Day 21 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 Wednesday, 16th 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 TWENTY-ONE
26
. P-1
Part II: Irving Cross-Examines Professor Richard John Evans (2.1-114.17)
Section 2.1 to 17.10
1 <Day 21 Wednesday, 16th February 2000
2 (10.30 a.m.)
3 < Professor Evans, recalled.
4 < Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving?
6 MR IRVING: May it please the court. My Lord, this morning
7 I shall deal with the Reichskristallnacht, the Night of
8 Broken Glass, and then, as a useful exercise, I will put
9 before the witness a bundle of documents, which is the
10 chain of documents referred to. We will go through that
11 and invite his opinion on that as an expert on the various
12 documents.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Certainly.
14 MR IRVING: My Lord, we left the operation yesterday, we left
15 the battlefield, so to speak, I had advanced about 250
16 pages into the minefield. There were a number of smoke
17 screens which had been laid by the witness and others and
18 by the documents, and I am now going to proceed through
19 the smoke screen into Reichskristallnacht. But, first of
20 all, I wanted to ask the witness briefly about page 210 of
21 your expert report, which is a matter which will be
22 covered by the documents later on, where you criticised
23 the fact that —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, I have not brought this with me. I thought we
25 were going to start with Kristallnacht. Can I have a
26 copy?
. P-2
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will just read it out, it is just one sentence.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I will have a copy, please.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let me put it to you. You say that my position on Hitler
4 on all these issues is highly favourable to Hitler.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You criticise me for adopting positions on Adolf Hitler
7 and his decisions that are sometimes favourable.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point me to where I do that, please?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 210 you say: “Irving’s position on all these
10 issues” — this is paragraph 4.1.10 — “is highly
11 favourable to Hitler”.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am commenting in this section on the allegation by
13 Professor Lipstadt that you are, I think, “an admirer of
14 Hitler”. I cannot exactly remember the precise words.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is one of them, yes.
16 MR IRVING: Which is why I am asking you to expand on this one
17 sentence where you say that Irving adopts a position on
18 all these issues, which we have been into before, which is
19 highly favourable on Hitler, and I was asking you whether
20 it is wrong for an historian at any time to say things
21 that are favourable to Hitler.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If that goes against the evidence, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it not put me in precisely the same position as an
24 historian like AJP Taylor, who, as you pointed out, is not
25 a Professor, not an academic, but a very well-known
26 perhaps even notorious writer before his death, and who
. P-3
1 was also very well-known for adopting positions where he
2 came under criticism for having adopted positions which
3 were also favourable to Hitler on certain points?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, of course, AJP Taylor was an academic. He was a
5 Fellow and tutor in modern history at Magdalen College,
6 Oxford for many years. Indeed, he was a Professor towards
7 the end of his life in another university. He was heavily
8 criticized. There was a long debate about that. He was
9 not shown, to my knowledge, to have deliberately
10 manipulated or falsified historical evidence in order to
11 arrive at what was alleged to be. And what he denied to
12 be. His position.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: But he did adopt positions that were on occasions
14 favourable to Hitler, did he not?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you can cite them to me?
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Here is a copy of AJP Taylor’s very well-known book,
17 ‘Origins of the Second World War’. Can you turn to page
18 7, for example? He says there, for example, does he not:
19 “Historians often dislike what happened or wished it had
20 happened differently. There is nothing they can do about
21 it. They have to state the truth as they see it without
22 worrying whether this shocks or confirms existing
23 prejudices.” Is that a fair statement of the position of
24 an historian?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: He should write what he finds, what happened and why?
. P-4
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Even if he is going to be accused of saying things that
3 are favourable to Hitler or Stalin, or Churchill, or
4 Roosevelt, he just should write what he finds. The fact
5 that he writes something favourable to a great personality
6 of history is not ipso facto perverse?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It depends how you arrive at that position, of
8 course.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then there is another position I am accused of in my
10 books, is there not, that by my books or by my writings
11 I give comfort to people on the extreme right. Is that
12 one of the allegations against me?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to point that out. I do not think
14 I comment on that in this section.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: On pages 8 to 9, does he also write: “I have no sympathy
16 with those in this country who complain that my book had
17 been welcomed, mistakenly or not, by former supporters of
18 Hitler. This seems to me a disgraceful argument to be
19 used against a work of history. The historian must not
20 hesitate, even if his books lend aid or comfort to the
21 Queen’s enemies or even the common enemies of mankind”.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you did leave out a little about there. Let me read
23 that last sentence again: “An historian must not
24 hesitate, even if his books lend aid and comfort to the
25 Queen’s enemies though mine did not, or even to the common
26 enemies of mankind”. You did not indicate there to the
. P-5
1 court that you were leaving out those four words, “though
2 mine did not”.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then he continues: “It is not my fault that according to
4 the record the Austrian crisis (that is 1938) was launched
5 by Schuschnigg, not by Hitler, nor my fault that the
6 British government, according to the record, and not
7 Hitler took the lead in dismembering Czechoslovakia”, and
8 so on. In other words, he is just writing what he finds,
9 even though it comes out in favour of Hitler?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is writing what he has argued that he found, and of
11 course there is a great deal of argument about this. But
12 I do not think that he would have accepted, and it is very
13 difficult, that he is favouring Hitler. “Destroying these
14 legends is not a vindication of Hitler”, he says.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then he also refers to specific episodes like the
16 Reichstag fire and other controversial episodes in history
17 where he claims the right to take a different line from
18 that commonly or politically correctly adopted by
19 historians up to that point. He says, if he does so, this
20 is not necessarily to be taken as a vindication of Hitler,
21 he is just doing his job as an historian.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, I am not unique in my standpoint; there
24 are other historians who accept, who on occasion find
25 words of admiration for Adolf Hitler’s military
26 capacities, is that right?
. P-6
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really do not know. The point is, Mr Irving —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, you are holding yourself out to this
3 court as an expert on the historiography of the Third
4 Reich, and now you are saying you do not know if any
5 historians—-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I imagine there are. I am not a military historian, but
7 I would accept that there are historians who have had
8 words of praise for some of Hitler’s military
9 interventions, most certainly, yes, but it is not really
10 what is at issue here in this case.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right, Mr Irving, is it not?
12 We are really not concerned with Hitler as a military
13 figure. I think I am right in saying that all the
14 criticism of you relates to your writings about his, for
15 want of a better word, political persona, not his military
16 persona.
17 MR IRVING: My Lord, I respectfully disagree. I think the
18 allegation is that I have written a book that is an
19 admiring work, a panogyric.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 MR IRVING: And this encompasses the whole Hitler, not just the
22 bits that the Defendants may wish to seize upon.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is right that they say you have
24 written a book which admires Hitler, but the criticism, as
25 I understand it, is of the way in which you write about
26 his political activities, not his military activities.
. P-7
1 Mr Rampton, is that right as a very general summary, just
2 so that we know where we stand?
3 MR RAMPTON: It may or may not be thought a good thing to write
4 a book which has elements, perhaps significant elements,
5 which are favourable to Hitler, but that has nothing to do
6 with this action. What is said here is that this book is
7 in large part an apology for Hitler, in particular those
8 aspects of Hitler’s thinking and actions which reflect
9 upon what happened to Jews in Europe during Hitler’s
10 reign, if I can call it that. Allied to that, and indeed
11 inseparable from it, is the criticism which is perhaps
12 even more important, that this picture of Hitler which
13 Mr Irving paints in his book is arrived at by bending and
14 distorting the evidence.
15 MR IRVING: These are two separate issues. At present we are
16 dealing solely with the issue with whether it is
17 legitimate for a historian to write a book which is in
18 part admiring of Adolf’s Hitler capabilities in whichever
19 field, and this was the burden of my opening remarks to
20 the court. I thought as a general matter I would deal
21 with that first.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think anyone is suggesting that the
23 historian is not entitled to express admiration, if the
24 facts and the evidence justify it. I think that is a
25 historian’s duty. I do not think anyone would doubt that.
26 MR IRVING: But your Lordship is familiar with the fact that,
. P-8
1 as soon as one utters the slightest positive word about
2 “that man”, as he used to be called in Tommy Handley’s
3 day, one then comes under the full guns of one’s enemies,
4 who say, there he is saying that he did the right thing in
5 the battle of France, or there he is saying that he did
6 the right thing over Czechoslovakia. There are different
7 opinions. Some historians take this point of view, some
8 historians take that point of view, and AJP Taylor is just
9 one example I wanted to present because he is so well
10 known. No-one has suggested that he did so for any
11 perverse reasons, or at any rate they no longer do so, and
12 whether the reasons were perverse, or whether I distorted
13 or manipulated is the second part of the argument with
14 which we are now occupying the court. We will now turn to
15 the Reichskristallnacht, please. I am going to ask you a
16 few general questions, first, Professor, if I may.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, I am just trying to keep my desk a bit clear.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Housekeeping, yes. Your researchers who were doing the
19 research for you, and possibly even you yourself, made use
20 of or looked into my files and the research that I had
21 done when I wrote my various books from the 1970s
22 onwards. Is that correct?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is correct, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: You looked in my files, in my collection, the Irving
25 collection, in the Institute of History in Munich, is that
26 right?
. P-9
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you look in the equivalent collections which are in
3 the Federal archives in Koblenz?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I believe we did, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you also look not just at the collections of documents
6 which were in Munich but also at the collections of
7 correspondence that I had donated to the Institute of
8 History in Munich between myself and, for example, Adolf
9 Hitler’s private staff?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think we did, yes. We looked at as much as we could
11 find in the time available.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: The time available was 18 months, is that right?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: To write the whole report, yes, of which this is only one
14 chapter.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You had a large number of people, or relatively large
16 number of people, working on your staff?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Two.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was probably several man years.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Two. I had two people, Mr Irving.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Again, it was several man years in the compilation of
21 these particular aspects?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, not really, no, because everybody of course had
23 other things to do at the same time. None of us was
24 working full time on this.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Do you think that any documents in my collection
26 would have eluded your attention, or your researchers’
. P-10
1 attention?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I hope not, but it is always possible.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is always possible. So, although it is possible that
4 some of my documents on which I base my book may have
5 eluded your attention, you quite boldly used these very
6 repugnant words about my writing, about having distorted,
7 manipulated and had no possible evidence, and this kind of
8 thing?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you can show me that there are important documents in
10 your collections which run against what I have said, then
11 obviously I will accept it. I said I hoped that important
12 documents did not elude our attention, and I have based
13 what I say here and what I write here on the most thorough
14 possible research in the time available.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: On balance, you disapprove of my method of relying to any
16 great degree on the statements made either to me or to
17 postwar investigators and historians and interrogators by
18 the members of Adolf Hitler’s private staff, is that
19 correct?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have been over this ground, Mr Irving.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, let us go through it again.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is later testimony, sometimes given many years after
23 the event, and therefore has to be treated with caution on
24 those grounds alone. Other things being equal, as it
25 were, one gives somewhat greater weight to contemporary
26 evidence such as the Goebbels diaries. And, in addition
. P-11
1 of course, we have already discussed this, members of
2 Hitler’s entourage had good reason not to tell the whole
3 truth.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that you attach great importance to Goebbels’
5 diaries. Would you look at footnote 2 on page 233 of your
6 report, please? You list there a number of these books
7 that are on your shelves in your book lined cave where you
8 do your writing, if I can put like that. Do any those
9 books show any sign of having used the Goebbels diaries?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that is a very fair question, Mr Irving.
11 The point here is simply that I am introducing the section
12 on the Reichskristallnacht. I say in sentence to which
13 that is a footnote: “The episode is well-known to
14 historians. There have been many important and scholarly
15 studies based on a painstaking examination of the original
16 archival documentation. These include two accounts by
17 staff members of the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte in Munich
18 and other detailed studies”, and so on. This is simply an
19 indication to the court of the fact that this is a
20 well-known episode about which historians are writing.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that every single item you refer to on that
22 page, including all the books and all the well-known
23 studies, and the work of historians at the institute, all
24 emerged before I brought back the Goebbels diaries from
25 Moscow relating to precisely this episode? Therefore they
26 are, to that degree, superseded, they are old hat?
. P-12
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not describe them as old hat, Mr Irving, and in
2 any case the point I am making there is that this has been
3 the subject of many studies over many years. This is not
4 something that has suddenly emerged into our knowledge
5 with the Goebbels diaries.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, you have relied in your footnote 1 on Hermann Graml
7 (who I know personally). He wrote that book in 1956, did
8 he not?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes, that is right.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that I submitted my entire
11 chapter on this Reichskristallnacht to Hermann Graml for
12 his, not clearance, but for his edification and for him to
13 comment on at the time I wrote the book?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not, no.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: But would you have expected to find that in the
16 correspondence put before you in the discovery process?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not, no. If it is there, it is there. You can show
18 it to me.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Again the second source in footnote 1 is 1957 which is,
20 what, 33 years old?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed. I am trying to establish here, Mr Irving, the
22 fact that this is a well-known episode in history which
23 has been studied over many years by many historians. I am
24 not saying that all these books are absolutely right or
25 that they are the last word or that they are up-to-date.
26 I am saying they are works by scholars which in their day,
. P-13
1 if you like, were advances of knowledge.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And these scholars have nothing to learn from us
3 revisionists then?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends what you mean by “revisionists”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: If somebody brought back from Moscow the Goebbels’
6 diaries, would that not be a contribution to the
7 historical debate?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is something different. You do not have to be a
9 revisionist to bring back the Goebbels diaries from
10 Moscow.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I expect you will come shortly,
12 will you not, to what it is in Goebbels diaries that you
13 say casts important light on the events of
14 Reichskristallnacht?
15 MR IRVING: I am laying the groundwork for the
16 cross-examination, my Lord. I am establishing what this
17 expert’s credentials are for this particular matter.
18 Professor Evans, you have worked for five years in
19 Germany?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On and off over a period of about 30 years, yes, if you
21 totted up all the times I had been there, I have not done
22 it, but it would come to, I do not know, five, six years.
23 It is difficult to say.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: But do you think that your knowledge of German is
25 sufficient to understand all the vernacular and all the
26 slang phrases and all the nuances?
. P-14
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mostly, yes. I would not say it was absolutely perfect.
2 It is impossible for any foreigner to enter totally 100
3 per cent into the inside of a language.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you say that I having worked in Germany for 39 years
5 on and off would have possibly a better knowledge of
6 German than yourself?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is possible and I do not dispute the fact you have a
8 very good knowledge indeed of German, Mr Irving.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right that the sources that you have relied upon by
10 way of preference are largely war criminals who were
11 properly convicted at Nuremberg and elsewhere for their
12 activities, whereas not one of Adolf Hitler’s personal
13 private staff was ever convicted as a war criminal?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not think that is true.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which part is not true, that not one of Adolf Hitler’s
16 staff —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, no. The fact that I have relied on these sources and
18 in any case that — I mean, relied, for example, on the
19 Goebbels’ diaries.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was Karl Wolff a war criminal?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was sentenced in 1964.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was Max Jutner a war criminal?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Now, I am not sure, but in any case the point here —-
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am just commenting on the odd feature that you rely on
25 Nazi war criminals and —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to point out to me, Mr Irving, where I rely
. P-15
1 on the testimony of Max Jutner, and so on.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, if I may say so, that is an entirely
3 fair observation. I quite understand the criticism. You
4 are saying he has relied on convicted criminals for —-
5 MR IRVING: In preference to people who have not got a criminal
6 record.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — his contentions. But let us get to the
8 nitty-gritty of it. I think that is what the witness is
9 saying and I think it is a fair point, if I may say so,
10 Mr Irving. Where does he rely on Wolff?
11 MR IRVING: It is a comment on the quality of sources, my Lord,
12 and the quality of sources is very important, particularly
13 in a matter like this.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I quite agree, but this point only has any
15 impact if you show me where he relies on Wolff or
16 whoever —-
17 MR IRVING: It is where I rely on rather than where he relies
18 on, my Lord, which we are now going to come to. Would you
19 look at the little bundle of documents which was handed to
20 you this morning which begins with the word “Deckblatt”,
21 “Sammlung Irving Deckblatt”, do you find that?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you would just briefly scan it you, would you agree
24 that this appears to be the covering sheet of a file of
25 documents relating to one Wilhelm Bruckner?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
. P-16
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know who Wilhelm Bruckner was?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was the head of Hitler’s, a sort of personal or
3 adjutantur in the 1930s.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was dismissed in —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: ’40.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: — humiliating circumstances in December 1940, is that
7 correct?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. He was also a senior officer of the SA, the brown
9 shirts, and he was an old Nazi — he seems to have been
10 already active before 1923.
Section 17.11 to 42.10
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So that he was Hitler’s chief person adjutant at the
12 material time, namely the Reichskristallnacht?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: In November 1938?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: From this covering sheet, it is evidence that I collected
17 a number of papers and manuscripts and affidavits and
18 letters from him?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact, this collection was obtained by me from his son,
21 Manfred, in March 1971 and, as was my way, I denoted all
22 these documents to the Institute of History in Munich?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you find this file of documents?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Now, what we found was a summary of a statement by,
26 I mean, you are referring here to page 252 of my report,
. P-17
1 is that correct?
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking you just about this one document in front of
3 you at present about the Irving collection?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, yes, but Bruckner is dealt with on page 252 of my
5 report, and I think we should really look at that to get
6 the context.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, I am asking you to answer my questions first please
8 which is —-
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to point out the context here.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: — have you bothered to find the Bruckner papers on which
11 I relied in writing this passage?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, now, we tried to chase up a reference of yours which
13 was very difficult to find in the Institute for
14 Contemporary History, and the only thing that we could
15 find, because you did not point very carefully to it, was
16 a summary statement of what Bruckner said.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the answer to my question is, no, you did not find the
18 file of Wilhelm Bruchner papers of which this was the
19 covering sheet?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This “Deckblatt” here.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but this covering sheet was actually brought to your
22 attention, was it not? It was part of my discovery along
23 with 500 other such covering sheets?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is just a covering sheet, Mr Irving.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but in the discovery there were 500 such covering
26 sheets, there were 500 collections of documents that
. P-18
1 I gave to the Institute of History, and this was one of
2 them, and it was copied by the instructing solicitors so
3 you were aware that this file on Wilhelm Bruckner existed
4 in the Institute and yet you did not find it or use it?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, what does it say? Let us have a look at the
6 description under No. 1: “Brief description” — I am
7 translating here [German- documents not provided].
8 “Documents from the”…
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Wilhelm Bruchner papers”?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Papers of Wilhelm Bruchner, herein [German] —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Declaration on oath 3749 on [German] SA on Adolf Hitler.
13 Notice notes on the [German] Putsch 1934. General
14 religious considerations and” —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Clemency” —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — “clemency” —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “application”?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — “Application for clemency or pardon”. So there is no
19 indication here that there is anything in here that has
20 anything to do with the Reichskristallnacht. That is why
21 it does not appear.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: So his manuscript on Adolf Hitler would not contain that
23 matter than?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not a manuscript from Adolf Hitler.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a manuscript on Adolf Hitler.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an essay on Adolf Hitler.
. P-19
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If I reference that in my source notes of several
2 books, then you would have normally gone to some trouble
3 to find that particular file, as you obviously had
4 privileged access to my papers which I no longer have, of
5 course, but you had access to these papers?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not privileged, no. Could you point out to me where you
7 cite this document, please?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is referenced in several parts in the Goebbels’
9 biography, is it not?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point out where you reference it, please?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are back to delaying tactics again, are we?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I want to see where you reference it.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not a delaying tactic. I think it is a
14 fair point, Mr Irving. I mean, if you want to spend a lot
15 of time on this particular document, which I am not
16 finding very helpful, then I think that is a fair
17 observation for the witness to make.
18 MR IRVING: Can I draw your attention to page 252 of your
19 expert report on line 5, which is line 3 of paragraph 3?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The evidence offered by Irving for the encounter between
22 Eberstein and Hitler” which you will agree is quite a
23 crucial encounter, is it not?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In your account, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The evidence offered by Irving for this is the testimony
26 of Wilhelm Bruchner”. My Lord, do you now understand why
. P-20
1 I am zeroing in on this particular collection of documents
2 which the witness has made no attempt to find?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I have not the faintest idea, no.
4 I really have not.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, your Lordship is familiar with the meeting
6 between Hitler and the Police Chief of Munich in the
7 middle of the night on the night in question?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am.
9 MR IRVING: And one source for that meeting was the papers of
10 Wilhelm Bruchner which is the papers which I donated —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You cite that, do you, in Goebbels?
12 MR IRVING: Which are the papers which I donated, well, the
13 reference in Goebbels is page 277.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am just looking at the footnotes at
15 277.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a copy, please —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Footnote 45 is what you are referring to, is it?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — of what we are talking about here?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 630.
20 MR RAMPTON: It says: “Testimony of Wilhelm Bruchner (IfZ,
21 Irving collection)”.
22 MR IRVING: That should be plain enough, should it not.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the IfZ the Institute of History in Munich?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: But is the Irving collection a well-known body of
. P-21
1 documents there under the designation Ed200 or Ed100?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, let me please just check this. Page 277 at
3 footnote 45.
4 MR RAMPTON: Page 613.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 613.
6 MR IRVING: This is going to take a long time if we have to go
7 into this.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, we started it back to front, if I may
9 say so, Mr Irving. If we are going to go on this like
10 this, I think I will make this observation to you. There
11 is a criticism made of your account, particularly in
12 relation to Hitler’s knowledge of the pogrom that broke
13 out during the course of whenever it was, 10th November,
14 I think. It would be helpful to me if you went to the
15 passage in Goebbels which is the subject of the criticism,
16 then went to what you say is the source for what you
17 write. As it is, we plunged into an extremely obscure
18 document called the Deckblatt without any indication of
19 where you were going; the result was I was not following
20 your cross-examination.
21 MR IRVING: I apologise, my Lord —-
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you see my point?
23 MR IRVING: — if I am not making myself plain. The reason
24 for this particular reason line of cross-examination is
25 I am trying to establish the repugnant allegations made
26 about me for having made statements in my books with no
. P-22
1 kind of foundation is the result of these expert witnesses
2 not having looked in the file which I actual reference in
3 the book.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I do not think you are quite
5 understanding what I am saying.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would have been helpful I think if in your
7 cross-examination you had gone to page 277 and shown me
8 the passage that you are seeking to justify, namely
9 sending for the police chief, Eberstein, and Eberstein
10 finding Hitler livid with rage, and phoning Goebbels,
11 saying what is going on, and then you can of course take
12 me to what Bruckner says about it, what Eberstein says
13 about it, and we can see where we go from there. Is that
14 not the right way of doing it?
15 MR IRVING: In this case unfortunately not, because your
16 Lordship will have caught the words that I used when I
17 said that the expert witnesses have access to these papers
18 of mine but I do not. I am disbarred from visiting my own
19 archives, my own collection. I am drawing to their
20 attention—-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can give evidence. All right, you are
22 not able to produce in disclosure Bruckner’s account of
23 these events, but you can put to Professor Evans what you
24 say Bruckner’s account reveals, can you not?
25 MR IRVING: That is the version sustained in my book, which is
26 probably footnoted and referenced back to this document
. P-23
1 which I had at the time I wrote the original manuscripts
2 of Adolf Hitler and Hitler’s War, which I no longer have.
3 It is quite plain that the Defence solicitors in this
4 action were aware of the Bruckner collection in Munich and
5 yet they did not use it. They are quite happy to allege
6 that I have had no foundation for this statement of mine,
7 and there are other documents to which I am going draw
8 your Lordship’s attention.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is all back to front. It is not a
10 question of whether the Defendants’ advisers have been
11 diligent about it. It is a question of you showing, by
12 your cross-examination of Professor Evans, that he is
13 wrong to criticise you for what you write at page 277,
14 because you have good reliable testimony to support it.
15 That is what you should be putting in cross-examination.
16 I am sorry to sound as if I am lecturing you, but it is
17 very important that you conduct the cross-examination in a
18 way that conveys to me —-
19 MR IRVING: I am doing the very best I can given the limited
20 circumstances that the Defence have access to my documents
21 which I do not have.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you suggesting that they are physically
23 in court, these memoirs of Bruckner?
24 MR RAMPTON: No. Can I help?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Otherwise I am completely lost.
26 MR RAMPTON: I think the position is this. Mr Irving is rather
. P-24
1 rushing his fences this morning. I understand what he is
2 saying, I think. The position is this, that they are in
3 the Munich archive.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that.
5 MR RAMPTON: He cannot go there. My people went there and
6 could not find it. Professor Evans does not know that,
7 I do not think, because he did not go himself. One of the
8 researchers went.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, I do know that.
10 MR RAMPTON: He does know that? I must not give his evidence
11 then. I am sorry, it is there already.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But none of that invalidates what I was
13 suggesting. I am not suggesting it, I think it must be
14 done that way. Otherwise this is meaningless for me.
15 MR IRVING: We have two more documents which will answer your
16 Lordship’s question straightaway.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me say the footnote reference to testimony of Wilhelm
18 Bruckner I have said Irving collection. It is really not
19 very helpful in trying to locate a document. When you
20 look at Samlung Irving Deckblatt, it does not contain
21 anything that is entitled testimony of Wilhelm Bruckner.
22 It just contains the things that I read out. It does not
23 indicate that there is anything in here giving his
24 testimony about the events of the Reichskristallnacht.
25 MR IRVING: Two follow up questions, however. The fact is that
26 you did not look, or you did not find it, for the Bruckner
. P-25
1 file, is that correct?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Those are two different things, Mr Irving.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You did not find the Bruckner file, is that correct?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We looked very very hard.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes or no? Did you find the Bruckner file?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You mean this Samlung Irving with the Deckblatt and so on
7 document? We could not locate the testimony which you
8 refer to, no.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Should you not therefore have said in your report, it is
10 quite possible that this document contained in this file
11 would have borne out Mr Irving’s version but we cannot
12 state, not having seen it?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well I will read the you the sentences: “Irving only
14 provide an incomplete reference for Bruckner’s testimony,
15 which could not be located in the Institute for
16 Contemporary History in Munich”. That is very carefully
17 phrased. That not mean to say it is not there. It is
18 just to say that we could not locate it there. It goes on
19 to say: “The only document which could be located was a
20 summary of a statement of Bruckner, written by a German
21 historian. According to this summary, Bruckner claimed
22 that Hitler ‘is said to have raged’ when he is informed of
23 the burning Munich synagogue”. So that does appear to be
24 the source which you are relying on. If you can show me
25 it is a different source you are relying on, I would be
26 happy to see that.
. P-26
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that document that you just referred to a part of the
2 Irving collection?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is part of their ZS collection?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in the Siegler — it is footnoted in footnote 39.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us move on to another personality now?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to pursue this, if I may. I am
9 sorry to interrupt again but I think this is quite
10 important. Professor Evans, you are in the difficulty you
11 did not personally search the archive.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly yes.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Can you help and say if this is any problem about doing
14 so? Who was it who went to Munich?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was my assistant Mr Vassman.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Tell me more about him. Is he in your department?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is a junior research fellow in Downing College,
18 Cambridge.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Never having had to consult an archive in my entire life,
20 I do not know how difficult it is to do a search. I have
21 to form some sort of view about how easy the testimony of
22 Bruckner should have been to find. I have no idea.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. This is getting very convoluted, my Lord. Archives
24 have file numbers, core numbers, so everything has a
25 number and here we cite in footnote 39, that is the core
26 number that I have said is in the Institute of
. P-27
1 Contemporary History in Munich, Zs-243/I. Basically it is
2 a kind of interview. They did a series of interviews in
3 the Institute after the war. Footnote 38 gives a numbered
4 film, which is an interview or interrogation really, of
5 Wilhelm Bruckner in 1947, statement by Schaub, so they all
6 have those core numbers. It is normal practice by
7 historians to put the core numbers in their footnotes, not
8 just to have some vague reference to testimony, which
9 makes it very difficult to locate what one is trying to
10 find.
11 Then archives have descriptions, both in what
12 are called location aids or search aids, which are usually
13 typed up and only available in the archive, and those have
14 numbers of the files and rough descriptions of what is in
15 then. So you can see in this document here Samlung Irving
16 Deckblatt, that is start a rough description, brief
17 description, of what is in the file. These are all done
18 by archivists. You can go on. It says who is the author
19 and then who is allowed and who is not, whose permission
20 has to be given to see the files.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you had been your researcher and you had
22 seen the kurz Bezeichnung, which, if any, of those would
23 you have gone to if you were looking for Bruckner’s
24 account of these events?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not say the testimony of Wilhelm Bruckner, which
26 is the tile the Mr Irving gives. There is nothing in
. P-28
1 there indicating that there is anything about the 1938
2 Reichskristallnacht.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So you say the answer is really none of them suggests that
4 it would have any bearing?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. In the limited time available, it might be
6 interesting to see his views on religion, or his essay on
7 Adolf Hitler, but there is nothing there to indicate that
8 he has a testimony about 1938. But there is an indication
9 in there of his testimony about other specific events, the
10 Hanfstaengel the Rowan Putsch 1934. Given the fact that
11 those specific references are in there, one would expect
12 there to be a specific reference in there to his testimony
13 about 1938.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: One more question and then I will keep
15 quiet. Who compiles the kurz Bezeichnung?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is usually archivists, my Lord.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: It would not have been Mr Irving?
18 MR IRVING: No, my Lord. In fact, this particular cover sheet
19 was compiled by me. I gave 500 collection of documents to
20 this institute and for each one there was this sheet in
21 the front of each file. The Bruckner file is about
22 quarter of an inch thick. It would have taken possibly
23 five minutes to flip through and find the appropriate
24 passage.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We may need to hear from the person who
26 actually searched the archive. Yes.
. P-29
1 MR IRVING: The point I am making, my Lord, is that I am
2 accused of not having had proper sources for the events of
3 that night. The sources were there, they were referenced
4 in my Goebbels biography in a manner in which any
5 competent researcher would have found the file in a matter
6 of minutes.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot agree with that, Mr Irving.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell the court now — I am moving on to another
9 personality — who Julius Schaub was?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. He was sort of Hitler’s —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Factotum?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, side kick. It is difficult to find a precise way of
13 describing him. He was a very close aid of Hitler’s for
14 very many years.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: An amanuensis, one of the old guard, with him in the 1923
16 Putsch?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. He joined the party very early on in 1921 or 22,
18 personal adjutant from the mid 20s on, and again he was
19 given a senior office in the SS and possessed various
20 decorations and so on.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Look at page 257 of your report, please, where we are
22 dealing with the Schaub as a source, the source which
23 Irving gives for Schaub’s claims is: Schaub’s unpublished
24 memoirs in the author’s collection in the Institute of
25 History in Munich, file ED.100/202. ED.100 is the Irving
26 collection, is that right?
. P-30
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is true, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Oblique stroke 202. They have now changed the reference,
3 you say, to 203. Can I draw your attention to page 26 of
4 the little bundle I gave you?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: This I think will put your Lordship’s mined at rest. This
7 is the reason I am going through these documents. Is that
8 a translation of a passage from these Julius Schaub
9 papers?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I find myself in some difficulty here. I do not know, is
11 the answer.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You made this translation, Mr Irving, did
13 you?
14 MR IRVING: I made it last night, my Lord, yes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have access then to Julius Schaub’s
16 papers? I thought they were in the archive in Munich.
17 MR IRVING: I am pretty certain that this comes from — yes, it
18 comes from the discovery. There was one page in the
19 discovery from these papers I think. Off of the top of my
20 head I have to say that, but this is a genuine
21 translation.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have not supplied the original.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is in H 5?
24 MR RAMPTON: I do not know what particular document Mr Irving
25 is talking about or which it is that he has translated.
26 There is a piece about Goebbels apparently headed Schaub
. P-31
1 Nachlass, whatever that means, at page 4 of tab 5 of the
2 file L2, the Reichskristallnacht.
3 MR IRVING: Yes, my Lord, that is where it comes from.
4 MR RAMPTON: Which is the reference given by Professor Evans at
5 page 257.
6 MR IRVING: It was quite late when I did this translation last
7 night.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure. I am not forgetting that side of
9 things.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have it.
11 MR RAMPTON: Page 4 of tab 5 my Lord. It is leaded IfZ ED
12 100/203.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 MR IRVING: If I had provided just the German to your Lordship,
15 you would have rightly reprimanded me.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The witness asked to see the German, which is
17 fair enough. I am very happy with the translation.
18 MR IRVING: If the witness wishes to challenge the translation,
19 then of course he may. “Without doubt Goebbels had the
20 biggest influence on AH”?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you direct me to where exactly it is?
22 MR RAMPTON: Page 5, last paragraph.
23 MR IRVING: I have translated only the passage dealing with the
24 events of that night. “Without doubt Goebbels had the
25 biggest influence on AH, far more so than Bormann, he
26 invented the concept Fuhrer for AH and he hammered the
. P-32
1 Fuhrer principle into the people. Goebbels always
2 discussed his propaganda with Hitler, even during the
3 war”. The part I am relying on is a sentence or two
4 later: “It is a certainty that Goebbels ordained the
5 Reichskristallnacht Sunday”.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You skipped a bit. All right, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: “It is a certainty that Goebbels ordained the
8 Reichskristallnacht Sunday with the SA command”. Of
9 course it was not a Sunday, was it? It was another day of
10 the week. Then comes no doubt Schaub’s own
11 particular hobby horse. He says, “The SS was innocent of
12 this, apart from a few lesser officers. When AH learned
13 on that Sunday of the anti-Semitic outrages, he was
14 furious with Goebbels. He made a frightful scene with
15 Goebbels and told him that this kind of propaganda was
16 just damaging”.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, this is a source that you would disqualify for some
19 reason, or downgrade?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you disqualify it because of its content, because it
22 does not agree with your own views, or because of
23 something about Schaub, or something about the document?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a number of different things. I think he is just
25 making this up, basically.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think he is just making it up?
. P-33
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes. There is an enormous amount of other
2 evidence, contemporary evidence, and not much later
3 evidence such as this, that most of what he says here is
4 not true, and that I go into in great length in my report.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: First of all, you do accept that this document is genuine,
6 that this is a collection of papers given to me by the son
7 of Schaub Mr Roland Schaub, containing an odd collection
8 of manuscripts and notes, articles, carbon copies and the
9 like?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed. I describe it on footnote 54 of my page 257.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have actually had a look at the heap of papers, have
12 you?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It is cited in the report on page 257.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but the point I am looking at is of course that here
15 we have a man who was on Adolf Hitler’s private staff, his
16 chief adjutant, and factotum, who says he was an
17 eyewitness, or he reports to us that, when Hitler learned
18 of the outrages, he was furious with Goebbels, he made a
19 frightful scene. Should I have disregarded that evidence
20 completely?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. You weigh it up against other evidence and against
22 Schaub’s possible motives in writing this, and the fact
23 that, as you say repeatedly, eyewitness testimony after
24 the war is less reliable than contemporary testimony.
25 This is another example of your double standards,
26 Mr Irving.
. P-34
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Double standards?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. You are determined to give credence to this report
3 but you dismiss all reports of victims of the Holocaust as
4 being fabrications due to mass hysteria, as we heard
5 yesterday.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which of us has the double standard? The person who
7 pretends that this report and the contents that it
8 contains should be in some way played down for no reason
9 other than you do not like it? You cannot give a real
10 reason why. You cannot say Schaub was a congenital liar?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have already said that he was wrong to say that it was
12 on a Sunday, Mr Irving.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: He got the wrong day of the week but this is a mistake any
14 of us can make. No doubt it stuck in his mind.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not if he is an utterly reliable eyewitness who has total
16 recall of what went on. That alone I think should alert
17 one to the fact that his memory is not particularly good.
18 Then you yourself went on to discredit, or cast doubt over
19 his statement that the SS was completely without any
20 guilt. No doubt that is connected with the fact that
21 Schaub himself was a senior officer in the SS. This is an
22 extremely self serving document. One has to regard it
23 with the deepest suspicion and compare it with other
24 documents, preferably contemporary ones dealing with the
25 same events.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do we have any contemporary records of what went on in
. P-35
1 Adolf Hitler’s private residence, any contemporary records
2 whatsoever of went on in his private residence?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not directly, no.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we are really then on our uppers, are we not?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We are comparing a lost of post war reminiscences and we
6 have to be very careful in treading through this
7 particular minefield of documents.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So ideally we want to have more than just one source that
9 says the same thing?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Whole range of sources, indeed.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: How many would you accept? Two sources?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not going to put a number on it, Mr Irving.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: But, if we have another source that says the same thing,
14 then we are getting convergences of evidence beginning to
15 kick in, are we?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is a problem with the evidence of Hitler’s
17 entourage, that they of course had a major incentive after
18 the war for trying to exculpate them for involvement in a
19 number of crimes such as the Reichskristallnacht. They
20 also seem to have been a fairly close knit group who had
21 the opportunity to discuss their line, as it were, amongst
22 themselves, so I think one has to be very cautious.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Any common sense historian would adopt that line, that is
24 correct. But, if we ignore for a moment the main trend of
25 these statements, and I am going to introduce another one
26 to you in a moment, and we look for the little bits of
. P-36
1 verisimilitude which tend to support the main trend, for
2 example he was livid with rage and he shouted at Goebbels,
3 those kinds of things which appear to figure in several of
4 the statements or certainly more than one, then the
5 convergence of evidence then becomes more convincing.
6 Would you agree?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not necessarily. This might have been a story they
8 cooked up.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we now turn to a third witness?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The sentence you are relying on here claiming such a
11 tremendous piece of evidence is– I will quote it: “As AH
12 on this Sunday” — we know it was not a Sunday.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you attach much important to the fact he got the day of
14 the week wrong?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It is pretty easy to remember. “As AH heard on that
17 Sunday about the anti-Semitic excesses, he was angry with
18 Goebbels”. It does not seem to me to be very
19 circumstantial.
20 MR IRVING: He was furious with Goebbels. You are changing the
21 words.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is angry, very angry, furious, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: He made a frightful scene, did he not?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Told him that this kind of propaganda was just damaging.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Mr Irving, I do not know how much detail I ought to
. P-37
1 go into here, but there is an enormous amount of evidence
2 which is laid out in my report and which was gone over in
3 your cross-examination —-
4 MR IRVING: But not of the events in your—-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not keep talking over the witness.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — about Hitler’s responsibilities for these events.
7 MR IRVING: We are not talking about that at this point.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You know that, and accepted that what Goebbels said in his
9 speech to the party assembly at between about 10 o’clock
10 at night on 9th November that (I quote) on Goebbels’
11 briefing the Fuhrer has decided that such demonstrations
12 should not be quelled. That is contemporary evidence,
13 Mr Irving.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: I really have to halt you here because this is a totally
15 different matter.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please do not interrupt, Mr Irving.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is contemporary evidence that Hitler had decided that
18 these excesses should continue, they should continue to
19 burn synagogues and destroy the dwellings and shops of the
20 Jews. It seems reasonable to suppose that, if Hitler had
21 been angry and had not approved of this, if Goebbels was
22 making this up, then the consequences for Goebbels would
23 have been extremely serious. I cannot imagine that
24 Goebbels would have said that to a mass assembly of senior
25 party officials if that was not true. Indeed, you have
26 accepted that what Goebbels said in his speech was what
. P-38
1 Hitler told him at the dinner. You have also accepted
2 that, when Heinrich Muller telexed the police, ordering
3 them again not to interfere in the excesses, the burnings
4 and the destruction, and to arrest 20,000 Jews at 11.55
5 p.m., that is an order that came from Himmler to Muller,
6 from Himmler who had had it from Hitler, i.e. that
7 Hitler’s order was the source of this Muller telegram.
8 MR IRVING: Can we now halt your flow of verbiage and get back
9 to the point I am asking about?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have a whole series of contemporary—-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am finding this extremely helpful and
12 please will you stop interrupting.
13 MR IRVING: This is not the point I am asking about. I am
14 asking about the events in Hitler’s home.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have a whole series of contemporary documents going on
16 to the telex from Heydrich, to the German police again
17 saying they are not to interfere unless German property is
18 threatened or foreigners are threatened at 1.20 a.m.,
19 again which Mr Irving has admitted under cross-examination
20 was a result of Hitler and Himmler having discussed this
21 issue. So right through the night — and this goes on.
22 There is a whole string of further documents, a telegram
23 from Eberstein, a telegram from Hess at 2.56, which
24 indicate all the way through that Hitler was fully
25 apprised of the situation, right from the very beginning,
26 that he approved of Goebbels’ idea and ordered that these
. P-39
1 excesses should be carried out.
2 These are contemporary documents and therefore
3 they undermine wholly the credibility of postwar
4 ex post facto self-serving justifications by members of
5 Hitler’s entourage who were heavily involved in these
6 events, that Hitler somehow did not know about it, and got
7 very angry when he heard about it.
8 MR IRVING: Are you saying —-
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We know from Goebbels’ diary, as I quote on pages 257 to
10 8, that Schaub himself was involved. Schaub is completely
11 worked up, says Goebbels, his old shock troop past is
12 waking up. So Schaub himself was heavily involved.
13 Obviously, all these things are things that Schaub does
14 not really want to admit after the war.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was a very long answer but what are you
16 really saying — and this is condensing it absurdly — is
17 that, when you are approaching the testimony of the
18 Adjutants, you have to weigh what they say happened
19 against the whole background and consider the likelihoods?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It is not a question of dismissing them totally.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: No. I said “weigh against”.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you have to weigh them up, yes, and particularly the
23 circumstances in which these statements were made after
24 the war.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
26 MR IRVING: My Lord, with respect this witness has laid a
. P-40
1 terrible choking suffocating smoke screen across the
2 courtroom and across the points that I was trying to
3 arrive at.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, let me explain why I think it is
5 helpful. You say, and I quite understand, and I think
6 there are three of them, Schaub, Eberstein and
7 Bruckner , as supporting evidence for Hitler’s angry
8 reaction in the middle of the night. Now, they may be
9 right, they may be wrong. What Professor Evans was doing,
10 and it was a long answer, was summarizing all the
11 considerations that should weigh with an objective
12 historian in deciding whether to attach credence to what
13 the individual witnesses say. Now, what is wrong with
14 that?
15 MR IRVING: With respect, I should have been permitted to
16 conduct the cross-examination my way, which would have
17 been to go over those documents, having dealt with this
18 central issue, and then looked at those documents which
19 were prior to that.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am afraid I see nothing wrong with
21 that answer and I tried to explain why I found it helpful.
22 MR IRVING: Well, we have had all of that. The whole of that
23 little speech — little is not the right word — we have
24 had several times in this courtroom. What I am
25 introducing here is material going to the issue, which is
26 whether I had no basis for writing what I did.
. P-41
1 Unfortunately, the witness, by his smoke screen, has
2 interrupted my cross-examination.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. What the witness was saying was yes, you
4 have records of what these Adjutants told you, but you
5 were in dereliction of your duty as a historian in
6 forgetting to weigh that evidence against the background,
7 the context.
8 MR IRVING: Should he not have waited until he heard the third
9 witness and then started off with his little speech?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Go on with your third witness.
Section 42.11-60.21
11 MR IRVING: Yes. Would you now turn finally, preferably
12 without five-minute speeches, to the translation of the
13 tape recorded interview of Colonel Nicholas von Below?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point me to the original German, please?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The original German is here. Am I right in saying —
16 I am trying to save time now — that Colonel Nicholas von
17 Below was Hitler’s air force adjutant from 1937 until the
18 last day of his life?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was an air force professional officer?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The last day of whose life, Hitler’s life, you mean?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I beg your pardon?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Last day of Hitler’s life?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. He was a professional German air force officer, he
25 was not a Nazi Party member, is that correct?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is right, yes.
. P-42
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: On this occasion, on this night, he was in Hitler’s home?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: In Munich?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is he a source whose recollections have been rightly
6 impugned on any other occasion, to your knowledge, of any
7 other historical event?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My memory fails me here, Mr Irving. They are a source of
9 variable quality but it is a valuable source.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, you have held yourself out to this court as an
11 expert witness on the Third Reich. You have spent 18
12 month in investigating these sources in particular, and
13 I am just asking you if you have any impression about
14 colonel von Below?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think Colonel von Below gave a number of different
16 testimonies, parts of which are valuable and parts of
17 which are not so valuable, is that enough?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is right that in general you are inclined to criticise my
19 interview technique and suggest that I may have asked
20 leading questions, or in some way browbeaten my Nazi
21 sources?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where do I use the word “browbeating”.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You know what I am getting at, that in fact I used
24 improper techniques?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know what you mean by attempts to browbeat, Mr Irving,
26 but I do not say that you do that with people cited in
. P-43
1 this report.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Browbeating is part of the job of somebody in
3 cross-examination, is it not, obtaining information from a
4 reluctant witness, shall say? Is there any sign here —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought you were complaining I was not reluctant, I gave
6 too much information, Mr Irving.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any indication from this transcript? Would you
8 agree it is a verbatim transcript?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: From a tape recording?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it appears to be such.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any indication that I am asking leading
13 questions?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The first one is a leading question, but let
15 us move on.
16 MR IRVING: My Lord, my interview technique is part of the
17 criticism against me, that I have distorted history.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but you asked whether there were any
19 leading questions and the first question is a leading
20 question, Mr Irving. Let us get to his answer.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “You were with Hitler at his home when the news of the
22 Reichskristallnacht arrived there in Munich and he was
23 rather surprised by that, can you depict that who else was
24 there, suggest to the witness that he was surprised”.
25 What you should have asked was, “you were with Hitler in
26 his home on the eve of Reichskristallnacht, can you say
. P-44
1 what happened”, something neutral like that?
2 MR IRVING: Is it not likely—-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You are suggesting things here.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this an extract from an interview or is it the whole
5 interview?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an extract. It starts with one question as well.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it likely that there had been some discussion of this
8 before this extract begins therefore?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to show me documentation of that previous
10 discussion if I am to answer that question, Mr Irving.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you look at the second question from the end,
12 please? Irving asked, “back to the Reichskristallnacht”,
13 is that a leading question, “back to the
14 Reichskristallnacht”?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, I cannot find it.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the first page.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First page, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the bottom of the page, Irving asks, “back to the
19 Reichskristallnacht”?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a leading question?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the answer comes, “the first thing that came to us was
24 a phone call from the Four Seasons Hotel”. Do you wish to
25 follow this in the German original and correct me if I am
26 wrong in the translation?
. P-45
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Those of us who were on duty with Hitler always lived at
3 that time in the Four Seasons Hotel and on this day we
4 were billetted in rooms that were quite high up. The
5 staff phoned to us”. Where was he then at this time?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In Hitler’s residence.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The staff phoned us to say we ought to come right over
8 and pack our bags as in a neighbouring building the
9 synagogue was on fire and the sparks were flying right
10 over the building”. Does this sound like he is recalling
11 the actual conversation?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, sounds like that.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is verisimilitude, is it not?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sounds like that.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: “It was just a matter of security. Brandt”, he is the
16 doctor, “always lived in that hotel too. He said, ‘Ought
17 we to drive over or not? Somebody” and this is the
18 adjutants speaking to each other, is it not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Somebody said then, ‘Well, one of us ought at least to go
21 and take a look’. Whether anybody did drive over, I don’t
22 know. Then further reports came. I don’t know on the
23 basis of what facts, whether it was Schaub asking or the
24 fire brigade or the Gaul headquarters. Shortly after that
25 it became known that the synagogue had not cut fire by
26 itself, but had been set on fire and that there was a
. P-46
1 demonstration going on. Thereupon that was immediately
2 passed on by Schaub to Hitler. Thereupon the Police
3 President of Munich, von Aberstein, was immediately sent
4 for. Herr von Aberstein then appeared soon after at the
5 Fuhrer’s residence. He was an SS Obergruppenfuhrer. He
6 was now interrogated by Hitler. Then there was a
7 conversation between Hitler and Goebbels by” — has he
8 been led with any of this by me, to your knowledge?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, by the opening question. “You were with Hitler in his
10 home when the news of the Reichskristallnacht arrived
11 there in Munich and he was rather surprised by that. Can
12 you depict that?” and that is what he is doing here.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have I mentioned in my opening question Aberstein or
14 telephone conversation with Goebbels?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Can you depict that, who else was there?” That is your
16 question.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then the we carry on now from the bottom of the page when
18 I asked, “What was Hitler’ reaction to the first news
19 report?” Is that a leading question?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well…
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: And then does he answer?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it depends. I mean, it makes the assumption, of
23 course, that these were the first news reports. But if it
24 refers just to reports of the synagogue burning in Munich,
25 then it is not a leading question.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Then Below admittedly recalling the events 30 years
. P-47
1 later”, because it is, it is 1968 this interview with von
2 Below, is it not?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: He records Hitler’s reaction as being, “What is going on?
5 Please find out. I have to know what the game is.”
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot find this in the German, I am sorry, for the
7 moment.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: “It was my impression that we all and even Hitler”?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause a second, would you mind, mr Irving?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 MR IRVING: “It was my impression”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, “What is going on?” Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Please find out. I have to know what the game is”. Is
14 that a fair translation, admittedly it is —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes — no, it is fine.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: — obviously not a verbatim recollection, but that was
17 his impression.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is fine.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: “It was my impression that we all and even Hitler himself
20 were totally in the dark”. I assume that is what he means
21 by “musspot”. “Nobody knew anything about anything.
22 I can only say”, and then he continues with his own
23 impression: “Form my many years with Hitler and on his
24 staff, if that had been organized by Hitler and with
25 Hitler’s knowledge, a charade on that scale would have
26 been impossible. I would not put it past Goebbels,
. P-48
1 absolutely not”. And then what does he say? “Then Hitler
2 became angry and raised his voice quite loudly to
3 Aberstein and said: ‘I demand that order is restored at
4 once’.” Is this now another source saying the same thing
5 that Schaub said?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It seems to be, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like to read the next sentence?
8 MR IRVING: “That was, however, limited just to Munich.
9 I overheard that because the conversation took place as
10 I was on the way out”. In other words, von Below was
11 returning to his own quarters — [German] as they say in
12 German. Then he quite frankly admits what happened with
13 regard to the “directive to Goebbels or to Himmler for the
14 rest of the Reichs territory, that, I do not know”. Then
15 comes a bit of hearsay: “I spoke once more with Aberstein
16 about this business in Nuremberg prison in 1948 and
17 I asked him: ‘Did you know anything about it before you
18 came to Hitler’s?’ He described it to me just as I had it
19 in my own recollection”. Is that significant? Do we
20 derive from that that it came as a surprise to Aberstein
21 too?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is unclear what time he is talking about here, and
23 I find that difficult to accept.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it significant, in other words?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mean, this is 30 years after the event, Mr Irving. He
26 has had an enormous amount of time to concoct a story
. P-49
1 which will exculpate himself from involvement in these
2 events which is in his clear interests to do.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: How could von Below had been implicated in any way
4 himself?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because he was with Hitler.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But how would that in any way have made him into an
7 accomplice?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because Hitler ordered this pogrom.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would he have invented this conversation with
10 Aberstein in Nuremberg prison where Aberstein confirms 10
11 years after the event, “It was surprise to me too”? Was
12 there any reason? Does it not look like a piece of
13 verisimilitude again then? A random scrap of something
14 that stuck in his memory over the years that he then
15 repeats to me 20 years later on as something that
16 always —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is extraordinary, is it not, Mr Irving? All these old,
18 all these police officers and SS men have been with Hitler
19 during the appalling violence against the Jews in 1938,
20 many years afterwards when it has become clear that
21 society and the world disapprove very strongly of these
22 events, all tell each other, “Well, I did not know
23 anything about it. I had not heard about it”?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we just look finally on the von Below and if we just
25 on the final page, at the end of the first paragraph on
26 that page, there is just one little passage that I am
. P-50
1 doing to draw your attention to: “For a long time Hitler
2 did not really place much trust in him”, that is Goebbels,
3 “but then after a while he began to on matters of
4 importance, because Goebbels had the knack of putting
5 things forward, putting forward his things in a very
6 logical and penetrating manner, Hitler was in some way a
7 sucker for this whole kind of act. There is no doubt
8 about that.”
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that an unusual picture of Hitler, that he could be
11 taken in by members of his staff, do you think, or taken
12 advantage of from your expertise as an —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: — historian on the Third Reich?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is somewhat unusual, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you heard it before by other authors, that Hitler was
17 not such a strong man after all, that he was taken
18 advantage of?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think “taken advantage of” is a phrase that other
20 authors would use. I mean, there is sort of glimmering of
21 — I mean, this is not to be dismissed entirely, as it
22 were. It is clear, I think, it is general agreement, that
23 the Reichskristallnacht was initially Goebbels’ idea.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, overall, looking at the von Below interview, now that
25 they are in front of you completely transcribed and
26 translated, in general, is it a proper interview or has it
. P-51
1 been deliberately skewed in some way by the man asking the
2 questions?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, as has been remarked several times now, the initial
4 question there is very much a leading question.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or picking up on something previously said during that
6 evening?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You would have to show me that before I could accept
8 that. In any case, it is a leading question.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So I do not want to go over that because we have been over
10 that.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Subject to that, it is an account which bears
12 out what Mr Irving writes in Goebbels?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not — not entirely, no, my Lord.
14 MR IRVING: Can I ask you to have a look at the Aberstein
15 telegram of the previous evening?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause a moment. It is really the top of page
17 277, I suppose?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of Goebbels?
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Of Goebbels. I mean, I will read it to you. It is two
20 lines. “According to Luftwaffe adjutant Nicolaus von
21 Below, Hitler phoned Goebbels, ‘What’s going on?’ he
22 snapped, and, ‘Find out'”.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, now, in his memoirs von Below says something rather
24 different, that he conducted his phone conversation with
25 Goebbels on his own from his living room, so that
26 contradicts what he says in the interview. In other
. P-52
1 words, if he conducted the phone conversation on his own
2 from his living room, he could not have heard what Hitler
3 was saying to Goebbels on the phone. That is at page 258,
4 paragraph 6, of my report.
5 MR IRVING: Will you accept that I have the original typescript
6 of von Below’s memoirs that he wrote in 1947 and I was
7 relying on that and not on a later published work. When
8 were the memoirs published? In 1980?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In 1980 in Meinz, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So how could I have possibly made use of that in ‘The
11 Warpath’ which was published in 1977?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I would say that von Below said, for what it is
13 worth, I quote him on paragraph 9 of page 260, that he
14 objected to your claim that he had provided you with
15 unpublished contemporary manuscripts and letters and
16 checked through pages of your manuscripts. He remembered
17 “some visits by Irving during which I answered his
18 questions. But I must decidedly reject his more
19 far-reaching claims as not corresponding to the truth”.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So what is von Below saying there, that he did not provide
21 me with any manuscripts?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I assume that is what he is saying, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: He provided me with no letters, wartime letters?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If one is to believe him, that is what he is saying.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: If one is to believe the printed word and that he did not
26 revise the manuscript then it was written by me, is that
. P-53
1 correct?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what he says, I think, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, Professor, you or your researchers have had access to
4 my files in the Institute of History, have you not?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen in the correspondence file between myself
7 and Colonel von Below the covering letters with which I
8 sent the chapters to him and which I thanked him for
9 having returned the chapters to me, chapters which
10 included in the files are all his marginal comments on
11 precisely this chapter?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Provide me with copies and I will look at this again.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your researchers have worked in the archives, is that
14 right, on the Irving collection?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you have had my personal files of correspondence with
17 people like von Below containing all these matters and you
18 prefer to believe what a book published in 1980 says
19 rather than the evidence of your eyes, namely the chapters
20 amended in his handwriting?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Provide me with copies of those chapters and I will
22 comment on that. I have not seen them, no.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have not?
24 MR IRVING: You have not seen them?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you or your researchers bother to look in these files
. P-54
1 of correspondence between myself and Adolf Hitler’s
2 private staff?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you name the files, give me core numbers of the
4 files?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you answer my question? Did you or your researchers
6 bother to look at my files of correspondence?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I have already said that we did not see them,
8 I mean, accepting for the moment your claim that there are
9 such files.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you are quite happy to repeat —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If they are in the discovery —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If they are in the discovery, we can see them.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know how difficult it is to dig them
14 out. I know there has been a massive amount of discovery.
15 MR IRVING: My Lord, they are no longer in my discovery, of
16 course, because I have given the originals to the
17 Institute.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought you were saying you had disclosed
19 them in this action, your correspondence with von Below?
20 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, I did not. With respect, I did not
21 say that. I said that these researchers have had access
22 in the Institute at Munich to all my private files in
23 which I have correspondence with Hitler’s personal staff
24 which I donated to the Institute because of its historical
25 significance. It contains voluminous correspondence with
26 Colonel von Below, including the chapters which he
. P-55
1 corrected in his own handwriting in the margin with his
2 very characteristic handwriting. Why this passage appears
3 in his book is a mystery to me.
4 A final question on this matter of the
5 documents: Professor, have you seen in my discovery now
6 one page of extracts typed by me on my large faced
7 typewriter from von Below’s original typescript manuscript
8 memoirs in my discovery?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Point it to me and I will —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: On this particular episode?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Provide it to me and I will say whether I have seen it or
12 not.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I sometimes wonder what the purpose of discovery is,
14 if all these documents are made available in numbered
15 folders to the defending solicitors and the evidence is
16 there, and yet they still write paragraphs like this.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, like what?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is insulting, is it not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Like what?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The allegation that I lied, is that not insulting, the
21 allegation that I lied about having had access to von
22 Below’s private papers and manuscripts?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is his allegation.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you have repeated it. Is it not insulting for
25 you to put that in there, although the evidence in the
26 discovery is that I did not lie?
. P-56
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If the man — well, first of all, I do say, draw attention
2 to the fact, that von Below is not always a very reliable
3 witness, so I think anything I say about von Below, it is
4 clear that it is with that caution. But if he does say in
5 his published memoirs that he takes strong exception to
6 your claims that you have — that he checked through many
7 pages of your manuscript, then I think one is duty bound
8 to record that fact. The only way we can actually verify
9 this not desperately important point is, of course, by
10 looking at all the correspondence.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say it is not desperately important?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a rather peripheral issue, in my judgment.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: If a journalist or an expert said, “Professor Evans has
14 claimed to have had access to the private papers of
15 Colonel Smith” and Colonel Smith says, “This is a lie”, is
16 that a peripheral point? Would you consider that to be a
17 peripheral point?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is something slightly different. He also — that is
19 a slightly different point.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: But do you say that Colonel von Below turns out to be
21 unreliable on many points. You remember that I asked you
22 earlier this morning, “Have you any impression about von
23 Below’s reliability? Has he ever been demonstrably wrong
24 on anything he has written about?”
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is variable, yes. It is variable. He is unreliable on
26 some issues. One has to make a judgment about what he is
. P-57
1 saying.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: That was not what you said in answer to my question, was
3 it? You said you did not know of any instances where he
4 had been wrong?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I honestly cannot remember. I would have to see the
6 transcript.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would have to see the transcript.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, probably now is the right moment
9 to ask you this. Where are you suggesting, or where is
10 anyone suggesting, we should put this clip of documents
11 because it is very convenient you have prepared it in the
12 way you have.
13 MS ROGERS: If I can help? L2 is the Kristallnacht file.
14 There should be an empty tab 9. If it is empty, I suggest
15 it goes there.
16 MR IRVING: Do you, therefore, accept, Professor, that I had
17 three sources of what you would describe as being of
18 variable quality, all converging on an episode in Hitler’s
19 private quarters on the Night of Broken Glass in which
20 Hitler, apparently, vented his anger upon receiving news
21 of what was happening in Munich, at least?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and I think they are all lying.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think that all three are separately lying?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, Mr Irving, it is not beyond the bounds of
25 possibility. You have already suggested in the course of
26 this trial that many thousands of Holocaust survivors are
. P-58
1 all collectively lying, so it is not beyond the bounds of
2 possibility that three people are lying, is it?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But the problem we have with the eyewitnesses in other
4 matters before the court is that their accounts diverge,
5 whereas the significant detail about these three is that
6 in minor points the little bits of verisimilitude are the
7 same?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Like the fact that it took place on a Sunday, for
9 example?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am now going to take you through some points in your
11 report relating to the Kristallnacht, page 237, line 2?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 237?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that the real number of deaths, including
14 suicides, was certainly much higher than 91.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, of course, I put the figure at about 91 or 100, do
17 I not, in my book?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is what you are criticising? Do you have any
20 evidence for saying that the real number of deaths was
21 certainly much higher?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, now there were, certainly I think over 200 in Vienna
23 alone. That is the figure, of course, that is given by
24 the Nazi Party tribunal, but it is clear that there were
25 deaths, suicides, in the camps when the 20,000 were
26 arrested.
. 6021
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where does that figure come from?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, 91 or 200?
3 MR IRVING: The larger figure.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The 91 are the murders which are listed in the Party
5 report.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In a Party report; of course, there were several
7 such reports, were there not?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is the Party tribunal which investigated these
9 events.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the figure of 200 in Vienna alone, where does that kind
11 of figure come from?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That comes from a contemporary report in Vienna. I am
13 trying to find where my records are of this. I think
14 I answered this in one of my answers to your written
15 questions.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Let us proceed then.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I refer you to that, my Lord.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is rather holding up the court on that matter. I do
19 not attach much importance to that, my Lord, so we will
20 move on.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think it is…
Section 60.22-82.19
22 MR IRVING: At the beginning of paragraph 8, please? “These
23 events were the only major nationwide pogrom undertaken in
24 public against the Jewish population during the ‘Third
25 Reich'”, is that the popular perception nowadays?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Would you like to point me to others?
. P-60
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that there were other major pogroms against
2 the Jews in Germany?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you name some?
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are these well-known to historians, do you think?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you tell me when they happened?
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I turn your attention to page 252 of my Goebbels
7 biography?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the middle paragraph, the second paragraph, of that
10 page describe a pogrom in Berlin organized by the Nazis in
11 June 1938 of which there has so far by no description by
12 historians like yourself? All the usual Nazi methods,
13 harassment, rounding up “1,122 criminal, 445”, I quote,
14 “‘anti-social’, and 77 foreign Jews found … imprisoned,
15 1,029 were thrown into concentration camps … 250
16 Jewish-owned automobiles seized pending safety tests”, I
17 mean, real harassment going on there?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the relevance of this, Mr Irving?
19 MR IRVING: He has said here in his paragraph 8 that this was
20 “the only nationwide pogrom undertaken in public against
21 the Jewish population during the ‘Third Reich'”. It is an
22 attack on his credibility as an expert witness. He
23 appears unfamiliar with the facts that in June 1938
24 Goebbels organized without any consent from Hitler a
25 pogrom against the Jews which is a kind of a trial run on
26 a major scale in Berlin, and I found the details of this
. P-61
1 in records in Princetown University Library. There is the
2 original report by Heldorf, the Police Chief of Berlin.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I hear what you say, Mr Irving, but what I am
4 concerned with is whether the criticisms of your account
5 of Kristallnacht are well-founded or whether they are not,
6 and the fact you have discovered another, as you put it,
7 major pogrom in Berlin in June 1938 does not appear to
8 help me very much on that.
9 MR IRVING: Well, it is a question of state of mind and mind
10 set and expertise of myself versus this witness, my Lord.
11 THE WITNESS: May I just then, in response to that, say that,
12 of course, I am aware of the fact that there was a great
13 deal of harassment and violence towards Jews in the Third
14 Reich, throughout the Third Reich, from the very
15 beginning, in particular, the beginning of April 1933, and
16 during the so-called Nazi seizure of power during those
17 months there were many arrests and a great deal of
18 violence against individual Jews. There was a
19 considerable amount in 1935 which was the background to
20 the Nuremberg laws, and there were a considerable number
21 of events, of violent actions, against arrests of,
22 harassment, maltreatment of Jews, right the way through,
23 including 1938.
24 The point I am trying to make here is that,
25 “These events were the only major nationwide pogrom
26 undertaken in public against the Jewish population during
. P-62
1 the ‘Third Reich'”. Let me draw your attention to two
2 words there, the first is “pogrom” which I understand to
3 be acts of mass violence and destruction and, secondly,
4 “nationwide”.
5 What you are describing here in the central
6 paragraph of page 252 of Goebbels are arrests accompanied,
7 no doubt, by harassment and, secondly, it is only in
8 Berlin. So I feel that I am justified in making that
9 statement.
10 MR IRVING: Can we turn to page 258, please, of your report?
11 You are accusing me here of suppressing evidence again,
12 are you not? Line 3, you have given a quotation from the
13 Goebbels diary, page 56: “Shock-troop Hitler gets Goring
14 immediately to clear things out”, and so on, “the events
15 during the night”. Then you state: “This contemporary
16 document – not mentioned by Irving” —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I just pre-empt you here, in my letter with
18 amendments, 10th January 2000, I recognize on checking
19 through it all again that you do cite the century on page
20 276 of Goebbels, so I was wrong there.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you were wrong there to suggest that I had suppressed
22 evidence?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Absolutely, yes, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I quoted it in full, in fact?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is another matter, but you do mention it.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I quoted it in full?
. P-63
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to direct me to the place.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 276 of the Goebbels biography, and you have accused
3 me of not mentioning this contemporary document?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I have withdrawn that accusation, Mr Irving.
5 I withdrew it on 10th January. So you had over a month to
6 read that.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but I am just drawing your attention to the fact that
8 once again you have made an accusation —-
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The court is already aware of that. I drew my own
10 attention — I drew your attention to the fact, Mr Irving.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You made an accusation against me which turns out to be
12 completely unfounded?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I withdrew that remark. Page what of Goebbels?
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: 276.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that right, page 276?
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Lower down that page, I am now back on your report again,
17 paragraph 7.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Wait a minute, I am just checking the shock-troop Hitler.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I cannot find it.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot find it either.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts on 276, Mr Irving?
22 MR IRVING: Let us work backwards from: “His old … (reading
23 to the words) … past comes flooding back”. That is the
24 final sentence of that paragraph.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which paragraph?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The indented quote in the middle of page 276, my Lord,
. P-64
1 which follows on: “We go with Schaub to the Artists’
2 Club, to await further bulletins” or “reports” in my
3 version. “In Berlin five synagogues are ablaze, then 15.
4 Now the people’s anger is aroused. That night”, so on and
5 so forth, “Schaub was on top form”. I suppose that
6 is —-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes I see?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Schaub is completely worked up. His old shock-troop is
9 coming past”.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
11 MR IRVING: Paragraph 7 on your page of your report 258, you
12 take exception to my relying on von Below. You say: “It
13 appears clear in this instance that rather than rely on
14 the published book”, I relied on the interview von Below
15 in 1968?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: How many interviews did I conduct with colonel von Below?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mean there were more than one?
19 MR IRVING: There were about 10, my Lord, yes.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This was the interview in 1968, interviews, if you like,
21 this is a particular interview, one particular interview
22 in 1968.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: All of the von Below interviews were available to your
24 researchers in the archives, were they not?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We are arguing about the word “the” here, Mr Irving.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, we are arguing about “interviewer” in the singular.
. P-65
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that sentence implies that there were not
2 more, and it is not an important matter. I am happy to
3 concede that you conducted various interviews. If you
4 like, I will withdraw the word “the” and put “and”.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, the substance of the criticism is
6 that you go to your interview with him rather than to his
7 own published book. That may or may not be a valid
8 criticism, but worrying about whether there was more than
9 one interview seems to me to be missing the wood for the
10 trees.
11 MR IRVING: Over the page, my Lord, on page 259, line 2, I
12 allegedly, von Below allegedly told me something which
13 implies that, in fact, there is no proof for it. The word
14 “allegedly” implies there is no proof for it. That
15 coupled with paragraph 9 where I am accused of having lied
16 about obtaining the papers of von Below and using his
17 unpublished manuscript?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, he accused you of that.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 261, paragraph 11, we come to the famous quotation
20 where from the Goebbels diary — from the court report
21 “Thousands of Jews would have to believe in it in the
22 coming days”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, page what?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end of paragraph 11 of page 261.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 261, right. Yes. I have opted for a literal translation
26 there because I did not want to be accused of
. P-66
1 exaggerating. I mean, I tried to convey there is a sense
2 of menace in that, of course, perhaps had better believe
3 it in the coming days.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point on that, Mr Irving?
5 MR IRVING: It is a German slang for “will die”.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I cannot agree with that.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Are going for a burton”?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not German slang for “will die”. If you look it
9 up in the dictionary as I have done. It is “will suffer
10 the consequences” is one possible meaning.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: “Glauben” means “believe”, it does not mean
12 “die”.
13 MR IRVING: It does indeed, but it is German slang. A Burton
14 is a beer, but “going for a burton” has a specific
15 meaning, my Lord. Goebbels writes his diary in slang,
16 Goebbels speaks slang. “Daran glauben mussen” is a German
17 slang, as, in fact, the Frankfurt Allgemeiner has pointed
18 out, that I was perfectly correct in this particular
19 matter.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a threat — there is threat included in that, but
21 it does not threaten death. If you look it up in a
22 dictionary, Mr Irving, you will find it does not mean
23 “will” die.
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I intervene to correct one completely
25 false point that Mr Irving — I know it is a small point,
26 but it does offend my sense of fairness. He just ploughs
. P-67
1 on. The reference to what von Below said, or is alleged
2 to have said, is on page 613 at note 44. The reference
3 which Mr Irving gives for what von Below is reported to
4 have said to him is “Author’s interview of colonel
5 Nicolaus von Below, May 18th 1968″. So the other nine
6 interviews can go hang. That is what Professor Irving is
7 referring to.
8 MR IRVING: And I draw attention to the fact that all that is
9 before you are the three pages and it was, obviously, an
10 interview lasting many hours.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You put the pages before us, Mr Irving.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have to ask a question about that then. Is it right you
13 have only had three pages of the original German
14 transcript in discovery?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that the case? You will have to check what is in
16 discovery. I cannot recall it, I am afraid.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, is it likely that the transcript of an interview
18 lasting two or three hours would be longer than three
19 pages if it is a verbatim transcript?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it likely that the original transcript therefore is in
22 the archives in Munich and that only those three pages
23 remained in my possession?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I really do not know; there is no reason why the whole lot
25 should not have remained in your possession. I do not
26 know what arrangements you made about making copies of the
. P-68
1 material before you sent it to Munich.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is a lot that you really do not know then, is there
3 not? This is the problem; you are an expert witness on
4 this case, you had access to my papers and the archives
5 and yet your answer again and again is that you do not
6 know what is there, you did not see this, you did not find
7 that.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not quite sure what point you are trying to make now,
9 Mr Irving, in this specific sense. As you know, we had
10 three people who also had other things to do, 18 months to
11 go through 30 years of your work, and we did the best we
12 could do in the time available. I am satisfied it was
13 thoroughly done.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am sorry to go back but you must
15 realise that I need to understand what the issue is. You
16 went to paragraph 11 of Professor Evans’ report, page 261,
17 and you had your argument with him about having to believe
18 it.
19 MR IRVING: The issue is purely which of us has the better
20 knowledge of German, my Lord; it is only that.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is, no doubt, a fascinating topic, but
22 it is not one I am actually dealing with. The criticism
23 is of what you wrote about Kristallnacht in Goebbels’s
24 biography.
25 MR IRVING: Yes, which presupposes the knowledge of German.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could you be kind enough to direct me to the
. P-69
1 passage, where you quote, if you do quote, Goebbels saying
2 what he said.
3 MR IRVING: We have already had it better, in fact, in one of
4 his other expert reports. I think it has been quoted from
5 Longerich’s report. We dealt with the matter of that —-
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is as may be, but would you be kind
7 enough to point me to where it is in your book one finds
8 the reference to this quote, so that I can make sense of
9 your criticism of the translation?
10 MR IRVING: It is not in my book at all, my Lord, that
11 passage. I rely on it purely as evidence of the fact that
12 this witness does not have command of the German language
13 that he should have, to be an expert on a difficult matter
14 like what the Goebbels diaries mean, for example.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on.
16 MR IRVING: Page 265, paragraph 8, the indented paragraph: You
17 have not indicated in that paragraph that there is an
18 omission, is that correct?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you point me to it then, please?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: In footnote 66, you can see where the omission is in
21 fourth line?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is an omission of about 20 or 30 words that have
24 been taken out, is that right?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is indicated in the footnote; no, that’s a typo. There
26 should be been three dots there, but the footnote gives it
. P-70
1 quite clearly.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: The words that have been left out are not reproduced in
3 either version, are they?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point, Mr Irving? Let us get to
5 the point. Obviously your case is that something
6 important has been omitted which affects what is there.
7 What is it that you say has been omitted?
8 MR IRVING: There are two points that I am saying. Firstly, we
9 cannot always be certain that the quotation given to us by
10 this witness indicates when there have been omissions.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, Mr Irving, it does indicate.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is futile. I am not even going to
13 trouble Professor Evans. That is an absolutely futile
14 point. It is clear from the footnote. What are you
15 saying is omitted that makes any difference?
16 MR IRVING: The words left out are: “As far as I recall from
17 these first reports, it already emerged that these actions
18 had been set in motion by the party or by subordinate
19 formations of a party whereupon, in my presence, Hitler
20 gave Himmler the order that the SS must keep out of these
21 events”.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Speaking for myself, that has no bearing at
23 all on the point that is being made here which is that,
24 according to Wolff, Himmler and Hitler were both
25 surprised. Mr Irving, I am sorry to keep interrupting,
26 but this cross-examination does not appear to me to be
. P-71
1 grasping the nettle of the criticisms against you. You
2 are finding tiny little points on which you hope, and
3 sometimes succeed, in tripping up Professor Evans, but you
4 are not grappling with what the criticisms are of your
5 account of Kristallnacht. That is what you have to do, if
6 you are going to advance your case in relation to this
7 part of the criticism of you.
8 MR IRVING: There are so many criticisms made by this witness
9 of me that all I can really hope to do on any
10 cross-examination is pick on central points, which I have
11 done, like the events in Hitler’s residence that night,
12 and suggest that this witness is wrong in saying I had no
13 sources for what I wrote.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have not even touched on the inception of
15 the events of this night, which is a key part of —
16 Mr Rampton will correct me if I am wrong or Professor
17 Evans will — of their case on Kristallnacht that Hitler
18 was in on it from the word go.
19 MR IRVING: We dealt with that at very great length under
20 cross-examination of myself, my Lord, and my belief was
21 that I would be testing your Lordship’s patience if I went
22 all over that ground again.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the contrary, this part of Professor Evans
24 is absolutely central. Professor Evans, I think, makes
25 that point and you are taking tiny little points like
26 whether a sentence has been left out of an account he
. P-72
1 gives as part of his testimony. That just does not really
2 affect the issues that I have to decide at all.
3 MR RAMPTON: I would have to say this, my Lord. It is as well
4 perhaps I say it now. Unless Mr Irving challenges
5 Professor Evans on this and other topics, upon the
6 foundation of his criticisms of Mr Irving’s writings,
7 which is not in every case but in most cases and in all
8 important respects the way in which Mr Irving has treated
9 contemporary documents, then I am afraid I will take it
10 that Mr Irving has accepted the criticisms.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We will come back to that. That would, in the
12 ordinary case, be a completely unarguable proposition for
13 Mr Rampton. Maybe we will have to come back to it later
14 on, but you hear what Mr Rampton says. I do think you
15 have to actually tackle the fundamental points that are
16 made in Professor Evans’s report, and there is no point
17 in, if I may put it this way, pussy footing around the
18 borders of the issue because that is not going to help me,
19 is it, really?
20 MR IRVING: I was coming at it from the rear.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, I accept that.
22 MR IRVING: I was trying to establish that this witness has an
23 agenda of his own; that he is not reliable; that he
24 distorts and manipulates evidence against me; that he is
25 quite happy to ignore evidence which was before him for
26 what I wrote; and that, on balance therefore, probably my
. P-73
1 version of events is more accurate than his.
2 Let me therefore just take one more point.
3 Would you go to page 266, please, where again you are
4 accusing me of falsification? Halfway down, four lines
5 from the bottom of that paragraph, you say: “Irving, for
6 his part, cites Goebbels diary entry, only first to cast
7 doubt on its validity as a source, then to falsify it by
8 reporting on the basis of this reference, not that Hitler
9 ordered the Jews arrested, but he failed to prevent them
10 being taken to concentration camps”.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just pause, so that I understand what
13 we are on at the moment?
14 MR IRVING: Has your Lordship found it?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have found the paragraph but you plunged
16 into the middle of it, so I am just trying to remind
17 myself what he is talking about.
18 MR IRVING: Again, I am accused of falsification. Is this
19 relevant or not, my Lord?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it may be; it is not perhaps the most
21 important point. Can you, Professor Evans, explain
22 because I am not quite taking on board what you are saying
23 in your paragraph 11?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to find the reference to the Goebbels —-.
25 MR IRVING: Perhaps I can help you. If you go straight to
26 Goebbels’s biography, page 276, you will find where
. P-74
1 I quoted exactly that passage.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts on the page?
3 MR IRVING: I am sorry, it is at the end of the second
4 paragraph, the sentence beginning: “The ‘Fuhrer’, claimed
5 Goebbels in the diary, ‘has directed that 20 or 30,000
6 Jews are to be arrested immediately. That will do it.
7 Let them now see our patience is exhausted'”. How can you
8 reconcile that quotation from the book with your
9 allegation that I falsified it, by reporting that not
10 Hitler ordered the Jews arrested, but that he failed to
11 prevent them being taken to concentration camps?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to find the reference to where you say he
13 failed to take them.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have given you the actual quotation from the book where
15 I stated that Hitler ordered them arrested.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Unfortunately, I do not have a reference there.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: 20,000 or 30,000 were, in fact, arrested that night, were
18 they not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: They were locked away for a few days and then released, is
21 that correct?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Weeks, a few weeks, Mr Irving.
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, the reference is the end of the first big
24 paragraph on page 277, I believe. The first sentence
25 begins: “But 20,000 were already — — “, but I am not
26 sure.
. P-75
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot find this. Yes, but 20,000 Jews were already
2 being loaded on to trucks and transported to concentration
3 camps at Dachau, Buchenwald, Oranienburg. Hitler made no
4 attempt to halt this inhumanity. He ordered it,
5 Mr Irving, and, in fact, as you indeed quote Goebbels —
6 but however you say in the passage that you are quoting on
7 page 276: “‘The Fuhrer’, claimed Goebbels in the
8 diary,’has directed that 20 or 30,000 Jews are to be
9 arrested immediately'”.
10 MR IRVING: So, I state precisely what you say that
11 I concealed?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You are saying it is claimed, you are not saying that it
13 is an accurate report. You go on, on page 277, to say
14 that Hitler’s involvement was limited to making no attempt
15 to stop it.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where do I say Hitler’s involvement was limited to making
17 no attempt to stop it, when I made it quite clear on page
18 276 that he ordered their arrest?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you do not, Mr Irving.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The Fuhrer has directed 20 or 30,000 Jews are to be
21 arrested immediately”. How else can you interpret that?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “‘The Fuhrer’, claimed Goebbels in the diary, ‘has
23 directed that 20 or 30,000 Jews are to be arrested
24 immediately'”.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Goebbels is our source for it, is he not?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is one source. The other source is the telegram of
. P-76
1 Muller ordering the arrests.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you make any reference —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a telex.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you make any reference in your report to this early
5 quotation on page 276 of my book?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, the third line. What is the evidence
8 for saying that Hitler ordered them to be taken to the
9 concentration camps as opposed to having them arrested?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are two pieces of evidence — well, three. One is
11 the fact that they were taken to concentration camps; the
12 second one is the Muller telegram which ordered the
13 arrests; and the third one is the Goebbels diary.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on. Goebbels’s diary does not say
15 anything about having all of them taken to concentration
16 camps, does it?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, just arrested.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So, the evidence for that, saying he ordered
19 them to be taken to concentration camps, consists of —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, my Lord, I think one has to work it out. They could
21 only really have been taken to state prisons, because you
22 needed a regular legal trial to put people in state
23 prisons. So this has to be an action that takes place
24 outside the regular legal framework, a penal system. You
25 cannot keep them in police cells. If you have that number
26 of people, the only place you can put them in is
. P-77
1 concentration camps and, of course, that indeed is what
2 happened. The Muller telex is quoted on pages 265 to
3 266.
4 MR IRVING: Does the final sentence (on page 277) of that
5 paragraph, “Hitler made no attempt to halt this
6 inhumanity. He stood by, and thus deserved the odium that
7 now fell on all Germany”, not refer to the whole episode?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just read: “20,000 Jews were already loaded onto
9 and transported to the concentration camps at Dachau,
10 Buchenwald and Oranienburg. Hitler had made no attempt to
11 halt this inhumanity. He stood by.” He did not stand by,
12 Mr Irving, he ordered the whole thing. He ordered the
13 arrests and he ordered the burning of the synagogues, and
14 he ordered the destruction of Jewish shops and dwellings.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: And?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He ordered the arrests, and he did not merely stand by.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have I left any doubt in the minds of the readers that, in
18 fact, he went further and that he ordered a massive fine
19 on the Jewish community and various punitive measures?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You accept that after the event.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: I accept this. Is this another concession by me or have I
22 stated this in accordance with what the documents tell us?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You point me to where you state this, please. You
24 certainly said that, in court, Hitler ordered the economic
25 measures against the Jews.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is another source which I rely on, Professor Evans, the
. P-78
1 diary of the SA commander Viktor Lutze?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I rely on it quite extensively, because his men were
4 involved that night, were they not?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Were you able to check my references?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me have a look. No, I am afraid we —-.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know where the diary is now?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in the Friedrich Ebe Stiftung, I think.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it in the archives of the Friedrich Ebe Stiftung which
11 is equivalent of the archives of the Labour Party in
12 Germany?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, the report of the Social Democrat Party archive.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did I have complete access to that diary when I wrote that
15 book?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I assume so, since you cited that we were denied access.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I had access to the source and you were denied access to
18 it?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it possible therefore that there are things in the
21 diary of Viktor Lutze of which you were unaware?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Such as?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, give me some examples. Show me.
24 MR IRVING: The fact that he was personally opposed to the
25 pogrom and ordered that it should not occur, and that the
26 SA people should not participate in it.
. P-79
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you show me the passages in the diary where he says
2 that, please.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am referring to paragraph 1 on page 246.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 246 of what?
5 MR IRVING: Of his expert report, my Lord.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Sorry, I have forgotten what the question was now.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: In broad general terms, is it likely that, having had
9 access to the diary of Viktor Lutze, and your not having
10 had access to it, therefore I know more about what is in
11 the diary than you do?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, that is true but, of course, it has to be regarded
13 with extreme suspicion. What you claim is that Lutze had
14 misgivings, that indeed he ordered the SA not to stay out,
15 and that only three of the 28 SA groups received orders to
16 stage demonstrations.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But the source for that — I am sorry to
18 interrupt again — is not Lutze but Juttner.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, if you look at note 34 on page 251, we do
20 have indication that I had the diary of Lutze, that I was
21 using it and relying on it.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but we are really looking at footnote
23 31. It is perfectly true you do there refer to the diary
24 entry of Lutze, but that does not say what you put in your
25 text. What you put in your text comes from gruppenFuhrer
26 Max Juttner.
. P-80
1 MR IRVING: As well, yes.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not as well.
3 MR IRVING: Obviously one relies on many different sources when
4 one is writing that but, in view of the fact that I had
5 the Lutze diary which has not been available like many
6 other documents to the Defence, this is the picture I am
7 trying to build up. I have had a lot of documents that
8 have not been available to the expert witnesses in this
9 case.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say I find that a bit bizarre.
11 If you have first hand evidence from Lutze as to what he
12 said, why would you cite somebody else as support for what
13 you say in your text Lutze said?
14 MR IRVING: Well, when you look at note 34, where we have the
15 German text of one fragment of what the Lutze diary
16 contains, the problem is once again that all my records
17 have been donated to the German government archives in
18 Bonn in June 1993, after this passage was written, and
19 I no longer have the Lutze diary. I have filing cards,
20 but that is all I have left.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What we had access to of course were your notes, as this
22 footnote says, on the Lutze diary.
23 MR IRVING: But in view of the fact that you write on page 251
24 quite robustly at the end of paragraph 1, once more
25 Irving’s account relies on a tissue of inventions,
26 manipulations, suppressions and omissions, and I have been
. P-81
1 telling you for the last two hours there are numbers of
2 documents to which you paid no attention or to which you
3 have had no access, this is probably an over robust
4 verdict. Would you agree?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, this is your account that Hitler did “everything he
6 could to prevent things nasty happening” to the Jews in
7 the pogrom of 8, 9, particularly 9 and 10 of November
8 1938. That is your account and it does indeed rely on a
9 tissue of inventions, manipulations, suppressions and
10 omissions.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You describe even now the interview with von Below, the
12 Schaub papers, the Bruckner papers, whatever they were,
13 as being just this tissue of inventions?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I think you accept their lies as being truth because
15 that supports your line.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: You think that I accept their lies as being true?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because it supports my line?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed.
Section 82.20-102.14
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have no evidence for that at all, apart from the fact
21 that there are a number of documents which can be
22 interpreted in a different way. Would you consider the
23 Eberstein telegram, the one signed by Eberstein during the
24 night — do you remember the one?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a triggering, an igniting telegram, is it not?
. P-82
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I do not think it is an igniting telegram. The
2 igniting event of course was Goebbels’ speech at
3 10 o’clock to the senior party people, the SA leaders.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Perhaps we should have a look at that telegram. Can we
5 identify the two page telegram, the one with the
6 typescript signature of von Eberstein?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is probably in L2, is it not?
8 MR RAMPTON: That is L2, tab 1, page 7.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I have this.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, you will see I am now working backwards
11 from Hitler’s fury or from round about that time. It is a
12 two-page telegram, is it not, typescript?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, if you look at the second page, it has two signatures
15 on it. One is the typescript signature of von Eberstein?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who was the police chief of Munich and Bavaria?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it is counter signed in handwriting by a
20 Kanzellaiungestelter, which is some kind of Chancellery
21 official?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Clerk, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Eberstein has not signed it himself, has he?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It seems to be a copy. It is a copy indeed.
25 Abschrift.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the German Civil Service method of
. P-83
1 occasionally sending out telegrams over the signature of
2 the boss?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which does not necessarily mean that the boss is actually
5 there when it is being sent out? It is just his authority
6 that it is being sent out on?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course, done with his authority.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the fact that this is a telegram signed at 2.10 a.m. in
9 typescript by Eberstein does not necessarily mean that
10 Eberstein is physically at the police headquarters at that
11 moment? He might be somewhere completely different?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a possibility, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So that it is entirely within the bounds of
14 possibility that at this moment Eberstein, unaware that
15 this was going on, was at Hitler’s residence, having
16 strips torn off him by his boss, by Hitler, while somebody
17 else had said, you had better send this message out over
18 Eberstein’s signature because there has to be this going
19 on tonight. It is an igniting telegram, is it not, of a
20 sort? He is saying about the police standing back and the
21 synagogues are going to be burning and this kind of thing,
22 is it not?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is very similar to previous telegrams, the Muller and
24 the Heydrich telegrams. I do not really think it is very
25 likely that Eberstein was unaware of the fact that this
26 rather important telegram was being sent out under his
. P-84
1 name. I find that very difficult to believe. They had
2 have telephones of course in Germany at this time.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: If at this moment Eberstein was in Hitler’s residence, it
4 would still be possible for this telegram to be is sent
5 out by police headquarters, over his typed name
6 authenticated by this staff member, would it not?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The telephone, you say?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the way that the German bureaucracy works
9 sometimes. The order would go out over the name of the
10 boss, but it would be signed by some responsible official
11 on his part, on his behalf?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I think, though, he would have known about it, of
13 course. The boss would have been apprised of it. He
14 simply would not have been in a physical position to sign
15 it.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, if we have 2 or 3 people on Hitler’s staff who say
17 that Eberstein was here with them at that time, then it is
18 not necessarily contradicted by the existence of this
19 telegram with Eberstein’s typed signature on it?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is possible there might have been a telephone
21 conversation, as I said. We do not have any evidence of
22 that.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the message that went out very
24 shortly afterwards over the signature of Opdenhof of
25 Rudolf Hess’s staff?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is at 2.56 a.m.?
. P-85
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 MR RAMPTON: That is page 9 of tab 1.
4 MR IRVING: One of those messages has an igniting function, if
5 I can put it like that, and the other message has an
6 extinguishing function?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept either of those claims.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: If the second message timed at 2.56 on the notepaper of
9 the Deputy Fuhrer orders that actions are to stop, then
10 this has an extinguishing function?
11 MR RAMPTON: I think it might be proper to get Professor Evans
12 to translate this short little message as he stands in the
13 witness box, rather than receiving what to my mind is a
14 completely pie-eyed version.
15 MR IRVING: I think it would be very nice if I was allowed to
16 conduct my cross-examination in the manner I wish.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could we see this document.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I remember this fairly well but it would be
19 helpful if we just read it through together.
20 MR IRVING: It is noticeable that every time I am about to make
21 a killer point—-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 9 is —-
23 MR RAMPTON: That is my function, Mr Irving, I am afraid.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is a very brief telegram.
25 MR IRVING: I promise that I will interrupt your killer
26 points.
. P-86
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I have give a translation, my Lord?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, if the conversation in the background
3 ceases.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is a telegram at 2.56 a.m. on 10th November 1938 from
5 the Brown House in Munich to all Gau leaderships.
6 MR IRVING: Can you translate the heading too then please?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Telegram via the propaganda writer, whatever that is.
8 MR IRVING: It is on the headed notepaper of the deputy of the
9 Fuhrer, is it not?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in the copy I have here, no.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: In that case you had better have one of these copies then
12 which is the genuine telegram.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thank you. That is very helpful.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: And not the version produced by the Defence.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right. National socialist German Workers Party. It is
16 very difficult to read this. Is that deputy of the Fuhrer
17 staff? I am guessing. Munich 33, 10th November.
18 MR IRVING: The office of the Deputy of the Fuhrer.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right. It is whited out here on my copy, I am afraid.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is no—-
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: To all Gau leaderships for immediate —-
22 MR IRVING: To be put into immediate effect?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, immediate effect, ordnance No. 174/38, repeat of the
24 —-
25 MR IRVING: Repetition of the telegram of November 10th.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: November 10th 1938, on the emphatic command of the all
. P-87
1 highest position.
2 MR IRVING: Acts of arson?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Acts, well, arson on Jewish shops or —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Businesses?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Shops or similar.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Shop would be Larden, would it not?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Gescheft. I think you yourself translated Gescheft as
8 shop in the witness box, Mr Irving.
9 MR RAMPTON: That is how Mr Irving translated it when I first
10 asked him to do it.
11 MR IRVING: Businesses is more precise.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, shops, Mr Irving.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure that it makes a huge amount of
14 difference, actually?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does, my Lord, I am afraid, but still.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I am not sure it does.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in this particular context.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is what I was talking about.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Arson and Jewish shops or the like must not —-
20 MR IRVING: Business.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — happen.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Establishment.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry. May I translate it, Mr Irving, please? Arson or
24 the laying of fire in Jewish shops or the like may not or
25 must not take place under any circumstances and in no
26 case, and so on. That is the essence of it.
. P-88
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Pretty emphatic, is it not?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. What it is saying is that nobody is to set light to
3 Jewish shops or —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Businesses.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — or similar kinds of premises. It is not saying that
6 nobody is to arrest the Jews. It is not saying that
7 nobody should smash the shops up. It is not saying that
8 nobody should smash up the apartments and houses of Jews.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, I have not asked you what it does not say.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not say that nobody should commit arson against
11 many hundreds of synagogues which were burnt down.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, I have not asked you what it does not say.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What it does not say, Mr Irving, is extremely important.
14 This is a very limited telegram which says that Jewish
15 shops and similar kinds of premises are not to be set
16 alight. The reason for that is very similar, it is the
17 same kind of telegram that —-
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where does it say similar businesses?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I finish my answer, Mr Irving, please? It is the same
20 kind of telegram that went out from Heydrich at 1.20 or
21 from Muller at 11.55. That is to say, it is saying that
22 laying fire to Jewish shops at similar apartments,
23 whatever it might be, is not to be allowed because of
24 course it endangers the surrounding premises, which are
25 owned by Germans —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where does it say that?
. P-89
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you please not interrupt?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And, of course, some of these shops may well have been
3 owned by Germans. That is all it is saying. It is very
4 limited. It does not say, “Bring the whole thing to an
5 end”. That is a completely illegitimate interpretation of
6 this document.
7 MR IRVING: Where does it say, “because of the danger to
8 surrounding premises”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am going back there to —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, I am looking at this telegram. Let us just look at
11 one document at a time, please?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not say that, but that is my interpretation of the
13 reason.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we look at what it does say and not what it does not
15 say?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because that, surely, is where the evidence is?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: It goes to all the Gauleiters, is that right?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: What, about 48 of the senior Nazi Party officials though
22 the entire country?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it is telling them there are to be no acts of arson
25 against Jewish Geschafte, whatever that is. I translate
26 that as “businesses”.
. P-90
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Shops.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And “der Gleichen”, what does that mean?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “And similar”.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: What does the “similar” mean? Similar to businesses or
5 similar to acts?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Similar to business, of course, Mr Irving.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: On what basis do you say that? Your knowledge of German?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because it is Geschafte oder der Gleichen. Had it been
9 “arson”, it would have been “[German] Oder der
10 Gleichen”. It is quite clear. It is a shameless
11 manipulation of this text to suggest that it says that
12 “arson and similar acts”.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this based on your —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Quite clearly not.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: — superior knowledge of the German language?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is based on my knowledge of the German language which
17 is a good knowledge of the German language, Mr Irving.
18 I am not claiming my knowledge is superior to yours. You
19 also have a very good knowledge of the German language.
20 That is why I say this is a shameless manipulation of the
21 text. It is not due to mere ignores.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: It would be useful if you could keep your answers a little
23 bit shorter and more to the point.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know you do not like what I am saying, Mr Irving, but
25 I shall say what I want to unless I am told not to by his
26 Lordship.
. P-91
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Otherwise Mr Rampton will complain about the expense
2 again. That is why I am trying to keep these answers
3 brief. If it says “Brandlegungen an Judenschen Geschaften
4 oder der Gleichen”, and you say that if the word “der
5 Gleichen” was going to refer to the “Brandlegungen”, then
6 it would have to go immediately after “Brandlegungen”.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Brandlegungen oder der Gleichen an Judenschen
9 Geschaften”.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: But then that would make nonsense, would it not?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Why?
15 MR IRVING: Because all you could do with the businesses as an
16 object would be to set them on fire or to demolish them or
17 whatever, whereas my contention is that the “der Gleichen”
18 refers to acts of arson and the “der Gleichen” refers to
19 other actions being carried out during that night which
20 can amount to all sorts of different things.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Like?
22 MR IRVING: Well, whatever was going on that night, my Lord.
23 We know already in great detail what was going on that
24 night, the arrests, the murders, the outrageous, the
25 harassment, the violence, and that —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So your case is — I am interested because I
. P-92
1 have not heard this before —–
2 MR IRVING: — the “der Gleichen” can refer equally —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That this meant that all criminal, violent
4 activities should stop, although it refers to arson? Your
5 case, Mr Irving?
6 MR IRVING: I was hoping that we had Mr Rampton’s undivided
7 attention.
8 MR RAMPTON: I am just having confirmation from a German
9 speaker behind me of your Lordship’s interpretation.
10 MR IRVING: Are you wishing to give evidence, Mr Rampton,
11 because, if so, perhaps we ought to wait until we have a
12 German in the witness box who we can cross-examine
13 properly on this matter. No doubt we will when the time
14 comes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I asked you a question.
16 MR IRVING: My contention is (and I am putting this to this
17 witness) that it is equally possible that “der Gleichen”
18 refers either to the businesses or to the “Brandlegungun”,
19 if I can put it like that?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is absolutely ridiculous. It is a completely
21 illegitimate misinterpretation and manipulation of this
22 text.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. We have your answers. In your considered
24 view, that is an impossible interpretation?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. I have already said it would have been
26 “Brandlegungen oder der Gleichen an Judenschen
. P-93
1 Geschaften” because it says “Brandlegungen an Judenschen
2 Geschaften oder der Gleichen”. “Der Gleichen” refers to
3 Judenschen Geschaften”.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are ploughing once again the depths of your
5 considerable knowledge of the German language, “alle
6 hochste Stelle”, to whom does that refer?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That must refer to Hitler.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: That must refer to Adolf Hitler. There is no question
9 about that then.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would seem that —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is not a janitorial level order then, this one?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, no.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: This comes from the very top man.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Hitler is saying here, “Go ahead with burning down
15 synagogues. Go ahead with wrecking Jewish shops and
16 smashing up the interiors. Go ahead with arresting 20,000
17 people. Go ahead with smashing up Jewish apartments,
18 destroying the furniture, chucking it out of the window,
19 throwing some of the inhabitants out of the window. Go
20 ahead with all of that, but don’t commit arson on Jewish
21 shops or similar premises”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You read all of that out of these three lines, do you?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I think what is omitted from here is more
24 significant in a way than what is in here.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am looking at a document you do not have,
26 Professor — well, you have it but you are not looking at
. P-94
1 it — and it has got “Brandlegungen an Judenschen
2 Geschaften” underlined. Is that in the version you are
3 looking at? Is it underlined?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving’s version is not underlined.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So somebody has done that later is the point?
6 MR IRVING: Effectively, yes, my Lord. I should amplify that
7 the version which is here is originally a negative copy
8 which is in the files of the Berlin Document Centre and
9 there is no question as to its authenticity.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I accept that.
11 MR IRVING: Professor, have you ever seen this document
12 reproduced or printed or quoted at any time before
13 I published it in my work in 1977? Has any German
14 historian or non-German historian deigned to use this
15 document?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not to my knowledge.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason why an orders from the very highest
18 level, in other words, from Adolf Hitler to all
19 the Gauleiters concerning the Reichskristallnacht should
20 have been suppressed in this manner if it was so innocent,
21 as you suggest, if it just fits in with the general
22 pattern?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not know that it was suppressed, Mr Irving. I cannot
24 say.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, there appeared to be at least two different copies
26 of it in existence, the one which the Defence provided and
. P-95
1 my different version, so I found it easily enough. So is
2 there any reason you can suggest why historians have been
3 embarrassed about it and have preferred not to use it?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it is true that historians have been
5 embarrassed about it. There is nothing to be embarrassed
6 about here at all. It fits in perfectly well into the
7 other documents we have from that same disastrous and
8 ghastly evening.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: A document showing Adolf Hitler intervening at 2.56
10 through his deputy, through the office of his deputy,
11 ordering a halt to whatever, or a stop, a veto on however
12 narrow a front you wish to portray it, did not deserve any
13 kind of comment by the entire assembled body of historians
14 around the world?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, you have already said that the telex of
16 Heydrich at 1.20 was the result of discussions between
17 Hitler and Himmler, the Muller telex earlier in the
18 evening was also on Hitler’s orders, and all of these
19 things say roughly the same thing. We can look at the
20 other telexes, if you like. They all, taken together,
21 represent the attempt by Hitler to make sure that German
22 property was not damaged, and that foreign — it is not in
23 this one, but it is in the other ones — that foreign Jews
24 were not to be harmed because of the diplomatic
25 consequences. None of these documents, certainly not
26 this one, puts it in any way — attempting to put the
. P-96
1 whole action to an end.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: So why have other historians not quoted it?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is part of a stream of documents. There is nothing
4 surprising or new or novel or shocking about this one.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why have other historians not quoted a brief telegram
6 which is on the authority of the very highest level in a
7 matter of such importance?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to ask them.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am asking you as —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it surprises —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: — the expert on historiography. You have written books
12 on the way people write history.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, can I just ask you this
14 question? If, indeed, the telex or the message, whatever
15 it is, had said, “Stop everything”, would you then agree
16 that it would be surprising that historians have ignored
17 it, as Mr Irving suggests?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that historians would have deliberately
19 suppressed it, had it said that. I mean, I can only
20 assume that —-
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is not quite an answer to my question.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: What I am really saying is that if, indeed, Hitler had
24 decided at 2.56 in the morning that everything must
25 stop —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-97
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: — would that be something that you would expect somebody
2 giving an account, an historian giving an account, of
3 Kristallnacht would include in his account or her account?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, most certainly because it would change our entire
5 picture of the whole series of events, and you would then
6 have to explain, of course, why lower police officials
7 sent out orders for the actions to start later in the
8 morning, why the Reichskristallnacht events only really
9 began in the morning well after this of the 10th November
10 in Vienna, for example, and this would cast very
11 interesting light on why Hitler’s orders were not followed
12 if that was the case.
13 I mean, I should also say I am here simply
14 accepting Mr Irving’s suggestion that other historians
15 have not quoted this, although he himself says he does not
16 read other historians, so…
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes, well, assuming that.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If may well be that if I had time to check up in detail
19 through the literature of other historians, I might find
20 that they had quoted this before 1977.
21 MR IRVING: But we assume that you have read all the literature
22 on the Reiskristallnacht because you are an expert witness
23 on this.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I would have to — this is one small document, and I
25 would have to go back and check it all. I do not have a
26 photographic memory.
. P-98
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is small in as much as it contains only three lines,
2 but it does rely on the authority of the very top level in
3 the Third Reich in the middle of the night on the Night of
4 Broken Glass —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but so —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: — and yet nobody else quoted it except me?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, how can you say that if you do not read other
8 historians’ work, Mr Irving?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am asking you as the expert on historiography.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And you are just telling me, and I am telling you that you
11 have no right to say that. You do not read what other
12 historians have written on the subject. You have no idea.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I believe that we would have had an echo by now.
14 I have been waving this document in the air for the last
15 25 years, saying, “Look what I found. Why have you not
16 quoted it?” I remembered a mass meeting at the University
17 of Bonn saying precisely this, and advising the students
18 to ask their professors afterwards why they were hearing
19 it from me for the first time. So, surely, somebody would
20 have said, “Mr Irving, you are not first”?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I am not sure I believe you, Mr Irving, I am afraid.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are not sure you believe me?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I would have to go up and check the literature to see
24 whether this document was quoted and it would not surprise
25 me if it was.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept the proposition that if my interpretation
. P-99
1 of the document is correct, that Adolf Hitler was hereby
2 acting on the information that he had received during the
3 previous hour as described by the Adjutants, the three of
4 whom I have related earlier this morning, he was
5 determined to stop this nonsense and he telephoned Rudolf
6 Hess and said, “Send an immediate message to the
7 Gauleiters”, that if this signal meant that, this would be
8 an embarrassment to the historical profession?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Too many ifs there, Mr Irving. I do not accept a single
10 part of your premises, I am afraid.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: But that, in a way, answers my question, does it not,
12 because it is an embarrassing document for the historians
13 to have a look at?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not an embarrassing document at all. It does not
15 really say very much.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it does not say all the things you said earlier, about
17 “Go out and burn the synagogues and arrest the 20,000”,
18 you said that you could read all that into it.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All it says, Mr Irving, is that there should be no arson
20 in Jewish shops or similar premises under any
21 circumstances. That is all it says. This is in the
22 middle of the evening where all over the country
23 synagogues are being burned down. Everybody knows that
24 synagogue are being burned down. I do not see any mention
25 of synagogues here, and I do not think you can describe
26 them as being like shops, although I am not very familiar
. P-100
1 with synagogues.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, my feeling is that we could
3 probably move on. I think we have really explored this
4 issue.
5 MR IRVING: Except, my Lord, that he said this was the middle
6 of the evening and, of course, that is not. It is the
7 middle of the night. It is 2.56 a.m. which fits —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, night, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: — in precisely with the timetable that I have adumbrated
10 from the very start of my writings on the
11 Reichskristallnacht. That is why i attach such importance
12 to it.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a completely phoney timetable, Mr Irving, based on
14 the manipulation and falsification of the material that
15 you have got before you and the acceptance of lies told by
16 people involved after the war simply because they support
17 your belief or your attempts to show that Hitler did not
18 order all these goings on and was not cognizant of them
19 and tried to stop them when he found out about them. It
20 is a tissue of your lies on your part, Mr Irving, based on
21 the shameless manipulation of documents like this whose
22 meaning is absolutely obvious to anybody with even the
23 most elementary knowledge of German.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, you accept that I do not have just an elementary
25 knowledge of German, do you not?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Quite.
. P-101
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you still feel entitled to trot out all those
2 adjectives again, the tissue of lies, the manipulations,
3 the distortions and so on, because that is the only kind
4 of language you can use to confront a document like this,
5 is that right?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not confronting a document like this. It is the use
7 you make of it that I am commenting on which I find quite
8 extraordinary.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which do you find more extraordinary, the fact that no
10 other historian has quoted that document or the fact that
11 I do quote it?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, do you remember a few moments ago
13 I said that I thought we —-
14 MR IRVING: You said we should move on, my Lord, yes, right.
Section 102.15-114.17
15 (To the witness): What is the evidence that we do have
16 for the fact that Adolf Hitler initiated the pogrom
17 therefore?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Goebbels speech to the Party at the 10th — at 10 p.m.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: What transcript do we have of that speech, if any?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in his — well, that is — there are two, I think
21 two relevant documents there, in particular, one is, of
22 course, Goebbels own diary, and the other is the Party
23 tribunal investigation.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Party tribunal, of course, only refers to the fact
25 that Goebbels triggered the events —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well —-
. P-102
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: — according to the —-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All right. Can we have a look at the Party tribunal
3 report then, please? It is very brief.
4 MR RAMPTON: Tab 2, my Lord.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Tab 2 of this?
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I seem to have a loose leafed folder here.
8 MR RAMPTON: Tab 2 of L2.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right. In the first very opening paragraph it says, if I
10 may translate: “On the evening of 9th November 1938,
11 Reichs Propaganda Minister Party Comrade, Dr Goebbels,
12 informed the Party leaders gathered for a comradely
13 evening in the Old Town Hall in Munich that there had been
14 anti-Jewish demonstrations in the Gals, Hessner,
15 Nanteburg, Anhaut, and thereby Jewish shops had been
16 smashed up and synagogues had been set on fire.
17 The Fuhrer had” — this is reported speech of
18 what Goebbels was saying — “the Fuhrer had decided on his
19 report that such demonstrations, these kinds of
20 demonstrations, should neither be prepared by the Party”,
21 I mean “should neither in future”, as it were, “be
22 prepared by the Party nor organized by it in so far as
23 they emerged or arose spontaneously, but they were not to
24 be opposed”.
25 MR IRVING: Now was Adolf Hitler present when Goebbels made
26 these remarks, allegedly?
. P-103
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, the Party court accepted that this was the case, of
2 course, that these remarks were accurate.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Accepted that what was the case?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That Hitler never intervened to say, as surely he would
5 have done, that he had not given this permission.
6 Goebbels had dinner with Hitler on the evening of the 9th
7 November, immediately before the speech, and what he said
8 in his speech was, essentially, what Hitler told him at
9 the dinner, as you agreed under cross-examination.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you answer my question? Was Hitler present when
11 Goebbels made these alleged remarks to the Gauleiters?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has answered that question.
13 MR IRVING: In other words, he was not present?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He said no.
15 MR IRVING: Yes. The only evidence we have, therefore, for
16 there having been such a conversation between Hitler and
17 Goebbels is Goebbels’ reported speech, as reported four
18 months later by the Supreme Party court, in other words,
19 it is a third party source?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is in his, well, this is an investigation of
21 the events of that evening by a Party court —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the report —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — under the chairmanship of a man who — Buch, I think
24 his name was.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Walter Buch?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Walter Buch who was rather hostile to Goebbels.
. P-104
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: I was about to come to that point. What was the
2 relationship between the Chairman of the Party court and
3 Dr Goebbels about whom he is writing?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not very good.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not very good at all, were they? In fact, if you read the
6 Goebbels diaries, there was most outspoken hostility
7 between them. They loathed each other. Is that correct?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it correct towards the end of the same report it
10 justifies the actions of a number of the criminals
11 involved in the outrages on the basis that they believed
12 that they were acting in accordance with the Fuhrer’s
13 wishes?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. Let us have a look at that passage, can
15 we?
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does that not imply that —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can we have a look at that passage, please?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: — in fact they believed wrongly?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where is it?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I would like to see the passage, if
21 that is what you are saying, Mr Irving?
22 MR IRVING: I am stating this from memory, my Lord. I do not
23 have it in front of me, but I am familiar with the
24 document.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can someone provide Mr Irving with the document, please?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it part of the same report?
. P-105
1 MR IRVING: It is.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it is a question of finding it.
3 MR RAMPTON: He needs L2, my Lord.
4 MR IRVING: I am pretty certain that the tenor of the report
5 was that these outrages and crimes had been —-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the final sentence in the report. Do you want me to
7 wait until you have it?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think you had better because the
9 suggestion is that when it says that they believed they
10 were acting on a Hitler order, it is really implying that
11 they knew they were not. Is that the suggestion?
12 MR IRVING: Well, my suggestion is that the document casts
13 doubt on whether there was actually such an order.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
15 MR IRVING: After a time when you have been studying these
16 documents over the years, they become part of your
17 microchip and I am quite familiar with the document
18 and —-
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, let us fresh your microchip. I cannot
20 find it actually.
21 MR IRVING: [German – document not provided].
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Would you like to translate that?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts are you? I had better find it.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 188, it is the tab 2.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 188?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or — no, 10 in the pencilled circle mark. Page 10.
. P-106
1 Sorry. It is the typed 188. Yes, well, do you want me to
2 translate that? This is after a long catalogue of crimes
3 of theft, looting and rape and so on, and it says that,
4 “The individual perpetrators had put into action, not
5 merely the supposed will of the leadership, but the to be
6 sure vague, vaguely expressed but correctly recognized
7 will of the leadership”. So the Party court is saying
8 that these people pleased they were acting after the
9 command of the leadership and they were right to believe
10 so.
11 MR IRVING: Without wishing to cast any judgment on the
12 language used by lawyers, this is a very legalistic
13 document and it is the sentence before the one that has
14 been read out says, in effect, “These people, if this did
15 not happen, then from the fact, as also from the remarks
16 they made, we can draw the conclusion that the eventual
17 result was desired or at least as considered to be a
18 likelihood and desirable, and that this was taken into
19 account, and from that fact, therefore, the people who had
20 acted in that way had reason to believe that they might
21 have been acting in accordance with the Fuhrer’s will”.
22 It is a terribly legalistic kind of —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, this is a document that says that these people
24 were right to recognize that the leadership willed these
25 crimes, and the consequence of this, and we have already
26 been through this and your cross-examination, if I may
. P-107
1 continue, was that those, the culprits were, that Hitler,
2 that Hitler’s permission or command was sought to let all
3 of these people off any kind of prosecution in the regular
4 courts with the exception of two who had raped Jewish
5 women and, therefore, were considered to have committed a
6 race defilement.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, here comes the smoke screen again. It is the
8 sentence before that counts though, is it not, because the
9 sentence you have quoted begins with the words “in that
10 case” or “then”, “dann”?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry. I have lost you now or you have lost me.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that refers to the previous sentence which is, in
13 fact, the saying that they may have got it wrong, they may
14 have got it right, but the fact remains they believed that
15 they were acting in accordance with the Fuhrer’s will,
16 perceived or otherwise, and so on. It is terribly
17 tangled, but the sentence beginning with “then” relies on
18 the previous sentence, in that case or that being so?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but it says “richtig erkannten Willenfuhrer” — “the
20 correctly recognized will of the leadership”. That is a
21 completely unambiguous sentence.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am going to have to sit down and write a translation of
23 that final paragraph for your Lordship, I think.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The court is saying that — the court is saying that the
25 will of the leadership was vaguely expressed, but
26 correctly recognized by these people and, therefore,
. P-108
1 because they not only thought that they were acting on its
2 behalf but actually were and, therefore, the final
3 sentence is “dafur kann er nicht bestrafft werden” — “he
4 cannot be punished for that”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you please read the sentence before the sentence
6 beginning with the word “dann”, then, in that case
7 because —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: OK. Well, this goes back now.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “dann” refers to “in that case” and obviously we need
10 to know in what case, “dann”. The sentence before. It is
11 very complicated, but I rely on that one too, of course.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, a couple of sentences before says that — I am going
13 further and further back into this document — it is
14 talking about the murders. It is really about the murders
15 of the 91.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Forget the murders. Let us please get on to—-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, this is what the document is about. I am not going to
18 forget them, Mr Irving. Let us remember here we are
19 talking about murder and whether or not the murderers
20 listed here should be handed over to the regular courts.
21 It says that, “In the course of the night of 9th to 10th
22 November, most of these killings could have been stopped,
23 prevented, by an additional command”. So what they are
24 saying there, in other words, is that if the leadership,
25 Hitler, had not wanted these people to be killed, he would
26 have sent out a telegram saying so, but he did not. So,
. P-109
1 “Wenn dies nicht geschafft”, that says “when” or, in
2 other words, “because this did not happen”, i.e. there was
3 no telegram saying stop the killings, prevent the
4 killings —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: “If this did not happen”?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, “if this did not happen, so the” —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The conclusion has to be drawn from this fact”?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “The conclusion must be drawn from this fact”.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: “And from the statement of such”?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “And from the statement that the eventual” —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Outcome”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — “success was wished or desired or at the very least
13 was” —–
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Considered to be likely or” —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “desirable”?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “was presented”, really, “presented”, I guess, “as at
18 least as possible and desired or taken into consideration
19 as being possible and desired”. And then it goes on. It
20 is a convoluted sentence, but the meaning is quite clear.
21 It is saying because there was not any command from the
22 Party leadership that Jews should not be killed, then it
23 was OK that they were and, therefore, these peopled who
24 killed them should not be punished.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let me cut through the Gordian knot —–
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I just ask one question because I am
. P-110
1 slightly puzzled. The very last sentence is in the
2 singular.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, yes. I think they are referring to Falshenk(?) which
4 is on the previous page, who had killed a Polish Jew.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I see.
6 MR IRVING: Can I now ask one question —-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I just finish? I mean, do you read the
8 fact that he cannot be punished as connected with the
9 previous reference to what the Fuhrer wanted or the Fuhren
10 wanted.
11 MR IRVING: I think Fuhrer and Fuhren is the same.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I mean, it is a kind of, well — sorry, I have to
13 slightly revise my previous opinion. I have just looked
14 at it. It says [German], so the heir(?), the singular,
15 you are quite right in recognizing.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is a representative villain?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is then the individual perpetrator is what they are
18 referring to when they say he cannot be punished.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So it is a sort of collective singular, yes?
20 MR IRVING: But the reference is to the perception of a Fuhrer
21 order, rather than to the actual Fuhrer order. I am sure
22 your Lordship will appreciate that the argument is if he
23 thought he was acting on a Fuhrer order, then we should
24 let him off the hook?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, my Lord, that is not the case.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it said that, I would agree with you, but
. P-111
1 it goes on say, not only did they think they were acting
2 on a Hitler order — this is my perception of it at the
3 moment — but that they were right in thinking they were
4 acting on a Hitler order.
5 MR IRVING: I think we will have a proper translation of that
6 final paragraph. We really need that. I will now ask one
7 question which should cut through the Gordian —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me just make the point, my Lord. I think you
9 entirely right there. [German] is “the correctly
10 recognized will of the leadership”. It is completely —
11 it is absolutely unambiguous.
12 MR IRVING: Yes, but the first word, of course, in this case
13 “dann” means “in that case”, does it not, if the above is
14 true?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is drawing a conclusion from the fact that there
16 was no order from the leadership preventing the murders.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So now I will ask the question which will cut through the
18 Gordian knot. The question is if there had been a Fuhrer
19 order to the knowledge of the Supreme Part court, would
20 they not here have said so in this document?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Preventing the murders? Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, if there had not been a Fuhrer order on the basis of
23 which all these murders were committed or these outrages
24 were committed, would this Party court document not have
25 made that completely clear?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does. There was not a Party, a Fuhrer order and it
. P-112
1 does say that.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: It says that there was not a Fuhrer order. Have
3 I understood you? You are frowning.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think that is right — I am just looking at the
5 text again. We have been through this. Yes, it describes
6 [German- documents not provided] So, you know, even so, I
7 do want to translate it all over again, Mr Irving. This
8 is really repeating what we have said already. It says:
9 “There was no order preventing — there was no order
10 issued preventing these killings” and, therefore, one has
11 to conclude from that that the leadership wanted them,
12 even if that is only kind of a vague wish. That is that
13 it says.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I phrase the question slightly more to the point,
15 therefore? It is my fault. If there had been in
16 existence to the knowledge of the Supreme Party court a
17 Fuhrer order at any time the previous evening directing
18 that the outrages should take place, whatever the nature
19 of those outrages was, would the Party court not have
20 mentioned it in this judgment as being a mitigating
21 factor?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That they were to take place or that they
23 were not?
24 MR IRVING: They were to take place. If there had been, in
25 other words, a triggering order by Hitler which is —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I do not think anyone has ever suggested
. P-113
1 there was a Hitler order that these outrages occurred.
2 MR IRVING: Or a clear expression of the Fuhrer’s will.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Nor does this document suggest that there
4 was. It talks about the will of the leadership, and that
5 is, as I understand it, the way it is put. He did not
6 give an order for Kristallnacht to occur.
7 MR IRVING: I think this will be useful, my Lord — this is one
8 of the documents which I provided as a translation to your
9 Lordship in toto, an official translation.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That would be very helpful because it is
11 heavy weather going through German for me.
12 MR IRVING: It is worse, my Lord. It is lawyers’ German, and
13 the fact that most of the concentration camp criminals
14 were lawyers is a fact I have mentioned before. My Lord,
15 would this be a suitable place to pause?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it probably is.
17 (Luncheon adjournment)
Part III: Irving Cross-Examines Professor Richard John Evans (114.18-201.25)
Section 114.18-143.20
18 (2.05 p.m.)
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.
20 MR RAMPTON: Can I mention something it has to do with the
21 timing of evidence in this case. According to an
22 indication given by Mr Irving earlier this week, I think
23 either Monday or maybe yesterday but I think Monday, we
24 expected that Professor Evans would be free to leave
25 sometime tomorrow.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
. P-114
1 MR RAMPTON: We were told a day and a half I think. It is
2 quite apparent that that is not now going to be the case,
3 or probably is not going to be the case. That involves
4 the following possible consequences. One that we have to
5 sit on Friday, and two, and this is more serious, that
6 beyond Monday lunch time Professor Evans’ academic life is
7 going to be a wreck if he has stay on here. It has the
8 further knock on consequence that I have other
9 professional witnesses, Dr Longerich and Professor Funke
10 who are also scheduled for particular dates to fit in with
11 their academic obligations. I cannot really say any more
12 than that but I am very concerned at the slow pace.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I slightly blame myself. I should have
14 possibly taken a firmer line beyond giving repeated hints
15 in the first two days of cross-examination, which I do
16 still regard as having been rather, not beside the point,
17 that is putting it too high. But rather peripheral.
18 Shall I ask Mr Irving what his plan is?
19 MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship would.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then we can think ahead and work out what the
21 timetable will be.
22 MR IRVING: Mr Rampton has very cleverly pre-empted what I was
23 about to say myself by way of submission. It is true that
24 a few days ago I anticipated two and a half days would
25 cover this, and I attach no blame to your Lordship, if
26 I can put it like that, that this witness has sometimes
. P-115
1 become so prolix in his answers. I have repeatedly tried
2 to curtail the witness’s answers, which have sometimes
3 rambled on and on.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us seek to apportion blame. What
5 is the prognosis?
6 MR IRVING: The prognosis is that I was going to ask your
7 Lordship, particularly in view of what I would call it, a
8 threat uttered by Mr Rampton that he would take certain
9 other matters that are contained in the report as being
10 agreed or accepted by me unless I did challenge them. In
11 that case I really have to have the time to deal with them
12 seriatim unless your Lordship rules otherwise.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will tell you this straight, as it were.
14 I have found extremely enlightening the cross-examination
15 that has taken place over the latter part of yesterday
16 afternoon and this morning. So I am not going to give you
17 any encouragement to skip things. Professor Evans is a
18 pretty key witness.
19 MR IRVING: May I make a proposal then, my Lord?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 MR IRVING: Clearly, this is going to take more than another
22 half a day this afternoon and another half day tomorrow to
23 deal with the remaining matters. I am very cognisant of
24 the fact that Professor Evans has his own academic
25 commitments that he has to return to, but I do not know
26 whether the procedure will permit him to return for the
. P-116
1 cross-examination to be continued.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is that, if he has to, he
3 has to. I would prefer that your cross-examination is
4 carried on and completed in one go, as it were.
5 MR IRVING: I have to say straight away that I would not be
6 physically capable of sitting on Friday, for two reasons.
7 Quite physically the burden on me is becoming very
8 serious.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you say that, I do not even need to ask
10 you to say any more because I accept that. Indeed,
11 I think everybody else finds it essential to have a day to
12 catch up.
13 MR IRVING: It is useless less if I do not come properly
14 prepared.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we deal with it this way? Do you think
16 you will be finished with your cross-examination by close
17 of play tomorrow?
18 MR IRVING: Of this witness?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
20 MR IRVING: The simple answer is no, not at the present rate.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I would prefer it that we did take
22 Friday as a non-court day and that we did, if Professor
23 Evans can bear it, continue him and conclude him hopefully
24 on Monday of next week unless that is going to throw
25 Dr Longerich into confusion.
26 MR RAMPTON: In fact both Dr Longerich and Professor Funke are
. P-117
1 here. I do not have instructions from them at the moment
2 about what their availability is for next week. I was
3 hoping we might actually finish the evidence next week or
4 early the week after. It does not look now as if we
5 shall.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was hoping it too.
7 MR RAMPTON: I was hoping so, but it does not look like it now
8 because I have three quarters of a day’s cross-examination
9 of Mr Irving left, to be fitted in at some stage. I do
10 not mind when. I will have to see if Professor Funke, for
11 example, can come back at the beginning of the week after
12 next if required, and I just do not know the answer to
13 that at the moment.
14 What I would invite your Lordship to do is two
15 things: Invite Mr Irving and indeed, if necessary, rule
16 that he must confine himself to the questions which really
17 matter. That is to say, for example, in relation to
18 Reichskristallnacht, the original documents and the
19 accusations which Professor Evans makes about Mr Irving’s
20 interpretation or use of those original documents.
21 I would also invite your Lordship to ask Professor Evans
22 just how problematical next week is, so far as he is
23 concerned.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The first of those suggestions is difficult,
25 because we are now dealing with the meat of Professor
26 Evans’ report. There are various ways of
. P-118
1 cross-examining. Sometimes it is not a bad idea to pick a
2 little hole and use it to undermine the witness. I do not
3 think myself that that is the best way of cross-examining
4 this witness on this sort of material, but that is in the
5 end for Mr Irving.
6 MR RAMPTON: I will be blunt, if I may. I do think that the
7 first three quarters, 75 per cent, of this
8 cross-examination has been a complete waste of time, if
9 I may respectfully say so. I deeply mind about that.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to say this, because I think it is
11 fair to say it in defence of Mr Irving. The first 150
12 pages of that report are there.
13 MR RAMPTON: Sure.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not Mr Irving’s fault that they are
15 there, and I would have wished that they were not there.
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes, all right.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will say no more but I will now ask
18 Professor Evans, what about Monday? Are your students all
19 going to fail their exams?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Monday morning is all right, my Lord, but some of my
21 students have an exam next week. I have five lectures to
22 give. I have presumed an enormous amount on the goodwill
23 of my colleagues for rescheduling lectures and classes.
24 As you appreciate, Cambridge has rather a short term and
25 we already halfway through it effectively. I put all my
26 teaching into the last part of term.
. P-119
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So what about Monday afternoon? That is what
2 we are really talking about.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Monday afternoon I would find very difficult. I have
4 commitments in the late afternoon.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: From your point of view, there is everything
6 to be said for getting shot of this altogether?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My preference would be to sit on Friday but I quite
8 understand the reasons why we cannot.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a strain being a witness day after day
10 but it is also a very considerable strain cross-examining
11 day after day, probably worse.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course. I really would find it extremely difficult to
13 appear here on Tuesday or indeed any day after next
14 Tuesday for the following three weeks.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am going to suggest is, if you can
16 possibly do so, would you mind trying to free Monday
17 afternoon and we will try, even if we have to sit a bit
18 late, to finish you altogether. I hope that is not
19 unrealistic but it does mean we have to keep a foot on the
20 accelerator.
21 MR IRVING: It does provide me with one extra day.
22 MR RAMPTON: I can then tell your Lordship that, so far as Dr
23 Longerich is concerned, the only day next week which is
24 impossible is Thursday. So we could use that as the day
25 off.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think he should be over and done with by
. P-120
1 then.
2 MR RAMPTON: I agree. I do not think he should take more than
3 a day myself, but there it is. It is not in my hands.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I will not require of Mr Irving is that
5 he goes over the same points with Mr Longerich as he has
6 been through with Professor Evans.
7 MR RAMPTON: No. The second half of Longerich is almost
8 entirely swept aside by Professor Browning.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not saying you should not, but I am
10 saying you do not need to.
11 MR IRVING: Yes. We shall be using Dr Longerich’s
12 “Germanness”, if I can put it like that, the way that we
13 could not with Professor Browning.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sure.
15 MR RAMPTON: After that, I will see where Professor Funke can
16 be fitted in either later next week or the beginning of
17 the week after.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: One problem about sitting too long is that
19 the transcriber who, if I may take the opportunity of
20 saying so, has done an extremely good job, really cannot
21 last, I suspect, for more than two and a half hours.
22 Shall we press on.
23 MR IRVING: I will try and phrase my questions on the remaining
24 days in a way that they can only be answered with short
25 answers.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not feel you have to gallop but could you
. P-121
1 could bear in mind that the big picture matters.
2 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, on page 276 you refer to yet
3 another of my witness with whom you find disfavour,
4 Mr Hederich.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: You call his testimony highly unreliable on the basis that
7 no other witness claimed that Hitler made a speech before
8 Goebbels. I am referring to paragraph 5 on page 276.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I draw your attention to the actual text of what he
11 says in the footnote?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Was vorher Hitler selbst gesagt hatte…”
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that any reference to Hitler making a speech?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It appears to be.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not just Hitler having said something? Is that the
18 only reason why you discount this witness’s testimony?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not. You will have to tell me what you use it
20 for.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Turn it page 277, at the beginning of paragraph 6 you say:
22 “So Hederich falsely claimed that Goebbels’s speech
23 contradicted a previous speech made by Hitler”.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: When all that we are certain of is that Hederich just said
26 that Goebbels’ speech appear to fly in the face of
. P-122
1 something that Hitler had said previously.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not something he said. It is what the translation
3 —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Was vorher Hitler selbst gesagt hatte…”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. As I say in my translation, he had held a speech and
6 I had the impression that it did not harmonise with what
7 Hitler himself had said before.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So there is no reference to a Hitler speech is there? Is
9 it not equally possible that Hitler arrived at this
10 function of the old guard, the old gang, and had mingled a
11 bit, gossiped with people like Hederich, possibly even the
12 death of this diplomat had arisen and, when they heard the
13 speech by Goebbels later, this man Hederich said, “that is
14 funny, it does not sound like what Hitler said to me”?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is all speculation.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you agree that there is no reference to a speech?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He does not say Hitler’s speech, no. He says Dr Goebbels
18 held an address and I had the impression that it did not
19 harmonize with what Hitler himself had said before. It
20 seems to me to be a reference to a previous speech.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the only reason why you say Hederich is a suspect
22 source because he refers to a speech which did not take
23 place?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you give any other reason?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is really the use that you make of it. This is an
. P-123
1 interrogation of Hederich, who is an old Nazi. He is a
2 sort of censor.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are we going to rule out everybody who is an old Nazi as a
4 possible source?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think one has to regard postwar interrogations of these
6 people. This is an interrogation.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was Rudolf Hess an old Nazi?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is an interrogation in Nuremberg on 16th April 1947,
9 and you yourself have cast serious doubts upon
10 interrogations conducted at Nuremberg, but, presumably
11 because this one you regard as being favourable to your
12 point of view, you do not raise those doubts there.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: The fact is that all—-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is another piece of postwar testimony.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The tissue of lies and distortion and manipulation, all
16 the rest of it. We know the speech.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have the point on Hederich.
18 MR IRVING: Thank you very much.
19 MR RAMPTON: Before we go on to the next question, one reason
20 why we do not proceed as quickly as one might like,
21 I suspect, is that Mr Irving never lets Professor Evans
22 finish an answer without interrupting.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us move on. That has happened
24 occasionally, I agree. Let us move on.
25 MR RAMPTON: It happened just now.
26 MR IRVING: Without interrupting, can I have an answer, please,
. P-124
1 to the following question? We are now in paragraph 8 on
2 page 278.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You dispute the allegation in my book, or the statement in
5 my book, that Goebbels spent much of the night making
6 telephone calls to try and undo the damage.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do I have no evidence for saying that?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No reliable evidence.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put the evidence to him, Mr Irving, and then
11 we will see what it amounts to.
12 MR IRVING: Is the evidence given by Hitler’s other adjutant’
13 Fritz Wiedemann in writing in his own manuscript on board
14 a ship in February 1939 as he sails to a new life in the
15 United States not evidence?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I cite this, do I not, on page 278?
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: You discount it. You say, OK, Mr Irving had evidence but
18 again this is another piece I am going to discount because
19 —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid, I am sorry to interrupt you —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have read it. It is hearsay.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is hearsay, it is reporting gossip. The fact that
23 he is who he is is neither here nor there. It says it is
24 reliably reported that Goebbels as well repeatedly
25 telephoned from Munich during the night’s worst outrages.
26 It is hearsay. That is why I do not give much credence to
. P-125
1 it.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: If Hitler’s adjutant Fritz Wiedemann — who had been in
3 fact his adjutant in World War I too had he not?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Fritz Wiedemann writes that it is reliably reported, and
6 he writes this in his own handwriting and I am the first
7 historian to have found it and deciphered it and used it,
8 that Goebbels spent much of the night making these phone
9 calls to stop the worst of the atrocities, and there is no
10 value at all to be attached to that, is that right?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is merely hearsay.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, does the fact of him making
13 telephone calls trying to stop the rot, as it were, fit in
14 with the general picture of the events of that night?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
16 MR IRVING: Is that why you discount it?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is another reason.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So anything that does not fit in with your picture you
19 discount?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not my picture. It is the picture that emerges from
21 the documents.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have dealt with that.
23 MR RAMPTON: Can I go back two steps please? I am sorry about
24 this. My interruptions do not help the speed of
25 proceedings either, I know. I am perhaps not as quick on
26 the ball as I should be, but I notice now that what this
. P-126
1 Hederich business arises from is it arises directly from
2 the text of Mr Irving’s book Goebbels at page 274. I see
3 now why Professor Evans used the form of words that he did
4 about a speech by Hitler. Right at the bottom of the page
5 before the indented quotation Mr Irving writes this:
6 “Several people who heard Goebbels’ firebrand speech were
7 uncomfortable. Karl Hederich, one of his department
8 heads, felt that it conflicted with the tenor of Hitler’s
9 speech”.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think I have the point. That is
11 based on nothing more than — and I say this rather
12 rudely to Mr Irving — the reference to what Hederich had
13 understood Hitler to have said.
14 MR RAMPTON: The whole cross-examination was based upon the
15 premise that it was Professor Evans who illegitimately
16 turned that passage in the German into a speech by
17 Hitler. It was not he at all.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I did realize it was really the other way
19 round.
20 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I had not. I was a bit slow.
21 MR IRVING: You do accept, Professor Evans, do you not, that
22 there is some evidence, no matter the fact that you
23 discount it and I accept it, to the fact that there were
24 phone calls made by Goebbels during the night?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point me towards it, please?
26 MR IRVING: That is Wiedemann.
. P-127
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is hearsay.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Hearsay is acceptable in civil cases. Do you accept also
3 that there were phone calls from Hitler made to Goebbels
4 on the evidence of the eyewitnesses like von Below, the
5 Adjutants, that Hitler telephoned Goebbels to express his
6 disfavour?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point me towards the piece of evidence you are
8 referring to, please?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is not evidence. This is the von Below interview
10 which was put to you this morning, the transcript.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right. No, I do not because the von Below memoirs say
12 that he was not in the room when Hitler made a phone call.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you saying that none of those three sources states
14 that he was furious with Goebbels, he made a frightful
15 scene with Goebbels?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not. I am saying the sources were unreliable.
17 We have been over this, Mr Irving.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You will see the point of this in a minute. Then there
19 was a conference between Hitler and Goebbels by phone
20 about the situation. That is what von Below says. Is
21 that not right? He saw this?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where is this?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is on page 4 of the bundle.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Assume it is there. I would have thought it
25 was pretty obvious they would have spoken on the
26 telephone.
. P-128
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 MR IRVING: There is a reason for this, my Lord. We now come
3 to the question of why Goebbels felt it necessary to draft
4 an order which he issued later on in the following
5 morning, or you say the afternoon, do you not?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You are referring to the next day, as it were, now?
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is right. We are now after midnight.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well after. We are now into the daylight hours, as it
9 were, or perhaps that is dawn.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, we are after midnight.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly what time are we talking about, Mr Irving?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the document?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 MR IRVING: First of all, I am saying, do you accept that there
15 is one statement at least, namely by von Below, that
16 Hitler telephoned Goebbels about the situation during the
17 night hours? This on page 4 of the interview.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Assume that.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 MR IRVING: Yes. If therefore, and I now ask you to look at
21 the little bundle of documents which has the anodnung in,
22 if you still have it.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: L2, tab 1, page 10.
24 MR IRVING: If therefore on the following day, 10th November,
25 at some time Goebbels issues this order —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is 10th November.
. P-129
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the one immediately following the anodnung?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is the actual order issued by Goebbels, is it issued
4 to all the Kreisleiters and all Kreispropagandaleiters,
5 which are the district propaganda officials?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the document say, I refer to my announcement today
8 concerning ending the anti-Jewish demonstrations, and so
9 on?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I just go on, concerning the anti-Jewish
11 demonstrations and actions which have already also been
12 published in the press and by radio.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And preceding that is the press notice which, according to
15 the footnote here, was issued at 4 o’clock in the
16 afternoon.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are going to deal with that time in a minute.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you accept therefore that it is likely that a
20 telephone conversation from Hitler to Goebbels was
21 concerning the drafting of such a stop order, or stop
22 orders, with the maximum possible dispatch?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: A telephone conversation, according to Goebbels’ diary, on
24 the morning of the 10th, before they met to finalise the
25 order in the Osterea restaurant.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 282 of your report we now look at how that order
. P-130
1 came around.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that, when Hitler and Goebbels talked, it is
4 reported in the diary entry and no decision had yet been
5 taken.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say that, following this first conversation with
8 Hitler, on the morning of 10th November, Goebbels drafted
9 an order to bring the pogrom to a halt?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You quote his diary entry written on the following day
12 referring to the morning of the 10th, “I prepared an order
13 that put an end to the actions, I report to the Fuhrer at
14 the Osterea”.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not extremely likely on the balance of probabilities
17 that he prepared the order on the basis of his
18 conversations with Hitler, whether in person or by
19 telephone, and he then took the draft order round at
20 Hitler’s request to him at that restaurant?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is how I read it, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: So Hitler had ordered everything to stop?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the morning of the 10th?
25 MR IRVING: On the morning of the 10th, yes, my Lord. Why did
26 they take this decision to stop everything then? Had
. P-131
1 things got out of hand? Had the forest fire suddenly
2 developed on to a scale that they began to fear they could
3 not halt it?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us just get quite clear when the order went out.
5 MR JUSTICE IRVING:: 4.00 pm.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It went out, in my view, in the afternoon of the 10th.
7 I think they decided that the action was complete. That
8 is to say that the synagogues had been burnt down, the
9 shops had been destroyed and wrecked, people were in the
10 course of being arrested, and it was time to call it to an
11 end.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, can I ask you where you get 4 pm from?
13 I know it is there.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At the foot of page 10 of this file it says
15 10th November and then gives a reference for it.
16 MR IRVING: I am looking for it in the expert report.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it matter where it is?
18 MR IRVING: Well, yes, because there is a footnote.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is page 10, L2, tab 1.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 MR IRVING: Because I have said that that order was issued at
22 10 a.m. that morning, my Lord, and I wanted to check the
23 actual source.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do you get the 10 a.m. from?
25 MR IRVING: That is why I wanted to check the actual source for
26 it in the book, which is a radio monitoring report,
. P-132
1 I believe.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, but this order goes out after the radio broadcast.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell me what page?
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is the bottom of 286, my Lord, top of
5 287, and the source is given. I think it is a deduction
6 because he uses the word “probably”, does Professor Evans.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks to me that, if you go back to the
8 document I was inviting attention to, would S 117 an
9 meldung 114 be a reference to the timing?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, page 107, and note 144.
11 MR IRVING: Is it not correct, as is evident from my book on
12 page 277, that at 10 a.m. he broadcast a live appeal for
13 order over the Deuchslandsender, which is the national
14 broadcasting system?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before he met Hitler at the Osterea.
16 MR IRVING: My Lord, yes, 10 a.m.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Note 53.
18 MR IRVING: This is another of your unreliable sources?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ingrid Weckert.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it only Ingrid Weckert or is it tape recordings or
21 recordings or disks?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You seem to have derived the information from Ingrid
23 Weckert not to have seen the recordings in the Frankfurt
24 radio archives yourself.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. In other words, I am referencing the recordings of
26 the broadcast made at 10 A.m. which she has found and she
. P-133
1 has referred to, is that correct?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First of all, I would have to see the document to accept
3 your account of what is in it or rather —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you always ask to see documents?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course I do, Mr Irving, because I do not trust
6 your account of what is in documents. Still less do
7 I trust the account —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know your own name without being shown a document?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Still less do I trust the account that is given by Ingrid
10 Weckert, whom I explain in my report as a notorious
11 anti-Semite.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Anti-Semite?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In Germany, not a serious historian, who —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Invented these recordings, has she? Is this what you are
15 suggesting?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying she has invented the recordings. I am
17 saying that I cannot trust her account of what is in
18 them. In order to be able to assess the point that you
19 are putting to me, I would need to see an accurate
20 transcript of these recordings. You would ask no less if
21 you were in the witness box yourself, Mr Irving.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: If we are concerned only with the time the broadcast was
23 made.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are not concerned only with the time. I
25 am sorry, I am now interrupting you. We are concerned with
26 the content because your point, as I understand it, is
. P-134
1 that in effect this order was in place from 10 a.m.
2 because it was broadcast. That is all very well if indeed
3 the broadcast did say effectively what the order says.
4 That is what the witness is wanting to be reassured about.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, the content is referenced on page 277.
6 The broadcast, while it spoke of the “justifiable and
7 comprehensible public indignation of the murder, it
8 strictly forbade all further actions against the Jews and
9 it was repeated at hourly intervals and printed in next
10 day’s party newspapers”, which is how we know the text.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 277 of what?
12 MR IRVING: My Goebbels biography, I am sorry, my Lord.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would help if I could see the text.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of the newspaper repetition of the broadcast?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, does that —-
16 MR RAMPTON: May I suggest item 23 on page 10? I do not know
17 if this is right or not. This is sheer guesswork on my
18 part. “Rundgruff” which I think is a broadcast.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that might be right, yes.
20 MR IRVING: Can I, in preference to the recommendation by
21 Mr Rampton, ask you to look again at that document in my
22 bundle?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am going to ask the witness whether
24 he thinks that 23A Mr Rampton just pointed out is, in
25 fact, the broadcast. The only problem is it goes out in
26 the afternoon.
. P-135
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, at 4 o’clock.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Oh, that is a reference to that.
3 MR IRVING: Can we now look it document?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it will assist, it is the news, the official German
5 news agency. It does not actually say that it is a
6 broadcast.
7 MR IRVING: Can I now ask you to look at the document —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we go just quickly through it? Can you
9 give us the gist of it in a sentence?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Dr Goebbels, let it be known that the justifiable
11 anger of the German people over the murder of vom Rath has
12 been expressed in a previous — in last night. In many
13 places in the Reich there were acts of revenge against
14 Jewish buildings and shops, but there is now the whole,
15 the whole population is now strictly ordered not to
16 attempt any further demonstrations and actions. The final
17 answer to the assassination in Paris will be a legal one”.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Looking at page 277 of Mr Irving’s book —-
19 MR IRVING: It appears to be the same.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — it is plainly a reference to the same
21 broadcast, well, the same communication, but it is
22 differently timed which makes me ask you what exactly are
23 we looking at? Document 23?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that authoritative or not?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an authoritative official circular, “Rundgruff” is a
. P-136
1 kind of circular call, really, of the official German news
2 agency in Berlin, at 4 o’clock on 10th November — well,
3 the title, to be precise, says: “On the afternoon of 10th
4 November”. Then the footnote in this edition of the
5 document says it is at 4 o’clock.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am sorry, Mr Irving, but that may have
7 clarified that point.
8 MR IRVING: Well, it would have clarified it even better if the
9 witness had looked at the document at which you were
10 looking at previously, the 10th November, in the little
11 bundle I gave you. If you look at the big block of text
12 at the bottom, the message from Dr Goebbels?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Wait a minute now. Sorry, I have too many bundles. Which
14 collection is this?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The one after the Anordnumg again?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that this one?
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: With the green —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is in chronological order. 10th November 1938. That
22 is the one there. A big block of text?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Beginning at the bottom —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Strengvertraulich”, yes?
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: [German – documents not provided] “I draw attention to my
. P-137
1 announcement made today concerning the ending of the
2 anti-Jewish demonstrations and actions” —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: — which have already been announced via press and
5 radio”, is that correct?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: That establishes that this came after the press and radio
8 announcements?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you are prepared to accept, are you, that there had
11 been an earlier radio broadcast?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: By Dr Goebbels?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Quite obviously, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the fact that the information on that and the disks
16 are referenced by the neo-Nazi extreme right winger
17 anti-Semite, Ingrid Weckert, is neither here nor there.
18 So you accept, therefore, you are wrong probably to
19 challenge my time of 10 a.m.?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not at all. Where does it say on this document or any
21 document that we have seen that it was at 10 a.m.? What
22 is your evidence, Mr Irving, for the fact that this went
23 out —-
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: If this source is right about everything else —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: May I just say what I want to say, please? What is your
26 evidence, Mr Irving, for saying that this went out at 10
. P-138
1 a.m.? All you have is a reference to Ingrid Weckert.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is a source you are not prepared to accept, although
3 she is right on everything else?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I beg your pardon? I do not think she is at all.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: As far as this particular matter is concerned?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Your reference to that is the broadcast as recounted by
7 Ingrid Weckert at 10 a.m. and I am saying that I have not
8 seen yet any evidence to suggest it was at 10 a.m.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask you this? The Rundgruff that
10 goes out at, apparently, 4 o’clock makes an announcement
11 in the name of Dr Goebbels?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Can you comment, as a matter of likelihood, as to whether
14 if that goes out at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and
15 bearing in mind what is going on throughout Germany, it
16 would have, in fact, followed an announcement made six
17 hours earlier? That is not very well put, that question.
18 Do you understand what I am getting at?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do. It seems somewhat unlikely. It is a long gap.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Because, in effect, they would be sitting on their hands
21 for six hours?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
24 MR IRVING: Is it right that the passage I just drew your
25 attention to makes reference to the announcements that
26 have already been made through press and radio?
. P-139
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, yes, we have said that.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it does not say “just recently made through press and
3 radio”?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Already” it says.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any reason why they would have sat on their hands
6 all day until 4 p.m.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cannot think of one.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but you accept that the meeting between Dr Goebbels
9 and Hitler was some time in the morning?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It seems that they communicate — that they had two
11 communications, one of which, it seems, was probably by
12 telephone at some time in the morning, and that is,
13 according to the Goebbels diaries, where he says, you
14 know, “What to do now, that is the question”, and it
15 clearly —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you now concede that they did telephone.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do not think I have ever said that they did not,
18 not in the middle of the night, but in the morning. Here
19 we are. Goebbels diary says: “Let the beatings continue
20 or stop them. That is now the question.” And then he has
21 a —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the German for “Let the beatings continue” since
23 we are there? “Weiter Schlagen lossen”?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to see the text, I am afraid. I can look it
25 up, if you like?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is really necessary.
. P-140
1 MR IRVING: No, it is unimportant. No. Just a question on the
2 translation again.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Hauen”, I think, is it “Weiter Hauen”? That is from
4 memory though.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So on the balance of probabilities —-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And then — can I just say my —–
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: — if we now string together the sequence of events —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, I have not been able to answer your —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you are talking over Professor
10 Evans time and again.
11 MR IRVING: My Lord, I began speaking before he interrupted.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am trying to answer your question, Mr Irving. Now, my
13 view of the sequence of events is that on the morning of
14 10th November there is a conversation, looks like a phone
15 conversation, between Hitler and Goebbels, where they
16 discuss what to do and —-
17 MR IRVING: Why do you think it was in the morning?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Will you stop interrupting, Mr Irving,
19 please. Just let the witness complete an answer.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And they then decide, then Goebbels drafts the order.
21 They meet in the Osteria restaurant, probably for lunch,
22 and then after that the order is drafted and it is sent
23 out in the afternoon. That is my reading of the sequence
24 of events.
25 MR IRVING: The timing is immaterial, is it not?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. The time is not really immaterial. I mean, we know
. P-141
1 that the pogrom did not start until about 8 o’clock in the
2 morning in Vienna, for example —-
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: What we can say with certainty —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — that orders were going out from Dalueges at 20 past 6
5 to get the pogrom going so that it was still in full swing
6 in the early hours of the morning.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I think I have the — I am not
8 interrupting; I am just simply telling you that I think
9 I have the point on the timing of the events of 10th.
10 MR IRVING: The timing is not very important, I appreciate, my
11 Lord, but now let me go on to —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, we have spent quite a long time on it.
13 MR IRVING: — the motivation, that, in other words, at some
14 time between midnight and the Osteria meeting, a phone
15 call had occurred between Hitler and Goebbels, is that
16 right?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not accept it is as broad a time frame as that.
18 This is the —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think his Lordship has said that the time is
20 unimportant.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — what we are talking — may I finish my answer,
22 Mr Irving? What this is, this is the final order putting
23 the stop to the pogrom and saying that, “Now there will be
24 legal measures to kind of back it up”. It is saying to
25 everybody, “Stop”, and this really is the order from
26 Hitler and Goebbels, agreed between them, saying, “Don’t
. P-142
1 not do anything more of any sort. The whole thing has got
2 to stop”.
3 Now, since orders were going out from Hess, for
4 example, at 2.56 which made it quite clear at that time
5 that the action should, the pogrom should continue, as we
6 have already seen this morning, it is very unlikely that
7 this order to stop it all was issued before 2.56. In
8 addition, there are further orders that go out after 2.56.
9 MR IRVING: From where?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: From Daluege, for one, and that there is plenty of
11 evidence that this — many contemporary reports which
12 indicate that the pogrom was continuing through the
13 daylight hours of the morning of 10th. So I think the
14 time frame for this order is some time in the afternoon of
15 the 10th, and it looks like, because it refers to a
16 previous broadcast which seems to have been made at
17 4 o’clock, that it is round about 4 o’clock or shortly
18 after that. Certainly, the evidence seems to be that then
19 although there were, sporadic actions did continue after
20 that, that the main action then came to a stop.
Section 143.21-163.25
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. Shall we move on to the next aspect?
22 MR IRVING: This is why you attach importance and not accepting
23 the 10 a.m. timing, is that correct?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, we are moving on now, Mr Irving.
25 MR IRVING: Well, my Lord, you interrupted the questions I was
26 about to put to him and invited him to continue speaking.
. P-143
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, if it is about the next topic, fine,
2 but if it is not, I really think we have had enough on the
3 sequence of events.
4 MR IRVING: So Hitler invited Goebbels to come to him bringing
5 a prepared order stopping everything?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already said that it looks as if they decided there
7 should be a prepared order in a phone conversation some
8 time in the morning of 10th, that they met in the Osteria
9 restaurant, Goebbels had a drafted order which they then
10 agreed would be sent out.
11 I have to say, Mr Irving, one of the reasons why
12 this is taking so long is that you are constantly asking
13 the same questions again and again and again, and I have
14 to give the same answers again and again.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And I am asking you to move on. Please,
16 Mr Irving, move on.
17 MR IRVING: I do not really wish to be lectured by the witness
18 on how I conduct my cross-examination.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, take the lecture from me and please,
20 please, move on.
21 MR IRVING: So what dispute do you have with — and this is
22 serious — the way that I described this particular matter
23 then?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know exactly what the dispute and the
25 criticism is and I know what your answer to it is,
26 Mr Irving, and I am now going to rule that you move to the
. P-144
1 next topic.
2 MR IRVING: Will you look at page 280? You accuse me of not
3 quoting a passage from the diary of Ulrich von Hassell?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry. Can I just clear my desk a bit?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is the “My dear Popitz, do you want me to
6 punish the Fuhrer”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, exactly.
8 MR IRVING: You state that in a conversation — I will read the
9 whole passage. I am sorry, I want you to look at page
10 283. It is again the Hassell diary. This is the last
11 change. Page 293 of the expert report, my Lord. It is
12 the Hassell diary that you are referring to in paragraph
13 2, is it not?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is again concerning the involvement of Hitler and
16 Hassell — this again is hearsay — Hassell is reporting
17 what he is being told by his friend, the Bruckmanns, is
18 that right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: About a visit from Rudolf Hess on December 23rd?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Hess “had left them in no doubt that he had completely
23 disapproved of the action against the Jews”. He is
24 referring to the Night of Broken Glass, is he?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: “He had also reported his views in an energetic matter
. P-145
1 (sic) to the ‘Fuhrer'” —-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Manner”.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “and begged him to drop the matter” —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: … “energetic manner to the ‘Fuhrer'”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: … “manner to the ‘Fuhrer’ and begged him to drop the
6 matter, but unfortunately completely in vain”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: What do you think he means by “dropping the matter”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I put this passage here because of the sentence you
10 left out, Mr Irving, the final sentence: “Hess pointed to
11 against as the actual originator”, and what you say in
12 your book is that “Hess confirmed that in his view
13 Goebbels alone was to blame” —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — which is a blatant misrepresentation of that sentence.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now will you answer my question?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is why it is there.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: It will speed things up if you answer my question.
19 Paragraph 2, you say: “Irving omits all mention of the
20 crucial sentence which reports Hess as saying his attempt
21 to get Hitler to stop the pogrom had been futile”. Is
22 that what Hess actually said, what the diary said, “Stop
23 the pogrom” or to “drop the matter”?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us read it again: “He had left them in no doubt that
25 he completely disapproved of the action against the Jews;
26 he had also reported his energetic matter to the ‘Fuhrer’
. P-146
1 and begged him to drop the matter, but unfortunately
2 completely in vain.”
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: [German], is that right?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, “the thing”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The original German?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, “the thing”.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: What do you think he meant by, dis aher, the matter, the
8 thing, the affair?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The action against the Jews.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not possible that by this time, the end of December,
11 he is referring to all the persecution measures that had
12 been ordained by the Nazis, the billion Reichs mark fine
13 and all the rest of it — all these petty measures of
14 persecution that had been adopted by the Nazis which were
15 adding insult to injury, if I can put it like that?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think so, no. It follows on naturally from the
17 notion, what he says about the action against the Jews,
18 which you have agreed was the pogrom of 9th/10th November,
19 and you still have to explain why you do not quote this
20 sentence.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is it not quite obvious that Hess had gone to Hitler
22 and upon learning that Hitler and Goring had decided to
23 impose this swinging fine on the Jewish community and all
24 the other measures, he had put Goring in charge of the
25 evacuation or emigration programme, and all these other
26 things that had been set in programme by then —-
. P-147
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is bizarre, Mr Irving.
2 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is bizarre, is it not?
4 MR IRVING: It is not in the least bizarre, my Lord.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you look at what goes before and what goes
6 after, plainly, surely, you must accept they are talking
7 about the event of Kristallnacht.
8 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, because you have to have a knowledge
9 of the Nazi Party hierarchy to know that Rudolf Hess’s
10 signature was under Adolf Hitler’s signature on all the
11 anti-Jewish measures that had then followed. Rudolf Hess
12 had found himself counter signing all these orders,
13 including the billion Reichs mark fine and all the
14 punitive measures against the Jewish community, and he had
15 obviously gone to Hitler and said, “For heaven’s sake, why
16 don’t we drop it? We are just adding insult to injury”.
17 That is what this conversation is about, and it is
18 perverse to translate “sacher” as “pogrom”, is it not,
19 which is what you have done?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is complete, complete — well, two things. I do not
21 translate it as “pogrom”. I say “begged him to drop the
22 matter”. “Matter” is a reasonable translation for
23 “sacher”, I think, so I do not translate it as that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, in paragraph 2 you say: “Irving omits all
25 mention of the crucial sentence which reports Hess as
26 saying his attempt to get Hitler to stop the pogrom had
. P-148
1 been futile” —-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, there has been a translation, Mr Irving. That is
3 what I am saying there. I am not translating there. It
4 is quite clear that the action against the Jews, as you
5 said yourself, referred to the events, the pogrom, the
6 destruction and murders of the night of 9th to the 10th.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you do not see there is any possible alternative
8 interpretation in view of the fact that, as you and I
9 know, you being an expert on the Third Reich, Rudolf Hess,
10 as Deputy Fuhrer, counter signed all the orders issued
11 against the Jews over the next few days and he obviously
12 found it repugnant to do so?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not see any evidence that he did.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr irving, my recommendation is that you move
15 on because we can all read what is there.
16 MR RAMPTON: We can also all read what is on page 281 of the
17 Goebbels book which is all about Goebbels’ blame for the
18 pogrom.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, and he is hardly the originator of the
20 criminal proceedings — the Party court proceedings
21 against the perpetrators.
22 MR IRVING: The translation of “sacher” as “pogrom” which is
23 what this witness has done —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you have asked that question. The
25 witness has quite rightly told you it is not a
26 translation. He is giving the sense of it. It is not the
. P-149
1 same thing. Please move on, will you?
2 MR IRVING: Page 297. Let us see what kind of spin you can put
3 on this. Line 3 and a half, if I can put like that, at
4 page 297, in other words, the fourth line?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is an entry in the Goebbels diary, is it not?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: 133, the entry for November 17th. It is in a book by
9 Dr Reuth?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, 133? Yes, that edition, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know where Dr Reuth got that entry from?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He got it from you, Mr Irving.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, I donated it to him.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I know that.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You will notice that the quotation is Goebbels diary.
16 Hitler is described as being “in a good mood. Sharply
17 against the Jews. Approves my and our policy totally”?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the original German of that text?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do quote it there. Do show it to me, Mr Irving. Can
21 you refer it to me?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we need to go beyond the footnote?
23 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, “Billigt ganz meine und unsere
24 Politik”, is that correct?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is quoted in — I cite that in my footnote. I try to
26 give the original German for all my translations so that
. P-150
1 you can check it, Mr Irving, and raise objections if you
2 want to.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I go one stage better than you. I use the original
4 handwritten text because sometimes you can draw
5 conclusions from the way the handwriting is done. If
6 I tell that you the word “meine” is obviously inserted by
7 accident and that he then, as an after thought, had to
8 include “and our”, “und unsere”, because he could not very
9 well cross out “meine” because that would be a bit of a
10 give away, would it not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, there are several things —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I made that comment in my Goebbels biography.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not want to give a long answer, but, first of all,
14 I would have to see a copy of the manuscript to be able
15 accept that it is as you say. Secondly, it does not make
16 any difference to the statement that Hitler completely
17 approves of Goebbels’ policy.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: But is it not a bit of a give away that Goebbels starts
19 off writing, “He approves my policy” and then he realises
20 he has given the game away, so he then adds “and our”
21 because he knows that he is going to say in the diary that
22 it is Hitler’s policy, because he cannot cross out
23 “meine”. It is quite obvious if you look at the
24 handwriting, the way it has been done. Did I not make
25 that point in my Goebbels biography which you read?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At the risk of repeating myself, I cannot accept that
. P-151
1 until I see the entry and, in any case, it does not seem
2 to me to make a great deal of difference to the statement
3 that Hitler completely totally approved of Goebbels’
4 policy or their policy, what is the huge difference there,
5 that he was sharply against the Jews, [German], in a good
6 mood.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that Dr Goebbels frequently
8 in his diaries stated that Hitler had reached decisions
9 when, in fact, Goebbels had reached the decision for him
10 and he then wrote in his diary afterwards that he had the
11 complete approval of Hitler for this, because these
12 diaries were going to be published?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Give me an example, Mr Irving.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 136 of my biography of Dr Goebbels.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 136?
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: From your knowledge of the period of 1932, was Adolf
17 Hitler keen to stand in the Vice Presidential election?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, this is a different matter altogether, Mr Irving.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are still talking about the Goebbels diaries, are we
20 not?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: And it is the example you asked for.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where are we?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 100 —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have 132.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: 136?
. P-152
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 136. Paragraph 1? I mean the first big paragraph of two?
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, it is the first full paragraph.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Hindenburg announced on February 15 that he intended to
5 stand again. Taking Hitler’s decision for granted,
6 Goebbels began designing election posters. Hitler was
7 still undecided. Hitler then was announced as candidate
8 by Goebbels at a huge mass meeting without having been
9 consulted, found himself railroaded. Writing in his
10 diaries Kaiserhof two years later Goebbels claimed that
11 Hitler had phoned him after the meeting to express his
12 delight that the announcement had gone down so well”?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this not a typical example of Goebbels window dressing?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I am trying to find the footnote here. Right, well,
16 I think it is two points, the first point I want to make,
17 obviously. Kaiserhof, by that you mean the published
18 version called “Von Kaiserhof [German]” of Goebbels diary,
19 Goebbels published a substantial chunk of his diaries as a
20 book in the 1930s, particularly concerned with the years
21 in which the Nazis came to power. That, of course, is a
22 very heavily edited and amended version of his private
23 diaries. So that really does not tell us anything about
24 the status of his private diaries in 1938. No doubt, had
25 Goebbels actually published his private diaries in 1938
26 during his own lifetime, he would have monkeyed about with
. P-153
1 them, just as he did those. So I do not think that tells
2 us very much.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you every compared Kaiserhof —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You also quote in footnote 35: “According to Vossische
5 Zeitung, February 23rd, Goebbels said”, and that is a kind
6 of “The Times” of Germany, it is a very respectable
7 quality paper, “said he was ‘authorized’ to tell them of
8 Hitler’s decision to stand”. And the source for the idea
9 that Goebbels is to be blamed for the fait accompli is
10 cited here as the so-called “Opposition within the
11 NSDAP”. That seemed to me a really very thin tissue of
12 evidence on which to base —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever compared —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — this rather far reaching conclusion that Goebbels was
15 constantly ascribing to Hitler decisions he had taken
16 himself without Hitler actually knowing about them.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you ever compared the Kaiserhof edition, in other
18 words, the published edition with the original handwritten
19 edition as published now recently?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you evidence for saying that they were monkeyed
22 around with?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, yes, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Apart from changing “Hitler” to “Fuhrer” and various
25 obvious cosmetic changes? Can you give one example?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Large amounts were left out, of course, lots about
. P-154
1 Hitler’s — Goebbels’ private life were left out.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that monkeying around?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course it is, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you now go, please, to page 284 —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, back again.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: — where we come to a more obvious example of what I am
7 getting at? The first line of page 284 of your expert
8 report: “Other evidence supports the diary”, you begin
9 this paragraph. “On the afternoon of 10th November, after
10 he had reported to Hitler, Goebbels informed the Nazi
11 Party chief of Munich-Upper Bavaria that the pogrom was to
12 be terminated and added” — so this is a message, right?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of the Adjutant to the Gauleiter recording this?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And he adds: “‘The Fuhrer sanctions the measures taken so
17 far and declares that he does not disapprove of them'”?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now what do you infer from the way that has been put in
20 that message?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Double negative?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Apart from the grammatical observation?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is pretty clear to me.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you infer that there is a belief in certain quarters
25 that Goebbels is alibiing in here, that he is saying that
26 he acted on Hitler’s behalf? Why would this have been
. P-155
1 recorded, do you think, in this form?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because Hitler’s views were important in the Third Reich,
3 it seems to me.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: So Goebbels has informed the Nazi Party chief of Munich,
5 who would normally have no reason to believe otherwise,
6 and said, “Oh, by the way, everything we did last night is
7 OK. It is in line with what the Fuhrer wanted”, and this
8 is not an unusual message, in your view?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I mean, it seems a reasonable thing to say, “The
10 Fuhrer sanctions the measures taken so far”.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not read into this exactly the same as he is
12 putting in his diaries —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It puts them, it puts the recipients in the clear as to
14 what they had done which they must have been, obviously,
15 very worried about since there was a great deal of talk
16 about involving the State prosecution and so on, as we
17 have seen from the Party tribunal report. There must have
18 been a great deal of concern about it amongst those who
19 carried them out. After all, these were beatings up,
20 murders, massive destruction of property, arson, looting,
21 all these sorts of things. So it seems to me important
22 that the people who had done this were reassured in the
23 eyes of the Nazi leadership that Hitler sanctioned the
24 measures.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a document that you accept at face value without
26 the slightest textual criticism or content criticism at
. P-156
1 all? You do not ask yourself why that odd sentence is in
2 it?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have just given my criticism, as it were.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, your criticism is no criticism. You
5 accept it at face value?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, criticism in the sense of critique or source
7 criticism when you ask why a document has been issued.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not say to yourself: “This is exactly the same
9 kind of thing as Goebbels writes in his diaries, saying
10 ‘What we did was entirely with the Fuhrer’s consent'” and
11 you say to yourself, “Why does he write that in his diary
12 then?”
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you have put that question several
14 times. I know the question, I understand your point.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The answer is because it is true.
16 MR IRVING: Well, page 289, paragraph 3. We are now on the
17 meeting on November 12th 1938 in the Reich Air Ministry
18 building under the chairmanship of Hermann Goring as head
19 of the four year plan. This was the meeting at which the
20 punitive measures were discussed and agreed between the
21 various ministers. Dr Goebbels is present, is he not?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. You say that Goebbels in his diary writes, “I am
24 co-operating splendidly with Goring”. Does that strike
25 you as being an accurate reflection of the relationship
26 between the two on that day and at that time?
. P-157
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, because the measures which Goring sanctioned were
2 those which Goebbels put forward and which, indeed, had
3 been suggested by Hitler in their meeting at the Osteria
4 restaurant according to Goebbels’ earlier diary.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mean a whitewash?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, these are the — sorry, my Lord.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I am not quite sure what we are talking about.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What we are talking about here are the economic measures
9 which on 12th November this conference was held to impose
10 all the economic measures, a huge fine preventing the Jews
11 from getting any insurance payments for the damage caused,
12 and then a whole series of further measures about which
13 I quote on page 290 about banning them from being in
14 various public places, trains and all the rest of it.
15 That is what we are talking about. There is a legal
16 wrapping up.
17 This is exactly what Goebbels says, as we see
18 when he says in the kind of closing, the message to “Shut
19 it all down, stop the actions, we are now going to take
20 the legal road”, and this is the legal road that he is
21 talking about.
22 MR IRVING: Now we get back to the Goebbels diary where
23 Goebbels describes this meeting in the most glowing terms
24 of cordial relationship between him and Goring, would that
25 be a fair description?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He says, “I am cooperating splendidly with Goring. He’s
. P-158
1 going to crack down on them too. The radical line has
2 won”.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a fair and accurate reflection of what is
4 contained in the verbatim transcript of that meeting?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is a — it is a very accurate summary of what
6 transpired at the meeting, that is to say, that Goebbels’
7 — that Goring was persuaded, if he needed persuading,
8 that there should be a crack down in the legal and
9 economic sense on the Jews, as suggested by Hitler in the
10 Osteria restaurant put forward by Goebbels.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that Goring was livid with
12 Goebbels for this pogrom that he had started because of
13 the costs that it had inflicted on the German economy
14 which he was now going to have to make good and the damage
15 to the broken glass that they were going to have spend
16 foreign currency on, and the insurance costs that the
17 German insurance companies were going to have to meet?
18 Are you familiar with those passages in that meeting?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course I am. I quote them in the next paragraph,
20 Mr Irving.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that Goering sneered and
22 said, what we need here is a little bit of public
23 enlightenment? What was that a reference to?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, I am not saying—-
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you answer the question, please? What was that a
26 reference to?
. P-159
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not saying —-
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you answer the question, please?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you answer the question, please? What is “public
5 enlightenment” a reference to?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying, Mr Irving, that there were no minor
7 disagreements between the two. I refer to these in
8 paragraph 4 on page 289 to 90. I am not claiming that
9 Goring and Goebbels were bosom pals. The relationships
10 between the leading people in that gang of ruffians were,
11 as one would expect, not particularly polite or loving or
12 courteous. Nevertheless, the fact is that his statement,
13 “I am cooperating splendidly with Goring. He is going to
14 crack down on them too. The radical line has won”, is
15 absolutely correct. That is what happened. Goring says,
16 as I quote, “I would have preferred it if you had beaten
17 200 Jews to death and had not destroyed such valuable
18 property”. Nice of Hermann to say that. “Once the
19 property was damaged, however”, I go on, “Goring ensured
20 that the meeting took maximum financial advantage of the
21 events for the Nazi state”. I quote a long example for
22 this disgusting collection of people.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you were going to quote a long example, would it not
24 have been better to quote an example of the outrage that
25 Goring expressed at Goebbels for having inflicted this
26 economic disaster on Germany at this time in their
. P-160
1 fortunes —-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You quote them to me. I refer to it. I make it quite
3 clear that Goring says that he had rather that the
4 property had not been destroyed.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we are really going to spend time on this,
6 Mr Irving, I think you ought to put what outrage it was
7 that Goring expressed.
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, this witness has claimed — am I right,
9 witness, have you read the whole transcript of this
10 meeting, such as it exists?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, this is the Nuremberg document.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right that the transcript is not complete, that it
13 is like every ten pages missing?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to show me that, I am afraid.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a well-known fact about this transcript, is it not?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will not accept your—-
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, did you hear what I said? It was
18 that, if you are suggesting that Goring expressed outrage,
19 it would be — I do not ask you to go to the document,
20 just say what it was you say he said.
21 MR IRVING: Your Lordship will remember that I three
22 times asked the witness to answer a question, which is
23 what is the reference to public enlightenment?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That is a reference to Goebbels.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, are you paying any attention to
26 the question I just asked you? What was it that Goring
. P-161
1 said that you say was an expression of outrage on his
2 part?
3 MR IRVING: I will be a bit more full in that question then.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not full. It is a question of being
5 specific. If we are going to spend time on this. I think
6 this is a tiny point myself.
7 MR IRVING: It is, except the fact that he says that I have
8 commented that this diary entry was written with less than
9 total honesty. It was a diary entry suggesting glowing
10 relations between these two Nazi gangsters.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have got the point, Mr Irving.
12 MR IRVING: It is quite obvious from the transcript, which this
13 expert witness has read, that exactly the opposite is true
14 that in fact they were at each other’s throats throughout
15 the meeting.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which is why I asked you, and this is the
17 fourth time I have asked you, to put to the witness in
18 general terms what it was that Goring said which you said
19 amounts to outrage on his part.
20 MR IRVING: Is it right that Goring expressed outrage at the
21 fact that the Reichskristallnacht, for which he held
22 Goebbels responsible, had inflicted colossal economic
23 damage on the German economy by virtue of the insurance
24 damages, the damage to the plate glass windows that had to
25 be purchased now with hard currency from Belgium, the
26 damage to the German international prestige and so on, and
. P-162
1 he made no secret of his dismay and he sneered at
2 Goebbels, what we need here is some public enlightenment,
3 which is a reference to Goebbels’ full title as
4 Reichsminister of propaganda and public enlightenment, is
5 that correct?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is perfectly correct, Mr Irving. Let me point out who
7 had to pay for all this damage as a result of this
8 meeting. It was the victims themselves who had to pay.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: That not the point of the question.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was the Jews who had to pay.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: The point of the question is that you said that—-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is exactly the proposal that was worked out by
13 Goebbels and Hitler at the Ostrea restaurant, and whatever
14 quibbling and cavilling and nasty remarks, sneers that
15 Goring made against Goebbels, that is the outcome of the
16 meeting. That to me is “splendid co-operation”. I cite
17 on page 290 a lengthy extract of the kind of disputes that
18 they had. It is quite clear that they were not
19 particularly fond of each other.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is true, is it not, that you also suppressed the
21 extracts which show anything but cordial relations between
22 the two in that meeting?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not at all.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have asked that question very many
25 times. I really think this is such a tiny point.
Section 163.26-180.12
26 MR IRVING: I have closed my file, my Lord, because we are now
. P-163
1 going to move on to the chain of evidence, which is a
2 useful way of spending the remaining hour of this
3 afternoon, I think.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What are we going to move on to?
5 MR IRVING: The chain of documents, the chain of evidence. It
6 is complete, apart from the Schlegelberger document, which
7 is bundle D. Witness, just so you know what the purpose
8 of the remaining cross-examination is about, as you are
9 aware and his Lordship is aware, I have maintained that
10 there is a chain of documents of high integrity which
11 indicate Adolf Hitler intervening, on a greater or smaller
12 scale, on behalf of the Jews rather than against them.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “The best friend the Jews ever had in the Third Reich” is
14 your phrase, I think.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where shall I put this, just so that I know
16 where its home is going to be? Miss Rogers always answers
17 this question.
18 MS ROGERS: The J files. There should be a J2. I am afraid
19 I do not know which tab we are up to.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Probably 10, I think.
21 MR IRVING: Now, Professor Evans, if you wish to challenge the
22 provenance of any of these documents, please do not
23 hesitate to say so and indicate if you think it is not a
24 genuine document, or that it has in some way been tampered
25 with or distorted or manipulated. Is the first document
26 dated August 20th 1935? I am going to go through these as
. P-164
1 rapidly as I can, my Lord.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you just run your eye over it very rapidly, does this
4 indicate that Hitler has ordered that individual actions
5 against Jews are on no account to take place and will be
6 severely punished?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. Individual actions or isolated
8 actions against Jews.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Committed by members of the Nazi party?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or other organizations and so on, or anybody provokes them
11 or whatever is going to be treated very severely, that is
12 right. This is August 1935, that is right.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is actually issued by the Reichsminister of the
14 Interior.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is a very interesting example of how Hitler did
16 indeed sometimes step in to try and regain control over
17 anti-Semitic actions when he thought that they were
18 occurring in a way that was piecemeal and not actually
19 steered from the centre. Of course, this is part of the
20 lead up to the infamous Nuremberg laws a few weeks later,
21 which then, in a very characteristic way of the way the
22 Third Reich operated, introduced a legal means, an ordered
23 means of disadvantaging and persecuting the Jews in place
24 of these individual and rather violent actions. It is an
25 exact parallel, well, not exact but a certain parallel
26 there with the relationship between the pogrom of the 9th
. P-165
1 and 10th November and with the legal measures introduced
2 on the 12th.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we continue by looking at the document and say, does
4 it continue by saying that anybody who does take part in
5 individual actions against Jews or instigates them will
6 have to be in the future treated as a provocator, a rebel
7 and an enemy of the state?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: “I please request you from now on ruthlessly to take
10 action against any such operations or means to keep law
11 and order and security and so on”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It is a well known document.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a well known document, is it?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So I do not really need to waste the court’s time with it?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, absolutely.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not assume that I have ever seen it
18 before?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You made your point, Mr Irving.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have made my point?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I accept that this is a document. You need not go
22 on about it.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we turn to 5th February 1936: On account of the
24 murder of the Swiss party chief or representative Wilhelm
25 Gustlov, what happened to Gustlov? He was assassinated,
26 was he not, by a deranged assassin? Is that correct?
. P-166
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think so, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: There were dangers of anti-Semitic outbursts in Germany,
3 and has Hitler ordered in this document there to be no
4 kind of excesses?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. 1936 was a year in which the Nazis
6 were particularly concerned about their international
7 reputation because of the Olympic games coming up Berlin,
8 and the winter Olympics as well.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: You mention the Olympic Games of course. Are you aware of
10 the fact that Hitler specifically ordered that Jews and
11 blacks were to be allowed to take part and they were not
12 to be subjected to any kind of indignities?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I am not aware of Jewish athletes running for the
14 Germans.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it was not just the Germans taking part, were they?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, that is right. As I said, he was concerned about the
17 international reputation of Germany.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mean black people from African
19 countries.
20 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon.
21 MR RAMPTON: No, they would be people like Jesse Owens.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Jesse Owens, my Lord, the black American runner, Hitler’s
23 demonstrably leftie.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point you are making is that Hitler did
25 not just make it an all white Olympics?
26 MR IRVING: He ordered they were not to be subjected to any
. P-167
1 kind of indignities or any of the things that one might
2 have expected, and there is such a document in the file.
3 The last paragraph of that document is possibly worth
4 looking at. Does it say, “It remains reserved to the
5 Fuhrer now as ever, to decide what policy is going to be
6 adopted from case to case”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly the point, yes. No individual party comrade may
8 pursue a policy on his own initiative. That is exactly
9 the point. That is what this is all about.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: The next document is 28th July 1937.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: That Hitler as Fuhrer Reichschancellor has from time to
13 time himself bent the rules a bit to allow people whose
14 blood was not pure Aryan to remain within the party and
15 remain in full office. As I say, these documents are
16 sometimes of great magnitude and sometimes of minor
17 importance, but they are documents and they all tend in
18 the same direction. Is that roughly the burden of that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It is all about Hitler’s ability to sort of rule who
20 is Aryan or not, really, or to make exceptions from the
21 Aryan paragraphs of the party in the case of individual
22 party members.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Whatever exactly that means.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the case of Field Marshal Milsch?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-168
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he half Jewish?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is right.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: His father was Anton Milsch, who was a Jewish apothecary
4 and he rose to the rank of Field Marshal.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. The Nazis never really decided exactly what to do
6 with half Jews, or so-called Jews of mixed blood. It was
7 a constant problem for them, as you might expect in such
8 an absurd racist ideology, where you draw the line. It is
9 impossible to draw lines.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you now turn the page, we now come to a page which does
11 not really belong in this file but it is there. This is
12 in fact the page of extracts copied from the original
13 unpublished memoirs of von Below, is that right?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: On which I based my own description, as opposed to the
16 1980 book. These are the 1947 handwritten memoirs of von
17 Below.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I will accept that.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. There is the reference there. I could not find it
20 previously and there it is.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did you type this up yourself, Mr Irving?
23 MR IRVING: Back in 1964, yes, my Lord.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You typed this up yourself?
25 MR IRVING: I sat in his home in Dusseldorf and typed it up,
26 yes.
. P-169
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At least you have three dots there. I find this a very
2 dubious document.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: You find it a dubious document?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I do not necessarily — we have already been through
5 von Below, Mr Irving.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you are going to say you find it a dubious document,
7 you ought to say why.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a fair point.
9 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point you have just made is a fair point.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not the original document.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: You said it is a dubious document. Why?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because it is not the original. It is Mr Irving’s notes
14 on it, I think, or Mr Irving’s account of it, with gaps.
15 That is the first thing. Secondly, of course, I do not
16 believe von Below. He had very good reason to lie. We
17 have been through that before.
18 MR IRVING: There is quite a lot of people today whom you do
19 not believe, are there not?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not nearly as many people as you do not believe,
21 Mr Irving. You said that you do not believe any of the
22 survivors of the Holocaust, they are all suffering from
23 mass delusion.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: We do not believe the survivors of the Holocaust who made
25 quite obvious mistakes, but there are tens of thousands of
26 others whom we have not heard a word from.
. P-170
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not seen you give credence to one single Holocaust
2 survivor in all your writings, Mr Irving. All you do is
3 pour scorn on them.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we proceed now to the transcript of the reception of
5 Chvalkovsky?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page number?
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are skipping the two that we have already looked at.
8 This is January 21st 1939.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: They are not numbered pages. Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a printed document, a record taken by Walter
11 Haevel, who was a Foreign Ministry official. Is it right
12 that Hitler begins by saying, “in January 1939 the Juden
13 Viorden Biunst Vernichtert”. What does he mean by that?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have to read. This is in reported speech, is it not?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the subjunctive.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He is saying the Jews —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would be —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I guess, are, I am trying to find what he would have said
21 in the original.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, I am slightly lost.
23 MR IRVING: It is the very first sentence.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Chvalkovsky, who is he?
25 MR IRVING: Czech foreign minister, my Lord.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. At that time there was still a Czecho and a Slovakio
. P-171
1 with a hyphen between them. Correct me if I am wrong.
2 I think he saying the Jews are being destroyed, literally
3 are being annihilated, in Germany effectively with us.
4 “On 9th November 1918, the Jews had not done the 9th
5 November 1918 for nothing, this day would be avenged but
6 in Czechoslovakia the Jews were still poisoning the people
7 today”. That is the first sentence there.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sure his Lordship appreciates why, just look at that
9 very first sentence.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do you want to go on, vernichtert?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not really want to look at the rest of the document.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stick with the questioning at the
13 moment. What is the question?
14 MR IRVING: The first sentence is, Juden viorden biunst
15 vernichtert, that is the Fuhrer speaking in the
16 subjunctive, the Jews are being or were being destroyed,
17 our Jews are being destroyed. He uses the word
18 vernichtert?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Annihilated.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: What does he mean by that?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think he probably — what date is this? 21st January
22 1939. I think there he means economically.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Economically?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the word vernichtert does not necessarily mean murdered
26 or exterminated then? It can mean something else?
. P-172
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. You have to look at the context and the time. At
2 this time in the 1930s I do not think it means that
3 necessarily.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How does this go to show that Hitler was
5 pro-semitic, if I can use that term?
6 MR IRVING: My Lord, going through these 2,000 documents last
7 night I came across these and I thought it proper to put
8 them into this bundle and bring them to your Lordship’s
9 attention in this manner.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But he does say in the next sentence, which is really why
11 I quoted him, Mr Irving, by way of explanation that Hitler
12 blamed the Jews in his sort of paranoid ideology for the
13 defeat of Germany and the revolution of 9th November 1918,
14 and as he says here that this day would be avenged. So in
15 the future he is saying it would be avenged. So it is not
16 exactly a pro-semitic document, is it?
17 MR IRVING: Now we turn the page perhaps.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am just wondering if —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you turn the page to page 2 of that document, the first
20 paragraph, is it right to say that from this time onwards
21 for two or three years Adolf Hitler was talking about a
22 geographical solution, he wanted to deport them, out of
23 sight out of mind?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, we have been through this ending up with the
25 Madagascar solution, this is what he says here.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: The first paragraph of this says, and I translate: “The
. P-173
1 Fuhrer points to the possibility that the States who are
2 interested in this should find or take some spot in the
3 world and put the Jews there, and that these Anglo-Saxon
4 humanitarian weeping people states should then say: Here
5 they are, either they are going to hunger or put your
6 final words into practice”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not quite, Mr Irving. I think that is wrong. [German
8 spoken].
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: “You have to say to them”, that is correct?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So, it is to say to them, yes. So, States which are
11 interested in getting rid of their Jews should pick out
12 any tiny spot in the world, flecks, a spot of dust really,
13 a tiny island, and saying: Here you are, either starve to
14 death or put your many speeches in these Anglo-Saxon —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So in his nasty Nazi way he is still talking about the
16 geographical solution; there is no talk about liquidation
17 here, is there?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not in 1939.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Starve to death” does not seem to me a particularly nice
20 thing to say.
21 MR IRVING: Is this five or six days before Adolf Hitler made
22 his famous speech in the Reichstag, on January 30th 1939,
23 nine days?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: His prophecy, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: His famous prophecy saying that if they start a new world
26 war —-
. P-174
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: — it will end with their destruction, vernichtung?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He already makes another prophecy we see in the first as
4 sentence of this extract: “On 9th November 1918 the Jews
5 had not done that in vein. This day would be avenged”.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but it is correct that Hitler uses the same kind of
7 terminology in that famous speech to which he then later
8 refers so often, is that correct?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you turn the page now. We are now in August 1940,
11 because not very much happens, does it? The emigration
12 continues until the end of 1939, is that right?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: About how many Jews actually emigrate from Germany?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: About half the Jewish population.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you including Austria, two thirds altogether, about
17 200,000 out of 300,000?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is about 200 to 250,000 is it not?
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did most of the emigration begin after the night of broken
20 glass?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. A lot did. It began in 1933 and it kind of went in
22 waves. But there was certainly a major emigration after
23 November 1938, because the situation had quite clearly
24 changed so much for the worse.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: These two notes now are dated August 3rd 1940. They are
26 from my card index, but they refer to a meeting that he
. P-175
1 had with Hitler, Otto Abetz. Who was Otto Abetz?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have to tell me I am afraid.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Otto Abetz was the German ambassador in France in Paris,
4 would you accept that?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sure, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: That he visited Hitler and on August 3rd 1940 he had a
7 meeting with Hitler, and the first document does it show
8 Otto Abetz swearing an affidavit saying that he had talked
9 with the Fuhrer about the Jewish problem, and then follows
10 the quotation: “He said to me that he wanted to solve the
11 Jewish question generally for Europe, and in fact by a
12 clause in the peace agreement, the peace treaty”?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: “In which he made a condition of the vanquished countries,
15 the defeated countries, that they agreed to transport
16 their Jewish citizens outside Europe”, is that right?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, exactly.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So again it is a geographical solution he is talking
19 about?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Quite right, yes.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can take this quite rapidly because you
22 are pushing at an open door.
23 MR RAMPTON: I do not understand where this is going. Nobody
24 on this side of the court has suggested anything else up
25 to 1941, and not even then until late 1941 do we get into
26 murder on systematic scale.
. P-176
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is exactly why I said you can take this
2 quite quickly.
3 MR IRVING: We are taking it at enormous speed, my Lord.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us keep going then.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: In that case we will skip the second file. We are now in
6 15th November 1941.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is apparently a retype by the Nuremberg authorities
9 of a presumably rather damaged or illegible original, a
10 letter addressed to the Minister for the Occupied Eastern
11 Territories by somebody in the Baltic States, the
12 Reichskommissar, the Office of the Reichskommissar for the
13 Ostland, stating: “I have forbidden the Jewish executions
14 in Liebau because it was quite unbearable or irresponsible
15 for them to be carried out in the manner that they were
16 being carried out”.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Irresponsible, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Irresponsible. “I asked to be informed whether your
19 question of October 31st is to be interpreted as a
20 directive” —-
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Your enquiry”. “Your enquiry”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Your enquiry of October 31st is to be interpreted as a
23 directive that all the Jews in the Baltic are to be
24 liquidated. Is this to be done without regard to their
25 age and race and to our economic interest or to economic
26 interests? For example, the Wehrmacht’s expert skilled
. P-177
1 workers in the arms factories”?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this indicate — then the final paragraph: “Neither
4 from the directives on the Jewish problem in the brown
5 file nor other decrees allow me to assume that there is
6 such a directive”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this indicate that at the very highest level in the
9 Baltic there was no indication by October 31st or November
10 15th 1941, rather, of any kind that they were floundering,
11 they did not know what on earth was going on and what they
12 should be doing and what they should not be doing?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not very clear who this is from or to. Can you just
14 remind.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is from the Reichskommissar.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Reichsminister, that is right.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: To the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories
18 who was Rosenberg, was it not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. Who is the Reichskommissar?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Reichskommissar for the Ostland was, I believe,
21 Lohse. If this a genuine document, and it appears to be a
22 Nuremberg document, then from this rather fragmentary
23 document we can conclude that on November 15th 1941 at
24 least there was no kind of directive from above as to what
25 was to happen with the Jews being sent out there, and the
26 man who is the asking the questions is saying: “What are
. P-178
1 we supposed to be doing?”
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not quite so. He is says he has not been able to
3 find one in his brown file.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, which appears to have some kind of great importance.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You also left out a sentence [German spoken].
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: It says that it is quite a laudable task cleansing the
7 Eastern Ostland of Jews, but if we are going to do it we
8 have to do it in a way that it does not damage our
9 economic interests?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. There is a great deal or a
11 considerable amount of argument about the economic
12 responsibility.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: The fact that I rely on is that apparently there is brown
14 file which appears to contain directives from top level,
15 and he has delved into that file and cannot find any kind
16 instructions at all?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, for all the total liquidation, as he says,
18 of all Jews in the Osland in the Eastern territories,
19 without any exceptions, and particularly without reference
20 to economic interests, and there is a good deal of
21 discussion, you find references in the Himmler
22 appointments and telephone diaries, for example, to the
23 discussions that went on about what should be done about
24 Jews who were working, for example, in armaments
25 industries, you see references here. So what he is really
26 saying is: “Do we have to kill these people too? We must
. P-179
1 surely square this perfectly acceptable cleansing”, as he
2 puts it, “of the Osland, Juden, this cleansing of the
3 eastland of Jews, that is all right, but it must be
4 economically OK”.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: His Lordship will appreciate the reason that I attach
6 importance to this is the absence even at this date of any
7 order, systematic order, shall we put it like that. He
8 has looked for a directive, he has looked for a decree,
9 there is nothing there, and so he is asking up the proper
10 channels, saying: “What should we be doing?”
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is no legal decree, that is right. “Alas” is a
12 legal decree.
Section 180.13-201.25
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I do not propose putting to this witness the
14 documents on the November 30th 1941 phone call, because we
15 have been over that in very great detail, Himmler to
16 Heydrich, transport of Jews from Berlin not to be
17 liquidated, and the intercepts which then followed.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not necessarily Himmler to Heydrich, is it, because
19 we do not know from these who phoned whom?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, a conversation between Himmler and Heydrich.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Oustenbunke” of course is not necessarily from Hitler’s
22 bunker because there were quite a large number of bunkers
23 in that Wolffschansser. Apart from those two points,
24 I think we have been over that very thoroughly.
25 MR IRVING: I am seeking his Lordship’s guidance on this.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you do not need to go over that again.
. P-180
1 MR IRVING: I will go straightforward, therefore, to July 1942.
2 MR RAMPTON: May I say this? Your Lordship might be helped,
3 I do not know — Professor Evans’ evidence on this is
4 perfectly clear, that both these file notes of Himmler
5 have been deliberately misrepresented by Mr Irving. He
6 gives his reasons for that in his report. I am a little
7 concerned that Mr Irving should think, he avoids that
8 confrontation simply by passing it by.
9 MR IRVING: That would be a different matter then which I would
10 then come back to. I think this is properly the right way
11 to do it, my Lord, that we will skip at this time as being
12 part of the chain, but on the question of the relevance of
13 these documents, these specific documents, we will take in
14 our stride when we deal with the pages in the report.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Eventually, sorry, Mr Rampton, go on.
16 MR RAMPTON: It was not so much the relevance of the particular
17 documents. It is, first of all, their transcription.
18 MR IRVING: These are different issues, of course, are they
19 not?
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes, and also once they have been properly
21 transcribed their true interpretation or what I might say
22 their fair objective interpretation. I think those are
23 probably two questions which are too important to be
24 bypassed.
25 MR IRVING: We can deal with it here perhaps.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am expecting at some stage, and
. P-181
1 I think there are about ten of them or at any rate the way
2 I see it there are about ten of them, criticisms made by
3 Professor Evans of your historiography. They are fairly
4 sort of clear cut separate topics. Mr Irving, I am not
5 absolutely certain but I think Mr Rampton is right that
6 keine liquidierung is one of them.
7 MR IRVING: Yes, we have been over it exhaustively.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I am not sure you have
9 cross-examined Professor Evans about it.
10 MR IRVING: Yes, if it will advance the matter.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can certainly cross-examine shortly, and
12 I am encouraging you to do that, but I do not think skip
13 it altogether.
14 MR IRVING: My Lord, my questions are very short. It is the
15 other half of the cross-examination that takes the time.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am saying is you do not need to ask a
17 lot of short questions on any of these topics, but I must
18 hear you put your case.
19 MR IRVING: Very well.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not say you have to do it now because
21 you may want to carry on with the exercise you are
22 embarked on at the moment, but you cannot just skip the
23 specific topics on which you are criticised by Professor
24 Evans.
25 MR IRVING: I will deal with it now. Professor Evans, will you
26 look at the telephone conversation of November 30th 1941?
. P-182
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you have two versions of it there, the typescript
3 version followed by the facsimile?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The typescript version is my own very amateurish attempt
6 about 15 years ago. What we need is on the facsimile. We
7 can agree, can we not, that this is record kept by
8 Heinrich Himmler in handwriting of his telephone
9 conversations, can we?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: That it is headed with the word “Wolffschansser”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was that the name of Hitler’s headquarters?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the following line “from the train”?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: And then in a similar kind of layout three or four lines
18 further down “from the bunker”?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Underneath that we have the words 1330 SS Oberguppenfuhrer
21 Heydrich in Prague or Prague?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I have a copy of the Himmler Dienstager book edition,
23 would that be possible please? That is it. Right. Yes?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this show that at 1330 he had a telephone
25 conversation with Heydrich?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-183
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the diary which you have now just been handed, the
2 appointment book, indicate that for about an hour or two
3 that morning he worked?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it would seem — yes, that is right.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Gute arbeit”?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: From 12 until 13 —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: — He saw an SS officer and then he worked?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: During that work do you think it is possible that he would
12 have telephoned people or received telephone calls or
13 actually met people?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not have thought so. I would have thought
15 “gearbeit” just simply means sat down and did papers,
16 because when he telephones people it appears in his
17 telephone log, and usually when he meets people that
18 appears in his appointments diary. So I would take
19 “gearbeit” as meaning he just sat down at his desk and
20 signed forms or wrote stuff or whatever, read.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you think that when he arrived by train in Hitler’s
22 headquarters he would not receive, he would not inform
23 Hitler that he had arrived in some way?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would imagine, no, because he had a lunch appointment
25 with Hitler at 2.30, so Hitler must have known he was
26 coming.
. P-184
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there an indication of what was discussed between
2 Himmler and Heydrich at 1.30 p.m.?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is on the right-hand column, is it not?
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the first line translated: “Arrest Dr Jakelius”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the second line: “Alleged or apparent son Molotov”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The third line: “Jew transport from Berlin”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Full stop. Is that a full stop there?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, in the edition it is. Here it is too, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the next line: “No liquidation”?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: What interpretation do you put on the last two lines, Jew
15 transports from Berlin and no liquidation?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That it was agreed between Heydrich and Himmler on the
17 phone that the transport of Jews which had left on 27th
18 November from Berlin to Riga should not be killed.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Had there been previous conversations between those two
20 parties about such matters?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not that I am aware of —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you turn back from that book to —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But it may be wrong.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: — to 17th November. It is on page 265.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there a telephone conversation at about the same time
. P-185
1 between the same two people which contains the two lines
2 “getting rid of the Jews”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: The previous line: Conditions in the generalgouvernenent?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they did talk about this kind of thing more than once?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, yes. I thought you meant an order not to liquidate.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the following day, on December 1st, before we go back
9 to 30th, is there a telephone conversation again between
10 them?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry it is not clear that “Beseitigung der Juden”
12 means —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Getting rid of?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — means killing, does it?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, getting rid of is —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, getting rid of, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a neutral way of putting it.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: On December 1st 1941 is there a telephone conversation
20 between Himmler and Heydrich on page 280 at 1.15 p.m. of
21 which the second topic is: “Executions in Riga”?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do we know that the train load of Jews from Berlin was
24 actually full of Jews who were executed in Riga?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who do you think ordered there should be no liquidation of
. P-186
1 the Jews on that particular train, if that is the
2 inference we can draw?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would imagine it is Himmler, because he was entitled to
4 give orders to Heydrich and not the other way round.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Why would he have ordered the train load of Jews
6 from Berlin not to be liquidated?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because at this time there had been no general decision to
8 kill Jews who had been transported from Berlin, and
9 because this is at a time when the killing of the local
10 Jews who had been herded into the ghetto in Riga was being
11 managed, was being carried out. They were being shot in
12 their totality in fact over these few days at the end of
13 November, beginning of December, and this transport of
14 Jews from Berlin landed in the middle of this and was shot
15 as well.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was this a matter of life and death, this telephone call?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: For the Jews, certainly.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But I think, to answer your question, if I may, the reason
20 is because this would be very alarming to those Jews who
21 were still in Berlin and still in Germany. Rumour would
22 get back. It was a very public kind of going on and this
23 was not desired at the present moment. Indeed subsequent
24 to this for some months transports of Jews from Berlin to
25 the East why not shot.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is pure speculation on your part about the need not
. P-187
1 to cause alarm among the remaining Jews in Berlin, is that
2 right?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not pure speculation. It refers to another
4 document which it is the Bruns’ document which you know,
5 which has been discussed.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does that refer to alarm in Berlin?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That says, if I recall rightly, that, here we are, this is
8 Bruns saying that someone showed him a piece of paper that
9 sanctioned the shootings; they just had to be carried out
10 less conspicuously in the future.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that not because they do not want to cause alarm in the
12 local city, on the East, in Minsk or in Riga or wherever?
13 Would not be the reason for that?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because these are Jews from Berlin. They carried on
15 shooting the Jews in Riga.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why did he make this telephone call from the bunker in
17 Hitler’s headquarters? Why did he not make it from the
18 train? Is there any significance in that fact? He made
19 the previous two telephone calls from the train, and yet
20 this was a phone call, would you agree, as a matter of
21 life and death he makes from Hitler’s bunker?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, as I say, we do not know whether it was Himmler who
23 called Heydrich or the other way round. That is one of
24 the problems with the phone log, it does not say who
25 phoned whom. So it may well have been that Heydrich
26 phoned up Himmler to let him know what was going on and a
. P-188
1 decision was made as a result of that. It is also
2 possible that the SS man he had seen previously, Gunter
3 Dalequin, from 12.00 to 1.00, who was reporting about the
4 travelling he had done on the East in the SS Political
5 Division and the Totenkopf Division who are concentration
6 camp guards, that he might have informed Himmler.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you any evidence that Gunter Dalequin in fact was
8 reporting back from the Baltic countries? Were those
9 divisions based in the Baltic or were they in fact on the
10 Eastern Front?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is difficult to say or difficult to say who could have
12 told him. One of the problems with this log, as you know,
13 is that it is very brief and rather cryptic. So one has
14 to use conjectures here a little bit.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The information —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But that is certainly possible if one imagines why that
17 happened. It seems to be the case that previous
18 transports of Jews from Berlin had been shot and that this
19 one that alarm was being raised in Himmler’s and
20 Heydrich’s minds about this.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: In Himmler’s and Heydrich’s minds?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it is totally irrelevant the fact that this
24 conversation did not take place because Himmler got to
25 Hitler’s bunker?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not say Hitler’s bunker. It says “aus dem Bunker”
. P-189
1 and there are I think 29 bunkers on that site, ten in a
2 circle. I actually have a plan here of the bunkers which
3 illustrates that example.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell us what date that plan is?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is from 1944, the second one. The first one is from
6 the whole covering the period 1941 to 1944.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you aware of the fact that the bomb that exploded
8 under Hitler’s table on July 20th was at first taken to be
9 the work of the local building men building lots more
10 bunkers at the Fuhrer’s headquarters?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is the case.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the Fuhrer’s headquarters had original existed in the
13 middle of 1941 from the Barbarossa, was of a much more
14 modest scale, is that right?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry. Well, obviously it grew over the years, but you
16 are not presenting evidence to say that this is from the
17 Fuhrer bunker. Indeed, as he says later on, he has a
18 midday meal with the Fuhrer, and then from 4 o’clock to
19 8 o’clock, gearbeit, it worked, and it seems likely to me
20 that he would work at his own desk or at the desk of his
21 adjutant Wolff in his bunker. I mean even in 1941 I do
22 not think there is just one bunker there.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you take refuge in the fact that this may not have been
24 Hitler’s bunker at the Wolf’s lair that Himmler was
25 phoning from?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am saying you do not have any evidence to show that it
. P-190
1 was in Hitler’s bunker.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right, and it would be perverse to assume that it was, is
3 that what you are saying?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is going well beyond the evidence, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: What about on the balance of probabilities?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Balance of probabilities, not.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: If he has come here to —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If he is working, gearbeit.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: If he has come here to see Hitler and these important
10 phone calls take place from bunker at Hitler’s
11 headquarters?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you yourself have said that Hitler’s bunker was rather
13 small, so it is difficult to think that Himmler had a kind
14 of permanent desk there to work at. Surely he went into
15 his own quarters or his those of his adjutant with Hitler
16 to do this work.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: On December 1st there is another telephone conversation
18 which we just looked at about the executions in Riga, is
19 that right?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that reference to these executions, in your opinion?
22 Had there been any other executions on December 1st apart
23 from these 5,000?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is the last one, is it not? I am trying to
25 find this.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: December 1st, it is on page 280, line 8 approximately.
. P-191
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Execution in Riga, yes. This probably refers to the one
2 the day before.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the background of that second
4 telephone call or conversation?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do put it to me, Mr Irving.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you turn, therefore, to the next items, turn the page
7 until you come to an item headed on the top right “PRO
8 file”.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: HW16/32?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is right.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a translation, and you can look either at the
13 original German three pages later and it is item 24, of an
14 intercept by the British decoders of a coded message from
15 Himmler’s staff to the chief murderer in Riga, SS
16 Oberguppenfuhrer Jackelm?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it say: “The Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler summons you to
19 him for a conference on December 4th”?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Please state when you will arrive here and by what means
22 you will be travelling on account of being fetched”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the immediately following telegram from Himmler himself
25 to the same man?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-192
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this one say: “The Jews being outplaced to the
2 Ostland are to be dealt with only in accordance with the
3 guidelines laid down by myself and or by the
4 Reichssicherheitsbeamter on my orders. I would punish
5 arbitrarily and disobedient acts”?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you think this is a reference to the arbitrary and
8 disobedient execution of these Berlin Jews?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It wants to make sure that that does not happen
10 again, which indeed it does not for some months.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do we see then a few days later on December 4th, we have
12 to turn back a few page I am afraid, the actual visit by
13 Jackelm? It is headed on the top right-hand corner in
14 handwriting page 350.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right down at the bottom of that page we find Jackelm, he
17 is actually twice on that page. Halfway up the page his
18 name is there but it is crossed out, somebody else has
19 taken his slot?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then at 2130 SS Oberguppenfuhrer Jackelm —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: — has this no doubt rather uncomfortable meeting with
24 the chief of the SS?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: What do you suspect happened there? Can you look at the
. P-193
1 right? Does is say Judenfrager?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right. I expect he was told off.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was told off. Is that not an extraordinary episode, in
4 your opinion?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, no, I do not think we disagree about it, Mr Irving.
6 A train load of Berlin — Jews are being deported from
7 Berlin to the East, and it does not seem to have been the
8 intention at this time to have to kill them. A few train
9 loads were killed, and Himmler stepped in and stopped it.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: And for several months there were no more killings, is
11 that right?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of German Jews?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of German Jews transported to the East.
14 MR IRVING: Yes, I am sorry.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Four days after this of course on 8th December all the
16 rest of the Jews in the Riga ghetto were killed by
17 Jackelm, on Jackelm’s order. So presumably when he
18 discussed this with Himmler on the 4th, Judenfrager, he
19 must also have discussed that too. Himmler must have said
20 “Go ahead, kill all the rest of the Jews in the Riga
21 ghetto”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you attach any importance at all to the fact that
23 Himmler had this epiphany, if I can put it like, while in
24 Hitler’s bunker or at least at Hitler’s headquarters?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, as I say, I do not think there is any evidence that
26 he was in Hitler’s bunker.
. P-194
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: But he was definitely in Hitler’s headquarters, was he
2 not?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was Hitler’s headquarters. The interview with Jackelm
4 was conducted in Himmler’s own place.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have seen from that rather fragmentary typed message of
6 November 15th 1941, the Nuremberg document, that there was
7 nothing in the brown file; he found no directives which
8 would indicate what to do with the Jews who were there or
9 who were arriving, and he asked for a directive. So it
10 appears there was system —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I just date that again? That is on the 15th.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: November 15th.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: November 15th, that is right, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: He says that he has looked in the brown file and he cannot
15 find anything: “Please tell me what we are supposed to be
16 doing with the Jews?”
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is rather different.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: In what way is it different, in your view?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Himmler, Jackelm, Heydrich series of exchanges just
20 deals with transports of Jews from Berlin.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: But does this not —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This deals with a slightly different matter of the
23 economic advisability or otherwise of killing all the Jews
24 in the Ostland.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: But do you agree that this message, the November 15th
26 message you are looking at, says that there are no
. P-195
1 directives whatsoever on what to do with the Jews which
2 would cover killing them, in effect?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He cannot find any in the brown file, no.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: So this is quite an important episode, is it not, November
5 1941, December 1941, as far as the Baltic States are
6 concerned, which highlights the fact that there were no
7 directives from above at that time. The killings had
8 begun, evidently on the initiative of the local people, on
9 a huge scale. When Hitler’s headquarters learned about it
10 or when Himmler at Hitler’s headquarters learned about it,
11 he issued immediate orders stopping it and reprimanding
12 the one who was doing it?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because you are drawing a false link between these two
14 documents. The order issued by Himmler and the rapping of
15 Jackelm over the knuckles is concerned simply with the
16 killing of transports of Jews from Berlin. As I have
17 said, four days after his meeting with Jackelm in which he
18 told him off for this, Jackelm, presumably with Himmler’s
19 full approval, killed all the rest of the Jews in the Riga
20 ghetto. The killing of Jews in Eastern Europe, who were,
21 as it were, already there, continued on a large scale. It
22 was uninterrupted.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: From this you can agree with us, can you not, that there
24 was a distinction made in the Nazis’ minds between the
25 value of German Jews or European Jews and the native
26 Russian Jews? It was open season on the Russian Jews,
. P-196
1 whereas at this time there was still no order, and in fact
2 no permission for the German European Jews to be killed?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At this point that does seem to be the case, yes.
4 MR IRVING: My Lord, do you wish to ask any questions on those
5 particular documents?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. You do not any longer suggest I think,
7 Mr Irving, that this is an instruction which applied to
8 anything other than that particular transport, do you?
9 MR IRVING: It very clearly laid down the ground rules, that
10 transports like this of European or German Jews were not
11 to be liquidated.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had thought you accepted earlier on that
13 you had misread the singular as being plural.
14 MR IRVING: Clearly, if the liquidation of this transport of
15 Jews was not to happen but did happen and the one who did
16 it got hauled over the coals, then that massage held for
17 any subsequent transports, and they did not need to keep
18 on repeating the orders, the same as your Lordship does
19 not have to keep telling me to be brief.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you agree with that?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, the actual document says quite clearly that this
22 particular transport of Jews from Berlin should not be
23 killed, and that is all it said. It does not permit of
24 the interpretation saying that no Jews at all are to be
25 killed or that no Jews being transported at any time have
26 to be killed.
. P-197
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Do you take the view that it applies to all transports of
2 German Jews?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not that particular one, but it seems to me that one can
4 read out the from consequence that transports of Jews from
5 Berlin were not —-
6 MR IRVING: Or from the Reich?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — killed, from the Reich were not killed subsequently,
8 that this was the policy for the following few months.
9 That does not of course —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But those were the guidelines laid down by
11 Himmler?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 MR IRVING: In the absence of the guidelines lines in the brown
14 file or in any other colour filed, this kind of emergency
15 took place by code message?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would seem to be the case.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I sense you are about to move on
18 to another topic. I have a fear I am going to have to
19 say — how long are you going to take on your next topic?
20 MR IRVING: I will be one more document.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, fine, but I have rise early as I think
22 I mentioned.
23 MR IRVING: As you mentioned, my Lord, but I am anxious to make
24 progress.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, so I am.
26 MR IRVING: 6th July 1942. This is one paragraph.
. P-198
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, where is this?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is in your clip, is it?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have it.
4 MR IRVING: The Reichforschungsrat was the government level,
5 scientific co-ordination agency, is correct, the Reichs
6 research agency or council?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you take it that this is the constituent assembly or
9 the founding meeting of that particular body in July 1942
10 over which Hermann Goring is presiding?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what it purports to be, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that the source at the foot at the page is Milch
13 documents which are bound volumes of transcripts of these
14 meetings which were originally in the British Air Ministry
15 archives?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am just going to draw your attention to the indented
18 paragraph. They are talking about the persecution of
19 Jewish scientists and the damage this is doing to the
20 German war effort. Goring says, and I am going to
21 translate this: “I put this to the Fuhrer himself now”?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: “We have kept one more Jew in Vienna for two years and
24 another one in the field of photography because they were,
25 they had certain things that we needed and which we could,
26 which would absolutely advance our cause at this time. It
. P-199
1 would be madness to say here ‘he’s got to go’. He might
2 have been a great researcher, a fantastic brain, but he
3 had a Jewish wife and so he cannot be at the technical
4 university”, and so on?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The Fuhrer has in this case in the field of art right
7 down to operetta level made exceptions in order to keep
8 things as they are”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: “So, all the more is he likely to or will he agree to
11 exceptions there and give permission where we are dealing
12 with really big research projects or researchers”?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, great researchers.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: My question is quite simply, does this show one more
15 example of Adolf Hitler intervening on whatever scale to
16 prevent ugly things happening to Jews of a particular
17 value, if I can put it like that?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is a very small scale. He mentions I think we
19 have got one Jew, we kept one Jew in Vienna and another in
20 photography because they have things that we want. So it
21 is on a very small scale. I do not think anybody has ever
22 disputed that there were individual exceptions.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: This invites one further question which will make sense of
24 this clip at this point. Have you seen documents of this
25 quality, in other words, direct, non-hearsay documents, in
26 the other sense, Adolf Hitler saying: “Kill this
. P-200
1 researcher, get rid of him, he is a Jew. I don’t want him
2 around the place. Liquidate that train load of Jews”, in
3 other words, the exact opposite of these documents?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, I see, Hitler, as it were, commanding in writing the
5 killing of individual Jews.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, just documents of this quality with specific,
7 explicit, unchallenged authenticity, documents of
8 integrity, but just saying exactly the same kind of thing
9 but with a minus sign instead of a plus sign, if I can put
10 it like that?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in such a precise way referring to individuals, but of
12 course there is a large quantity of evidence from the
13 table talk of Goebbels’ diaries and other places which
14 attests to Hitler’s murderous intentions and policies and
15 views towards the Jews, his murderous anti-Semitism.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: You will have noticed that I have left the table talk out
17 of this particular clip because they can be taken one way
18 or the other depending on frequently and how you translate
19 them. So I thought we would just pick on specific
20 documents and verbatim transcripts and intercept signals.
21 My Lord, I have come to the end of today’s
22 matter.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, thank you very much. 10.30 tomorrow.
24 < (The witness stood down).
25 (The court adjourned until the following day)
26
. P-201