, of course, who is two or three
23 rungs down the hierarchy, is he not?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Very close to Himmler.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. The question, witness, which I asked you just before
26 that little discursive, are you familiar with the military
. P-47
1 planning documents or working papers that led to these
2 three documents we were just talking about, the
3 guidelines, not these ones, but the May 19th guidelines?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have, I think, briefly seen in the Hans Adolf Jacobsen
5 study his account of the emergence of the Commissart order
6 and the Krasvnik(?) article on the emergence of the
7 military jurisdiction order. I have not worked on those
8 in the archives, but I have seen other historians’ studies
9 of those two particular cases.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the private diary of General Franz
11 Halder, the Chief of the German Army General Staff?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I have read parts of that.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that in that private diary, which was
14 written by him in shorthand (so it was of a very
15 confidential nature) it emerges that the German Army were
16 the source of the inspiration for those documents, in
17 other words, it did not come from Hitler down to the Army;
18 it went from the German Army effectively up to Hitler or
19 up to the German High Command, they wanted —-
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I cannot say that that was my impression from Halder, but
21 I would have to disagree in the sense that we have
22 Hitler/Jodl conversation in early March, in which Jodl
23 then comes back to the Generals and says, “Hitler wants us
24 to do something in terms of the” —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Commissarts?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — “Commissarts” and the negotiations over the shaping of
. P-48
1 the military jurisdiction order comes I think from a
2 similar instigation from above, that the Army is not to be
3 involved in disciplining the behaviour of troops against
4 the civilian population which previously would have been
5 primed under martial law.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you identify Jodl to the court, please?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Jodl is, if I get it right, the Chief of Staff of the High
8 Command.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he Chief of the Operations Staff at the German High
10 Command.
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: High Command, not the Army, the Arm Forces High Command,
12 the global one.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: And if Hitler, as Supreme Commander, was having this
14 discussion with the Chief of Staff of the German High
15 Command, then it must have been a discussion of a military
16 nature rather than ideological nature?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not if he wants the Army to take part in and not to be a
18 problem concerning this war of destruction. If the
19 military is to take part in a wider kind of war, not to
20 conceive of this war is a war like they fought against the
21 French, and that they are to remove themselves from or to
22 give to their own officers a new understanding that
23 certain kinds of behaviour, the troops will no longer be
24 subject to the jurisdiction of military court martial and
25 will not be criminalized. Now, this has to go to the
26 Army. But that certainly cannot be said to be —-
. P-49
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But this is the military discipline?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, but it is an issue of military discipline that is
3 completely related to the notion of this wider war of
4 destruction. It is not compartmentalized to military
5 operations but to the ideological war.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not likely, in fact, that Hitler would have these
7 discussions with the German High Command on the military
8 side of the problem and he would have similar discussions
9 with Himmler on the ideological side of the problem, and
10 these documents only refer, therefore, to the military
11 side of the problem.
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I disagree totally. That certainly is the postwar plea of
13 the German Generals of self-exculpation, but I think the
14 documents we see is that he makes very clear to the
15 Generals that this a multi-dimensional war, and that he
16 does not compartmentalize. He wants the Army to revise
17 its multiple court martial code. He wants the Army to
18 take part in the finding of the Commissarts and either
19 shooting them or turning them over to the SS, that he does
20 not compartmentalize this war.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: We so far have not mentioned one very important conference
22 that took place around this time after Barbarossa, which
23 is the conference of July 16th 1941. You are familiar
24 with this?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a document, can we go — I am
26 quite keen to pick up these points and not deal with
. P-50
1 them —-
2 MR IRVING: It certainly be referenced by Longerich. It is not
3 referenced by this witness in his report, but it is one
4 with which he is quite familiar, my Lord.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does not make it any easier, but if we can
6 identify and locate these documents.
7 MR IRVING: I was going to ask one question on this conference
8 really which is — are you familiar with the conference to
9 which I am referring?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is for my benefit rather than yours or
11 Professor Browning’s.
12 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the conference to which I am
13 referring?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is July 16th conference?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: July 16th. Hitler, Rosenberg, Martin Bormann wrote a
16 memorandum on it?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Lammers, I believe, was present.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Lammers was present, Himmler was present?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, Himmler is not present. Himmler met with Hitler on
20 15th and left for Lublin.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am going to ask you to pause. I
22 think I really must have the document, if only a reference
23 to it.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is a Nuremberg document. I think it is L…
25 MR RAMPTON: I can help. Page 57. Longerich 1, paragraph
26 15.7.
. P-51
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to interrupt you, Mr Irving, but
2 I have to try to digest all this and it is easier.
3 MR IRVING: Problem is, my Lord, that both the witness and
4 I have all this in our heads.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but it is quite important that you get
6 it into my head too.
7 MR IRVING: It is not an easy task.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to hear you say that.
9 MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship wants to see the German?
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, the reason I said this is because it has
11 taken me 35 years to get it into my head, the whole
12 history
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
14 MR RAMPTON: It has only taken me nine months! It is 4.2, if
15 your Lordship would like to see another splodgy German
16 document.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It may be that now you have given me the
18 reference here, I can follow it up. Is it paragraph 15?
19 MR RAMPTON: Paragraph 15.7.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then it is in the transcript at least so
21 I can go back to it. Yes, Mr Irving, follow that up if
22 you want to.
23 MR IRVING: All that I want to say is, I mean, I have no idea
24 where this question and answer is now going to lead. It
25 may harm, it may help me. This was a very important, top
26 level conference deciding areas of responsibility in the
. P-52
1 Eastern territories; is that right?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Immediately after that conference, the next, they issued
3 the Fuhrer decrees delineating the responsibilities of
4 Himmler and Rosenberg, the SS and the civil administration
5 for the occupied territories, Soviet territories.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: And this, effectively, gave Himmler absolutely police
7 control over all these regions, is that correct, the
8 executive control?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It put the SS in a very dominant position.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the rear areas?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Actually, I think it gave him powers — at least
12 Einsatzgruppen already had powers to operate all the way
13 up to the front, and this established in a sense that that
14 would become permanent as the SS positions are changed
15 from mobile units to a permanent police structure on
16 occupied territory.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think that, Professor, you once mentioned that the
18 Jewish problem was mentioned in this conference, but that
19 is not correct, is it?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not think he does mention that. He does talk about
21 “shooting anyone who looks askance at us and isn’t it
22 good that Stalin has called for a guerilla war because it
23 gives us the pretext”, I believe is the word, “to shoot
24 anyone that we want?”. I do not believe that I have said
25 that —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is a very interesting phrase. What was the phrase he
. P-53
1 used? “It gives us the pretext to shoot”—-
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “To shoot anyone who so much as looks askance at us” I
3 believe is the …
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Schief schaut”
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The German is there on page 57 if you want to
6 look at the footnote.
7 MR IRVING: Effectively, “Anybody who stands in our way or
8 looks like he might stand in our way”?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, it does not even say “stand in our way”, “looks
10 askance at us”, I believe, is a much wider shooting
11 licence than “stands in our way”.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What does “nur schief schaut” mean?
13 MR IRVING: “Looks askance”, literally.
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Gives us a twisted look” or “looks askance at us”.
15 MR IRVING: Anybody whose face does not fit would be another
16 way of saying it? It is a pretty broad kind of
17 directive.
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is an open shooting licence.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but there is no reference to the Jewish problem at
20 all?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not a specific reference, no.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Just that Himmler has now given, effectively, carte
23 blanche?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will deal with that, I think, in more detail, my Lord,
26 when we come to Longerich?
. P-54
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You were still asking me my view of the decision-making
2 process. Do you wish me to continue?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
4 MR IRVING: If you have had after thoughts, yes. My view (and
5 I would wish you to correct it) is that the German Army
6 provided the impetus for these orders, and that this is
7 evidenced in the papers of the German High Command where
8 the position papers are, effectively, written by German
9 Army officers and also from the diary of General Franz
10 Halder. In other words, that the initiative did not come
11 from Hitler?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would disagree. I would say that the open invitation
13 for these proposals comes from Hitler and, in terms of
14 guidelines and policies, it is the response of the SS and
15 the military and the economic planners to turn into
16 reality this vague vision of a war of destruction in an
17 ideological crusade against the Soviet Union.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you say you disagree, is this just a gut feeling or
19 do you have any specific document you want to reference?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think we have both the Jodl/Hitler meeting and Jodl’s
21 response, and we have the meeting of March 30th with the
22 Generals in which he again makes clear to them his desire
23 to have a war of destruction, a war that is not fought by
24 the ground rules of a conventional war.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: The latter meeting is, of course, recorded in detail in
26 the diary of General Halder, is it not?
. P-55
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again it would help me, rather than just
3 having this —-
4 MR IRVING: Interesting discussion.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — debate between the two of you if —-
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That would be 15.3, page 56, of Longerich, again where he
7 emphasises the dual nature of the war, the struggle of two
8 world views against one another.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The Jodl/Hitler meeting, can you pinpoint
10 that for me?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: March 3rd.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, in terms of where I find a
13 reference.
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: 15.1.
15 MR RAMPTON: Page 55, my Lord.
16 MR IRVING: Would it be correct to describe these features as
17 pep talks by Hitler to his Generals to fire them up for
18 the coming campaign?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say they are more than pep talks. I would
20 say they are a setting of expectations and, as you know, I
21 have tried to develop this model of Hitler eliciting,
22 setting a level of what he expects and that that brings
23 responses and proposals that are brought to him. I think
24 this is a very good example of that dialectic.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But he does not say, “We are going to invade the
26 Soviet Union so that we can destroy Jews”?
. P-56
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Nothing as crude as that?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: What he is saying is, “We are confronted by a Judaio
5 Bolshevik enemy, and that we will destroy the Judaio
6 Bolshevik intelligenzija and the leadership class and
7 whatever, and that is what he is effectively in all these
8 documents he is saying, he is just mapping out who the
9 enemy is going to be?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is not yet an explicit instruction to systematically
11 kill all the Jewish population on Soviet territory.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Even in this important meeting of July 16th 1941, there is
13 still no such instruction at any rate recorded in the
14 memorandum by Martin Bormann?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, in this case we have no smoking pistol document — I
16 have declared that often — that we are working from
17 inference, and the inference we draw is very similar to
18 what you did about the November 30th meeting. Himmler and
19 Hitler meet, Himmler gives an order. As you put it, it
20 would be perverse not to assume a connection between them.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Except that we now unfortunately —-
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Find out the meeting came after rather than before.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: The meeting came after the telephone call, yes.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In this case the meeting, I say, comes before. We know
25 that Himmler meets with Hitler and then leaves for Lublin
26 on 15th, that the others meet with Hitler on 16th, and
. P-57
1 what follows thereafter is very quickly that Himmler
2 vastly increases the number of people behind the Front in
3 terms of putting the police battalions under the command
4 of the higher SS and police leaders, of throwing in two of
5 his brigades of his own and authorizing the raising of the
6 auxiliaries and that within a very short period after that
7 we begin to be able to document the systematic killing.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And then it is an inference, but I think it is one that
10 circumstantial evidence supports, that there is a
11 connection in that period of July 16th to —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is not the likely inference that Himmler had received from
13 Hitler the carte blanche that he had sought and Himmler
14 strutted into occupied Russia and told his often teenage
15 thugs who were wearing SS uniform, “I have carte blanche.
16 Go ahead and deal with these people and pacify the rear
17 areas”?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In fact, that is not what we know of how Himmler does it.
19 Himmler says, “This terrible burden has been laid on my
20 shoulders by the Fuhrer. This is the hardest thing I have
21 ever been given to do.” He does not strut; he shares
22 crocodile tears —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: 1944 he says that, does he not?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, but in ’43 too. We are talking about — what we know
25 about Himmler and how he speaks to others about this task,
26 he does strut in and say, “Boy, aren’t I lucky? I can now
. P-58
1 kill them”. He comes and says: “The Fuhrer has laid this
2 burden on my shoulders. This is a terrible thing we have
3 to do, but we must fight this battle now so other
4 generations do not”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: He says this just once, am I right?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We have the Posen speech where I think he says it on —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: October 1943.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — both occasions. But this is, I think, an accurate
9 reflection of how Himmler speaks to others about this. So
10 your portrayal that Himmler is the eager go-getter is not
11 supported by how he talks when we can document it to the
12 other SS leaders about his role and responsibility.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: The documents are very thin, though, are they not? We do
14 not have a whole sheaf of documents to draw these
15 inferences from; there are a lot of gaps?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There are gaps, but this is a very strong document. Here
17 he is talking to all of the SS leaders and this is the
18 stance that he takes to them.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, Mr Irving, just so that you know —
20 you may know this from the transcript — draws the
21 distinction between after October 1943 and before.
22 I think he accepts that Hitler knew and, indeed,
23 authorized, I think.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: But this is a different question, my Lord. The question
25 here is how did Himmler act towards his SS Generals?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. As I understand the way you put it,
. P-59
1 what he was saying in October 1943 and later is consistent
2 with the interpretation you put on the slightly thin
3 documentation of 41/42. Is that a fair summary?
4 MR RAMPTON: It may be relevant to point out —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I have an answer first? Is that right?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I am saying that in so far as we want to know how
7 Himmler talked to others about this, it was not that
8 “Hitler has given me carte blanche”, it is that “Hitler
9 has laid a duty on me, it is a hard duty”. It is not one
10 that he portrayed himself as eager to do, but one that he
11 felt obligated to do. That was an answer to the scenario
12 that Mr Irving gave of an eager Himmler running with the
13 ball with very little authorization from Hitler.
14 MR IRVING: Is it not also right to say that on one occasion
15 Himmler specifically says to I think Berger, “The Fuhrer
16 has ordered these territories to be made free of Jews.
17 This serious grave order that Fuhrer has placed on my
18 shoulders nobody can take off me”?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That comes end of July of 1942.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: 1942, which is closer to the time we are talking about?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that what you are going raise?
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes, because the date came out wrong first of all.
23 It is 28th July 1942.
24 MR IRVING: Yes, and that when Himmler is, therefore, talking
25 about the order, he is talking about the blanket order to
26 get the Jews out of here, and the way that Himmler then
. P-60
1 interpreted that is where you and I begin to differ.
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We differ a great deal on how one interprets that, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But, Professor, I remind you that yesterday I showed you
4 one coloured page photocopy of an intercept, did I not,
5 and I suggested to you that we have hundreds of thousands
6 of such intercepts in the British archives now, and
7 I suggested that neither my expert, Dr John Fox or Richard
8 Brightman or any of the experts who have waded through
9 these hundreds of thousands of intercepts of top level and
10 medium level and low level messages, is this correct, has
11 found even one inference, one document, which supports the
12 inference that Hitler was behind this?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have not read through them, but no one has said that
14 these intercepts, the place that we have found such a
15 thing, and we have not found the smoking pistol document.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the more documents that do come our way, whether from
17 Minsk or Riga or Moscow or from Bletchley Park or
18 wherever, and yet we still fail to find even a luke warm
19 gun, let alone a smoking gun, indicates that possibly
20 I may be right and my opponents may be incorrect, or, at
21 any rate, I am justified in suspecting, would you agree?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, because I do not think one would ever expect to find
23 such a thing in a radio intercept. These are, from what I
24 have seen of them, very specific things. They are not
25 general points at which, for instance, Hitler has ordered
26 Barbarossa or decisions of that level.
. P-61
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: You refer — I am now coming on to Adolf Eichmann, unless,
2 my Lord, you wish to ask further questions?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. Take your own course.
Section 62.4 to 81.4
4 MR IRVING: I now come on to Adolf Eichmann. What reliance can
5 be placed on his writings, do you think?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have used him as a very important source because we
7 have —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, understandably.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — a collection of documents from him that stretch over a
10 period of time and were given under different conditions
11 before his arrest in Argentina under arrest by the
12 Israelis, the private notes that are part of his
13 attorney’s, Nachlass that is in Koblenz, that subject to
14 the confidentiality that were only between him and his
15 attorney and were not in the possession of the Israelis.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is a lot of paper then?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There is a lot of — and now, apparently, we have learned
18 there is about 1300 or more pages of notes that we have
19 never seen yet.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you were in Koblenz, did you have the opportunity to
21 look at the 600 pages that I gave to the German government
22 which I found in Argentina?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I have not seen those. I do not know what the
24 overlap is between those and —-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are similar to Sasson material. Would you
26 characterize for the court what kind of witness Adolf
. P-62
1 Eichmann was in all these stages? What kind of person —
2 was he robust, was he servile, just characterize him.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say that there are elements of both, that he is
4 very robust and contentious in protesting against certain
5 aspects of what he is being accused. He has no problem
6 saying Hoess is lying about him, that he did not be
7 involved there; that he engages in a vigorous denial of
8 certain parts of the documentation the Israeli
9 interrogators at court show him.
10 On the other hand, he comes and says things that
11 there is no documentation for, admits to things that they
12 would never have known otherwise, except that they are
13 repeated consistently in all of his stories, and it is a
14 story he sticks to from beginning to end for which we
15 would not know other than that he consistently told that
16 story.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. There are plausible elements and there are
18 implausible elements, is that right?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In any eyewitness testimony, there will be elements that
20 are more plausible than others. I think a fair amount of
21 the Eichmann testimony is plausible. Again, it would
22 depend on when he is reacting to particular documents they
23 present, sometimes he takes a very defensive position, and
24 in other areas he is very self-incriminating and very
25 forthcoming.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Hannah Arred in her book “The Banality of Evil” I think
. P-63
1 refers to him as being almost complacent and compliant and
2 anxious to please?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not agree with her characterization there.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not agree with that?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. He is quite vigorous in defending himself in many
6 areas.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I had the dubious fortune some time ago of coming into
8 possession of his personal copy of Rudolf Hoess’ memoirs.
9 I will pass to you, if I may?
10 MR RAMPTON: May I enquire whether this is, I do not know, this
11 is an entirely open enquiry, whether this is part of
12 Mr Irving’s discovery?
13 MR IRVING: It was in my box called “Judenfrage” but if you
14 wish —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the original you are handing up, is
16 it?
17 MR IRVING: This is a photocopy of it which I have retained, my
18 Lord.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: A photocopy of the version you discovered or
20 were given?
21 MR IRVING: That is correct, my Lord. It is only interesting
22 in one very minor respect.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is what I thought.
24 MR IRVING: Pages 13 and 14 of your Lordship’s little bundle
25 which I gave your Lordship this morning. This is, of
26 course, the published edition of Hoess’ memoirs which you
. P-64
1 are probably familiar with?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. The handwriting on that has been identified as the
4 handwriting of Adolf Eichmann, as is evident also from the
5 internal evidence of the comments that he makes. The
6 original is in the possession of a friend of mine in
7 Germany. He bought it in a store.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: OK. I am, of course, not an handwriting expert.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, you are happy with this, are you?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And so I cannot confirm or deny.
11 MR RAMPTON: I have never seen it before. I do not have a
12 translation.
13 MR IRVING: I just wish to refer to page 14.
14 MR RAMPTON: But what is puzzling me about this is if this is a
15 selective use of the document, it may be that there are a
16 considerable number of other comments by Eichmann of which
17 Mr Irving is aware on these memoirs which we ought to see
18 because they are relevant.
19 MR IRVING: I would be very happy to make available a copy to
20 the Defence and I will leave this copy with them overnight
21 and they can make a copy if they wish.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is fair. I think Mr Rampton is happy
23 you should make the point that you make on these two
24 pages.
25 MR IRVING: I just wish to put this to the witness. I
26 just draw your attention, witness, to page handwritten 14
. P-65
1 which is page 122 of the book.
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: 122.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you give us the context, Mr Irving?
4 MR IRVING: The killing of the Russian prisoners in 1941
5 I think he is talking about. This is by Rudolf Hoess.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And he had been ordered to carry it out, is
7 that right? He, Hoess, had —-
8 MR IRVING: “It was ordered that I had to carry it out”, writes
9 Hoess, “but I have to say openly that this gassing had a
10 calming effect on me, as in the near future we had to
11 begin with the mass destruction of the Jews too, and
12 neither Eichmann nor I was clear about how we were to deal
13 with these masses”, is that roughly the sense of that
14 final sentence on page —-
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Roughly, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And underneath it in his appalling handwriting Adolf
17 Eichmann has written — can you read the words: “Ich war
18 gar nichts zustandig”?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: What does that mean?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I was not at all competent, this was not at all my
22 jurisdiction.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: And in the margin next to the footnote he was written just
24 one word “falsch”?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, Eichmann, who ought to have known, if
. P-66
1 I can use one of the phrases Mr Rampton likes, disputes
2 the version given by Rudolf Hoess. In private, he does
3 not know that David Irving is going to come into
4 possession of that years later, so can we assume therefore
5 that there is some conflict in the evidence that Hoess
6 writes?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. This is the major case where Eichmann contests
8 vigorously the evidence the Israelis bring to him and
9 present this before him. For instance, in the handwritten
10 notes to his attorney, he says: “Hoess is the arch liar.
11 I have nothing to do with Hoess, with his death camp or
12 his gas chambers”. That is in Eichmann’s handwriting and
13 Serwateus’ notes. He disputes having anything to do with
14 Hoess’s gas chambers. He does not deny the existence of
15 gas chambers but confirms Auschwitz, but he says that was
16 not my thing.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The falsehood is his own involvement,
18 Eichmann’s own involvement.
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. He is saying that Hoess is laying responsibility on
20 him for playing a part in the selection of the gas chamber
21 site, and the selection of the type of gas at Auschwitz,
22 and in this regard I think Eichmann is correct and that
23 Hoess is utterly wrong.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the means, not the end, in other
25 words.
26 MR IRVING: You use the interesting phrase, of course, “Hoess’s
. P-67
1 gas chambers” and that Eichmann —-
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is Eichmann’s phrase; what I quoted to you from
3 memory is what Eichmann wrote to Serwateus in the
4 Serwateus papers.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Serwateus was his lawyer in Israel?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any hint there, therefore, that people like Hoess
8 and the other concentration camp commandants were loose
9 canons, and that they were doing things their own way
10 without — ?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not think that there is a hint of that at all. The
12 hint is that Hoess is trying to shift blame elsewhere and
13 that Hoess has a very bad memory.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or a conveniently bad memory perhaps?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, Hoess has many self-incriminating things. Where
16 Hoess’s testimony is particularly unreliable is anything
17 related to dating.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Dating and numbers?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Numbers as well, and to, in this issue certainly,
20 Eichmann’s role in all of this.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not correct that Hoess, in fact, fluctuates between
22 2.8 million and 1 million, and then back to 2.7 million,
23 as late as March 1947? Before his execution, he is back
24 to 2.7 million again killed in Auschwitz.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not remember the exact figures but I believe he does
26 give fluctuating figures.
. P-68
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can any kind of credence be attached to figures like that
2 when they vary by such enormous amounts?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This would be a case where you would look at the testimony
4 and say that, when Hoess is talking about dates and
5 figures, one would not use it as reliable. When he is
6 talking about experiences that he recalls with great
7 vividness, one would say this is more likely to be
8 something that one at least must look at, can we
9 corroborate this? It would not mean that everything Hoess
10 says is wrong, but it would mean that, in the areas of
11 dating and where he is trying to share responsibilities
12 with others, one must use it with great caution.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not know this, Professor Browning. We
14 looked at the 2.8 million figure in some detail and it is
15 quite clear that that is actually not his own account but
16 it is what he has been told by others.
17 MR IRVING: It did actually creep up again, the 2.8 just before
18 he was hanged. He appeared to be readily flexible and
19 this is what I am getting at; I suppose “suggestible” is
20 what I am aiming at, the word that these witnesses — you
21 yourself have said that you had to pick and choose what
22 they wrote, effectively?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You had to make judgments about it. “Pick and choose”
24 sounds as if one was picking and choosing for my
25 convenience rather than my ability to explain in terms of
26 —-
. P-69
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come to that in a minute, Professor Browning, when
2 we come to Gerstein.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We will get there but, in terms of ability to bring
4 reasons as to why you think parts of it are more reliable
5 than others.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Is there any reason why, when somebody is in
7 captivity on trial for one’s life, one might write things,
8 either deliberately or inadvertently, that were not true,
9 do you think?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is a possibility but, again, one looks at it and
11 judges. If one is already sentenced to be hanged and
12 there is, in a sense, nothing further they can threaten
13 you with, then wonders one why would one go through the
14 business of writing out a long handwritten document.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you not read large numbers of interrogations and
16 pretrial interrogations yourself, where you have marvelled
17 at some of the statements that these people have made?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Can you give me a context?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: For example, self-incriminating statements which, as you
20 said in the case of Eichmann, nobody knew what he was
21 admitting there. Have you never wondered why people would
22 make these statements?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think in cases I have used he is telling the truth.
24 I think he is relating—-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Obviously. Otherwise you would not have used them. But
26 does it not occur to you that sometimes people make
. P-70
1 astonishing statements, self-incriminatory statements?
2 The most extraordinary examples are, for example, in the
3 Soviet show trials. It is a psychological problem. I am
4 just trying to assail the credibility of eyewitness
5 evidence basically. That is what I am getting at.
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Certainly in Soviet trials where part of the protocol, in
7 a sense, is to have a signed statement at the end.
8 I would not put great weight on something collected in
9 1937 and 38 in which a witness said, “Oh yes, I was part
10 of the Trotskyite conspiracy”, or whatever.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or American agent. Do not the same kind of duresses
12 prevail when you are in a cell in a bleak prison in
13 Nuremberg and the Americans come to you and say, well, we
14 can guarantee you will not get the death sentence if you
15 sign this affidavit which we have taken from your
16 testimony?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would not accept that Americans came and said, “Sign
18 this or we are going to kill you”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the case of Dr Friedrich Gauss, who
20 was Ribbentrop’s legal adviser?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I am not.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with Dr Robert Kempton, who said, “If you
23 do not sign this we are going to turn you over to the
24 Russians”?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I am not familiar with that.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Obviously I cannot develop that particular line. If you
. P-71
1 are not familiar with that case I cannot develop it. In
2 later trials in Germany we have another problem, do we
3 not, and this is the passage of years? 20 or 30 years
4 pass. You have referenced in your own very interesting
5 expert report a number of German war crimes trials
6 conducted quite properly by the German government in the
7 1960s and even in the 1970s?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: How reliable is that kind of evidence being given by
10 Germans who have been taken out of their little bedsits
11 somewhere in Ingoldstadt or somewhere and they find
12 themselves on trial, they are going to be locked away for
13 20 years, and they are being asked to remember something
14 that happened 30 years before?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that much of it is very reliable. They did not
16 have to give testimony. They had counsel, they did not
17 have to, under German law, give self-incriminating
18 testimony. They could remained silent.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: how many did remain silent?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Virtually none. A few. The document that we see in the
21 Chelmno gas vans, the villager who signs that refused to
22 talk and nothing happened to him. He is one who did not
23 get brought to trial.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the man who signed the famous memorandum about the
25 97,000 killed, is this the document you are referring to?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is the document and this is the case where someone
. P-72
1 refusing to talk —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Nothing happened to him?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They said, we have not enough evidence to contest that he
4 contributed in a causal way to the killing, even if he
5 knew of it, and therefore we have no grounds. In fact,
6 there was a case where the one who did not talk did much
7 better than his colleagues in the motor pool who did talk,
8 incriminated themselves and were tried.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I do not want to interrupt you
10 unduly. I am not finding this terribly helpful because we
11 all know that eyewitness evidence has to be looked at very
12 carefully. Everyone agrees on that.
13 MR IRVING: If you think I have laboured the point too strongly
14 then I shall not bring it up again.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not really that, but illusive
16 references which are not really followed up do not help me
17 very much, besides which it appears to me we are straying
18 perhaps a little bit from what I think is the intended
19 structure of your cross-examination, which really goes to
20 the case for saying that Hitler knew about the
21 extermination. I am not keeping you to any tramlines.
22 MR IRVING: I was trying to undermine the quality of his
23 sources by referring to the fact that a very large number
24 of the sources which he refers to in his report in the
25 footnotes appear to be —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not in relation to Hitler’s knowledge. I do
. P-73
1 not think eyewitnesses come into that at all, do they?
2 MR IRVING: It is certainly in connection with the numbers and
3 I was just about to get on to the 97,000 figure again,
4 when your Lordship intervened.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Develop that, but can you help me by
6 giving me a little bit more information about which figure
7 you are talking about, given by whom, in what context?
8 MR IRVING: This is one of two letters. One is the Greiser
9 letter of May 1st 1942, Greiser to Himmler. Are you
10 familiar with that document?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
12 MR RAMPTON: Page 38 of Professor Browning’s report, my Lord.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
14 MR IRVING: In that letter Greiser says that we shall have
15 within, I believe, two to three months killed 100,000
16 effectively. That is what he is saying, is he not?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Has he already started by then?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Chelmno has opened in early December 1941.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does he actually refer to Chelmno in that document?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He does not refer to Chelmno in that document.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: We do not know whether he is actually referring to the
23 document or actually to Chelmno, and whether even one of
24 those 100,000 has died at that time or not.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He does not say explicitly but Chelmno is the operating
26 death camp in the region to which he is referring, the
. P-74
1 Warthegau.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is a reasonable inference?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not assume too much. You have been, as
5 you say, for 34 years on this topic.
6 MR IRVING: Not on the Holocaust.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate that, but you know what I mean.
8 I have had rather less long. So can you just help me who
9 Greiser was?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Greiser is the head of—-
11 MR IRVING: The Gauleiter of the Warthegau.
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Gauleiter of the Warthegau. Lodz and Chelmno are located
13 in the Warthegau.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
15 MR IRVING: The second document is the one — you must help me
16 on this — with the 97,000 figure in it?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe it is June 6th 1942.
18 MR RAMPTON: June 5th?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: June 5th.
20 MR IRVING: 1942, correct.
21 MR RAMPTON: Perhaps in this case we should maybe get the
22 document.
23 MR IRVING: I agree. There are two rather odd features about
24 the document I want to draw your Lordship’s attention to.
25 MR RAMPTON: It is in the second volume.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hope it is in J or L.
. P-75
1 MR RAMPTON: I think it is in the main bundle now.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If Greiser’s letter is there too, then
3 I would quite like a reference to that at the same time.
4 MR IRVING: Do you have the actual document in front of you?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just a moment. Let us catch up..
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not.
7 MR RAMPTON: One starts at page 92 of the new Browning file
8 which is Greiser’s letter.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You tell me about a new Browning file. I
10 feel I am the last to know about it.
11 MR RAMPTON: Tab 7, I am sorry.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, meanwhile I can tell you what I am aiming
13 at here.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us pause a little, Mr Irving. You have
15 to be patient with us.
16 MR RAMPTON: Then the motor pool letter, the 97,000, is on the
17 following page, I hope, 93 to 97.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I may have misunderstood. Are we in
19 tab 7 of L1.
20 MR RAMPTON: Tab 7 of L1.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 97.
22 MR RAMPTON: Starting at page 92, that is Greiser to Himmler of
23 1st May in a printed form. We have not got a copy of the
24 original.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. And the other one, Mr Rampton?
26 MR RAMPTON: Then the very next page, 93, is the 97,000 letter
. P-76
1 of 5th June 1942.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
3 MR IRVING: I am just going to wave one little flag about the
4 document’s oddities. This is the document containing the
5 97,000 figure, correct?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you see at the top it says “Einzigste Ausfertigung” in
8 German?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever seen that designation on a document anywhere
11 else in your entire archival experience?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not recall seeing it.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. “Einzigste Ausfertigung” which means the “onlyest”
14 copy.
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, the motor pool sergeants were not terribly literate.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I take that point. Can you see that the document begins
17 with the sentence: Beispielsweise, for example? The very
18 first sentence in the document.
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, it says, “seit December”, yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I have not got that. Where are
21 you?
22 MR IRVING: In the very first sentence of the document, my
23 Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Seit December”.
25 MR IRVING: The one with 97,000 figure in it.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Since December.
. P-77
1 MR IRVING: No. The word I am looking at is “Beispielsweise”.
2 It is a letter beginning with the phrase, for example,
3 “Beispielsweise”, it is just lifted out of the middle of
4 nowhere. Have you ever received a letter from somebody
5 beginning with the word “Beispielsweise”,
6 Professor Browning?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or “for example”?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: But I think to have to realize Mr Schuss was not a college
10 graduate, that these are people who are working in the
11 motor pool in Berlin, and that the tone, as I see it, is
12 someone who is trying to emulate what he thinks is proper
13 bureaucratic German and he in fact is someone is not a
14 bureaucrat, he is a mechanic.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was not stupid because, as you say, he was the only one
16 who was not punished in this entire horrible affair.
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You have to remember that “Beispielweise” comes after the
18 subject, which is they are talking about technical
19 changes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I presume that this is a result of a conversation people
22 have had, there has been a meeting.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And someone has said, write it up.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: OK.
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We get a very —-
. P-78
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you do a rough calculation of how many people were
2 being killed per van per day?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause, Mr Irving. If I may say so, you
4 must just let me absorb the points you are making.
5 MR IRVING: I am just planting suspicion.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are casting doubt on this, partly because
7 it has “Einsigste Ausfertigung” on the top and
8 I understand that, but I am not sure I am really following
9 your point on “Beispielsweise”.
10 MR IRVING: It is an unusual turn of phrase to start a letter
11 with, my Lord.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is it unusual? He is picking three
13 trucks, is he not, to give an example of the sort of
14 numbers that are being processed if that is the right
15 word, in the special trucks.
16 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, but you would normally expect
17 that in the second paragraph of a letter. In the first
18 paragraph he says, well, we are going to have troubles
19 doing this, that and the other, troubles with the trucks,
20 the exhaust hoses are getting corroded and all the rest of
21 it, for example, but in fact his letter begins with the
22 word “for example”. This is the oddity about it. But I
23 can do no more than —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You rely on that as an indication that this
25 is not an authentic document?
26 MR IRVING: I am trying to plant a seed of suspicion in your
. P-79
1 Lordship’s mind, that is all.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are not succeeding at the moment because
3 I would have thought, if you are trying to create a
4 document that is going to deceive anybody, you would not
5 do what you say is something obviously inappropriate,
6 which is to refer to an example in the first paragraph.
7 MR IRVING: It would be improper for me to do anything else.
8 Mr Rampton will object if I do anything else because
9 I have already stated that I fully accept that this
10 document refers to the homicide of large numbers of human
11 beings in gas vans.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where are we going?
13 MR IRVING: We are going to look at the number, my Lord, the
14 97,000.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you accept this is an authentic document?
16 MR IRVING: For the purposes of this morning, yes.
17 MR RAMPTON: I do have to know sooner or later, and so does
18 your Lordship, whether Mr Irving accepts for the purposes
19 of this trial that this is an authentic document. If it
20 is a forgery, we need to know why he says it is a forgery.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You do not say it is a forgery?
22 MR IRVING: No.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we can forget about Beispielsweise, can
24 we not?
25 MR IRVING: But it also helps to address the court’s attention
26 to the fact whether this witness had competently
. P-80
1 questioned the integrity of the documents we are
2 confronted with.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a valid criticism of him if you do
4 not question it.
Section 81.5 to 97.22
5 MR IRVING: I personally would question it but not for the
6 purposes of this morning’s hearing. Shall we just proceed
7 to the number?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us do the numbers. 97,000 — what is
9 wrong with that?
10 MR IRVING: I am sorry about that detour. 97,000 people killed
11 in three vans in what space of time?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: From December to June, this would be six months, by my
13 calculation.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Six months?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are these regular German army diesel trucks, five ton
17 trucks or something?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They refer to two and then a third, and I think they had
19 — we do not know the capacity of two of them because
20 they were not either the Opal or the Saurer trucks. They
21 were apparently converted Renault. Then they brought in a
22 Saurer truck, which is the biggest model and could carry
23 I think 50 to 80 people. The Opal was 30 to 50. We do
24 not know the capacity of the actual two trucks that
25 were—-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: From the descriptions we have, it did not actually do it
. P-81
1 on the spot. They were loaded aboard, the victims, and
2 they were driven off into the country side for a couple of
3 hours and then they were gassed on the way?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. As best we can tell they loaded them, gassed them
5 there, or for a while ran the engines, and then drove them
6 off.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: So it was not a long way from Chelmno to the forest.
9 I think it is two kilometres or 3 kilometres.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have read 20 kilometres.
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is not correct at all. I have driven it myself. It
12 is not far, and one would have to do a considerable amount
13 of the time needed to kill the people, one would have to
14 remain in the courtyard unless you wanted to run the
15 engines for a prolonged period after you arrived in the
16 forest camp.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever calculated the quantities of gasoline or
18 petrol that would be needed for these kind of trips?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not knowing the fuel consumption of the various truck
20 models, no, I have not made a calculation.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it strike you as being a very economical way of
22 killing people?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think this camp was probably very inexpensive to run in
24 comparison to what they were taking in, property and
25 getting in labour from the Jews in Lodz. My guess is that
26 this was an infinitesimally small part of their budget.
. P-82
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: If they had just the three trucks and this length of
2 time to do it in, and they had the problem of persuading
3 the people to get into the truck, and loading them up,
4 driving off, waiting for the gas to have its effect, then
5 unloading them at the other end and cleaning up the mess
6 so that the next cargo did not have any suspicions, there
7 must have been quite a substantial turn around time?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The trucks made return trips each day. In fact, we know
9 with just one truck at the Semlin camp, it took about two
10 months, with just one trip a day and occasionally two, to
11 gas the 7,000 people there. So, with three trucks
12 operating on a shorter run, they did not have to drive all
13 the way through Belgrade to the far side, which is what
14 happened in Semlin. I did the calculations for Semlin.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have done the calculations?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. I have not done them for this.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the 97,000 not strike you as being wrong by a factor
18 of two or three?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Absolutely not. It does not strike me as wrong at all.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It depends strictly on what the capacity of the trucks
21 would have been, what the turn around time was, whether
22 they were really efficient, whether they worked 24 hours a
23 day and whether the trucks had any down time.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: From the witness reports the trucks made numerous trips
25 each day, the drivers traded off so that they in fact
26 operated continually during the day.
. P-83
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Around the clock 24 hours a day?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not 24 hours, through the day.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is pretty distasteful, but may I ask this
5 question? How many people were there in a gas van when
6 they were being gassed? How many people could be
7 accommodated?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We do not know for Chelmno because it is a different
9 truck. There is a Saurer truck, one Saurer truck was at
10 Chelmno. That is the one that exploded. Then they had
11 two converted Renault French military trucks that they
12 turned into gas vans, so we do not have a knowledge
13 there. The small truck that they produced, the Opal
14 Blitz, was the smallest. The Saurer could carry 50 to 80
15 people, the Opal Blitz was 30 to 50. So, even if the
16 Renault was smaller than the Opal, which probably as a
17 military truck it was larger, would be in between the two.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is the order of magnitude?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
20 MR IRVING: Were there more than three of these ominous trucks
21 of death going around the Eastern Front do you think? Did
22 they go from location to location?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Some of them were distributed to each of the
24 Einsatzgruppen so there were some operating in Riga, some
25 in Minsk and south, so that they were a few. We know, for
26 instance, that Minsk, I do not have the document, but
. P-84
1 I think they had 3 or 4 trucks and they asked for more.
2 So we know that they had small fleets of these trucks with
3 different Einsatzgruppen.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was this the principal means of killing at that time?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. It was a very minor part of the Einsatzgruppen. The
6 vast bulk of the killing in the East was by shooting. The
7 gas vans attached to the Einsatzgruppen were a very minor
8 part of their killing operations.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you draw any conclusions from the fact that they used
10 different methods of killing people, a lack of system?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think we can find a kind of chronological sequence.
12 They start with shooting. The next thing implemented is
13 the gas vans starting at Chelmno and Semlin. Then they
14 move to the fairly primitive gas chambers, which is the
15 gas chambers that Operation Reinhardt and the converted
16 peasant bunkers at Auschwitz. Then they move to the
17 design construction. Once they have experience one can go
18 back and say, how would you do this if you were creating
19 something modern? So I do not find anything haphazard and
20 confusing. I find it quite a logical sequence in which
21 they add new methods of killing at the same time as the
22 old methods continue.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you not agree that the lack of preparedness at the
24 time Barbarossa began on June 22nd 1941 is in itself an
25 indication that they did not go into Russia with the
26 intention of carrying out systematic liquidations on a
. P-85
1 large scale?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That has been my argument. We get evidence of
3 preparations at the death camps coming in the fall of 41,
4 which is when I have argued, partly because of that, that
5 one then concludes that they have now reached the point
6 where they want a systematic killing of the Jews of
7 Europe.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. My Lord, I wanted to take this witness briefly on to
9 the table talk document which your Lordship may remember,
10 October 25th 1941.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure I will when you tell me what it
12 is. Is that the Himmler Hitler meeting?
13 MR IRVING: It is the ugly rumours one, good thing that the
14 rumour goes ahead of us.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us dig it out.
16 MR IRVING: I put in my clip, my Lord, of documents I gave to
17 you.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is somewhere else perhaps we will go to
19 where it is already.
20 MR RAMPTON: It is in part 1 of Longerich.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was wondering about the actual document.
22 MR IRVING: We will find it most neatly on page 25 of the clip
23 I gave you, my Lord, in the actual original Martin Bormann
24 version.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The problem is that I do not have the document.
26 MR IRVING: It is the clip that I gave you this morning,
. P-86
1 Professor.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 25.
3 MR RAMPTON: Page 59 of Longerich 1, paragraph 16.4. It is
4 translated and the relevant part of the German is given at
5 the footnote 149.
6 MR IRVING: Professor, do you have the document in front of
7 you?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment, Mr Irving.
9 MR IRVING: Page 25.
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
12 MR IRVING: Professor, in your absence, before you arrived in
13 the United Kingdom, I was taking stick for having wrongly
14 translated two or three words in the second paragraph of
15 that document.
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: The translation which I relied upon was the Weidenfeld
18 edition of Hitler’s table talk.
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will read out most of the paragraph. They are talking
21 about the Jews. They are going to have to disappear from
22 Europe. The Weidenfeld translation continues: “That race
23 of criminals has on its conscience the 2 million dead of
24 the First World War — this is Adolf Hitler allegedly
25 speaking — and now already hundreds of thousands more.
26 Let nobody tell me that all the same we cannot park them
. P-87
1 in the marshy parts of Russia. Who is worrying about our
2 troops? It is not a bad idea by the way that public
3 rumour attributes to us a plan to exterminate the Jews.”
4 I will stop there. That is the translation of
5 the phrase “Es ist gut, wenn uns der Schrecken
6 vorangeht”.
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I would ask you how would you translate the phrase, “it is
9 good if wenn uns der Schrecken vorangeht”?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is good if the terror precedes us that we are
11 exterminating the Jews.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: The terror?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The Schrecken, the fear of the terror. I certainly would
14 not have translated it as “rumours”.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would not translate it as “public rumours”? So they
16 have it wrong and I was wrong, criminally wrong,
17 perversely wrong to have adopted the Weidenfeld—-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is for me, not for the witness.
19 MR IRVING: Professor, are you familiar with a historian by the
20 name of Philip Burrin?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Philip Burrin, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Is he a notable historian? He is not an extremist
23 in some way, is he? Is he a dependable historian? His
24 works are published?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He is an historian of accepted reputation.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with a book that this historian wrote
. P-88
1 called “Hitler and the Jews, the genesis of the
2 Holocaust”.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Please turn to page 17 of your bundle of documents that
5 I gave you and look at page 145? Would you say that in
6 the second half of that paragraph this historian has done
7 his own translation of the original German? Perhaps
8 I ought to draw your attention, first of all, to the end
9 note 47, which you will find on page 18 of my bundle.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How do you know he did his own translation?
11 MR IRVING: That is what I am just referring to.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does that prove that?.
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He wrote the book in French and someone else translated
14 it. Burrin’s original book is in French. He is a French
15 speaking Swiss historian.
16 MR IRVING: He has not used the Weidenfeld translation from
17 what you can see.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is obvious.
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He has not listed his monologe.
20 MR IRVING: Is that the title of the German edition of the
21 book, Hitler’s table talk, Monologe im Fuhrer…
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, but what it looks to me is that his translator got
23 lazy and, instead of translating Monologe, in fact grabbed
24 the Weidenfeld and borrowed an English translation from an
25 earlier edition and goofed it entirely. Burrin has been
26 betrayed by his translator. That is how I would look at
. P-89
1 this.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you take it from me that this Weidenfeld edition, sad
3 to say, only went through one edition and there were no
4 other editions than this? If he had had this edition
5 before him, he would have used use phrase “public
6 rumour”.
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am in possession of a paper back that presumably was
8 sold in great quantities that has exactly the Weidenfeld
9 translation, so it is not a scarce book to get.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: They did not change this wording then? They did not use
11 the word ominous reputation, which is the wording that has
12 been used by Philip Burrin?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am afraid I am not following you right now.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think this is such an open question that it
15 is not going to get you anywhere really. There is no
16 point in my not saying that. I see the point you are
17 driving at but it is too speculative.
18 MR IRVING: My point, my Lord, is quite clearly that, if this
19 historian uses the phrase “ominous reputation”, which is
20 arguably very close to the translation which is adopted
21 both by myself and Weidenfeld translation, then it would
22 be perverse to call me perverse for having adopted a
23 perverse —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think the criticism is more focused
25 really, that you saw the German text, saw the word
26 “Schrecken”, but were nevertheless content to use the
. P-90
1 word “rumour” because it was in Weidenfeld when
2 “Schrecken” does not mean “rumour”. That I think is the
3 point.
4 MR IRVING: So, my Lord, does this translator.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow that. In a sense, this is
6 beside the point.
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: One have would it to —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is my feeling. I have the point you
9 seek to make. I have told you what I think about it.
10 MR IRVING: The point I am seeking to make is that he is not a
11 Holocaust denier. He is not perverse. Others also use a
12 milder version of it than the outright terror, which is
13 possible translation of “Schrecken” but not the only one.
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: One way to deal with it is to get the Burrin original and
15 see what he says in French, because this is what would
16 reflect what he was thinking, and then we could decide
17 whether Burrin, as a historian or a historically ignorant
18 translator, using a different version to save himself the
19 time from a responsible translation, is at fault here.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: While you have the bundle in front of you, we can now
21 dispose of the bundle in a few minutes, page 32 of the
22 bundle, my Lord, I am just using this witness in order to
23 introduce a document.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are doing it in exactly an appropriate
25 way, as I say.
26 MR IRVING: Page 32 and page 33: Are you familiar with the
. P-91
1 Harvard University? Of course you are.
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that their library at
4 Harvard University is called the Weidener library?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this appear to be a list of books which the library
7 has in its card file by an author called David Irving?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And do there appear to be 47 books by that author in the
10 Harvard University library?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: 47 entries. Some of them are duplicate.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In other words, 47 copies of my books are in Harvard
13 University Library?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a commendable total, would you say?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is a large number.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: How many books by Professor Browning are there in the
18 Harvard University Library? Have you any estimate?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know if they have any of mine!
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, joking apart, what I get out of
21 this is that you are thought by Harvard University or the
22 Wagner Library to be the sort of author of whose many
23 books they have a large number in stock. I think that is
24 a fair point for you to make.
25 MR IRVING: Taken in conjunction with one of the earlier
26 paragraphs of Professor Evans’ expert report, my Lord —
. P-92
1 I am sure your Lordship will remember it — Professor
2 Evans went to the British Library and found that my book
3 “Hitler’s War” was kept on the pornographic and
4 restricted list. Apparently, it is not the case in
5 respected institutions in the United States.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If Professor Evans makes points like that,
7 you are entitled to make this sort of point in reply.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would just add that Harvard University tries to have a
9 complete list so they will buy everything. It does not
10 reflect an endorsement of the authors by virtue of the
11 fact they have them available in the library.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, of course.
13 MR IRVING: Would you turn to page 34 of that bundle? These
14 are just odds and ends and this is the appropriate way to
15 use them, I think. It is the last page. My Lord, this is
16 the German original and also I have translated it into
17 English for your Lordship.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful. Thank you.
19 MR IRVING: It is German police decodes. It is Traffic of
20 November 13th 1941, is that correct? Intercepted and
21 decoded a month later roughly. There are two radio
22 messages here, is that correct?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Item 10 and item 32, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Item 10 and 32. Would you agree that item 10 appears to
25 be a radio message sent from the SS Chief Medical Officer
26 in Riga to the firm of Tesch and Stabenow in Hamburg?
. P-93
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not see the Riga. I see radio message of the SS at
2 Hamburg.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: The last line says: “Signed, Senior Medical Officer”?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I was looking at the top.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree this is from the Senior Medical Officer
6 attached to the Chief SS Officer in Riga and it is going
7 to the firm of Tesch and Stabenow in Hamburg?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Via the Hamburg SS, yes.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, sorry, can I just ask you this?
10 It is called a decode. Is this is an intercept?
11 MR IRVING: This is a British intercept.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: A Bletchley intercept?
13 MR IRVING: From Bletchley Park. One of this myriad of
14 hundreds of thousands of messages, but it is typical of
15 the kind of information that is there waiting to be fished
16 out of the Public Record Office. Would you agree that
17 this shows a request for information on which Zyklon was
18 dispatched for the use of a man called Dr Tesch?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know who Tesch and Stabenow were?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They are people involved — no, I do not know for sure. I
22 will not say. I mean, I have heard their names.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right to say that they are the firm in Hamburg which
24 had the monopoly of supplies of Zyklon and other
25 fumigation agents east of the River Elb?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I remember the names in connection with the production of
. P-94
1 Zyklon-B. I could not testify that they were in Hamburg
2 or had a monopoly.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that this message is referring to dispatch, not only
4 of Zyklon, but also substances referred to as Tegas,
5 Athylo, Trito?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They are referring to three other products. Whether they
7 are gas or not, we do not know.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, we do.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept they are other fumigation products?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I will accept that they are referring to three products.
12 I do not see anything that says what their purpose is.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, and the message also shows that Dr Tesch who is doing
14 something in Riga connected with training?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Obviously, they did not get the complete message, but they
16 do have the word “training” in Riga, at least as part of a
17 garbled part of the intercept.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So that the inference to be drawn from that telegram is
19 that people were being trained in the use of fumigation
20 agents, both lethal and non-lethal?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Since I do not know what Tegas, Athylo.D and Trito are,
22 I can only say that there are three products in addition
23 to Zyklon being dispatched.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that Tegas is a substance which is nine
25 parts of ethylene oxide to one part of carbon dioxide? It
26 is one of the proprietary fumigation agents that the
. P-95
1 German Army used?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I have no ground to accept or dispute. If you want
3 to present that to the court or whatever, I cannot comment
4 on that because I simply do not know.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the other items were, in fact, proprietary fumigation
6 agents?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, does this decode tell you
8 anything about whether it was a lethal or a non-lethal use
9 of these gases, assuming they were gasses or fumigation
10 agents?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They say nothing to that regard and I do not know of any
12 lethal gassings in Riga, except for the gas vans which
13 gassed with carbon monoxide.
14 MR IRVING: I just need one further piece of evidence. Have
15 you read the Tesch trial at all, the trial of Dr Bruno
16 Tesch by the British?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have not read that?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: But the word “training” indicates the people were being
21 trained in the use of fumigation agents or could be both?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They were engaged in the training of something.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I am going to go through the remaining pages of your
24 report. We have started at I think round about page 24.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you go further, Mr Irving, shall we
26 just decide what should be the home for this? I will be
. P-96
1 guided by the Defendants, Mr Rampton.
2 MR RAMPTON: I am so sorry.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you have any suggestions about where this
4 clip should go?
5 MR RAMPTON: My Lord —-
6 MR IRVING: L, I think.
7 MR RAMPTON: — what we will do, if your Lordship will just
8 put it all at the back of L for the moment, we will take
9 out the ones which are chronological.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Thank you very much.
11 MR IRVING: My Lord, so you have an overview, I have now
12 finished the general part and what may seem to your
13 Lordship rather vague and eccentric (as the opposite of
14 concentric) questioning. We are now focusing just on the
15 report. I think I will be finishing this half way through
16 the afternoon.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not hurry at all. My problem was simply
18 you were assuming too much knowledge on my part.
19 MR IRVING: I was hoping to hit a few nails in while this
20 witness was here.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. You are perfectly entitled to do
22 that.
Section 97.23 to 108.14
23 MR IRVING: And we will do the same with Professor Longrich
24 when he comes. (To the witness): Paragraph 4.4.1, which
25 is on page 24 of your report, Professor?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
. P-97
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Once again, simply stated, I do not deny that these
2 shootings occurred and these killings occurred. All I am
3 looking at here are two specific matters. First of all,
4 the scale, and, secondly, the quality of the evidence that
5 is available to us. That is what these questions are all
6 going to. You say: “The commanders in the field were
7 explicitly told to report extensively” — this is your
8 middle sentence — “as both Hitler and Himmler were to be
9 kept well informed.”
10 Now, did you have a specific reason for
11 including Hitler in that sentence, or what I am asking for
12 is what is the proof that Hitler had asked to be kept well
13 informed?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The document that we cited of August 1st 1941, I do not
15 say Hitler asked, I said the document there said Hitler
16 was to receive, you know, a regular supply of reports, the
17 current reports.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But this paragraph refers only to the systematic mass
19 murder, does it not? It does not refer to the
20 Einsatzgruppen’s other operations?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If you want to know the work of the Einsatzgruppen and one
22 major piece of the work of the Einsatzgruppen was the
23 killings.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: But I do not want to repeat the discussion we had about
25 that document yesterday, but we concluded that the
26 document was looking for visual materials?
. P-98
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: To supplement, it was following on the already existing
2 policy of handing on these reports and they wanted to
3 fatten them.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: I guess what I am asking really is that the only document
5 you rely on when you say that both Hitler and Himmler were
6 to be kept informed?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is the one for Hitler, I am not —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not interested in Himmler. We have accepted that
9 Himmler needed to be kept informed.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So solely based on the 1st August 1941?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is the documentary evidence we have, yes.
12 MR IRVING: Thank you.
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In terms of a wider thing, of course, Heydrich then
14 summarized these, and that we have the monthly summaries
15 that are spread out and copied as many as 100 for report,
16 that are distributed to various Ministries, and the
17 Foreign Office report will be seen by 30 or 40 people. So
18 there does seem to be a great eagerness to get the word
19 out. This is not something within the government that
20 these reports are terribly shielded.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are familiar with Hitler’s order on secrecy, are you
22 not, of January 1940, the need-to-know order, that Hitler
23 issued the order saying that only those were to be told of
24 secret operations or events —-
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have seen reference to it. I do not believe I have read
26 it myself, but I have seen reference to it.
. P-99
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So that would have tended to keep information
2 compartmentalized, would it not?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These always listed who was to receive, so there was — it
4 was not circulated on the street corner. They had a list
5 of who was authorized to receive it.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you say now in paragraph 4.4.2, the next paragraph:
7 “Such a thorough documentation does not exist concerning
8 the fate of the Jews from the rest of Europe”. In other
9 words, we are reliant on postwar materials, eyewitness
10 accounts, inferences, are we?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We are reliant on that systematic documentation in the
12 sense we do not have a complete run of reports like we
13 have of Einsatzgruppen. We have some documents that have
14 survive here, some there. We are reliant on less complete
15 documentation, though some pockets of documentation that
16 are very suggestive and, in addition, postwar testimony as
17 well. Documentation, for instance, concerning the
18 deportation operations is fairly rich in some countries.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you are referring to the railroad information?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I say “concerning the fate of the Jews from the rest
21 of Europe”, we have a mixed bag of documentation, rather
22 than a fairly rich and steady run. I mean, Einsatzgruppen
23 reports, to have a complete series, it is fairly rare for
24 an historian.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I appreciate that.
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We do not have that rich —-
. P-100
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But if you take one specific matter, for example, the
2 deportation of the Jews from France, is it right to say
3 that there is a broad measure of disagreement on what the
4 total number involved was, ranging from 25,000 at one end
5 of the scale (which I think Pierre Vidal Nacette supports)
6 right up to the high 200,000s?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Of how many in France or how many deported?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: How many Jews were deported from France?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think most historians accept the figure of around
10 75,000. I have not been aware of a huge difference
11 because we have references to most of the trains and when
12 they left, and we can add up the trains. So I did not,
13 I do not think — it is not my — I am not aware that
14 there is a vast discrepancy of interpretation concerning
15 the number of Jews deported from France.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would Himmler have discussed with Hitler the
17 deportation of 200,000 or 300,000 Jews from France when
18 that figure was not in France at that time?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In mainland France there is roughly about 300,000 Jews.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The number in North Africa, I have no idea, but it is —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a discussion on 10th December 1942. Do you
23 remember what happened one month before that?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, the Germans were pouring troops into Tunisia.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: And we had seized control of most of French North West
26 Africa, had we not, so that the Germans could not have
. P-101
1 done anything with the Jews in that part of the world, so
2 those figures could not have been included, could they?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not in the 2 or 300,000, but if you are working — the
4 question is why — let me back up so we do not get totally
5 lost. There is a figure in the Wannsee conference
6 protocol that has mystified historians because it is
7 listed I think 600,000. It is a number well beyond what
8 any historian believes of Jews in France. Puzzling, some
9 people have speculated, purely speculated, that this may
10 include the Jews of French North Africa too.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: But on December 10th 1942 that can no longer have
12 pertained?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, but we do not get that figure. We get the 2 to
14 300,000 that is —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Still wrong?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. That is still approximately right. If you started
17 with 300,000 and 40,000 were deported in 1942, you would
18 be at 260,000.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: But there were not two or 300,000 Jews in mainland France
20 on December 10th 1942, were there?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Oh, there were. 300,000 is the figure that I have seen
22 for the population in all of France and, of course,
23 Germany occupies the southern part of France and thus
24 would have the Jews of all of France in December 1942.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where have you seen these figures?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This would come from Michael Merris and Paxton’s book on
. P-102
1 the Vichy France and the Jews.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you turn to page 25 please? I am looking at
3 paragraph 5.1.1 which I suppose is your topic paragraph.
4 You are setting out what you are going to be saying. You
5 say, the final sentence in that paragraph, you are
6 referring to the fact that there are disagreements over
7 historical interpretation?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Absolutely.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are not at all unusual, you say?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We have seen several of these, the questions of
11 interpretation from circumstantial evidence about what
12 date decisions were made —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not have to have a Professor’s title to be entitled
14 to have a different opinion, do you, or to be Lord
15 somebody or Sir John somebody, do you? You are entitled
16 to have a different opinion?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There is a range of opinion and one does not have to have
18 a PhD to hold an opinion.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. You do not have to be rocket scientist, as they say
20 now. You say: “On the contrary, it is quite a normal
21 occurrence” to have different opinions about how the
22 programme for murder of the Jews came about?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: You finish that paragraph by saying: “What follows is my
25 interpretation concerning the emergence” of what you call
26 “the Final Solution” by which you are referring to the
. P-103
1 murder of the Jews, are you not?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: “It is not shared in every aspect by other able and
4 learned historians of the Holocaust”.
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it would be wrong to call them Holocaust deniers,
7 would it not, just because they disagree with the
8 established view?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: As I have said, there is a large body of interpretation on
10 a number of issues, including the issue of whether Hitler
11 gave an order or not, that is within the historical
12 debate.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is permissible, in your view, and his Lordship may
14 interrupt this discussion, to debate and what is
15 impermissible to debate? Where is the line drawn?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Where we draw the line? I would say —-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In relation to these death camps, do you
18 mean, or more generally?
19 MR IRVING: The Final Solution — the mass murder of the Jews.
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say if interpretations are based upon evidence
21 such as you invented yesterday when you added the lines to
22 the Himmler notation, and that becomes the basis of an
23 interpretation, that would be one that we could say, “This
24 is flawed”.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Over the line?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “This is over the line”.
. P-104
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, we are talking about December 18th 1941 note?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: We put things in square brackets saying, if you remember,
4 Jewish problem to be treated as partisans or to be wiped
5 out as partisans —-
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And when you added “that they were” —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, in square brackets?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — I said that was invention, and if one is using
9 invented evidence, this would be one example of where we
10 would say, “This person is no longer taking part in the
11 debate. He is fantasizing evidence”.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is a very good example. Suppose the person who did
13 the inventing put the invented words in square brackets,
14 which is the accepted connotation for his assistance to
15 the reader, and if he also then gave the German original,
16 if there was any doubt, would that be over the line or
17 within the line?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would have to see the particular case to get a sense of
19 whether it was clearly intending to help the reader or to
20 mislead the reader. I mean, this would be a border line
21 case and one would have to look at the individual
22 circumstances.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the criterion then is if something has been changed or
24 included with the intention of misleading, then that would
25 be over the line?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Certainly when the intention is clear, then we are — it
. P-105
1 is easier to decide. I, myself, would feel that if one
2 has a pattern of distortion, even if it is not intended,
3 but is so much of the personality of the person that they
4 are so identified with this that they no longer in a sense
5 can see the evidence except by kind of default position,
6 one gets a consistent pattern of distortion even if it is
7 not a calculated and wilful distortion.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a very useful concept. In other words, if an
9 historian is so imbued with the notion that, “Surely,
10 Adolf Hitler gave the order and, even we cannot find it,
11 it must be there somewhere and I am going to disregard any
12 evidence to the contrary”, that would fit within that
13 concept, would it, or are you only looking at the people
14 on the other side of the mirror when you say that?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think it is a general rule and the is, as you have
16 brought it up, obviously, one can reverse these things,
17 and if every piece of evidence one gets, the first thing
18 is, “Does this implicate Hitler? Is there Hitler in it?
19 Well, it does not implicate Hitler, we can deal were this
20 document; but if Hitler is in there, then we have to do
21 something with it”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Suppose there was a document which suggested that Hitler
23 had repeated the order that he wanted the Final Solution
24 postponed until the war was over and all the historians
25 ignored that, would they be being perverse or would they
26 be entitled to act like that?
. P-106
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In the circumstances, which I am sure we will discuss in
2 detail, I will explain why, I do not think it would be
3 perverse not to discuss that document.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: We do not discuss the document today. I just wanted to
5 know would it be right to ignore it and pretend it did not
6 exist or would that be perverse?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not think one is obligated to footnote all the
8 documents they do not use.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In other words —-
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And that they have made a judgment they do not find
11 helpful.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You put it under the carpet and you do not even put a
13 footnote about it, and that is OK, is it? That is what
14 you are saying?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Again, it would depend very much on the circumstances.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So I am trying to help you here because the picture you
17 are giving is that a person is considered to be a
18 respectable historian provided he has views that are
19 respectable, if I can put it like that, but as soon as he
20 starts having disrespectable views, then — if he has
21 politically incorrect views, then this makes him
22 disreputable and beyond the pail?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It not said that at all.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: But there are certain views which one has no problem with
25 at all?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There is a range of views which involve a looking at the
. P-107
1 evidence that historians seeing that evidence would say,
2 “This is within a range of interpretation”. The example
3 I then gave was that if one invents further evidence, this
4 is not within the realm of acceptance as one example of
5 where I would say we could say one has gone over the line.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but putting something in square brackets to assist
7 the reader is not inventing evidence, is it? If you are
8 adding an interpretation for the reader and helping the
9 reader to see that — would that be —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving —-
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that could be called misleading.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — I think that for two reasons we have had
13 enough of this. (A) it is my province, and (B) I think
14 the questions are too broad. I think it all depends.
15 MR IRVING: It is, my Lord, and I am going to ask the witness
16 now to turn to 5.1.6 which is on pages 27 to 8. We have
17 had this before already in another context, my Lord. In
18 fact, it is not irrelevant to the previous matter. (To
19 the witness): If one has a certain mind set, Professor,
20 is it correct that one might read a document the wrong
21 way?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is possible.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think we are going to come to one example of this
24 straightaway. You say at the foot of page 27:
25 “Rademacher reported: ‘Then as soon as the technical
26 possibility exists within the framework of the total
. P-108
1 solution to the Jewish question, the Jews will be deported
2 by waterway to the reception camp in the east.”
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, the fact that they were going to go to a reception
5 camp implies to your mind that they were going to go to a
6 sticky end, to some kind of sinister place where nasty
7 things were going to be done to them?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: What I used this for was to show that a reception camp,
9 and we will come to my mistake in terms of the plural and
10 the singular, I am sure, immediately. As I said
11 yesterday, yes, I did make mistakes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that an example of the kind of mistake one might make
13 if one had a mind set where you were expecting that we are
14 talking about one of the Operation Reinhardt camps, one of
15 the camps, that they are going to be sent there and they
16 are going to be bumped off; but when we read that the
17 actual document says they are going to be sent to
18 reception camps, all the sinisterness goes out of this
19 particular document?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: On the contrary, I think my interpretation was against
21 interest, that I have looked and what, as an historian,
22 I have been concerned with is evidence in the fall of 1941
23 of this, as say, a vision between Himmler, Hitler,
24 Heydrich and others, that they have now decided on the
25 murder of Jews. For my purposes, in terms of what I would
26 have been predisposed to find, would indeed to have found
. P-109
1 evidence of a much broader thing and to have interpreted
2 it correctly. To have it in the singular was against
3 interest; an error on my part, but certainly not one that
4 would be one that I would have made willingly or would
5 have been disposed to make because of opinions I held that
6 this is a case, in fact, where I made an error that
7 limited the importance of the document I had, and the
8 correct translation, I think, is very useful to me because
9 it goes towards something that I have been working to
10 collect evidence on, hoping to bolster an argument. So in
11 that case, I would say this is not a reflection of a
12 predisposed mine set to read the document wrongly. I read
13 it wrongly despite a prior interpretation that I had
14 published.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you do not think that this very minor translation error
16 has in any way damaged the burden of the argument you are
17 making?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot see that it makes a blind bit of
19 difference myself.
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think it limits it. If my argument has been that after,
21 that the second Hitler decision came in early October and
22 that after that there is an awareness among the Germans
23 they are going to build a series of camps, to put this in
24 the singular instead of the plural, that Eichmann’s
25 assistant saw travelling with Rademacher is speaking about
26 the creation of, I put it there, within “the technical
. P-110
1 possibility of a framework for a total solution” is
2 talking about a series of camps, this is a much stronger
3 document than the way I have interpreted it.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it depends if it is one big camp or a
5 lot of little camps.
6 MR IRVING: Except that one big camp might have been Belzec or
7 Sobibor or Treblinka, whereas a lot of little camps could
8 not have been, my Lord. It would have been the “new
9 life”, if I can put it like that? It would be the
10 gettoes, the alternative solution that was being
11 propagated. I fully accept that it was an accidental
12 mistranslation on the witness’s part. But the other point
13 I was going to make is do such accidents happen and are
14 they necessarily perverse in translation?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If they happen, they should at least sort of be 50 per
16 cent one way and 50 per cent another, and here the case we
17 have found is one, as I say, against interest. If there
18 was a consistent pattern where all mistakes tended to
19 support the position of the man making the mistakes, one
20 could make a case that (indeed, what we have talked about)
21 a predisposed mind set was contributing.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You mean it is like a waiter who always gives the wrong
23 change in his own favour?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: 5.1.8, please, which is on page 28 — I am just going to
26 refer very briefly to Aberhard Wetzel. We have looked at
. P-111
1 this document many times. I am not going to look at it
2 again. What happened to Aberhard Wetzel, do you know?
3 Was he prosecuted or punished in any way?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know of a Wetzel trial, so I assume he was not,
5 but I do not know that.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this is yet another case of a man who, prima facie, on
7 the basis of the documents on which you rely was
8 committing crimes of great enormity or encouraging them or
9 inspiring them, and yet nothing happened to him.
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, the problem is, of course, that it is a letter in
11 which they propose something. It was never done.
12 Therefore, the document does not — the only documentary
13 evidence was to a crime that was not committed because, in
14 fact, this plan was not carried out and, therefore, they
15 had no crime with which to charge Mr Wetzel. Knowledge of
16 the killing does not constitute in German law a felony.
17 It is contributing to the killing and in this case there
18 was no gas van killing in Riga resulting from this action
19 by Wetzel, so there was no crime to charge him with.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now page 29 please, paragraph 5.1.9, you summarize: “In
21 short, surviving documents show that by late October 1941
22 the Nazi regime” had done a number things. But does not
23 the previous paragraph, 5.1.8, suggest that it is actual
24 individuals who are doing it and that frequently their
25 proposals were not being taken up? What do you mean by
26 the “Nazi regime”? Are you talking about Himmler, from
. P-112
1 Himmler downwards or from Hitler downwards?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I am talking about a policy that is out there.
3 I think Hitler is involved. I do not have a document to
4 prove it, but given how I think the Himmler/Hitler
5 relationship worked, and that in every case, numerous
6 cases we can find that Himmler did not act without
7 Hitler’s permission, that I would say — my conclusion
8 circumstantially is that Hitler is part of that, but I do
9 not have the document to collect my £1,000.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say in paragraph 5.1.10: “These documents suggest
11 that a policy of systematic extermination”, and so on, was
12 going on, but is suggestion enough really? You have
13 documents from which inferences can be drawn, and yet here
14 we are, 55 years after the war is over, we are still
15 looking for documents that only suggest things?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, this is, in terms of dating, suggests that by late
17 October, and that others like Jerloch argue it is not
18 until December, some like Dr Longerich will argue that
19 this comes even later than that. The suggestion is not
20 that there was or was not a killing programme. It is at
21 what date it will take shape.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that must be right, as a matter of
23 the interpretation of what is in the report. I think,
24 Mr Irving, it is probably a time to — unless you have a
25 short point you would like to deal with.
26 MR IRVING: No. It is quite a long point, the next one, it is
. P-113
1 going to go to page 31, yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, we will do that at 2 o’clock.
3 (Luncheon adjournment)
Part III: Professor Christopher Browning, Day 2, continued, Afternoon Session (114.4 to 210.25)
Section 114.5 to 128.22
4 (2.00 p.m.)
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
6 MR IRVING: Thank you, my Lord. Professor Browning, are you
7 still under contract to Yad Vashem?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have contracted to write a book for them and that has
9 not been completed.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: They paid you $35,000?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, they have paid me, I believe, 27,000.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that Yad Vashem also paid money
13 to the second Defendant in this case?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know. No, I am not aware.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So you do not see any possible conflict of interest
16 in giving expert evidence in this action on behalf of the
17 Second Defendant?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: One, I did not know that and two, I do not see the
19 connection if I had none.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the book published by the Second Defendant
21 “Denying the Holocaust”?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I have.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Had you not seen that very early on in the book in her
24 introduction and on the title pages, she thanks the Yad
25 Vashem/Vidal Sassoon Institute?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not remember reading that. I may not have read the
. P-114
1 credits. One often goes directly to the body.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Yad Vashem is an institution of the State of Israel,
3 is it not?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are, in that respect, a paid agent I suppose of the
6 State of Israel using the word “agent” in its purely legal
7 sense?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If that was the case, then since I had been at the
9 Holocaust Museum, I would also have been an agent of the
10 American Government, and since I have received
11 scholarships in Germany, I would be an agent of the German
12 government, so I must be a very duplicitous fellow to be
13 able to follow these regimes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is lots of money, is there not, in connection with
15 the Holocaust research scholarships? It has become a
16 well-funded kind of enterprise, can I say, Holocaust
17 research, history, publishing —-
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: All in the past, I wish it had been much better funded.
19 I did not find that I lived particularly well.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: $35,000 to write a book which you have not delivered seems
21 relatively well remunerated to me?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They have got the manuscript for the first half and that
23 is where I have been remunerated from. They have it as in
24 France.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is the book that, I have not quite got the
26 name of it, but this organisation is going to publish
. P-115
1 written by you connected with your evidence?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I mean I was in the course of researching that book.
3 I am using evidence here, but it is not directly related
4 to this, no.
5 MR IRVING: Will you tell his Lordship what the nature of the
6 book is you are going to write for Yad Vashem which is the
7 Holocaust memorial in Israel, is it not?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The book is an overview of Nazi/Jewish policy from 1935 to
9 1945. The first half of September 1939 to March 1942 is
10 what is now in the hands of both the editorial board of
11 Yad Vashem and the Cambridge University Press, and it is
12 under completion of that manuscript that I was paid the
13 money, according to the contract that we had signed.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it covers the same general area as your
15 evidence but is broader?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
17 MR IRVING: If you were to write a book for Yad Vashem which
18 suggested that you discovered that Adolf Hitler had not
19 issued the order or that it was just a totally haphazard
20 killing operation that had resulted from the Holocaust,
21 would this book be welcomed by them, do you think? Would
22 that enhance his prospects or diminish them?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: As I have said, a number of historians have already made
24 the argument that Hitler did not give the order, and
25 I have been with them at a conference at Yad Vashem. They
26 had been invited to take part in the discussion there.
. P-116
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will it surprise to you hear —-
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have been on what we would call the functional end in
3 terms of Hitler not having, as I say, a blueprint from the
4 beginning, and though that is different than many Israeli
5 scholars’ view, that does not cause them to view me as
6 outside the pale.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I have not had anyone interfere with or attempt to
9 interfere with how I write the book.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: The point I am trying to make is obviously quite clearly
11 you do not feel that your evidence, expert evidence in
12 this case, has been in any way tainted by the money you
13 have received from the State of Israel or Yad Vashem?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I have written a book from which obviously my
15 scholarly reputation is going to be based, that would be
16 far more important to me than whatever money may be given,
17 and that certainly would not be a factor in what I was
18 writing.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. If an historian writes a book, just a
20 hypothetical historian writes a book, and then between
21 that publication of that book and the publication of the
22 next edition of that book he changes his mind in any
23 respect, on whatever basis of evidence, and he makes
24 deletions from the text of the original edition of his
25 book, is this reprehensible necessarily?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not necessarily. In my review of the second edition of
. P-117
1 Raul Hilberg I noted where he had made changes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are running ahead of my question.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That represented his view of the change between 61 and 85.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have correctly anticipated my next question,
5 Professor, which is you are familiar with Professor Raul
6 Hilberg?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you describe Raul Hilberg and his qualifications to
9 the court, please?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say that Raul Hilberg is the major historian who
11 has written the overview of what we call the machinery of
12 destruction, bureaucratic —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Hold it one moment. You describe him as an historian.
14 Did he actually study history at university? Did he get a
15 degree in history?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. He sits in the Political Science Department, but in
17 terms of political science he is an historical end of that
18 field which in fact involves people who do many other
19 things that do not have particularly historical dimension.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you do not have to have book learning as an historian
21 in university to be regarded as an historian?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Walter Laqueur is an example, is he not?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know what Laqueur’s Ph.D., is but Raul Hilberg’s
25 is political science.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: And Winston Churchill is another historian of course and
. P-118
1 he never history, and Edward Gibbon I believe he also
2 never studied history, and we can keep on going through
3 the list, am I right?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — and Heroditus, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Raul Hilberg is, as you say, one of the world’s leading
6 Holocaust historians?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In my view.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: He wrote a book called —-
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The Destruction of the European Jews.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Destruction of the European Jews. What was his
11 position on Hitler’s responsibility in the first edition
12 of his book?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In the first book he was mainly laying out what he called
14 bureaucratic structures, but that he did have sentences
15 that talked about two decisions, a two-decision theory,
16 that Hitler made a decision in July of 1941 and then
17 Hitler made the decision later, the first for Soviet
18 Jewry, the second for the mass murder of the European Jews
19 outside Soviet territory. He rephrased that to —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Hold it for a moment, you have very carefully chosen your
21 word there. You said “decision”.
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Two decisions I said.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, decisions. Is there a distinction in your mind
24 between “orders” and “decisions”?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I think so. I usually use the word “decisions”.
26 I do not usually use the word “order”, because an order
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1 implies a more formal, it is a formal transfer from
2 position of authority requesting a certain action be taken
3 in a more specific way. “Decision” I have used, and
4 I would also say I use this in a broad way, a point at
5 which it became crystallized in the mind of Hitler and
6 Himmler and Heydrich, or at least Himmler and Heydrich
7 knew now what Hitler expected of them had been conveyed
8 what they were to do. I have said that in the senses at
9 the end of this decision-making process, and I have always
10 said that is an amorphous incremental process. I have
11 argued against what I would call the “big bang” theory,
12 there is a certain moment in time in which suddenly,
13 voila, we will kill all the Jews.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: So did Hilberg in the first edition of his book, The
15 Destruction of European Jewry, refer to a Hitler order or
16 a Hitler decision or both?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I cannot remember exactly. I would have to look at the
18 text.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: What happened between the publication of that edition and
20 the publication of the second edition? What did he do?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He took out specific references to a Hitler decision or
22 order, I forget how he phrased it, and phrased it more
23 generally.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not right that he went the whole way through the
25 book cutting out the word “Hitler order”, and the notion
26 that Hitler had issued and order?
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1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In so far as it refers to a specific order, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you actually wrote an article on this subject called
3 “The Revised Hilberg”?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is no doubt well in your memory?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, it was written in mid-1980, so it is 15 years in the
7 past.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: And your recollection of events 15 years ago is not all
9 that good?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is not bad, but if you want to tell me which word did
11 I use I would like the like text. If you want the general
12 gist of it I can give it to you.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am suggesting that if your recollection of something you
14 did 15 years ago is not all that hot, then an eyewitness’s
15 recollection about something 30 years ago might be equally
16 shaky?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I can remember writing the article and I can tell you the
18 gist. I cannot tell you if I used a word or a different
19 word. It depends on the magnitude of detail that you are
20 talking about.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just winding up that matter, there is nothing
22 reprehensible whatsoever about Hilberg going all the way
23 through his book taking out any reference to a Hitler
24 order, which is quite a major element to the book
25 obviously, because he had reflected. On second thoughts
26 he had decided the evidence was not there, is that the
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1 right way of putting it?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He had decided that the way he had phrased it in the first
3 volume should be revised.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Surely the key consideration is what
6 persuaded him to change his mind. If there were good
7 reasons, there good reasons, and if there were not there
8 were not.
9 MR IRVING: Witness, can you answer his Lordship’s curiosity in
10 this respect?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He does not explicitly address that question as to why the
12 change. He rephrases it in such a way that he felt that
13 was too specific.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. What I am getting at is, that the ground
15 for criticising him for changing his mind would depend on
16 the quality of the evidence that convinced him to change
17 his mind. If there were not good reasons for his change
18 of mind, then he should not have changed his mind or the
19 text, that is obvious, do you agree with it?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
21 MR IRVING: But of course it would be an entirely subjective
22 decision by the author or historian concerned as to what
23 evidence would meet his own personal criteria?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, and I think in this case it was partly a semantic
25 question. He felt the word “order” implied or had come to
26 imply by the 1980s more than he was comfortable with in
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1 specificity, and so he phrased it in a more general way
2 because by this point of course the controversy between
3 intentionalist and functionalist had broken out. In fact
4 he withdrew himself from that controversy. He phrased
5 things in a way that was not part of that debate.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I put to you just a few words of your testimony in a
7 court action in Canada in about 1988, which obviously your
8 recollection then was refresher, it was 12 years ago:
9 “I will go on, thank you, said Browning. There
10 is a question of how we understand the word ‘order’ and
11 this is a case where I think we have deepened
12 understanding. Though we have tried to deal with the
13 concept, what does it mean for there to be Hitler order, a
14 so-called Fuhrer befehl. I have certainly looked into
15 that question. I have myself”, that is you, “proposed
16 that we have to look at it in terms of a series of signals
17 or incitements”, and that appears to have been a favourite
18 concept of yours, signals or incitements?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I did not mean to interrupt.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you remember saying that in that particular legal
23 action in Canada, in the Zundel case?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I remember we discussed the question and that sounds very
25 much like what I said.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you just explain to the court what you mean by this
. P-123
1 phrase of signals and incitements from somebody like
2 Hitler which would lead to a Holocaust?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say it is the same as we have been discussing this
4 morning and yesterday. Hitler sets a level of
5 expectation, in this case, for instance, that the war in
6 the Soviet Union is to be not simply a conventional war
7 but a war of destruction, an ideological war, and then
8 people bring him proposals and he approves or does not
9 approve.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: It all sounds frightfully vague, does it not, far short of
11 an order with a heading signature Adolf Hitler that we
12 have in some of the other Hitler crimes like euthanasia?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. This in a sense is a very different kind of process,
14 and I think the reason why Hilberg took that word out is
15 because people would read that word and interpret it that
16 there must be a specific piece of paper, and so he talked
17 more about a general process in which intentions or
18 desires are conveyed, but did not want to use the word
19 “order”.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Does your Lordship wish to explore that particular
21 matter any further?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, thank you very much.
23 MR IRVING: I think it is quite useful that we should establish
24 that somebody of the reputation of Hilberg became uneasy,
25 that in his own conscience, would you agree, he felt that
26 he could no longer accept, having suggested there was a
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1 Hitler order in his first edition and he went through
2 actually — I think, would you agree this is more
3 significant than not mentioning it in the first place,
4 that he had put it in the first place and then took it
5 out? This is a more significant step than just not
6 mentioning that there was no Hitler order?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It does mean that this had become I think a word that had
8 become more freighted than when he wrote the first
9 edition, and that he felt now the connotation of the
10 expectation or the interpretation of the word “order”
11 would place him in an interpretation that he was not
12 comfortable with.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you visited any of the Nazi concentration camps or
14 the sites that you are talking about?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I have been to Poland and visited Chelmno, Treblinka,
16 Sobibor, Belzec and I have been to Auschwitz, Birkenhau.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have been to Auschwitz and Birkenhau?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And to Semlin.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was this recently or some years ago?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In 1990 or 1991.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: 1990, 1991?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: One of those. I forget which summer.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you visit the sites of the alleged gas chambers in
24 Auschwitz one and Auschwitz two in Birkenhau?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I visited both of them, and so I did go into the
26 crematorium building, the reconstruction in Auschwitz one.
. P-125
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: You called it a reconstruction?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, it is not the original building?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. It was a crematorium and then in 43 to 45, I am not
5 an expert on this but I believe it was used for other
6 purposes, and then it was reconstructed back to close to
7 what it had been before. Then I visited in Birkenhau and
8 walked around the grounds, including the four sites of
9 crematoria 2 through 5. One could walk to bunker two, the
10 site of bunker one that seems to be totally unknown now.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Did they make any attempt to tell you at the time
12 you visited these two sites that the Auschwitz one site,
13 the old camp, that what they were showing you was a
14 reconstruction?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know even remember. I went in and I knew what I
16 was looking at and I do not even recall how it was signed
17 or labelled.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were you aware of the fact that you were not being shown
19 the real thing?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I was aware that this was a reconstruction, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you say you also went to Dachau concentration camp?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have been to Dachau much earlier. I believe that would
23 have been 1972, the fall of 1972.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do they have gas chambers on display at Dachau
25 concentration camp?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There is a gas chambers on display in Dachau concentration
. P-126
1 camp.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you wish to express an opinion to the court as to
3 whether that is a genuine gas chamber or not?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whether he wishes to, is it going to help me
5 really at all? I know that that there was at one time a
6 belief that there had been gas chambers at Dachau. I know
7 it is now accepted, I think on all sides, that there were
8 never any. Do I any need any more than that?
9 MR IRVING: If your Lordship will accept the proposition that
10 the Allies and their Allies after World War II are capable
11 of erecting fakes for whatever purpose, and that it is not
12 perverse of me to have said that and it does not make me
13 ipso facto a Holocaust denier, then I will move on to
14 another matter on.
15 MR RAMPTON: If the word “fake” were changed for
16 “reconstruction” or “demonstration” or something like
17 that there would be common ground. The word “fake” is
18 inappropriate for the reconstruction at Auschwitz one.
19 MR IRVING: I would happily give Mr Rampton a reconstructive
20 $50 bill if me gives me ten fives in exchange.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can have your wagers outside court. I do
22 think we must move on. I do not think Dachau has anything
23 to do with this case. I have explained my understanding
24 of the position.
25 MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the fact that at Nuremberg
26 the British prosecutors stated that there had been
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1 gassings at Dachau, Buchenwald and at Oranienburg?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I am not familiar with that passage.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have read the Nuremberg war crimes trials records?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have read some of them. I have not read the whole 42
5 volumes, no.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that large numbers of
7 eyewitnesses, and I think this is relevant, my Lord —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: — testified to the existence of homicidal gas
10 chambers at Dachau?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know how many did.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware that any did?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you want to take that further you would
15 have to put chapter and verse.
16 MR IRVING: My Lord, I cannot put chapter and verse to him at
17 this time. If the witness says he is not aware of these
18 eyewitnesses’ testimonies I cannot take it further, but
19 I shall certainly do so again with successor witness. If
20 your Lordship agrees that putting it that way is relevant.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I think that is a rather different kind
22 of question and I think it is legitimate.
Section 128.23 to 145.20
23 MR IRVING: Moving back to the integration of Adolf Eichmann,
24 are you aware of the conditions under which he was
25 interrogated when he arrived in Israel?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He was in prison.
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1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he in prison with the light permanently switched on?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have read that that was the case. My guess is, and this
3 is purely speculation, the Israelis might have been very
4 worried that he might commit suicide, so they wanted a
5 constant watch on him. They did not want a dead witness
6 on their hands.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: That he was constantly in the company of a guard?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I presume he was under constant watch.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you suspect that this might have some affect on his
10 mental stability if he was deprived of sleep through these
11 conditions?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have no idea how bright the light was. There are such
13 things as night lights that would not disturb the sleep at
14 all.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have any reason to believe that he was provided
16 with a night light on these occasions?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have absolutely no idea what the wattage of the light in
18 his cell was.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Mr Leon Poliakov who is also an expert on the Holocaust,
20 is that name familiar to you?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am familiar with the name.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he a trained historian with a university engagement?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know what his academic background is.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I would now like to revert to the December 1941, the Hans
25 Frank diary, the meeting which is familiar to this court
26 now held on I think December 13th 1941 — no, it is
. P-129
1 December 16th.
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The speech is December 16th.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: The speech by Hans Frank is on December 16th?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am purely concerned with your treatment of this,
6 Professor. You have gone in some detail over the content
7 of that speech, and this is on page 31 of your expert
8 report.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 5.1.13. I will ask that you have in front of
11 you —-
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have the English text and the footnote I believe
13 contains the original, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we have footnote 88, the document that corresponds to
15 it? I think it would be adequate if I ask the witness
16 just to read the three lines in German and translate what
17 he has omitted.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I personally think it is a good idea to
19 actually have the document.
20 MR IRVING: The whole document.
21 MR RAMPTON: Pages 68 to 75 of what I now know to be L17.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I missed the page number.
23 MR RAMPTON: 68 it starts.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
25 MR IRVING: The passage which you have quoted, Professor, is on
26 page 457 of the printed text.
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1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you remember this is the passage where the translation
3 is: “What is to happen to the Jews? Do you believe that
4 they will be lodged in settlements in the Ostland in
5 Berlin? We were told why all this trouble. We cannot use
6 them in the Ostland or in the Reichskommissarat either,
7 liquidate them yourselves. We must destroy the Jews
8 wherever we encounter them and wherever it is possible in
9 order to preserve the entire structure of the Reich”, and
10 there you cease to quote. You then paraphrase for two or
11 three lines on page 32 of your report?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then you continue with the word: “Nonetheless, we will
14 take some kind of action”. If you will now go to page 458
15 of the original text you will see what you have omitted.
16 It is seven lines down. Do you agree that you have
17 omitted from the front of that quotation beginning with
18 the word “nonetheless” —-
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am afraid I have still not located it.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have the German text. I have not got the
21 English.
22 MR IRVING: Line 2 of page 32 is what I am looking at on the
23 expert report, my Lord.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have not found it yet.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is line 2 of the expert report on page 32 and it is
26 line 7 of the original Hans Frank conference.
. P-131
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have the line 2. It is the line 7.
2 MR IRVING: Page 458.
3 MR RAMPTON: One should start from the first complete
4 paragraph.
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Is Judensendt the paragraph you want us to get to?
6 MR IRVING: That is correct.
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: OK.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: His Lordship has not found it yet. Footnote 88 and it is
9 page 488 of the printed text.
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you translate, please, those first five or six
12 lines, the first four lines of that paragraph: “The Jews
13 are exceptionally damaging eaters for us”, right?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: “In the general government we have got an estimated 2.5
16 million, with the Jewish next of kin and all the rest that
17 depends on them, now 3.5 million Jews”, is that correct?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then a significant sentence follows: “We cannot shoot
20 these 3.5 million Jews. We cannot poison them”. Then you
21 continue with the passage about: “Nonetheless, we will
22 take some kind of action”?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to get into the content of this particular
25 paragraph. I just want to ask for your motivation for
26 leaving out that opening sentence, unless his Lordship
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1 feels it is irrelevant?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not feel it is irrelevant at all. No.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I do not know that it was a specific motivation.
4 I do not see why one concluded or not concluded. What
5 I did is, he rejects certain kinds of or when he says, “We
6 cannot do this or cannot do that”, I simply summarized
7 that as —-
8 MR IRVING: He effectively says: “We cannot shoot them. We
9 cannot poison them.”
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he suggesting we should strangle them?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: What he is suggesting is he does not know how they are
13 going to do it.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you not agree that if another historian had omitted
15 sentences like that at the beginning of a paragraph,
16 without any even any indication of an omission, he would
17 be held up to opprobrium and obloquy?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I mean by putting precedents, you know, switching out of
19 direct quotes I do not think I indicated that there was
20 nothing that I was continuing directly on.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Unless of course the part that was being omitted
22 substantially altered the sense of the gist that you were
23 trying to convey?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not think it substantially alters the gist.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: If the man who is speaking says “We cannot kill them” —-
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, he does not say we cannot kill them. He says, “We
. P-133
1 cannot shoot them or we cannot poison them”.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is another way of saying, in my submission, that we
3 cannot kill them?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not accept that.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Apart from gas what are the alternatives?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, the alternatives are that one can starve them. One
7 can keep them in conditions where they will perish. Of
8 course Frank does not know yet, I think, that in fact they
9 were working on ways to poison them. This would indicate
10 Frank has not yet been initiated into the fact that indeed
11 they will be poisoning them. What he does say, and what
12 I think is important, is the fact that he is told there is
13 going to be a big meeting to sort this out, and when they
14 go, when Buhle then is sent to the Wannsee conference he
15 is going to get some answers to this.
16 MR IRVING: But did they discuss methods of killing at the
17 Wannsee conference?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: According to Eichmann it is not literally in the
19 protocol. They use the euphemism we talked about,
20 solutional possibilities or possible solutions when
21 Eichmann was asked —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which could mean anything, could it not?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: When Eichmann was asked what did that mean, he said it was
24 ways of killing or something to that effect.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: When Eichmann was asked in Israel during these
26 interrogations we were talking about a few minutes ago,
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1 right?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: And he agreed it could have meant killing?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. He did not agree that it could have meant. He said
5 that is what it did mean. When he did not want to agree
6 to such things such as Auschwitz, he denied it vigorously,
7 which would indicate that he could say no when he wanted
8 to.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are now on to the Wannsee conference which is quite
10 useful, Professor.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before we do can I ask this. Do you read
12 Frank at this point in the omitted words, do you read
13 Frank as still quoting Hitler’s speech?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I think at the beginning part of his talk in which he
15 says, “We must put an end to the Jews” and he cites the
16 Fuhrer and that he goes on, you know, “We must have
17 compassion only for the German people”, these are citings
18 I think in a sense the speech that he got there. Then
19 when he gets down to beyond that I believe he is now not
20 necessarily paraphrasing what he had heard in Hitler’s
21 peach on December 12th.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: He does say, “In Berlin we were told why all this
23 trouble”, and so on?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. My feeling here is that that is more than a speech,
25 that he has had a separate meeting with Hitler and he must
26 have at some point had meetings with people who told him
. P-135
1 about the upcoming Wannsee conference, because there is no
2 indication that Hitler would have mentioned that. So that
3 I think he has talked to — my interpretation would be
4 that he had talked to a number of people, possibly with
5 Hitler alone, and clearly with someone who let him know
6 that there would be further meetings, because he makes
7 reference to this meeting under the SS at which much of
8 this will be sorted out.
9 MR IRVING: Are you aware of testimony that Hans Frank gave
10 at Nuremberg, evidence-in-chief I believe, in which he was
11 questioned about his contacts with Hitler, and he
12 mentioned having visited Hitler once and talked to Hitler
13 about Auschwitz and asked him what was going on there,
14 that he described having tried to gain access to Auschwitz
15 but that he was turned back on the excuse that there was
16 an epidemic? Are you familiar with that passage?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am not, but Auschwitz is not in the General Government
18 and certainly not in Frank’s jurisdiction, and I would see
19 no reason why he could barge into Auschwitz.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was this particular passage put to you in the Canadian
21 trial that I referred to earlier?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have a vague recollection but I do not remember in fact
23 that discussion in any detail. I know that we brought up
24 aspects of the Frank testimony at Nuremberg. I do not
25 remember.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that Frank testified on oath at Nuremberg that when he
. P-136
1 put this to Hitler, Hitler said to him, “I do not want to
2 hear about this, this nothing to do with me, this is
3 entirely Himmler’s business”?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not remember us discussing that passage. We may have
5 but I just do not remember it right now.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: If your Lordship is interested I could find the actual
7 quotation and read it to you.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do not do it now, but that is quite a
9 revealing exchange.
10 MR IRVING: Yes.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to me.
12 MR IRVING: I will do that overnight.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.
14 MR IRVING: We are now at the Wannsee conference. Is there any
15 indication at all that Hitler was involved in the Wannsee
16 conference or was even apprised of it?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We have no evidence of him being apprised of it. We do
18 know that Heydrich cites him as authority that the Fuhrer
19 has now ordered something other than the territorial
20 solutions that now will be sent to the East.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to the letters of invitation that
22 Heydrich sent out in the middle of November 1941?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I believe it is in the opening of Heydrich’s remarks
24 that he cites that he is acting on the authority of
25 Hitler.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a reference to the vulmardt which was issued to
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1 Heydrich by Goring, do you think, on July 31st 1941?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The fact it includes the Goring authorization with the
3 invitation, I think that is indeed what he is partly
4 referring to. He is bolstering his credentials because he
5 is dealing with people who might not be anxious to take
6 orders from him.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there a dispute among historians as to the significance
8 of the Wannsee conference?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think that most of them view it as an implementation
10 conference, at a point at which they are now trying to
11 initiate the ministerial bureaucracy and in which Heydrich
12 is going to visibly assert his leading position in this.
13 I do not think it is viewed by many historians now as a
14 conference at which a decision was taken. They did not
15 debate should we do A or B and then say we will do B.
16 They said, “Hitler has ordered this and now how are going
17 to implement it? Are we going to include mixed marriage?
18 Are we going to include this?” It is an implementation
19 conference.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you saying that it has been overrated?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not overrated, because it is a crucial part of bringing in
22 the ministerial bureaucracy. I have always seen it that
23 way, so I do not consider it, I am not backing up from
24 something I think that I have claimed more than.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Am I correct in describing it as being an
26 inter-ministerial conference at State Secretary level?
. P-138
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, the ministers themselves were not brought
3 in; it was just at the lower levels?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Because Heydrich cannot sit there with people higher than
5 his rank. Cabinet ministers would have been parallel with
6 Himmler. If Heydrich is sponsoring it he cannot bring in
7 people higher in his rank in a programme he is trying to
8 assert his leadership. So he would invite the State
9 Secretaries.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: This rather tends to down-play the significance of
11 Heydrich was acting on Hitler’s orders at this meeting
12 then, if he is only able to bring in State Secretaries.
13 As you say, he is only relying on his own rank. He is
14 only pulling his own rank and he is not pulling Hitler’s
15 rank on those present?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, at the place he cites Hitler’s authority, buried
17 against all protocol for him summoning cabinet ministers.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: He cited Hitler’s authority just proforma, is that what
19 you say?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not think it is proforma. It is setting out his
21 authority and he has the signed Goring letter which, as
22 best we can tell, he drafted and took to Goring for
23 signature and that he, likewise, invokes Hitler’s
24 authority at the conference.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: You said earlier at any rate in the record of the
26 conference (which is not verbatim) there is no explicit
. P-139
1 reference to killing. There is one inference from which
2 killing can be drawn, am I correct?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There are a number of passages in which — that most
4 people would view as transparent references.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you remember one offhand?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would suggest two. One is that most of the Jews will
7 diminish away under physical labour and the rest —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The hard core will remain?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — will be treated accordingly. The second is Buhle’s
10 reference that where we should we begin, and he said, “We
11 should begin in the General Government because there we do
12 not have to worry about Jews capable of work”. They do
13 not mention in the first place what happens to the
14 non-workers. They talk about the workers will diminish,
15 the survivors will be handled accordingly, and there is no
16 reference to the vast majority, the women and children and
17 old people, who obviously are not even going to work.
18 Then Buhle’s reference, “Well, let us begin this programme
19 with the General Government because most of the Jews are
20 not even work worthy there any longer”, I would interpret
21 it as a fairly — as a reference to the fact that they can
22 be killed first of all.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there a passage in the protocol that reads: “The
24 remnant that finally survives all this” — do you remember
25 this passage — “because here it is undoubtedly a question
26 of the part with the greatest resistance will have to be
. P-140
1 treated accordingly”? This is what you were referring to
2 right, right?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Because this remnant representing a natural selection can
5 be regarded as the germ cell of a new Jewish
6 reconstruction”, what are the next two words, do you know?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “If released”.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: “If released”, that is the way you translated them, is it
9 not?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you are familiar with the fact that people accused you
12 of having mistranslated that, people accused you of having
13 translated the words “upon release” “as if released”?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the German?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Abfreilasung”.
16 MR IRVING: “Abfreilasung”. It is one of those German words
17 which you can translate so oder so, as the Germans say,
18 one way or the other.
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And when you say people, quite specifically, Mr Christie,
20 the attorney for Zundel —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Precisely.
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — spent a great deal of time trying to make a great deal
23 out that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Trying to embarrass you, I agree. I certainly shall not
25 try to embarrass you today with that, Professor. I
26 just wanted to draw attention to the fact that we do have
. P-141
1 problems with words, do we not, in German? I know that
2 there are occasionally from the public ranks behind me
3 when I spend time going into these words, like “vie” and
4 “als” and so on, but it is a problem, is it not, how to
5 translate words with the right flavour?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There are many areas where we could have disputes.
7 I think the context here does not leave a whole lot of
8 doubt in this case.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not possible, and have you in fact done it, to
10 either interview those who were at the Wannsee conference
11 or to read the interrogations of them which were conducted
12 by the Allies after the war, people Stuckart and
13 Kritzinger? Have you read the interrogations when they
14 were questioned about their recollections of that and
15 other conferences?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I have not read those systematically. I have seen
17 excerpts of them, I believe, but I have not gone through
18 the exercise of tracing all of those.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: For once I have to express my astonishment that, as an
20 Holocaust historian, knowing that in the national archives
21 in Washington they have verbatim transcripts of the
22 questionings of these half dozen or so surviving
23 attendees, you did not read what they had to say about
24 their recollections?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You are free to express your amazement.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, what did Kritzinger have to say? Can
. P-142
1 you put that?
2 MR IRVING: As a question?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, otherwise —-
4 MR IRVING: Can you justify why you did not do so?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, no. He has accepted he did not do so,
6 but that perhaps is only material if there is something
7 really significant he missed by not having consulted what
8 Kritzinger said, whoever Kritzinger may be, I do not know.
9 MR IRVING: He was a State Secretary in the Reichschancellory,
10 I believe, under Lammers. Is it right — well, I cannot
11 ask him what he has not read, my Lord.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you can.
13 MR IRVING: Would you not expected to find that they would have
14 been questioned about as to whether there was actually
15 explicit reference to killing operations in the Wannsee
16 conference and that this might have clarified the
17 uncertainties from the text?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think I have seen excerpt of the Stuckart one and, in
19 general, they are denying that this had much significance.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So all of them denied that there had been any
21 discussion explicitly of killing operations?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, as far as I know all of them did.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that influence your thinking about what
24 Wannsee was about?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I think these people were shown the protocol and if,
26 of course, their participation there made them more
. P-143
1 vulnerable legally, and here is one case where I would
2 invoke Mr Irving’s practice that we look at oral testimony
3 very carefully, and ask what motive would they have to say
4 less than the full truth, and when I have a written
5 document, on the one hand, and a self-exculpatory
6 testimony post war, on the other hand, I put more weight
7 on the written document.
8 MR IRVING: But suppose this self-exculpatory testimony after
9 the war contained references, for example, by a man called
10 Gottfried Buhle who attended the subsequent conference on
11 March 5th 1942, and he says: “It was disgusting the way
12 these SS officers treated the Jews like cattle”, and
13 referred to forwarding them here and shipping them there,
14 “and when we protested, Eichmann’s deputy said, ‘We are
15 the police and we do as we want'”, would that be taken as
16 self-exculpatory? Would you expect this man also to have
17 remembered and testified if there had been decisions on
18 killings?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would take that as testimony that, in fact, they talked
20 fairly openly about killing at these conferences, and a
21 denial of others to the contrary should not be trusted.
22 This is a non-self-exculpatory statement with much more
23 specificity and would indicate, in fact, that Eichmann’s
24 indication that there were open in their discussion about
25 killing than his euphemism has for their credibility.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, if I am more specific here and say that these
. P-144
1 interrogations referred only to the brutal nature of the
2 language used by the participants in the uncouth language,
3 but there was still no talk of killing, it was just
4 treating these people like cattle, does this not indicate
5 that probably there was no talk of killing at these
6 meetings, no open talk anyway?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, there is no open talk of that at the second one, at
8 the March 6th. That is all that Buhle is referring to.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: But again neither in the interrogations nor in the records
10 of the Wannsee conference, as far as you have seen them,
11 have you seen any explicit references to killing only
12 references by inference?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Except for Eichmann.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Except for?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Eichmann is a participant and he —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: What he said in Israel in 1963?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. Or 1960/61.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: ’61. My Lord, do you wish to ask further questions about
19 Wannsee?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, thank you very much.
Section 145.21 to 165.17
21 MR IRVING: You referred to Hermann Goring’s authorization to
22 Heydrich dated July 31st, 1941. One very brief question
23 on that: was it intended or taken by either party as
24 being a blank cheque to kill?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe it was intended as a kind of authorization for a
26 feasibility study, that what it says is, “Please study the
. P-145
1 question of”—-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of what?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: –“the fate of the Jews in the rest of Europe”. It does
4 not say killing, it says a total, you know, examine the
5 possibility of a total solution for the Jews in Europe.
6 Deal with, the second sentence, I believe, is to deal with
7 the agencies whose jurisdiction is affected. The third is
8 to bring back a plan for a Final Solution, both
9 “gesamtlosung” and “endlosung”, and my interpretation is
10 this is not an order, this is an authorization for
11 Heydrich to look into the possibilities of what will they
12 do with the rest of the Jews of Europe?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can it be taken just as an extension of the powers
14 conferred on Heydrich in January 1939?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: My feeling is no, that the very fact they needed a new
16 authorization means that we are no longer talking about
17 immigration but a new kind of solution that is no longer
18 immigration is what is envisaged, otherwise he would not
19 need a new authorization.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask to go to page 44 in your expert report, please?
21 This is another criticism, I am afraid, of your
22 methodology.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page what?
24 MR IRVING: 44 of the Professor’s expert report. Two lines
25 from the bottom you say: “… unloading the train cars
26 some 2,000 Jews were found dead in the train”?
. P-146
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the figure you quote?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have made the translation yourself?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw your attention to the footnote 113 on the
7 following page, 45?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: In which you state, no doubt correctly: “A more legible,
10 retyped copy of this document contains the figure 200
11 rather than 2,000″?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why did you use the larger figure rather than the smaller
14 figure?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Because it was the original document. The other one says
16 “Abschrift” and I use the original rather than copy if
17 I have both of them.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why do you, therefore, state that a more legible retyped
19 copy contains the figure 200 rather than 2,000?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was the figure illegible in the original?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The original is clearly 2,000. It is just a hard document
22 to read because the photostat quality is less. The
23 retyped copy is a clear one to read but in neither —-
24 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship has it.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: — is there any doubt about —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do I? Well, we can actually look at it for
. P-147
1 ourselves.
2 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Everybody should look at it. It is page 103
3 to — it is the Westerman report, I think, of 14th
4 September 1942 — 105 of L1.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And this is the original, not the Abschrift?
6 Whereabouts?
7 MR RAMPTON: That I cannot — your Lordship will need the
8 Professor’s report. I can barely read the wretched thing.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is not legible?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, the report itself is very difficult to read in this
11 edition and in terms of whether it is, you know, what the
12 number is.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think I have found it in it. I think
14 it says 1,000. It is the third paragraph on page 105. It
15 looks to me like 1,000 Juden.
16 MR IRVING: How many spaces does it have? Is it enough spaces
17 for —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It has plenty of spaces to be 1,000.
19 MR IRVING: Four digits then?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, four digits.
21 MR IRVING: In that case I will accept that 2,000 is probably
22 correct.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can have a look at it, if you want to,
24 Mr Irving. I may have the wrong bit.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It will come near the end.
26 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I think it is the wrong paragraph. I am
. P-148
1 sorry. I think it is the last paragraph up from the
2 bottom of the last page and I think it is the third line
3 and I can read it very clearly. 5,000 “Juden tot” — it
4 is five words in from the right-hand margin is the word
5 “tot” and 2,000.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
7 MR IRVING: How did that figure of 2,000 dead on a transport of
8 that size compare with the average for journeys like
9 this? Was the average, am I right in saying, about 20 to
10 25 per cent?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is an extraordinarily high one, but when one looks at
12 the surrounding documents of the Westerman report, one
13 realizes what had happened, that they — in these previous
14 reports that they had march people from surrounding towns
15 in August, and a very hot August, for three or four days,
16 left them in a collection centre for several days — these
17 people had not eaten or drunk for nearly a week — were
18 then crammed into cars in which they had not nearly enough
19 room. So instead of the usual 100 to 120, they were
20 packed in even further, so that you have in a hot summer
21 in suffocating conditions packed totally full of people
22 who have not eaten or drunk for a long time, being shipped
23 in which the guards say they fired off all of their
24 ammunition into the cars. This is not a normal transport
25 and, thus, I concluded that the 2,000 number is not, in
26 fact, unrealistic, given what we know about the nature of
. P-149
1 this transport, that it was not a normal transport.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which would have happened to the 2,000 bodies when they
3 arrived at Belzec?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They would have been a logistical problem. You would have
5 had — they do not walk out of the trains, so you have to
6 get people to carry them from the ramp to the pits.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: And there they would have been buried or cremated or
8 disposed of?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: At this stage they would have been buried. They were not
10 cremating yet at Belzec.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And lots of people would have seen this going on,
12 presumably?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The people inside the camp. The train cars were brought
14 into the camp in the ramp —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: There would have been lots of eyewitnesses, in other
16 words, of 2,000 bodies been buried in Belzec?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, they were burying much more than that, in my opinion
18 because —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking about these 2,000.
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They would have seen these 2,000 being —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that would have remained in the memories of very many
22 of these eyewitnesses?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the railway line runs into the camp,
24 does it? There is a spur?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The main line runs through and then I believe they pulled
26 off on a ramp which, in effect, is fenced in, a siding, so
. P-150
1 this would not have been at the central train station,
2 this would have been somewhat off, though the Belzec camp
3 lies very close to the train tracks there.
4 MR IRVING: The reason I am saying this is, quite clearly, as
5 you say, it is a logistical problem, it is a human
6 problem. You have 2,000 corpses being carried into a camp
7 in which there are living people, there are guards, there
8 are eyewitnesses, there are prisoners. They are being
9 buried, they are being disposed of. It is an horrific
10 problem, it is an atrocity, there is no question of that,
11 and there are eyewitnesses to it?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If one is gassing 5,000 people a day, an extra 2,000
13 bodies in the train cars is not going to be a memorable
14 experience. They are seeing more corpses than that every
15 day, day after day, week after week, month after month.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I take you now to page 46, paragraph 5.3.14?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Here you say that the documentary evidence of the killing
19 at Belzec and Treblinka is scant. Have I got it right?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The scant surviving documentation concerning the purpose
21 of Sobibor.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do we have documentary evidence about Belzec and
25 Treblinka, about the gassing?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, about the kinds of people, this is a section that is
. P-151
1 still dealing with people being sent there who are not
2 sent there to do work and who do not reappear. This is
3 not yet the section in which I say how do we find out what
4 the documents do not tell us and that is how they were
5 killed.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I take you now to page 48, paragraph 5.4.1? Here we
7 have the talk about the pestilential smell from all the
8 rotting bodies caused by the inadequate burial of the
9 Jews. “No contemporary document specifically states how
10 the Jews sent to these three camp were killed”. We have
11 the same kind of documentary problem again, do we not?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We are dealing with something — yes, as I have said, that
13 they do not have a document, we do not have a document
14 from Operation Reinhardt that specifies their being killed
15 in gas chambers.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So how do we know then? Eyewitnesses?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is what we then turn to, yes. At the beginning
18 I said there are numbers of kinds of evidence. Eyewitness
19 is one category among a number.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You very honestly state in the same paragraph towards the
21 end: “As in any body of eyewitness testimonies, there are
22 errors and contradictions as well as both exaggerations
23 and apologetic obfuscation and minimisation”?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, the whole sorry of these three camps
26 which I am not challenging — I am only challenging the
. P-152
1 scale of the operations — the whole story is rather
2 hedged in uncertainty and lack of the kind of documentary
3 evidence we have for the killings that went on on the
4 Eastern Front.
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is evidence of a different quality. The convergence of
6 testimony I think establishes beyond any reasonable doubt
7 what took place in those camps.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The convergence of testimony, as I am beginning to
9 believe, is a phrase that people take refuge in when there
10 is no testimony and little evidence?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I believe it is a very useful concept that we deal
12 with a totality of evidence, and that if one were to argue
13 that we cannot use eyewitness testimony and had to let out
14 every criminal in prison on that ground, we would have a
15 fairly chaotic society.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you would agree that there is are different qualities
17 of eye witness testimony; there is eyewitness testimony
18 gained from somebody who saw something this afternoon,
19 reports this afternoon what he saw this morning or
20 yesterday evening, but eyewitness testimony recalled 30
21 years later in a West German court is liable to be
22 somewhat more shaky?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is liable to have less specificity. My feeling is if
24 somebody had spent six months or 12 months in a death
25 camp, he does not forget the existence of gas chambers.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, can I just go back to something
. P-153
1 you said a while ago which was that you were not
2 challenging — I am just picking up your quote.
3 MR IRVING: This is quite right, my Lord. I am not challenging
4 the nature of these three camps.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are not challenging that?
6 MR IRVING: As killing centres.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you do not have to put it quite like
8 that, but you are challenging the scale of operations?
9 MR IRVING: Yes.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I understand that completely. But at
11 paragraph 5.4.1 what Professor Browning is dealing with is
12 the way in which Jews were killed. I just wanted to have
13 clear from you, you do accept that gas was used to kill
14 Jews at all these three camps, as I recall; is that
15 correct?
16 MR IRVING: I think it is immaterial what way they were killed
17 or the way I accept they were killed at these three camps.
18 There is a lot of debate about it. But in order to keep
19 this trial far shorter than it could be if we really
20 wanted to challenge everything in it or debate everything
21 in it —-
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, if that is right, you need not bother
23 with paragraph 5.4.1 because that is where Professor
24 Browning says that they were basically killed in gas
25 chambers at those three camps —-
26 MR IRVING: It goes to the whole problem of —- no.
. P-154
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — and, as I understand it, you are not
2 challenging that.
3 MR IRVING: — reliability of eyewitnesses. We have now
4 established since that concession or statement by me — I
5 hate to say “concession” because it implies that —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not worry about that, yes.
7 MR IRVING: — we have now established since that once again
8 it is the eyewitnesses that we are relying upon for this,
9 and I am using this as a way of undermining the
10 credibility of eyewitnesses or eyewitness evidence as a
11 general source. We are later on coming to quite an
12 important eyewitness who is a man called Gerstein who
13 I shall spend a few minutes assailing the credibility of.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does Gerstein deal with gassing at Belzec,
15 Sobibor or Treblinka?
16 MR IRVING: Indeed, yes. He claims to be an eyewitness and he
17 introduced — Your Lordship will remember the pretrial
18 hearing on November 4th where we learned that Professor
19 Browning had desired to incorporate subsequent material
20 relating to one particular man.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. All I am getting at this is — I am
22 sorry to interrupt you because I want to keep the
23 interruptions to a minimum — if you are accepting that
24 gas chambers were used to kill Jews at these three camps,
25 in a sense, there is not terribly much to be gained by
26 challenging the credibility of Mr Gerstein who says that.
. P-155
1 Is that unfair?
2 MR IRVING: It is a general attack on eyewitness evidence which
3 is important for the main plank of my case which is
4 Auschwitz where we have established, I think —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
6 MR IRVING: — from Professor van Pelt that the only evidence
7 one can really rely on is the eyewitness evidence.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you are using Gerstein as a sort of
9 example of the fallibility?
10 MR IRVING: Rather like Rommel, I am coming round from the rear
11 and attacking am attacking the eyewitnesses.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.
13 MR IRVING: It is an indirect attack. (To the witness): One
14 of the eyewitnesses that you rely on is, of course,
15 Eichmann. He saw, he visited, some of these camps, did he
16 not?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. We have talked a bit about his reliability. Does he
19 ever have a tendency to exaggerate, do you think?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Much less than others and I think sometimes he probably
21 understates, but, in general, his memory of sequence of
22 events and things seems to be better than most witnesses.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he describe once visiting a scene of executions and
24 seeing blood spurting from the ground like in geysers?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, and then when we have the — when you have lots of
26 bodies like that, I believe that coming up of blood was
. P-156
1 testified to by others as well.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he once testify or write in his papers — in fact, in
3 my collection of papers too — did he write that he got so
4 close to one shooting that bits of babies’ brain were
5 splattered across his nice leather coat?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He complained that at Minsk that happened and, of
7 course —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that credible in your view?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have written on police battalion 101 where the men came
10 routinely with their uniform saturated in blood. When you
11 shoot people at point blank range, you get bloody.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Eichmann, of course, testified that he was told there was
13 a Hitler order, and perhaps we ought to ask your views on
14 that.
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He consistently says that he learns from Heydrich, so this
16 is second-hand, that he learns from Heydrich that Hitler
17 has issued the order for the physical annihilation of the
18 Jews of Europe.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand? If Hitler
20 has Himmler who has told Heydrich or Himmler has told
21 Muller who has told Heydrich or Himmler has told Heydrich
22 who has told Muller?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We only know that it goes from — all we know is what he
24 says and that is that Hitler — that Heydrich tells him
25 Hitler has ordered. Heydrich does not give details of
26 what may or may not have intervened.
. P-157
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: What importance do you attach to that particular piece of
2 evidence?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He says that from beginning to end, and I think that he is
4 probably accurately relating a meeting with Heydrich in
5 which this issue was clarified.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: The end was, presumably, 1963 when he was hanged, and when
7 was the beginning in the 1950s, late 1950s?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Certainly from the —-
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Sassen papers?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I am not sure what he says in the Sassen papers except
11 I think it must be included because Aschenal wrote a bunch
12 of footnotes saying that the person he was publishing was
13 mistaken on this — a strange thing for the editor to do.
14 So I believe that — sometimes I do not remember exactly
15 which one says which, but my recollection is that the
16 published Adolf Eichmann which based on some Sassen papers
17 does stipulate that he was told there was a Hitler order.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I secured the publication of those actually. I am the one
19 who found a publisher because I thought they needed a
20 publication, a publisher. I insisted that they should be
21 published in their original form because they did contain
22 these very odd passages. But can you see any reason why
23 Adolf Eichmann in the 1950s, living in the underground in
24 Argentina, should have wanted to state in his writings
25 that he remembered a Fuhrer order in that way? Can you
26 think of any reason why should he have written that?
. P-158
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think he was absolutely convinced there was an order,
2 that he was carrying out state policy.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, would the existence of a Fuhrer order in his mind
4 have let him off the hook? “I was only acting on orders”,
5 would that have let Eichmann off the hook in his own mind
6 if there was a Fuhrer order?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It would have been a defence after being arrested, but if
8 he says it before that, I think it is a reflection of his
9 feeling that he had been carrying out a very major Hitler
10 order.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it evident from these papers that he wrote or dictated
12 to the journalist, Sassen, while in the underground in
13 Argentina while hiding that he was aware that there was a
14 worldwide hue and cry searching for him?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know how much he was aware of. It is very
16 strange that the man who, obviously, had fled to Argentina
17 because he knew he was hunted would talk to a journalist.
18 What sort of self-destruction wish he had, I do not know,
19 but it was very strange behaviour for someone, but
20 certainly not an indication that he would then take the
21 opportunity to lie.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you not agree that it is possible that he was either
23 consciously or unconsciously creating an alibi for
24 himself, rehearsing the alibi he would used when he was
25 caught or if he was caught?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not think he would be increasing his chances of
. P-159
1 getting caught by trying to establish an alibi when if you
2 kept your mouth shut he would not be caught in the first
3 place.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not evident that Sassen had a commercial interest in
5 marketing these papers and that he sold them to a major
6 New York magazine?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He did sell them to Life magazine. What his motive was
8 earlier, I do not know.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in fact, we do not know whether Eichmann actually made
10 that confession or whether it was incorporated by the
11 journalist?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, we do have — the Israelis have the transcripts of
13 the tapes in which he made handwritten notations, and
14 I would have to look at those to find if there was a huge
15 discrepancy. I think the one discrepancy in the Life
16 magazine report, as opposed to what he consistently says
17 in his other testimony, is that they portray his visit to
18 Belzec where he talks about there is a camp in a sense
19 under construction, I think the Life magazine account
20 talks of this being already in operation. My guess is
21 that that is a Sassen invention to make it more spiffy.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who was Kurt Gerstein?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Kurt Gerstein was a covert anti-Nazi in the SS who was in
24 the hygienic department.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: What makes you suggest that he was a covert anti-Nazi?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He had joined and then been expelled from the Nazi Party
. P-160
1 and then, at least in his own account, got back into the
2 SS because he had heard of the euthanasia programme and he
3 wanted to find out more.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say “in his own account”, when was his account written
5 to which you are referring?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The accounts that he gave that he writes are dated in late
7 April and early May 1945. He also had conversations with
8 others that have been related to us later, would be his
9 statements at a time earlier than 1945.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be to his advantage after World War II to
11 establish or to maintain the position that he had been a
12 covert anti-Nazi?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Certainly, lots of people claimed that they were
14 anti-Nazis who were not, and the question then is you have
15 to look, is this a bona fide claim or not? Certainly,
16 lots of people were claiming that, and that would be one
17 question you would have to put to the evidence. If you
18 have other people such as Bishop Dalias(?) who said
19 Gerstein came to him in 1942 or ’43 and corroborates his
20 anti-Nazi stance, then you would lend more credibility to
21 the 1945 statement as opposed to someone who had been
22 killing Jews over the years and then suddenly poses as an
23 anti-Nazi in 1945.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was he tried?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Gerstein? He was arrested and sent to a French prison
26 where he died, and the French prison ruled it as suicide.
. P-161
1 Some have voiced suspicion that he was killed by fellow
2 prisoners as a traitor.
3 MR IRVING: Kurt Gerstein is used or relied upon as an
4 important eyewitness, or was relied upon as an important
5 eyewitness, for various camps or killing operations. Is
6 that right?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He is relied upon, as far as I know, for Belzec and
8 Treblinka.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: For Belzec and Treblinka, because he visited these camps?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is the visits to the camps, yes, that he says he
11 visited these camps and I am sure we will get into why
12 I credit that.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: What was his actual position in the SS?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: One of the things he was doing was delivering Zyklon-B to
15 places for fumigation.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was head of the SS pest control office, can we say,
17 their fumigation or hygiene department?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Their fumigation department, I think we can say that, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: I mean in the non-homicidal sense —-
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a straightforward meaning of the word. So he visited
22 these camps. Was he delivering anything to these camps?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: According to his account, he brought out Zyklon-B to
24 Lublin to fumigate the clothing that was there and then
25 went on to Belzec and Treblinka, and that in his account
26 at Belzec, I think it is, he buries the rest of the
. P-162
1 Zyklon-B and does not deliver that to the camp.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You talk about “in his account”. How many accounts were
3 written by Mr Gerstein, to your knowledge?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think there are a number of drafts and notes, but, in
5 general, in terms of the finished product, we have the
6 French version and the German version and maybe even two
7 French versions, but how many — I have not seen the
8 actual notes. I do not know how many drafts that we might
9 count as a version, but —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is no question as to the authenticity. He was the
11 author of these —-
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not believe that has been challenged.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the work of a French academic called
14 Henry Rocques? R-O-C-Q-U-E-S, I think it is.
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have not read his work. I have heard the name.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have heard the name. Did he write a dissertation on
17 the various reports by Kurt Gerstein in order to obtain a
18 PhD?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe so — I have heard that.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he awarded a doctorate on the basis of these,
21 initially?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe initially.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the basis of his PhD thesis. Did he keep his
24 doctorate?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe not.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What was the problem?
. P-163
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think somebody said the document did not deserve a PhD
2 and it was looked into and they withdrew it.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the university decided to knuckle under pressure, am
4 I right?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe you could say that the university discovered
6 somebody had let through a very sloppy dissertation and
7 decided that they had better get their house in order.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do these things happen often? Are people often stripped
9 of their doctorates?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not very often.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it happen very often in France?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it happen largely to revisionist historians?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I know of this case. I do not know of any other.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Faurisson, are you familiar with the case?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not believe he has had his dissertation withdrawn.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he have his Professorship removed from him?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I believe he is suspended from teaching but I do not know
19 that he had the position terminated. I do not know.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: To get back to Gerstein, is it right that Henry Rock, in
21 writing his dissertation discovered no fewer than seven
22 different versions of the Gerstein report?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I cannot answer that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that he obtained also access in the French police
25 files to all the private letters that Gerstein had
26 written?
. P-164
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That I do not know.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not that either. Is it not surprising that your Holocaust
3 historian, you have not read his PhD dissertation which
4 relies on these papers?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I have not seen the PhD dissertation, and it is not
6 in circulation that I know of.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Like most PhD dissertations, it can be obtained from the
8 university, can it not?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If it has been withdrawn, I do not know.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am not going to stop you, but
11 this is all slightly Alice in Wonderland, is it not? For
12 the reason we went through before, you accept there were
13 gas chambers so criticising Gerstein for saying there were
14 is slightly limited value, I think. Do not take it too
15 slowly.
16 MR IRVING: A well deserved reprimand, my Lord.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a reprimand.
Section 165.18 to 182.13
18 MR IRVING: Can I take you to page 50 of your report, please?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I want you to look at the second version of page 50, which
21 contains the bold type on it. Your Lordship said in
22 November you would interleave the pages?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have done that and I have crossed out
24 the superseded one.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: My account does not have bold type.
26 MR IRVING: It does not have bold type?
. P-165
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the new version you interpolated certain sentences.
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I can get my own version and I believe I may be able to
4 use that.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, I shall be another half hour at most.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not hurry. I really mean that. I am not
7 seeking to hurry you, just to guide you to the areas which
8 I think are of greater significance.
9 MR IRVING: Is it fair to say that, after you wrote your report
10 initially, you realized that you had omitted, either
11 accidentally or wilfully, certain passages which, if
12 included, would have cast grave doubt on the reliability
13 of this man as a witness?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: What happened is that I in fact sent a draft, mistakenly
15 you were sent what was not my final report, and, when
16 I got back, it was clear that things that I had put in
17 were not included. One of the things was that I was able
18 to look at both the French and the German reports and the
19 French has some exaggerations not included in the German,
20 and I then amended mine and I emphasised further the
21 elements —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do urge you, before you continue, to consider your
23 replies carefully, because the tenor of each of these
24 interpolations is very much material that has been
25 previously left out or not included which, if left in,
26 would have totally destroyed the veracity of this report
. P-166
1 or certainly tended to undermine it. In other words, it
2 all tends the same way. It is not random omissions. It
3 is all that kind of document, right? That kind of
4 omission?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The ones that were added were the cases that highlighted
6 exaggerations in Gerstein, that on reflection I felt
7 should go in.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: According to Gerstein, I am reading from the middle of
9 paragraph 5.4.1.3, new version, this is the sentence which
10 you omitted but have now put in: “According to Gerstein
11 Globocnik also claimed with great exaggeration Belzec
12 Treblinka and Sobibore respectively 15,000, 25,000 and
13 20,000 Jews were killed daily with diesel exhaust gas”.
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you consider those figures to be reliable?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. I think they are not reliable at all.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Rather lower down that same paragraph, we have a 45 wagon
18 transport arriving from Woolf with 6,700 Jews, of whom
19 1,450 were already dead. That is about the same kind of
20 proportion, is it not, 20 per cent?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is similar to the Versterman report and, given the
22 conditions under which the Galetian transports were
23 coming, I do not consider that to be an exaggeration or,
24 on the face of it, outrageous.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: This was in your original report. What would have
26 happened to those 1,450 corpses? Would they have been
. P-167
1 dragged into the camp and disposed of?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I can only speculate, but my guess would be that after the
3 entire operation was over they would then bring the dead
4 bodies from the transports. That would have been the last
5 clean up item when they had finished liquidating the
6 transport.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now we have, “The Jews were forced to undress who arrived
8 on this transport”, and then comes a parenthesis that you
9 originally left out, “the piles of shoes were allegedly 25
10 metres high”. Is that from the Gerstein report?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is from Gerstein report.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: 25 metres is, what, 80 feet?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, it would be.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: About as tall as that building out there, probably?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know, but it clearly is an exaggeration.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: It clearly is an exaggeration, but you left it out because
17 of space reasons, or was there some other reason why it
18 got left out?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It was not a matter of left out, it is a decision of
20 putting something in. I had said in the original working
21 draft that there were many exaggerations and I felt we had
22 better be specific about what they were.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then over the page, my Lord, page 51 of the new version,
24 with bold face on the third line, you say: “Approximately
25 750 Jews were driven into each of four gas chambers,
26 measuring 5 metres by 5 metres each.” Is that a
. P-168
1 reasonable kind of estimate of the number of people? Why
2 did you leave out the phrase “measuring by 5 by 5 metres
3 each or apiece”?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: As I said, it was question of putting it in when I felt
5 I had to be more specific about what I meant in terms of
6 Gerstein’s exaggerations.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would it be perverse to believe that, if that measurement,
8 the dimensions had been left in, that would have tended to
9 undermine the credibility of that sentence?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, given that later I have 200 Jews per gas chamber and
11 in another the 750 figure was already considerably out of
12 line with other stuff that I put, I make clear in this
13 from beginning to end that there are exaggerations and
14 that Gerstein does exaggerate.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: But he does not exaggerate just on an amateur scale, does
16 he? He exaggerates on a Munchhausen scale.
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: There are some extraordinary exaggerations, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw your attention to the next paragraph, 5.4.1.4?
19 This is one you left in, I believe?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This was there.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The following day Gerstein drove to Treblinka where the
22 gassing facilities were larger and he saw, you quote,
23 veritable mounds of clothing and underwear 115 to 130 feet
24 high”.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, which I would suggest was that I was putting in
26 already in the first draft considerable materials that
. P-169
1 were demonstrating my conclusion that much of his report
2 was exaggerated. I added further material. Certainly in
3 the working draft there was no attempt to hide that fact.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: But would you agree —-
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: You suggest that there was some sort of cover up or
6 sinister attempt to sanitize Gerstein, I do not think that
7 is borne out by looking at either first and second draft.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not trying to suggest that you tried to cover up or
9 sanitize, but merely to make passages you wanted to rely
10 on seem more plausible. I put it to you that, if you had
11 left these passages in, it would have totally demolished
12 the veracity of this witness, and no responsible historian
13 would have dreamed of using Gerstein as a source.
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They are in, and I use him, and others have used him, and
15 we use him with caution.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: They are in now, of course, because you subsequently
17 amended your report to include them.
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, “amend” is not the right word. As I have said, it
19 was a mistake by Mishcon de Reya to have turned over what
20 was not the final draft.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, in your first draft?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Do you write one book in one sitting, or do you revise
23 things as you go, and do you reflect about what you are
24 writing? I have things in a number of drafts.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I quote Mr Rampton and say you are not allowed to ask me
26 questions. I am the one who asks the questions.
. P-170
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Then let me phrase it this way. I write in many drafts.
2 I would expect any careful author would write a number of
3 drafts, the second and third drafts would not be
4 identical, or one would not write numerous drafts.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Out of your own mouth, Professor, you are condemning
6 yourself. That implies that in your first draft you chose
7 to leave all these passages out, and only later did you
8 decide to put them back in again for whatever reason.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is not a matter of having decided to leave out, I was
10 constructing it. I said in the initial draft there were
11 many exaggerations. Looking at it, I said let us spell
12 that out more clearly.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it not indicate in fact, if you read these monstrous
14 exaggerations by Gerstein, that he was a man with a
15 severely disordered mind, which finally crashed when he
16 committed suicide in prison?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think he was a man that was utter traumatised and
18 unstable.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In other words, totally unreliable and undependable
20 and it was responsible to base an important piece of
21 history just on the eyewitness testimony of this man
22 because — is there any other eyewitness testimony of
23 equal colour?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Two things wrong. To say he is unstable is not identical
25 to saying unreliable. To say that it is the only
26 testimony is false because we have lots of other
. P-171
1 testimony.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to Pfannenstiel?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We certainly are.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to what Gerstein is alleged to have said
5 to a Swedish diplomat?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: When did this conversation with a Swedish diplomat take
8 place?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: August 21, 22, coming back from Warsaw.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: In 1942?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: What date is the Swedish diplomatic memorandum on that
13 conversation? Was it contemporary or was it written years
14 later?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The one that is in the file of the Swedish Foreign Office
16 was written after the war.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Three years later. Was there any opportunity for that
18 Swedish Foreign Office gentlemen to have cross-pollinated
19 his knowledge with what he had read in the Allied and
20 Swedish newspapers about what had been discovered?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I have no idea on that.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, but you agree that, if this Swedish diplomat had
23 written a contemporary memorandum dated August 1942, that
24 would have very strong evidentiary value?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That would have been much stronger.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Something written after the war in 1945, for various
. P-172
1 reasons, is less dependable?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is evidence of less strength than one written at the
3 time.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why did this man Pfannenstiel accompany Gerstein on his
5 visits to these extermination camps?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know why he went.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: What was his position?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He was a Professor.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he a Professor at the Institute of Hygiene in Berlin?
10 Yes, not in Berlin, Mabuch on the Lan.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: And why did he accompany Gerstein?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was that the kind of position where a Professor would
14 accompany an SS officer in connection with controlling
15 epidemics?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It could well be that he would be invited along as an
17 expert or someone who wanted to learn, or that the SS was
18 trying to bring in, I do not know. There are a number of
19 possible explanations.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Pfannenstiel, of course, after the war, am I right,
21 testified broadly in accordance with what Gerstein had
22 stated?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: He confirmed that he had seen these things happening?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What did Gerstein testify that he had seen happening in
. P-173
1 two or three sentences? He had seen gassings?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Gerstein testified that he went to both Belzec and
3 Treblinka and saw gassings at each. I am not sure — yes,
4 I think he said he saw them at each. Pfannenstiel said
5 that he only went to Belzec, that he did not go to
6 Treblinka, it could well be that Gerstein went on and he
7 did not. Pfannenstiel only confirms being with Gerstein
8 in Belzec and seeing the Belzec gassing.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Take these two people separately. Gerstein went to these
10 two camps, carrying with him a hundred kilograms of Zyklon
11 or some fumigating agent and his story is that, after he
12 had delivered the goods, which was for fumigation of
13 clothing — and he himself states that am I right?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: That the local SS people then gave him a treat and let him
16 watch a gassing on the following day. Is that plausible
17 in your view?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, I think they said they did some of the work in
19 Lublin and then they took him up, and of course, by his
20 account, he had gotten into the SS to find out what he
21 could. So he would have taken this opportunity.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason why they should have shown him
23 something that was top secret?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: To people in Lublin this was not top secret, and he was a
25 member of the SS.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about Pfannenstiel? Why should they have shown to
. P-174
1 this Professor of Hygiene one of the most secret and
2 deadly operations going on, namely the Final Solution and
3 operation? Why should they have done that?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know why they should have done that.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you think of any reason why Pfannenstiel, testifying
6 in a West German court after the war, would have said that
7 he had seen these things?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It led to a lot more interrogations. If he had denied it
9 entirely, I think nothing would have happened, and, when
10 he said this, nothing happened either, because witnessing
11 it was not committing a crime.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are absolutely right. Witnessing was not committing a
13 crime and Mr Gerstein, was he still alive at that time?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was dead. So, by saying that Gerstein had witnessed it
16 and was involved bringing Zyklon and so on, that did not
17 hurt Gerstein either, did it?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Gerstein was dead.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: There was no skin off Pfannenstiel’s nose to accept
20 whatever was put to him?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think it led to a series of interrogations and, if it
22 had not happened, he would have said it. He had no reason
23 to incriminate, not incriminate but to involve himself in
24 supporting Gerstein’s account if it had not occurred. To
25 me, it would have been much more likely that he would,
26 even if it happened, have denied it than vice versa.
. P-175
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Surely, if he had denied it, then he would have been
2 subjected to even more intensive interrogations until
3 finally he came round. Is that not more likely?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These are German interrogations in the 1950s and, from my
5 looking through a number of court cases, the notion that
6 he would have been subjected to ongoing pressures and
7 whatever, I see no evidence of that in the Belzec trial or
8 other trials of this sort.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Gerstein has however been pretty comprehensively
10 discredited as an eyewitness, has he not?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Gerstein, as I think most would agree, was a very
12 traumatized and, they decided, unstable individual, but
13 what he witnessed, in terms of having been in Belzec, that
14 he knows the names of several of these people, he gets
15 them slightly wrong but close enough, whatever, he could
16 have come up with those names in his cell in 1945 when the
17 Allies had absolutely no knowledge of the names of the
18 personnel in these camps. How could he have known that
19 there were Galetian transports in August? This was not
20 knowledge in 1945. He knows a number of things that could
21 not have been known if he had not been there. In that
22 case, in those areas, I think one can say that this is a
23 witness that is telling what he saw, even if it is in a
24 highly excited and exaggerated mode.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So his visit is plausible but one is entitled to
26 disbelieve large parts of what he claims to have seen?
. P-176
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If this was the only witness for all of Operation
2 Reinhardt, we would say that this is a very contested
3 one. What he did say in fact, there is very good
4 plausibility in the details of which he tells us about
5 some things that he could not have known if he had not
6 been there, and in turn it is confirmed by a number of
7 other witnesses.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it not tell us something about the integrity of
9 historians who have relied so wholeheartedly on Gerstein
10 and have suppressed the details which you omitted from
11 your original report. I am not pointing a finger at you,
12 Professor, I am just talking about a number of other
13 historians. I am not going to mention any names.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why does it matter for our purposes, what
15 other historians may have made of Gerstein? I do not
16 understand.
17 MR IRVING: It does not matter at all.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it really does if one thinks
19 about it.
20 MR IRVING: It does not, no. The point which I am finally
21 going to develop is that, if an eyewitness like Gerstein
22 can be discredited so largely through the good fortune of
23 our having access to his French police records and other
24 materials, is it not likely that other eyewitnesses will
25 turn out also to be made of straw to a greater or lesser
26 degree, for one reason or another?
. P-177
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, I do not agree. I think that he is confirmed in his
2 essentials, and the question before us here was how did
3 the killing at these camps take place? And he is one of a
4 number of witnesses that say they take place in gas
5 chambers. In so far as he can come up with the names of
6 the people that were there, the transports from the
7 particular region that were arriving at Belzec at that
8 time, I think this is very essential for saying this part
9 of his testimony is reliable. I do not consider that
10 having been destroyed in any way, and I think there are a
11 large number of other witnesses that are also believable
12 that tell the same story.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just dealing with Gerstein at this moment, I do not have
14 to destroy all the eyewitnesses. I just want to tackle
15 the principal ones. If he was who he said he was and he
16 had the task of delivering these fumigation supplies, the
17 Zyklon, to those camps, then he would know the people who
18 were operating whatever they were operating, would know
19 the names. This does not necessarily presuppose that all
20 the rest of his story is true, or any of the rest of his
21 story is true.
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We know that transports from the Volf went there at this
23 time. This was the place from where they were coming. We
24 know that Hockenholt was the man who ran the gas chambers,
25 that Oberhauser was Wirt’s assistant, that he could have
26 come into this information without having visited Belzec.
. P-178
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: How did he know that Hockenholt ran the gas chambers? Is
2 this another eyewitness?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is the other eyewitnesses, but people from whom
4 Gerstein could never possibly have heard of and known of
5 when he was giving this testimony.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask a question at this stage,
7 Mr Irving, really because it might suggest to you that
8 there may be one or two questions you would want to ask as
9 a follow up? It is really this. Given that there is a
10 live issue about gassing at Auschwitz, does the evidence
11 about what was happening at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka
12 have an impact on the issue in relation to Auschwitz? Do
13 you follow my question?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: In the sense that it has the impact that, if the Operation
15 Reinhardt camps are basically killing the bulk of Polish
16 Jewry, then the bit provides the historical context for
17 weighing, is Auschwitz a similar camp for killing Jews
18 brought from other parts of Europe? So they are
19 interrelated if, in that sense, the camps are dividing up
20 geographical areas from which they receive people. We
21 know, I do not know if he does concede but it seems to be,
22 that the people sent to these camps died in one way or
23 another, and at least the eyewitness testimony tells us
24 how that was done. That would contribute to the
25 credibility of those that say Auschwitz was a similar camp
26 as part of a similar programme.
. P-179
1 MR IRVING: My Lord, may I remind you, of course, that I do not
2 challenge that there gassings at Auschwitz on some scale?
3 It is the scale that we very much challenge.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, I do not want to quote him without
5 his permission, as it were, but I imagine, Professor
6 Browning, it is implicit in the answer he has just given,
7 would say that you learn something about the scale of the
8 gassing at Auschwitz from what was happening at these
9 other death camps.
10 MR IRVING: With respect, my Lord, I think not.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Am I misrepresenting you?
12 MR IRVING: I am just alarmed at the notion of building such a
13 major part of World War II history just on the testimony
14 of half a dozen eye witnesses as far as Auschwitz is
15 concerned.
16 MR RAMPTON: I do not know where that comes from. It is the
17 second time we have had that today. It is built on a mass
18 of evidence, documentary, archeological, eyewitness,
19 goodness knows what, all of which, as Professor van Pelt
20 puts it, converged to the same conclusion.
21 MR IRVING: The transcript will show what position we reached.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will obviously have to deal with the
23 totality of the evidence, but it had gone through my mind,
24 this thought, and I therefore thought it right to put it
25 to Professor Browning, because it seems to me to be an
26 argument for the existence of gassing on a substantial
. P-180
1 scale at Auschwitz. You have heard the answer that
2 Professor Browning has given to me. It is a matter for
3 you whether you want to pursue it. I appreciate you do
4 not accept it.
5 MR IRVING: I can only ask the supplementary question, which is
6 does that answer depend entirely on eyewitness evidence,
7 or is there any documentary basis whatsoever for what you
8 have just told his Lordship?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We have documentary evidence for gassing in Semlin and
10 Chelmno and the uses of the gas van. We have only
11 eyewitness testimony for the existence of gas chambers in
12 the three Operation Reinhardt camps.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: So there is no documentary evidence relating to scale
14 then?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Not to scale, to mode of killing. What we do have is
16 documentary evidence concerning the emptying of Poland of
17 Jews to these three camps, which are teeny little villages
18 which do not accommodate one and a half million people.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have been through part of that argument sometime ago
20 when I mentioned the English village of Aldershot, to
21 which large numbers of English people went during World
22 War II.
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: If the population of Aldershot had been a group of people
24 already deprived of their rights and property, if they had
25 been rounded up with all of the brutality that left bodies
26 lying all the way to the train station, and if they had
. P-181
1 been sent there and never came back, and if a hundred
2 witnesses from Aldershot said they had been gassed, we
3 would, I think, say something happened at Aldershot.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Absolutely right. We do not have 100 witnesses in these
5 cases, do we? We have apparently, in the case of
6 Auschwitz, about which Mr Rampton is concerned, tens of
7 thousands of survivors, but only five or six have been
8 questioned on this matter so far as we know from these
9 proceedings before us. Anyway, I have no further
10 questions. Thank you very much for coming to England,
11 Professor Browning.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
Section 182.13 to 201.25
13 < Re-examined by Mr Rampton QC.
14 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, if I ran maybe past quarter past 4
15 perhaps I would be forgiven?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had thought already that, if needs be, we
17 will do that.
18 MR RAMPTON: We would like to get the Professor off the stand.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that would suit Mr Irving actually,
20 and then he will have a free run tomorrow, preparing
21 Evans.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I do not have that many questions,
23 Professor, but it may take a bit of time because I want
24 your help with some documents. Can we start, please, with
25 what I call the Browning document file, which is tab 7 of
26 L1? I would like you to turn to page 19A. This is a
. P-182
1 document which by now we all probably can recite in our
2 sleep. There was a lot of cross-examination about it. It
3 is the message from Muller to the Einsatzgruppen of 1st
4 August 1941, I hope, is it?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
6 MR RAMPTON: 19A in a circle. There are about four numbers on
7 the page. You are looking for a handwritten number in a
8 circle in the bottom right hand corner of the page.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, 19A I have.
10 MR RAMPTON: First of all, can I ask you whether you know how
11 long this document has been accessible to scholars?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think the first reference I saw to it was in Gerald
13 Fleming, a book published in 1982.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is that “Hitler und die Entlosung”?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Second question. I am coming back to the content of it in
17 a moment. You see it has the security mark Geheim on it?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I see Geheim.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I want you just to have a quick look at some of the other
20 documents in this bundle, not for the content but for
21 their superscription, if I can call it that. For the
22 moment, I have lost my note. Can we turn, please, to page
23 38? You will remember the context of these questions. It
24 was that Mr Irving was suggesting that Geheim was such a
25 low security classification that this document could not
26 have a sinister connotation.
. P-183
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Page 38 ought to be what I call the Rademacher report,
3 following his visit to Belgrade. Is it?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you tell me, just glancing at the first page, you know
6 it backwards, what is the substance of this document, the
7 first page of it?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He is reporting here on the shooting of the male Jews in
9 Serbia. He had been sent down there to deal with what was
10 to happen to them and he says there really is not a
11 problem concerning the male Jews, they are being shot.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They are being shot. He is an official in the Foreign
13 Office?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He is the so-called Jewish expert in the Foreign Office.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Do you see that has the mere marking Geheim at the top of
16 it?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Thank you. Then can we go to what I think is 40A? It is
19 25th October 41. I am going to ask you to do a bit of
20 stationery work, if you do not mind, Professor. Just put
21 this in the file. There is one for the witness and one
22 for the judge (Same handed).
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: One for Mr Irving?
24 MR RAMPTON: One for Mr Irving, yes. This is another of your
25 documents, Professor. I say “your documents”, documents
26 referred to by you. 25th October 1941, from a Dr Wetzler
. P-184
1 to somebody called Lohse, who is the Reichs Kommissar for
2 the East land. What is this document about?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is the one in which he discusses the possibility of
4 sending someone to Riga to construct gassing apparatuses.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That is in the fourth line on the first page Vergassungs
6 apparate. Then, if you turn over the page, can you just
7 tell us what the first sentence of the first complete
8 paragraph says?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: He says that, given the situation, there are no objections
10 if Jews not capable of work are removed by Brock’s “little
11 helper”.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: His Vergassungsapparate?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Notice then please on the first page the appellation, the
15 security?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The security rank is Geheim.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Then, finally, three other documents. Page 91 is a
18 document dated 26th March, the year I do not know. 42,
19 I guess, is it?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to be very pedantic and say
21 Wetzler document, 40A, or otherwise we will never find it.
22 MR RAMPTON: Sorry, my Lord?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 40A for Wetzler.
24 MR RAMPTON: To Lohse?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is a carbon, so they would have had on the original
26 stationery the 194 and the blank paper behind just recalls
. P-185
1 the two they typed in.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Have you got page 91?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I think it is the 26th, 26th March 1942.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This is a letter, I think, from somebody called Rauf.
5 What is this about?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Rauf is the head of the sort of, I guess we could call it
7 the administration of material matters of the
8 Reichssicherheitshauptamt. Included in that is the motor
9 pool, and this I would have to read through to see
10 exactly.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Something about Sonderwagon.
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. This is about the Sonderwagon that are prepared by
13 them.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I see. It is about the supply of Sonderwagon?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What are Sonderwagon?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is one of terms they used for gas vans.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I notice again in a box at the top of the first page the
19 word Geheim only, please. Then, last but one, page 99A,
20 this I hope is a letter or a copy of a letter, I think it
21 is a Nuremberg document in fact, from Gantzen Muller to
22 Karl Wolff?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: This, I think there is no dispute about this, announces
25 the starting of the journeys of 5,000 Jews a day from
26 Warsaw to Treblinka and twice a week of 5,000 Jews from an
. P-186
1 unpronounceable Polish word.
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Schemeshall.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton]: To Belzec, is that right?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And again the appellation or classification is, is it not,
6 on the front page, Geheim?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is Geheim.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: A mere Geheim for that one. Just by way of contrast, we
9 can look at Wolff’s reply, which is 99C, 13th August
10 1942,. This is not a Nuremberg document. This looks like
11 a copy of an original, does it not? Have you got 99C?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. We have the initials on this, but it is not clear.
13 I am not sure whether this is in the files of the person
14 who received it, or the person who sent it I assume this
15 is in fact in Wolff’s file because that is I think where
16 these documents come from.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It may be. The only thing we can see about this is that
18 there is no Geheim, still less a Geheimerreichssacher .
19 The only thing you can see in the box at the top of the
20 page is a Gothic AR. Do you see that?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What does this series of documents that we have looked at,
23 and I can tell you in the file there are lots of other
24 fairly sinister documents which have no security
25 classification at all, what does that tell you about the
26 classification Geheim as used on documents of this kind?
. P-187
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That there are many documents referring to the workings of
2 the Final Solution and deportation and killing that do not
3 have a high secrecy rating.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Finally — I know this has been laborious — what is
5 your reaction then to the suggestion that the
6 classification, a mere classification of Geheim, on the
7 Muller order or message to the Einsatzgruppen? It is
8 suggested it is not a document of any importance.
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That would not be a persuasive document.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now, this will be slightly disorderly, not in any sense a
11 criticism of Mr Irving, simply because I track his
12 cross-examination in my questions to you. Are you
13 familiar, I am talking now about numbers, with something
14 called the Korherr report of 23rd March 1943?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So as to save us all getting it out, it is noted in some
17 detail in Mr Irving’s book Hitler’s War, in the 1977
18 edition, at pages 503 to 4. The numbers it apparently
19 gave—-
20 MR IRVING: My Lord we have not raised Korherr report in the
21 examination.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but there was an issue about numbers.
23 MR RAMPTON: It has to do with the cross-examination about
24 numbers, scale.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it casts light on that issue, it does not
26 matter whether it has been referred to or whether it has
. P-188
1 not.
2 MR RAMPTON: It has to do with numbers in the East. I can give
3 you the numbers. Numbers given for people subjected to
4 Sonderbehandlung before it was edited.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you, Mr Rampton, very quickly remind me
6 who Korherr is?
7 MR RAMPTON: He was Himmler’s statistician. Is that right?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had forgotten that.
10 MR RAMPTON: He is Dr Rickard Korherr, he is an anorak and he
11 crunches numbers for Himmler. Anyhow, the numbers he
12 gave, if you remember, I will read them out, are for
13 people deported from the eastern provinces subjected to
14 Sonderbehandlung 1,274,166; for people in the Warthegau,
15 and this is at the 23rd March 1943, 145,301, making a
16 grand total of 1,419,467. Now, as at that date, 23rd
17 March 1943, do those numbers seem surprising to you?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No. If anything, I would have thought they would have
19 been slightly higher, because at that point in these
20 regions the first sweep through the ghettoes has already
21 taken place, so this is a very cautious estimate.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: By this date, speaking from your general knowledge of the
23 subject and your detailed knowledge, end of March 43,
24 roughly speaking, how many people do you think have been
25 Sonderbehandelt in the three Reinhardt camps? Roughly.
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Roughly. I would say that would be the lower estimate and
. P-189
1 it might be 100 or 200,000 higher. Basically, the
2 question is how many Polish Jews do we still know are in
3 other places and they are in the work camps in Lublin,
4 there is still 50 to 60,000 in the Warsaw ghetto. They
5 have not liquidated the remnant ghettoes. So, when they
6 made the first sweep, they would take between 70, 80, 90
7 per cent and there would be remaining then in the ghettoes
8 a smaller group that would be left for work. Then the
9 sweep through those ghettoes came in 43. So most of the
10 Polish Jewry has been destroyed but there is still a
11 segment that has not.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I was going to ask you that as my final question on this
13 part of numbers. We saw that Hans Frank estimated between
14 2 and a half and 3 and a half million Jews or people with
15 Jewish connections on 16th September 1941.
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Is it known how many Jews were left in Poland by the end
18 of the war?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: First, I should say those who have looked at real
20 statistics and not Frank talking off the top of his head
21 would not accept the 2.5 to 3.5 in the
22 Generalgouvernment. I should say in Poland the pre 1941,
23 that is the German share of Generalgouvernment and to the
24 West, I believe German demographers who made reports
25 thought it was close to 2 million Polish Jews who were
26 there. Galicia has another 500,000. Bialystok I believe
. P-190
1 has 200,000 or 300,000, and then of course the unknown
2 question is just how many managed to flee. And of those
3 who fled were they then killed in White Russia or the
4 Ukraine?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am coming to some fleeing along the line because we had
6 that yesterday in report number 81, I think. What shall we
7 say then? 3 million? We are talking about Warthegau,
8 Generalgouvernment, Bialystok and Galicia in the
9 southeast. Total 3 million? Three and a half?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say that the prewar population has been estimated
11 about 3.3 million for all of Poland but in terms of the
12 Generalgouvernment, Galicia, Bialystok, that would leave
13 us I think around 3.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can I repeat the question? You are quite right not to
15 adopt Frank’s figure and to give us what one might call a
16 real figure. Has anybody done work to estimate how many
17 Jews were left in this area of Europe after the war?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This is the difficult question because you had a constant
19 flow of Jews who survived fleeting from Poland to Germany
20 so you always have a moving target.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: They flowed westward as well, did they?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: After the war they fled westward. Most of the immigration
23 to Palestine came in fact via Germany. Jews returning
24 from hiding who came back to Polish towns felt very
25 insecure in the atmosphere, where it was feared they would
26 be reclaiming their property and this kind of thing, and
. P-191
1 so they moved out of Poland very quickly.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So population lost figures are not necessarily a very
3 reliable means to an accurate answer?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We get an approximate figure by subtracting the postwar
5 from the prewar to get an approximate number of Polish
6 casualties. So we generally say out of 3.3 million
7 probably 3 million were murdered and 300,000 survived, but
8 those are rough figures.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I am only asking for what you Americans call ball
10 park figures.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are they worth anything, these ball park
12 figures?
13 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I think those are accurate as ball park figures, but
14 they could easily be off 100 thousand on either side,
15 I would think.
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Where the ball park figures are very uncertain is for the
18 Soviet Union.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now I am afraid I shall need some help from people in
20 court. This has to do with three different things that
21 arose during your cross-examination, Professor. The first
22 thing is to go back, if you will, to 19A in the Browning
23 document section of file L1, which is tab 7. Please could
24 somebody find the Professor file H1(vii) please? That
25 file hunting can stop now because Miss Rogers has done the
26 trick with a little file of documents which can go into
. P-192
1 this section. I would like to start with the Muller
2 message of 1st August 1941, the first sentence of which
3 says something like this, does it not, Professor: Running
4 reports on the work of the Einsatzgruppen in the East are
5 to be placed, or will be placed, before the Fuhrer from
6 here”?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. I am sorry about my translation. That is roughly
9 what it says, is it not? Then can you have a look,
10 please, at what I think is probably the first of the
11 documents in that little clip, which is the situation
12 report number 80 dated 11th September 1941?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In English?
14 MR RAMPTON: This is an English translation. The German is
15 there too and I shall need to ask you about that in a
16 moment.
17 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am unhappy about this introduction of
18 documents in this way when I have no chance to re-examine
19 on them.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You will be offered the opportunity to follow
21 up any new points, but this is entirely legitimate
22 re-examination.
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because it arises in relation to a topic that
25 you have cross-examined on.
26 MR RAMPTON: Indeed. It arises, if I may say so, in relation
. P-193
1 to three topics. It arises in relation to what
2 information Hitler was being given, about which the
3 Professor was cross-examined. It arises in relation to
4 the disappearing Jews that ran across the Urals, which we
5 had yesterday, and it arises in relation to the
6 translation given by Mr Irving for Hitler’s table talk on
7 25th October 1941, where he translates the word
8 “Schrecken” as “rumour”, if I have the right German, but
9 anyhow he gives “public rumour” as the translation. So
10 all three of those points arise from these documents.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
12 MR RAMPTON: Can I ask to you look at report number 80 in
13 English, September 11th 1941. Have you got that one?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Good. The second paragraph read as follows. I ask you to
16 note the words carefully. “The rumour that the Germans
17 shoot to kill all the Jews has advantages. This is
18 probably the reason why all the time the EK’s encounter
19 fewer Jews. Thus it should be noted that everywhere more
20 than 70 to 90 per cent of the original local Jews have
21 fled. In contrast to the past this concerns not only
22 those Jews who once held influential positions”. This
23 comes I think from Einsatzgruppen C, which had which area
24 under its jurisdiction?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Ukraine.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then, just in passing, please note the other side of the
. P-194
1 page, which has a 129 at the bottom, “Notwithstanding that
2 those people had, as it were, done a bunk, we still find
3 something like 30,000 Jews shot by the 11th September
4 1941″. Do you see that?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, at the bottom.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I have done the arithmetic for you.
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The Kommandant, he mentions already 23,600, then
8 Sonderkommando A had reached a figure of 7,000 so the
9 cumulative is 30,000.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: 31,000, something like that, and notwithstanding that some
11 had been able, most had been able, to get away, they still
12 found 23,600 which they managed to shoot in three
13 days yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now I would like you to look at the German of that
15 document, if you will, and the relevant passage, if you
16 have this thing, this one is marked Geheim Reichssacher.
17 It looks like a 60 on the front but it is not in fact, it
18 is an 80, and you can see the date 11th September 1941 on
19 the top right hand corner. Have you got that one?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you turn to page 9, please, and look at the last
22 paragraph on the page?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It reads: (German – document not provided) Please
25 translate that for me.
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It turns out to be beneficial. The rumour turns out to be
. P-195
1 beneficial, that all the Jews are shot by the Germans.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If you were asked to translate the word “rumour” into
3 English, what word would you use?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well gerucht would be the common one.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Finally this, and do you still have Dr Longerich’s report
6 up there with you?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Could you turn to page 59?
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, I fail to see under what wangle Mr Rampton
10 is being allowed to produce this document to put it in? It
11 has had no relevance at all of the cross-examination that
12 I conducted.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We may not have quite got to it yet. It is
14 certainly relevant on the questioning so far on whether
15 Schrecken is properly translated as “public rumour”, which
16 was one of the points we went through this morning.
17 MR IRVING: A very tiny shoe horn for such a long document, my
18 Lord.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can promise you I am not going to plough
20 through it unless I am shown other bits of it that are
21 worth ploughing through.
22 MR IRVING: This document was one of the ones that was put to
23 Hitler.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is, as I understand it, one that is
25 suggested was generated by the request.
26 MR IRVING: I think the witness should be asked if there is any
. P-196
1 evidence that this document was one of the ones that was
2 put to him.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is a fair point. I think that
4 question should be asked, whether there is any evidence
5 that this particular situation—-
6 MR RAMPTON: I am going to come to that.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you may have jumped the gun,
8 Mr Irving.
9 MR RAMPTON: These documents, taken in conjunction, affect
10 three questions, Mr Irving’s —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have through them. I remember them.
12 MR RAMPTON: They all arise directly out of cross-examination.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right.
14 MR RAMPTON: I mentioned, Professor, that you have also got
15 there report number 81 about which Mr Irving
16 cross-examined you yesterday without producing the
17 document. He has not got it there, but I can tell you.
18 On page 14 it makes similar remarks about the 72, 90 per
19 cent of the people having fled across the Urals?
20 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This was one that was cited yesterday?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: It is the day after. It is 12th September. We will hand
22 those in later, if we may, my Lord. Can you turn to page
23 59 of Longerich, part I?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, before we leave this, I am taking
25 it that the reference to 70 to 90 per cent of the original
26 refugees having fled is a reference supporting one of
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1 Mr Irving’s points, which is that that was what happened
2 to quite a lot of the local Jews, namely they went into
3 Russia.
4 MR RAMPTON: I do not think we dispute that at all.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. We are agreed about that.
6 MR RAMPTON: Oh absolutely. How many Jews do you think there
7 were in the Ukraine before the Germans got there?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not know, but the total Soviet population of Jews was
9 probably around 5 million, and of course only the question
10 of whether one or two million of those were murdered is
11 really where you get the difference between five and six
12 million victims of the Holocaust.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: In your mind, I know this is probably a matter for his
14 Lordship than for me, but maybe I can ask this. In your
15 mind does it matter whether it is one million or two
16 million?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is for me, is it not?
18 MR RAMPTON: Well, except in so far as it may impinge on the
19 question of system, but I think that has been conceded so
20 I need not pursue that. Page 59 of part I of
21 Dr Longerich, do you have that?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Paragraph 16.4.
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He writes this: “On 25th October, the year is 41, Hitler
26 made the following remark at his table talk after he had
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1 once again made mention of his prophecy of 30th January
2 1939. ‘This criminal race has the 2 million dead from the
3 world war on its conscience, now hundreds of thousand. No
4 one can say to me we cannot send them into the morass.
5 Who then cares about our people? It is good if the terror
6 we are exterminating Jewry goes before us”, and the word
7 for terror is Schrecken in German.
8 You saw in report No. 80 the words the rumour
9 that the Germans shoot to kill all the Jews has
10 advantages. You notice that that comes about a month and
11 a bit before Hitler’s table talk on the 25th. You have
12 seen the Muller order of 1st August 1941. Is it
13 legitimate in your mind as an historian to draw any
14 inference about Hitler’s reception and knowledge of these
15 reports from that information?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We could say that there is a certain resonance. It is not
17 a direct one, but it is an inference that the materials
18 were getting to him and that the Table Talk might be a
19 reflection of having read that.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton]: If we are good, cautious historians, we do not need leap
21 to giant conclusions from little inferential sketches like
22 that, do we?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We would say that this a possible inference.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes. Thank you. The Barbarossa guidelines are on — if
25 you have got Dr Longerich’s report, can you turn to the
26 second part of it on page 5 where in paragraph 2 he sets
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1 out a part of the guidelines for the conduct of the troops
2 in Russia of 19th May. That is about a month before
3 Barbarossa is actually launched, is it not?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: He translates it as: “Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of
6 the National Socialist German people … (reading to the
7 words) … Germany’s struggle.
8 2. This struggle demands ruthless, energetic and drastic
9 measures against the Bolshevik agitators, guerillas
10 saboteurs and Jews as well as the complete removal of all
11 active and passive resistance”. The German is at footnote
12 10 at the bottom of the page and I have two questions
13 about this. Professor Longerich translates the German as
14 “Those Jews were a separate or disjunctive category from
15 all the rest of them”. Do you understand?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can you look at the German at the bottom of page 10 and
18 tell me whether you think he is right write about that?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is the way I would translate it too.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How else could you do it?
21 MR RAMPTON: I do not know.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure —-
23 MR RAMPTON: I do not know.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — is this a bit of an Aunt Sally? I mean,
25 I am not sure what Mr Irving has made of this.
26 MR RAMPTON: I do not know. I have not heard what he says
. P-200
1 about this. I know that he does not —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is re-examination.
3 MR RAMPTON: No, this arose in the course of cross-examination,
4 this document.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know it did, but this point about
6 whether Jews are disjunctive as a category.
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Professor Browning said in his
8 cross-examination Jews are a separate category.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
10 MR RAMPTON: So I wanted to check with him against the German
11 whether he thought that Longerich had translated it
12 correctly.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see.
14 MR RAMPTON: He did not have it in front of him at the time
15 when he said it, I think, actually.
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, I was doing that from memory and now I am looking at
17 the document.
18 MR RAMPTON: The second question is this. Again, this is said
19 to be a document directed at the Vermacht, not at the SS
20 or anybody else like that or the Gestapo. Who would have
21 written it?
22 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: These would have been prepared in the General Staff,
23 I think.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Somebody underneath Jodl?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, or even further down but in the Armed Forces, yes.
Section 201.26 to 210.25
26 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Now, the numbers — page 38 of your report, please,
. P-201
1 Professor, now — this is the famous 97,000, I should say
2 “notorious”. We do not need the German for this. I am
3 going to excuse the motor mechanic who is not good at
4 German grammar.
5 Page 38: “Since December 1941, for example,
6 97,000 were processed by three trucks in action, without
7 any defects in the vehicles being encountered”.
8 How many trucks did they use during this period,
9 December to June 1942?
10 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They had two trucks that were there constantly. Another
11 truck came and that is the one that had the accident that
12 blew up. So most of time they had two trucks running,
13 part of the time a third truck.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I am going to use some arithmetic, then I will ask you
15 further questions, if may? I do not know whether 1941 was
16 a leap year or not, but there are from 1st December ’41 to
17 1st June 1942, 172 or 173 days.
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So let us assume it was not a leap year and it is 172. If
20 you divide 97,000 by 172, that means they are processing
21 564 people a day. If you divide that by three trucks —
22 I know this is rough stuff and maybe the trucks did not
23 have equal capacities — that means roughly 188 people per
24 truck per day. If they did, say, four trips a day, that
25 would be 47 people per trip and that would mean — when
26 I say “a day” I mean on a 24-hour basis?
. P-201
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton]: That would mean there would be six hours, roughly
3 speaking, five and a bit, between each trip. Does that
4 seem feasible?
5 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We know the Saurer truck was much bigger than 40. We do
6 not know the size —-
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: What do you think its capacity was?
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The Saurer truck was, depending on, you know, women and
9 children or adults, would be between 50 and 80.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right.
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: But, in general, you know, I mean, I think as they show
12 that the number per day is not beyond the capacity of the
13 two and three trucks.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Right. So four trips a day, that would actually cover the
15 numbers involved, would it not?
16 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, we know in Semlin when they made — they could do two
17 trips a day and that would be all the way across Belgrade
18 to a burial site that was much further away than the
19 distance between the burial grounds and the Chelmno camp
20 here.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I mean, how long does it take to drive 20 kilometres in
22 one of these trucks?
23 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: We are talking about driving about two or three kilometres
24 from the camp.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Two or three? That is a matter of minutes?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes. The longer period would be the period to gas. That
. P-203
1 is why the motors had to run inside the camp before they
2 left or the passengers would not be dead when they
3 arrived.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton]: From start to finish of the operation, what is your
5 estimate of how long it would have taken?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, would you have to let the desired number of people
7 into the basement of the main building where they would be
8 undressed, force them up ramp into the truck, close the
9 truck doors, run the motor for probably 20 minutes, and
10 then drive, given the issue of undressing and the driving,
11 on the generous side, we would say an hour, and then you
12 must empty the van and clean it out and drive back.
13 MR IRVING: My Lord, this is purely speculative. He is not an
14 expert on gassing operating —-
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, Mr irving, you must understand if you ask
16 almost identical questions in cross-examination,
17 Mr Rampton must be entitled to ask the same sort of
18 questions in re-examination.
19 MR IRVING: Well, I was objecting really to the question that
20 was asked about how long would it take to gas them and…
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you went into the arithmetic, Mr Irving.
22 That opens the issue for Mr Rampton. I am afraid you have
23 to take that as being the rule.
24 MR IRVING: Well, I asked a slightly vaguer question. He asked
25 a specific expert question.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Again that is legitimate, I am afraid.
. P-204
1 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I would say this is not speculation in the sense that
2 I have read through virtually all the testimony of the
3 Chelmno trial and have seen a number of descriptions of
4 the operations, so to call what I have said speculation
5 would be unfair characterization.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is speculation in the sense it is
7 reconstruction.
8 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes, reconstruction. My real question is this.
10 Those sorts of rates, whether it is two or three trucks in
11 operation at any one time, whether it is 40 or 50 people
12 in the truck at a time, whether there are three or four or
13 five trips a day for each truck, does the figure of 97,000
14 seem to you to be credible?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It is entirely credible.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Can we please turn back to your L1 tab 7 documents and
17 turn to page 74 where I think you were accused — this is
18 Hans Frank on 16th December accused by Mr Irving of
19 deliberately suppressing significant parts of the German.
20 It is the paragraph that begins “Die Juden”?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: I only want you to look at the sentence, the next
23 sentence, which begins: “[German – document not
24 provided]”. What would you say if you were going to say
25 “gas” there?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “Vergasung”.
. P-205
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Vergasung”. So he cannot shoot them, he cannot poison
2 them, then he says “verden aber”, that means “but”, does
3 it not?
4 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton]: [German], what does that mean?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Well, “Verden aber” would be in the sense “but
7 nonetheless”.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “Nonetheless”?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: And “eingriffa” would be, you know, “steps would be
10 undertaken”.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Yes, [German] “We can do something”?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And then it says: “Die [German – document not provided]”
14 That means what?
15 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is “one way or another”, “in some way”.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton]: [German] and then the word “vernichtung erfolch”. What
17 does that mean?
18 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: “That would lead to a successful”, literally in the way
19 Germans combine words it means “a destruction success” and
20 an English translation usually would be, we would invert
21 those and say “a successful destruction”.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So “We will find a way to bring about a successful
23 destruction”?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Correct.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton]: “One way or another”?
26 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes, yes.
. P-206
1 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Then I think you will be pleased, Professor, that that is
2 that, but I would like, if you can give me the answer —
3 what is this? Finally, I would like a little bit of
4 history from you. You were asked about the Wannsee
5 conference?
6 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton]: Was the date in January, 20th January, I think it was,
8 ’42, its original date?
9 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, it was originally scheduled for December 8 or 9.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton]: And when was it cancelled, do you know, or postponed?
11 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Just right before that, basically at the time of the
12 Russian counter offensive around Moscow on 5th and Pearl
13 Harbour on the 7th. I forget the exact date. The notices
14 of — when the marginal note that Rademacher makes on the
15 invitation, you know, that he hears it has been cancelled,
16 I do not remember the exact date, but it comes just
17 before.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton]: So does one know the reason why it was cancelled?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: They do not stipulate — they do not specify, but I think
20 a probable inference is that at that point a crisis is
21 going on and the people who are invited have too many
22 other things to do.
23 MR IRVING: It says “because of intervening events”, I think,
24 does it not?
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: It would suggest that the 5th and 7th were very important
26 events that suddenly did not allow — that Heydrich’s
. P-207
1 schedule had to be changed.
2 MR RAMPTON: Right. Thank you very much, Professor. My Lord,
3 those are all the questions I have in re-examination.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you think there is anything
5 raised by the re-examination would you like to further
6 question the Professor about, feel free.
7 < FURTHER CROSS-EXAMINED BY MR IRVING.
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, going in reverse order, the “We cannot
9 shoot them, we cannot poison them”, what would the
10 objections to shooting and poisoning have been that would
11 not also have applied to gassing, if any?
12 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: The shooting of 3 million or 2 million in this case very
13 possibly would have, simply it would have been much too
14 public. I do not know why Frank would have said they were
15 impossible. He is not the one that has been charged with
16 trying to figure out how to do it. This is an
17 extraordinary thing that is to about to take place, and
18 the mind boggles that Frank could not conceive immediately
19 of how this would be done strikes me as —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was not talking from a script, was he?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Finally, on this document which has been put to which
23 I have not seen mentioned before, which is the Event
24 Report No. 80.
25 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: You will notice it has the top State Secret classification
. P-208
1 on it?
2 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: This has Geheim, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would I be right in saying that all SS documents are very
4 pernickety about the classification of security on them,
5 an that the Foreign Office and other bodies were less
6 pernickety about the security grade placed on them?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: I do not think I could say that. I notice here that this
8 is 48 copies. They may have wanted to stamp it so those
9 who were getting, given the number in circulation, that
10 they would be very careful with it. That is speculation,
11 but I do not know that SS had a tendency to use the Top
12 Secret stamp more than the Foreign Office.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this document typed in the special Fuhrer typewriter?
14 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No, it is not.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever seen any Event Reports typed in this special
16 Fuhrer typewriter for submission to Hitler?
17 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Nothing, except the No. 51 we have talked about.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that called an Event Report?
19 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or is it called Meldung Fuhrer?
21 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: That is a report to the Fuhrer.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any indication on this document that it was shown
23 to the Fuhrer or submitted to the Fuhrer, like vorgelegt?
24 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: No.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Thank you.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why would just the one document have been
. P-209
1 typed out in the large type for the Fuhrer and marked
2 vorgelegt?
3 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Why were these not typed out?
4 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Sorry, that was a rather badly phrased question. Does the
5 fact that there is only one such document extant indicate
6 that there only ever was one document?
7 A. [Professor Christopher Robert Browning]: Given the destruction of documents, particularly, say, in
8 Eichmann’s office and in the SS, it leaves open the
9 question that there was a file of such things, and they
10 were destroyed. We do not know.
11 MR IRVING: My Lord, I answer that. There is in fact an
12 extensive file of such reports to the Fuhrer, but they
13 cover everything like the midget torpedo attack on
14 Turpids. It is the whole gamut.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure there are. I was talking only about
16 reports from the Einsatzgruppen.
17 MR IRVING: That is only one I have seen also.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I appreciate it is the only one anyone knows
19 about. I was wondering whether that suggested that there
20 only ever was one, but the Professor says not. No more
21 questions?
22 MR IRVING: No further questions.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Browning, thank you very much. You
24 are free to go.
25 < (The witness stood down).
Part IV: Closing Proceedings (210.26 to 214.21)
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are going to resume at 10.30 on —-
. P-210
1 MR RAMPTON: I think Professor Evans will be here on Thursday.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you wanting to interpolate some witness
3 of your own before him?
4 MR IRVING: We have Dr John Fox.
5 MR RAMPTON: Whatever you like.
6 MR IRVING: I am only going to ask Mr Rampton whether he was
7 going to cross-examine me further and, if so, when?
8 MR RAMPTON: I will not only say when but I hope what, because
9 it is the last things I have to ask about. I was hoping
10 to do it on Friday, so as to get it out of the way, but
11 I am in other people’s hands.
12 MR IRVING: Can you say about how long you will be
13 cross-examining?
14 MR RAMPTON: I do not think it will take all that long.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What are the topics?
16 MR RAMPTON: The topics are, well, there is the question of
17 Mr Irving’s knowledge of that Muller signal to the
18 Einsatzgruppen. I do not accept his answer that he has
19 not seen it before, and there is a reason for that which
20 I shall not say what it is now, apart from the fact that
21 it appears to have been in the public domain for nearly 20
22 years.
23 MR IRVING: I have been in the public domain for 62 years.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not going to have the
25 cross-examination now.
26 MR RAMPTON: That I think we have dealt with. So that has
. P-211
1 gone. There is Zamus report of 16th December 1942 which
2 appeared and then disappeared because your Lordship said
3 Mr Irving needed more time.
4 MR IRVING: Also you should reveal where it came from.
5 MR RAMPTON: That is happening and I hope that will be in place
6 by Friday. There is Anne Frank that I forgot about out of
7 Evans and also van Pelt, and I think I ought to ask a
8 couple of questions, it is quite short. Then there is,
9 again which I hope I can keep quite short, the question of
10 Mr Irving’s associates, if I may call them that.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
12 MR RAMPTON: That will certainly be completed in a day or
13 perhaps less.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My slight feeling, and it is up to Mr Irving
15 in the end, well, I suppose it is up to me in the end, but
16 I wonder whether it is right to interrupt his
17 cross-examination —-
18 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — of really your major witness,.
20 MR IRVING: May I suggest that I bring Dr Fox on Thursday?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you are going to do that bring him first
22 off.
23 MR RAMPTON: Can I say not, because I think I told your
24 Lordship Professor Evans is in real difficulty on Friday.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: Which is why I am proposing — if your Lordship
. P-212
1 wants to leave Friday blank I quite understand the reason
2 why, nothing personally, but from Mr Irving’ point of
3 view, then he has three clear days to gather himself again
4 for a renewed assault on Professor Evans on Monday.
5 Alternatively Dr. Fox might come on Friday, but it seems a
6 bit of a —-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That I would not have so much difficulty
8 with, because Fox, frankly, I do not quite know what he is
9 going to say, but he has not a major problem for Mr Irving
10 in terms of preparation.
11 MR RAMPTON: Absolutely certainly not, and none for me because
12 I am not going to cross-examine him.
13 MR IRVING: You do not what he is going to say yet.
14 MR RAMPTON: Of course I do. I have read his witness
15 statement.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So I have but I have forgotten what is in it.
17 MR RAMPTON: Something about free speech I think.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we just plan the timetable? On
19 Thursday we will have Evans all day. On Friday we will
20 Fox for as long as he takes. Then we will resume with
21 Evans on Monday. We will have the cross-examination of
22 yourself at a later date to be fixed.
23 MR RAMPTON: That means only one more day and a tiny bit in
24 court this week I think.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which I think at this stage of the case is
26 not such a bad thing.
. P-213
1 MR IRVING: Preparation of Evans is complicated by the fact
2 that I now have to shoe-horn the material which I have
3 prepared for Levin and Eatwell into the Evans
4 cross-examination.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are giving you a day tomorrow and then you
6 are going to have most of Friday.
7 MR IRVING: Very well.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you happy with that because tell me if
9 you are not?
10 MR IRVING: So Fox on Thursday?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Fox on Friday morning.
12 MR RAMPTON: If he can manage it.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tell me if it turns out to create any
14 problems for you.
15 MR RAMPTON: We do not mind, my Lord. If Mr Irving would
16 rather have Dr Fox here on Thursday we do not mind.
17 MR IRVING: No.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is quite a good idea to have him
19 on Friday. So we are not sitting tomorrow but we are
20 sitting on Thursday.
21 (The court adjourned until Thursday, 19th February 2000)
22
23
24
25
26
. P-214