Day 22 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 Thursday, 17th 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-TWO
26
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Part II: Professor Richard Evans’ Cross-Examination by David Irving continued, Morning Session (2.1-108.24)
Section 2.1 to 28.11
1 <Day 22.
2 (10.35 a.m.) Thursday, 17th February 2000.
3 < Professor Evans, recalled.
4 < Cross-Examined by Mr Irving, continued.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
6 MR IRVING: May it please the court. My apologies for this
7 late start.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is quite all right.
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, today we will certainly advance to the end
10 of 1942 and I will certainly finish on Monday.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
12 MR IRVING: So that is the target that I have set. Professor
13 Evans, good morning.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Good morning.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you please go to page 306 of your report? If we
16 could just before that go briefly to page 302 on paragraph
17 4? It is a minor point but we will take in our stride.
18 You criticise on line 4 of paragraph 4 that “Irving all
19 too often provides inaccurate references or no source
20 references at all”.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, on the facing page on the bottom you have quoted
23 three documents from the Public Records Office, Foreign
24 Office, archives?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you find those yourself or were they from my discovery
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1 or from my —-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: These were found by one of my researchers in the Public
3 Record Office.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the Public Record Office.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where there are documents that I found in your discovery,
6 I have said so.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they made no use of the identical documents in my
8 discovery provided to your solicitors then or of the
9 reference numbers that I gave in the footnotes of my
10 books?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, we went straight to the Public Record Office.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: How did they know which of these tens of thousands of
13 files to look in if it was not from the source references
14 I gave in the book?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That was, I presume, how we knew.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: We now advance to page 306. You, of course, have strong
17 criticism —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If I may just add to that, that I think these concern
19 British Ambassadorial reports, that is right, and I note
20 at the top of page 301 that you footnote those reports.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, thank you. In other words, I give sufficient
22 references for you and your research to find documents
23 like that?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In some instances, yes, in some instances you do not.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, well, we will come to those instances later on. I do
26 not think it is enormously important, but one or two I am
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1 going to pick off like a sniper. You have general
2 criticism of a lady called Ingrid Weckert. You consider
3 that her work is anti-semitic and that she is a neo-Nazi,
4 and these are reasons why one should not use her, is that
5 right?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: She is not a serious historian. Her work is anti-semitic
7 propaganda.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to labour the point, but we had a discussion
9 several days ago, you may remember, in which I asked you
10 do revisionists ever turn up anything useful? Do they
11 ever do any useful research or would you totally ignore
12 the body of evidence the revisionists provide?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would ignore it unless —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Ignore it?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — I mean, unless you count yourself as a revisionist.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: This was going to be my — well anticipated. Do you
17 consider me to be a revisionist whom you would ignore the
18 work I do?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what you call yourself. I mean, I have said
20 repeatedly that you have turned up in the course of your
21 career a number of documents of varying value, but some
22 are valuable.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are slightly missing the point on Ingrid
24 Weckert, are we not? I think the point that Professor
25 Evans makes (and you may want to deal with this) is that
26 she is, as he describes her, not a serious historian but
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1 an anti-semitic propagandist and you cite her seven times
2 in, is it Goebbels — yes, Goebbels.
3 MR IRVING: My Lord everyone is anticipating very well what
4 I am about to ask this morning.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Except me.
6 MR IRVING: I was going to get on to this. At the beginning of
7 paragraph 6 on page 306, you tend to talk a great deal
8 about the book by Ingrid Weckert?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now, why do you do this? Is there any evidence at all
11 that I have had the book or I that I have used the book or
12 that I have relied on the book?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, there is.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is this book then?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is a — in a number of my footnotes —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you referring to footnote 162?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 154 and 160.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that a book?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And 158 and 162, and I understand that these are articles
22 which were put together then to make a book.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You reference the actual book on footnote 159, is that
24 right?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any evidence whatsoever that I have had that book
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1 or used that book or relied on that book in any degree?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, because in footnote — I mean, you are really
3 splitting hairs here, Mr Irving —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, I am talking about your paragraph No. 6.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you will allow me to answer the question, please? It
6 is only two minutes into this and you are already
7 interrupting me, Mr Irving. As I have said, you have in
8 your discovery, in the documents you made available to the
9 Defence, some articles by Ingrid Weckert with pencil
10 margin lines, presumably by yourself. These articles went
11 together to form a book, though that, I mean, the articles
12 in the book are, essentially, the same thing.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think it would be useful if we, therefore, have a look
14 at this article that I am supposed to have done with the
15 alleged pencil lines on it. It is in bundle H1 (vi). Do
16 you have that?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not have that here.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you do, Mr Irving, can I be clear why
19 we are doing this? Is it to show that she is not an
20 anti-Semitic propagandist?
21 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, it is because I have repeatedly been
22 accused in this report of relying on an inaccurate book
23 and of drawing pencil marks in an article to indicate that
24 I have relied on the article. First of all, we are
25 dealing with the book. I have asked him to say, is there
26 any evidence at all that I have even had the book in my
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1 possession and, of course, there is not. So everything he
2 says about the book is totally irrelevant.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, Mr Irving. I have already explained twice why
4 it is not irrelevant.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He says, Mr Irving — he may be wrong, but
6 what he says is that the articles you do quote or cite are
7 really regurgitated in the book. Is that what you are
8 saying, Professor Evans? I do not know whether it is
9 right or wrong.
10 MR IRVING: Can I draw your attention —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, not simply regurgitated.
12 MR IRVING: Can I draw your Lordship’s attention to footnote
13 160 which is one typical example where the witness says:
14 “The testimony of Naumann, discussed later in this
15 Report, is taken over by Irving from Weckert, but only
16 mentioned in her book”.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in the two articles by her which he has included in
18 his discovery.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But this is also, Mr Irving, I mean, in your account of
21 the Reichskristallnacht, you have concealed where you get
22 your material from. You cite simply “the author Ingrid
23 Weckert” or “Ingrid Wecker” without giving a precise
24 reference to where your material comes from. If one looks
25 at some of the more extraordinary assertions you make in
26 your account of the Reichskristallnacht, they occur in
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1 Ingrid Weckert’s work and it is a fair inference that you
2 have derived from her.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have stated specifically —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not saying that you take over all of her
5 extraordinary ideas, but you take over some.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: To cut the matter short, can we accept, can we agree that
7 you now accept that I have not used her book?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you cannot.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He has just said the opposite.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already explained three times that the articles are
11 substantially the same as the book.
12 MR IRVING: But you criticise me for what is in her book and
13 I have asked you to agree that I have never had her book?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us have a look at some —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: This should be a matter briefly disposed of.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — let us have a look at some of the ideas. I mean, this
17 is all extremely vague at the moment.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: First of all, can you point to the pencil lines on the
19 article to which you refer?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right, well, can you refer me to the page, please?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is page 646 of bundle H1 (vi).
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 600 and?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: 46. That is where it begins I believe. H.
24 MR RAMPTON: It may be your Lordship will find it in L2.
25 MR IRVING: H1 (vi) is the copy that I have used.
26 MR RAMPTON: Yes. That may be, but what is it called?
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1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is Kristallnacht 1938, the great anti-German
2 spectacle, and this may be taken directly from the journal
3 and not —-
4 MR RAMPTON: I do not know. Your Lordship will find it in L2
5 at tab 6.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
7 MR RAMPTON: Without the pencil marks, I think.
8 MR IRVING: Without pencil marks?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Without pencil marks.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the point of putting in a footnote 162, see the
11 pencil lines, if we cannot see the pencil lines?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You deny that there are pencil lines, Mr Irving.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am asking you to show them to us.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have the original copy, then, please?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I have just given you the reference. It is H1(vi) 646.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, the original.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we have now established that I did not use the book?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Mr Irving.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have not established that.
20 MR IRVING: I am not getting a clear answer from the witness,
21 my Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure what it is I am looking at in
23 L2. Is this extract from the book or one of the articles?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an article.
25 MR IRVING: It is not the reference I gave. The reference
26 I gave was H1 (vi) 646, which is the way the documents
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1 were given to me?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the same.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I am bound to say I do not really
4 find this terribly helpful. The nub of the criticism,
5 I will say it again, is that you have used and cited as a
6 source for events succeeding Kristallnacht a lady who is
7 alleged by this witness to be worthless as a historian and
8 an anti-Semite. You have various answers to that. Either
9 you can say I think she is a serious historian and you can
10 put to the witness why, or you can say that the material
11 you cited has no signs of any anti-Semitism, but really
12 burrowing through the documents to see whether there are
13 pencil sidenotes on an article seems to me to be a waste
14 of time.
15 MR RAMPTON: I have the original discovery copy and it has lots
16 of pencil marks on it, or what appear to be copies of
17 pencil marks, to be exact.
18 MR IRVING: Can I take you to the little bundle of documents?
19 We will jump several stages in this case, my Lord.
20 Towards the end of the little bundle of documents probably
21 on the second page —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, you will have to tell me which little bundle, Mr
23 Irving. I have plenty here.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: The one I gave you this morning.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me try and find it. Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: About two pages from the end, is that a letter from me to
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1 somebody called Mrs Weckert dated June 3rd 1979?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry. I wonder if I am looking at the
4 wrong thing?
5 MR IRVING: It is two pages from the end of that little bundle,
6 my Lord.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it has found its way here. It
8 does not appear in my clip, at any rate not two pages from
9 the end?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is the one with 693 in the top right hand corner.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the 693 indicate that that letter was in my
12 discovery?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am sure it does.
14 MR IRVING: Am I replying in that letter to a sehr ausfuhrliche
15 Darstellung which this lady has sent to me?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am thanking her for a very —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Extensive.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Extensive description.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that this was a description of the events
22 of the Kristallnacht as she has researched it up to that
23 point?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I accept that that is her tendentious account of the
25 Reichskristallnacht.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very well. Will you look in the second paragraph and see
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1 that I make criticisms already of her account and suggest
2 that I am not going to go along with everything that she
3 writes? You cannot just dismiss the report of the SA
4 Group — do I write that?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You write that, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: This will certainly interest you most of all? I also
7 refer to the diary of von Hassell, the diary of Grosfort
8 and other contemporary sources?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, Mr Irving. As I have already said, I do not say that
10 you take over all her ideas. You do not, for example,
11 depict, as she does, the pogrom of the Reichskristallnacht
12 as devised and put forward by Zionists in order to cast
13 opprobrium on the Nazi regime and cause it to fall. Even
14 you have some scruples, Mr Irving.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is possible that an amateur historian like Ingrid Weckert
16 will succeed by her obsessive diligence in turning up
17 items, or documents, or conversations with people that she
18 conducted, that would be use to the general body of
19 historical opinion?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would not regard her as an amateur historian, Mr Irving.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: An amateur writer, an amateur chronicler?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Answer the thrust of the question, Professor
23 Evans.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is always a possibility, yes, of course, that anyone
25 can do that.
26 MR IRVING: Is this the kind of correspondence you would expect
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1 to see between one writer and another where one writer is
2 saying, “I found this kind of thing”, and the other writer
3 writes back and says, “well, I think you got this right
4 but you got that wrong, here are some documents that
5 I have got” — does this go on?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not said that you take over all her ideas, or that
7 you agree with absolutely everything she says. The fact
8 remains, Mr Irving, that in your accounts of the
9 Reichskristallnacht some years later than 1979, and after
10 she had published her work in the course of the 1980s, you
11 do adopt a number of her ideas.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen the lengthy Darstellung that she sent me?
13 It was in the discovery.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We used her book and her —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have used her book?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Wait a minute, and the articles with the pencil lines in
17 the margin.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have used her articles, but have you seen the lengthy
19 typescript letter she sent me with all the details of the
20 research that she had done?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have not used that in the report, Mr Irving. We have
22 used her — this is not a report about Frau Weckert and
23 her works.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: But quite a lot of it is about her, is it not?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The report is about you, and your use of her work. There
26 are one, two, three, four, five, about half a dozen pages
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1 here about your reliance on aspects of her work rather
2 than on your own research.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: The inference you are giving in your report — I am going
4 it move on very shortly from this — is that I have
5 relied on her book. You go in great detail into her
6 book. You say that her book has been black listed by the
7 Germans. It has been put on the censorship list, has it?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is illegal to sell or lend it to any person under the
9 age of 18 because it is regarded by the authorities as an
10 anti-semitic work which is liable to corrupt young minds,
11 and also shows no evidence of even minimal attempts at
12 truthfulness and objectivity. Let me say once again,
13 Mr Irving, that what I demonstrate in my report is that
14 you have taken some, although not all, of Ingrid Weckert’s
15 ideas from her writings, from her articles, which then
16 were reprinted and put together as the book.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you have not made no reference at all to the fact that
18 I had from her a lengthy special Darstellung which she
19 wrote at my request and which has no reference to her
20 book, which is the thing that has been banned and on which
21 I pass critical comment?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Are you claiming that this is entirely different from the
23 book and the articles, it says completely things and that
24 that is what you use in your book, Mr Irving? I do not
25 think so.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the corner of the world where you come from, Professor
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1 Evans, do you agree with the censoring of books,
2 blacklisting of books?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think we need to get into that.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is an entirely different matter.
5 MR IRVING: Why did you mention it then in this report?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because the German authorities have investigated her work
7 and decided after the investigation that it is
8 anti-semitic, corrupting and shows no evidence of even
9 minimal attempts at truthfulness or objectivity.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: As you said earlier, have we anything—-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What they do as a result of that is a matter for them.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have we anything to learn from Germany in this last
13 century about freedom of speech?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that question helps, Mr
15 Irving.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I take that as a rhetorical question, Mr Irving.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes. Leave me to deal with the question.
18 MR IRVING: In paragraph 10 on page 308 you object to the fact
19 that I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date.
20 What on earth is wrong with that?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, where is this?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: In paragraph 10 on page 308. You say he unilaterally
23 alters the date of arrival of Goebbels back in Berlin.
24 I have corrected a wrong date to a correct date. What is
25 wrong with that?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just read back here. I am afraid this might
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1 require —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, if this is a point that you
3 do not really place much reliance on, I think I would say
4 so.
5 MR IRVING: Again it is an allegation that I have relied on the
6 book, and the wrong date in the book. In fact, of course,
7 I have relied on the correct date from other sources.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It does appear to me, Mr Irving, that whether
9 you actually relied on the book is, in a sense, a bit of a
10 side issue. Even if you have not, the criticism that is
11 made of you, and you have not really addressed it, is that
12 you are content to cite a source who Professor Evans says
13 is anti-semitic and not a worth while source for a
14 reputable historian to use.
15 MR IRVING: Let me address that point now, my Lord, by way of a
16 response to your Lordship. This is to say that there may
17 be some historians with a political bent who will
18 disregard entirely evidence coming from people of whose
19 politics they disprove. If we were to do that with all
20 sources, of course, we would be left without a very large
21 body of historical documentation, for example, the works
22 of all the Nazi war criminals, somebody like Rudolf Hoess,
23 Kommandant of Auschwitz, who clearly was not very
24 pro-Semitic, to disregard the writings as somebody on the
25 basis of the fact that they have expressed anti-semitic
26 views, or racist views, or any other views of which the
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1 researcher personally disapproves, is a very poor
2 criterion for selectivity of documentary materials, in my
3 submission, my Lord.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. Would you like to comment very
5 briefly on that? Turn that into a question, if you see
6 what I mean, and give your answer.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think anybody suggested that Rudolf Hoess was an
8 historian.
9 MR IRVING: Very well, if that is your answer. Now will you go
10 down to page 309 and the justification for my having dealt
11 with that previous matter at such length, my Lord, is the
12 first line of paragraph 1, “another instance of Irving’s
13 poor scholarship is”. In other words, you are saying that
14 all the aforegoing is evidence of my poor scholarship?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Although you now admit that I did not use the book, I have
17 not got the book?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do we have to go over this all over again, Mr Irving? I
19 have already given my answer about five times to that.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think I have made my point. Page 312, line 6 of your
21 report?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I necessarily have to leap forward onto little
24 mountain peaks like this, because otherwise we will get
25 bogged down in the minefield.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As long as they are mountain peaks. You also
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1 must explain to me in what context if you go to the middle
2 of a paragraph. We are on now the testimony of
3 Shirmeister and Fritsche.
4 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you objected to the fact that
5 I have mentioned the figure of 91 deaths in the
6 Reichskristallnacht in the previous paragraphs, or are you
7 going to insist that we look for the actual references?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is not a very important point, Mr Irving.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you allow me to decide what is important?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Please, I think I am entitled to say what points in
11 my report I regard as important, and what I do not regard
12 as important. You may disagree with that. That is
13 another matter. But I am perfectly entitled to say that.
14 This is not a particularly important point —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree you spent an entire page describing this?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Will let me speak, please, Mr Irving? I am getting very
17 fed up with these constant interruptions. I will read
18 this out, OK?
19 “In the War Path, published in 1978, Irving
20 gave the official figure of 91 killed, arrived at by the
21 Nazis themselves. Of course, this figure is still far too
22 low, and does not account for suicides, of which there
23 were 680 by Jews during or shortly after the pogrom in
24 Vienna alone. Others were killed after their transport to
25 the concentration camps. However, many other historians
26 have quoted the figure of 91 deaths, and Irving’s account
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1 in 1978 at least gives some insight into what happened
2 during the pogrom”.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you please now stop? That is all we need?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is intended to comment relatively favourably, or to
5 sort of find some redeeming features in the account you
6 gave in 1978. It is not a very important criticism.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say it is not an important criticism. You devote an
8 entire paragraph, an entire page, to the suggestion that
9 my entire portrayal is designed to diminish the suffering
10 of the Jews. You pick on the figure of 91 and it turns
11 out many other historians have quoted precisely the same
12 figure.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, let us read on a bit, shall we?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just read on, Mr Irving. Let me try and get
15 some sort of sense into this. If you read that page, I do
16 not think Professor Evans is criticising your use of the
17 figure of 91. What I think he is saying is (and he is
18 being critical here) that after you used that figure in
19 ‘The Warpath’, you then reduced it when you came to
20 publish your book on Goebbels. Now, I take that to be the
21 gist of the criticism. It is probably not the most
22 important criticism made, but that is the criticism. So
23 let us address that rather than something that is not
24 being criticised.
25 MR IRVING: I will address it briefly because I do not think it
26 is a just criticism. Are you suggesting that in the book
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1 on Goebbels I left the final death roll at 35?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, in the book on Goring published in ’89, the book on
3 Goebbels ’96, you cite a figure of 35 or 36 basing it on
4 an early incomplete report by Heydrich.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are suggesting that I left it at that figure?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And I cite Goring page 237, if you want to have a look at
7 that?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, show him the passage where you
9 bump the figure up again.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, you are one who has brought this matter up
11 and I am not prepared to answer that at short notice, but
12 I will look into it and I will bring the figure and the
13 source material out.
14 The point that I was making with that is that on
15 several previous occasions he has criticised my figure of
16 91 in the Goebbels book, and here he says, “Well, lots of
17 other historians have had the same figure”?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And my point, Mr Irving, as his Lordship has quite
19 correctly said, that reduce the figures to 35 or 36 in
20 your later work.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 309?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Going back?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Do you rely on the testimony of Schirmeister and
24 Fritzsche and the fact that page numbers and dates are
25 wrong as being one more instance of David Irving’s poor
26 scholarship?
. P-20
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, let me read that paragraph. You give a footnote on
2 page 281 of Goebbels.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: I summarise it for you? Are you suggesting that I got the
4 dates wrong of the testimony and the pagination wrong
5 which caused your researchers some difficulty?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is one of the tiniest points I would
7 have thought in the entire report that Professor Evans has
8 —-
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, it is a barrage of tiny points. It is
10 death by a thousand cuts. I am picking on some of them
11 which I can with relative ease amend the damage.
12 MR RAMPTON: Can I intervene because that reflects on something
13 I raised yesterday. I am very concerned about this
14 because it put me in a difficulty. We had passed through
15 Reichskristallnacht yesterday, I would have thought.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So did I.
17 MR RAMPTON: We have now come back to it for what I might call
18 pinpricks. One huge section, major section, of Professor
19 Evans’ of Mr Irving’s treatment of Reichskristallnacht was
20 the Heydrich telex at 1.28 and we have not touched on it.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have said just now — I am trying to
22 guide you, Mr Irving — that you were concentrating on the
23 mountain peaks. Absolutely right. That is what you must
24 do. Professor Evans has taken some what I agree are
25 pretty tiny points, but you must not forget about the
26 mountain peaks altogether. I mean, the Heydrich telex is
. P-21
1 a crucial part of the criticism that is made of your
2 rendering of the accounts of Kristallnacht. I think
3 Mr Rampton is right and I think I am right in saying that
4 you have not really challenged that part of the report.
5 MR IRVING: I can deal with the Heydrich telex in two lines,
6 quite simply by pointing to the 2.56 telegram that came
7 subsequently.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry?
9 MR IRVING: By pointing to the 2.56 document issued by the
10 officer Rudolf Hess which came subsequent to that which
11 clarifies that matter.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What do you mean, it clarifies?
13 MR IRVING: I mean which renders the 1.20 telex, in my view, of
14 much less significance.
15 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not a question of history, my Lord. It
16 is the question of how it is written by Mr Irving. I am
17 looking at the bottom of page 276 of Goebbels and I see
18 what Mr Irving wrote about it. Then if I look at the
19 actual document, I think I am looking at two completely
20 different things. That is the criticism made by —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the criticism Professor Evans makes.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Mr Irving has not even touched on it. Maybe
23 he accepts it as being a fair criticism. That is what
24 I need to know.
25 MR IRVING: Maybe I find these —-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, there are two points here and they
. P-22
1 are separate points. One is whether you have accurately
2 reported what the telex or the message or the order or
3 whatever it was said, and the second point is whether it
4 matters one way or another. I quite understand you say
5 you can forget about it because things moved on an hour
6 and a half later.
7 MR IRVING: Am I right in understanding that if I do not
8 challenge or traverse something here in cross-examination,
9 then it could be taken as accepted?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, the mountain peaks, yes. You cannot
11 chase every single tiny point, and I would not dream of
12 criticising you for not doing so.
13 MR IRVING: To be accused of poor scholarship, my Lord, is not
14 a tiny point.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but what I would be critical
16 of is if you did not pick up in cross-examination major
17 criticisms. It is terribly easy to see what the major
18 criticisms are — at least I believe it is.
19 MR IRVING: We will come to them, and I am not aided by the
20 lengthy discourses which are caused by the very frequent
21 interruptions by Mr Rampton.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think they are very frequent and if
23 they are justified, then Mr Rampton cannot be criticised
24 for making them.
25 MR RAMPTON: Can I add, while I am on this subject, that is one
26 major criticism which seemed to me to have, I do not know
. P-23
1 what the word is, bypassed a mountain peak. Another one
2 appear to have been bypassed yesterday, and again it puts
3 me in a difficulty because I am bound to say at the end of
4 the case, if these mountain peaks are not tackled, I shall
5 say that Mr Irving has conceded them. Another one was the
6 Himmler log entry for 1st December 1941.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I think Mr Irving must take his own
8 course.
9 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the end, he must cross-examine on what he
11 wants to. I am not going to take anything as conceded
12 because it is not cross-examined to, but I —-
13 MR IRVING: Unless I expressly concede it.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — I think it is right that I should take
15 into account the fact that he has not challenged it.
16 I have to make up my own mind in the end. I do not think
17 I can say that the point goes by default.
18 MR RAMPTON: I am using a shorthand; I would if he were a
19 professional advocate, he is not, but I am bound to say
20 that I will place considerable weight on the fact that he
21 makes no challenge.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I can see why you would.
23 MR IRVING: Of course, they have been extensively dealt with in
24 my cross-examination of me.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think that is a sufficient
26 answer. I said yesterday (and I will say it again) you
. P-24
1 must cross-examine to the mountain peaks if you want to
2 challenge what Professor Evans says but you can do it
3 briefly.
4 MR IRVING: Yes, I shall certainly do so.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just going back, let us use the Heydrich
6 message of 1.20, or whatever it was —-
7 MR IRVING: As an example.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — as an example; if you want to say that
9 what you said about it in Goebbels is entirely accurate
10 and no sensible person can criticise your account of it,
11 you can put that very briefly.
12 MR IRVING: My Lord, the submission that I intend to make on a
13 number of those matters is, apply the following test: if
14 that sentence or that error or that flaw or that
15 misreading be taken out of that book, does it in the
16 slightest alter the thrust or the weight of the
17 arguments?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a very good point, but that is a
19 point for final submissions —-
20 MR IRVING: Yes, and that is why —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — not for cross-examination.
22 MR IRVING: — it may well be that I shall readily concede the
23 points when the time comes.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So be it. That, in a way, rather tallies
25 with what Mr Rampton just said. But you must make a
26 judgment about that, but it is very important you
. P-25
1 understand how I see the important points and what should
2 do if you are going to challenge Professor Evans’
3 criticisms.
4 MR IRVING: My Lord, it is revealing no secrets if I say that
5 in my final speech I shall not be addressing all the
6 issues; I shall be strongly addressing to your Lordship
7 that a number of the issues are of far less moment.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I quite agree.
9 MR IRVING: And that the major issues like poor scholarship,
10 distortion, manipulation, Holocaust denier and so on are
11 the ones to which I shall attend in the final speech.
12 That is why, with your Lordship’s permission, I intend to
13 dwell on matters like poor scholarship in a way that may
14 appear infuriating to you, but I can only pick on the
15 examples that are given in this report.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but I am getting the impression — I am
17 Judge alone, I can say this and I do not have to worry
18 about the Jury — I get the slight impression that you are
19 cherry picking your way through and alighting on some
20 really rather minor points. I mean, the point about
21 Schirmeister and Fritzsche, if I may say so, with respect
22 to Professor Evans, it be could have been omitted from his
23 report without doing any injustice to the Defendants’
24 case.
25 MR IRVING: Let me just ask two brief questions then, my Lord?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.
. P-26
1 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you find criticism with the fact
2 that the pagination of the references to the testimony did
3 not tally?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me read everything I say about this: “Another
5 instance of Irving’s poor scholarship is the footnote
6 reference given on page 281 of Goebbels: ‘Mastermind of
7 the “Third Reich”‘ to back up his claim that ‘Goebbels
8 however would brag that he had proved that the Jews could
9 be eliminated from the economy, whatever Funk said to the
10 contrary’. When we turn to pages 190-1 and 235-7 of
11 volume 17 of the Nuremberg Trials documents, cited by
12 Irving as the location of the ‘Testimony of Schirmeister
13 and Fritzsche, June 28, 1946′ in support of his statement,
14 we find that the reference for pages 190-1 refers to June
15 27 not June 28, that Schirmeister is never mentioned on
16 these pages, and that Fritzsche’s testimony deals with a
17 completely different subject”. I am bound to say this is
18 a very minor I point. I thought it, on balance, worth
19 putting in. I was not advised that it should be taken
20 out, but it really is not an important, not a desperately
21 important, point.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you just one brief question? Are you aware of
23 the fact that there are two parallel editions, one German
24 and one English?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you — well, in order — if you really want to go into
26 this, Mr Irving, we will have to look up both editions and
. P-27
1 have to have copies of both editions of the Nuremberg
2 Trial documents here and a copy of your book, “Goebbels:
3 Master mind of the Third Reich” which I have here.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do we really want to go through this?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Speaking for myself, I do not think I would.
7 I would forget it. This is not going to feature in any
8 conclusions that I come to in this case.
9 MR IRVING: The allegations of poor scholarship, my Lord, rest
10 substantially on these trivial complaints.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept that, Mr Irving.
Section 28.12 to 40.25
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Pages 321 to 322. We are now back in Riga at the
13 shootings. Can I ask you just a brief, simple question to
14 start with? Professor Evans, do you challenge my account
15 of the shootings at Riga, the actual shootings on November
16 30th 1941, and if so, why?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Tell me what your account is, where it is, what you are
18 referring to exactly.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read, in pursuance of your duties as an expert
20 witness, the account I have given of that in various books
21 including Hitler’s War volume 2 — the second edition,
22 rather, and the Goebbels biography?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you point me to one of these, please?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can do that quite quickly.
25 MR IRVING: My problem here, my Lord, is once again the fact
26 that this is not the right witness to ask these questions
. P-28
1 of.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why not?
3 MR IRVING: Because this was certainly the matter to be
4 addressed to the Holocaust witness rather than to this
5 witness, but he has spent a page and a half looking at
6 this episode, and I am just trying to deal with this
7 summarily. Does he accept my account is right?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is a very sensible question to
9 start with actually.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, well, turn to pages 347 and 348 of my report, and
11 there you will see my criticisms.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That should give us the reference too for
13 the …
14 MR IRVING: The manipulation of statistics?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can somebody find us the passage in Hitler’s
17 War? It is not very good on its index.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is also Goebbels, page 645.
19 MR IRVING: Shall we just dwell on the Goebbels one which is a
20 more recent one?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is page 645 or thereabouts.
22 MR IRVING: Yes, the footnotes. (To the witness): Do you
23 suggest, witness, that I have given the wrong overall
24 total for the number of Jews killed in Riga or on this
25 specific day?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: First of all, you say that on 30th November 1941 5,000
. P-29
1 Jews were killed.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Whereas there is a documentation to indicate that 10,000
4 were killed and after the war the court accepted that the
5 number was actually between 13 and 15,000. You then
6 claim, when you are confronted with this evidence, that
7 each ditch into which these unfortunate people were
8 dumped, shot, would have held 1 or 2,000 victims without
9 having any evidence at all about the size of the ditches.
10 That is the first point.
11 Then the second point is that in the main
12 narrative in Goebbels you do not say anything about the
13 second massacre on 8th December. You do, however, as
14 I say, in the footnotes say that 27,800 Jews are executed
15 in Riga, but you then claim that that is possibly an
16 exaggeration.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we take those two points?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And that is — yes.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, take them one by one.
20 MR IRVING: Take them one at a time. So we are now on pages
21 347 and 348?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You say: “Faced with this evidence”, five lines from the
24 bottom, right, of page 347?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Faced with this evidence, Irving offers a further
. P-30
1 argument”. Why do you say “faced with this evidence”?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do you not mention this evidence?
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you find these documents that you referred to earlier
4 in that paragraph in my discovery or are they referenced
5 in my footnotes?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me just have a look. This is the Bruns and then there
7 is the —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The evidence for the figure of 10,600 shot on that day
9 which was a book published in 1989. You have no evidence
10 that I was faced with that evidence, do you?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What you do, what you say is that they will have held 1 or
12 2,000 victims each. What you are aware of, you see, in
13 the second — let us leap to the second account here — is
14 that Einsatzgruppen A reported that a total of 27,800 Jews
15 were executed in Riga, which seems to be a pretty accurate
16 estimate and that is the evidence that you are faced with.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the second part of the question?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And are you saying that you —-
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you object to the fact that I say that this is
20 possibly exaggerated?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, there is this — you say that is possibly
22 exaggerated, yes, you try to cast doubt upon it, and then
23 you mention the size of the ditches without mentioning
24 their depth.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come back to the size of the ditches. You take
26 exception to the fact that I say that 27,800 is possibly
. P-31
1 exaggerated. You are familiar with the historian
2 Ezergailis, the Baltic historian who is, I think we both
3 agree, an expert on this matter?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I cite him in footnote 75.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: And at the end of that paragraph 2 you say that he has
6 arrived at figures of certainly almost 25,000 Jews killed?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: So 27,800 is about 12 per cent more than that, is it not?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The estimates by the court in Hamburg is about 25 to
10 30,000.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is Ezergailis, Andrew Ezergailis, who, as you say, used
12 various methods of calculating the victims arrived also at
13 figures of certainly almost, in other words, less than,
14 25,000 less killed?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, when you saw possibly an exaggeration, you do
16 not mean to suggest to the reader that it might have been
17 a couple of thousand or 2,800 less.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: 12 per cent?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you are casting in your usual, a way that you
20 frequently employ, you are trying to cast a general doubt
21 on these figures. “Possibly an exaggeration” does not
22 mean that it is within that range of possibilities.
23 I think you are trying to suggest it could be a gross
24 exaggeration.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just, I am trying keep an eye on the
26 wood rather than looking at the trees. The first
. P-32
1 criticism, if I remember what you said a few minutes ago,
2 was that if anyone just read the text in Goebbels, he
3 would get the impression that there were only 5,000
4 killed. Am I right so far?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And that is page 379 of the text?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I cannot find a reference to 5,000. I can find a
9 reference to 4,000.
10 MR RAMPTON: It is 1,000 plus 4?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 1 plus 4. 1,000 from Berlin and 4,000 from Riga.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you saying — Mr Irving will, no doubt,
13 ask you a question if you are wrong about it — that there
14 is no reference in the text to any more Jews having been
15 shot at Riga than the 5,000?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
17 MR IRVING: But the reference is there in the end notes at the
18 back to 27,800, is that right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, where you frequently put embarrassing things in
20 footnotes hoping, no doubt, that the common reader will
21 not consult them.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would I put footnotes in a book if I hoped that the
23 reader would not consult them? Would it not just be
24 simpler not to put them in at all?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is a matter of what strategy you are adopting to
26 try to make your work plausible to those, that minority of
. P-33
1 readers who will consult the footnotes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which of us has the minority of readers? Me with my best
3 selling books or you with the 10,000?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not what I meant.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The suggestion that I put footnotes in a book in the hope
6 that nobody will read them is rather implausible, is it
7 not?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I think that the average reader does not consult the
9 footnotes. You are addressing yourself to two audiences,
10 as I think you yourself said under cross-examination. You
11 are addressing yourself to the general reader, but also to
12 people who have a more specialized knowledge.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that if you are writing a book which has a
14 strong chronological flow and you are dealing with an
15 episode that in happened in November, it would be
16 disruptive to the reader to be told about things at the
17 end of December and that it, therefore, makes sense to put
18 in footnotes the overall result of this kind of murder
19 operation?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not the end of December, Mr Irving. It is 8th
21 December. That is a week later.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but would you accept that it is confusing for —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not a huge chronological gap.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a reader to be —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I will not accept it. I think you have a duty to give
26 an accurate estimate of the numbers killed, and not to
. P-34
1 partly underestimate it and then hide the actual final
2 number in a footnote and cast doubt on it in a footnote.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are there better ways of hiding things than printing
4 things in books; you can hide them by just dropping on the
5 floor, like the Schlegelberger document?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have asked that question and I
7 think you have got the answer.
8 MR IRVING: I have, my Lord, and I will I move on now to the
9 pits.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, would you, because I have not quite got
11 the picture on that.
12 MR IRVING: Do you agree that General Bruns in his gripping and
13 harrowing account of the mass shootings that occurred on
14 November 30th 1941 — you remember the girl with the flame
15 red dress that he had in his mind’s eye just before she
16 was shot? Do you agree that he describes that there were
17 two or three pits of a certain length and a certain
18 width.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: And can we not calculate from that in a rough — can we
21 not do a check sum to work out the feasibility of numbers
22 of bodies that would fit into those pits?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you cannot, unless you know the depth.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: How deep can a pit be dug, do you think?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh, goodness! I mean, any depth. I would not want to
26 make an estimate, I mean.
. P-35
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you accept that I am expert in digging pits, having
2 worked in my early years as a student as a navvi for many
3 years in order to finance my way through university?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, come on. You can dig a pit as
5 deep as you have got the energy to dig it.
6 MR IRVING: My Lord, that is a very hazardous operation if you
7 are standing at the bottom of the pit and you dig it
8 without any kind of shoring. I would now draw your
9 Lordship’s attention to one such pit which is photographed
10 in the little bundle I gave you. It is the last item in
11 the bundle. It provides a useful check point for the
12 depth that these pits go when they are only three metres
13 wide.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And you are saying, are you, Mr Irving, that this is one
15 of the pits in Riga? This is an authenticated photograph
16 of one of them?
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is, well, as you can tell by the British soldier
18 standing around with machine guns, this is probably
19 Bergen-Belsen or Buchenwald, where the victims of Nazi
20 atrocities are being buried by some of the perpetrators.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And what does that tell us about the pits in Riga,
22 Mr Irving?
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, my Lord. You do not have the photograph?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think maybe I am missing a few pages off
25 the back of this little clip.
26 MR IRVING: This is the photograph from my collection of
. P-36
1 original photographs that I have assembled over the years
2 of Nazi atrocities.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the question?
4 MR IRVING: Yes. Do you have the photograph in front of you?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I will take it out again.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you give a rough estimate as to how wide and probably
7 how long that pit or, at any rate, how wide the pit is?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, I am not — this is not one of the pits at
9 Riga. This is no relevance whatsoever to the matter we
10 are dealing with.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is relevant to the matter of how deep you can dig a pit
12 in circumstances like this —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You can dig pit any depth you like, Mr Irving.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that your expert evidence as a pit digger or can we
15 apply some common sense?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As it happens, I have been having my house reconstructed,
17 Mr Irving, recently —-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is as may be.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — and people have been digging pits and I have watched
20 them, so I do know something about digging pits.
21 MR IRVING: Can I ask my Lord, did your Lordship consider that
22 it is possible now using that photograph to make some
23 basic assumptions about the kind of pits and graves that
24 were dug and whether they had layers of soil on top of
25 them and…
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put your case briefly for saying that the
. P-37
1 pits could have contained — well, put your case briefly.
2 MR IRVING: Would you agree, as General Bruns describes, the
3 ditch was 24 yards long and 3 metres wide, and if it was 2
4 metres deep, that would be 144 cubic metres?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 25 metres long and 3 metres wide? No, I do not, no. They
6 could have dug it any depth they wanted to.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will ignore that remark for the moment and continue
8 with this calculation, please. Will you agree that if the
9 pit is 25 by 3 by 2 metres deep, for an example, it would
10 be 150 cubic metres?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not going to challenge your mathematics, Mr Irving,
12 but it really is not a very relevant question. I do not
13 know how deep these pits.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him continue. I see which way he is
15 going. That is on the assumption it is 2 metres deep, the
16 arithmetic is right.
17 MR IRVING: Yes. Would you agree that the bodies were not left
18 exposed, that there was a certain amount of back fill done
19 afterwards?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, if you wish.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in other words, 2 metres of this hypothetical pit
22 would not be used. But let us assume that it was used and
23 let us assume that the walls went straight down, they did
24 not slope inwards, as you can see in the photograph which
25 is before you, so there we would have 150 cubic metres,
26 and you can get about 10 bodies to a cubic metre if you do
. P-38
1 a calculation with which I will not bother you. So how
2 many bodies would be in that pit, just on that rough order
3 of magnitude?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You say this all in your footnote, “It would have held 1
5 or 2,000 victims each”, that is what you say, but it is
6 entirely hypothetical. There is a number of “ifs” in that
7 question —-
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just one “if”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — if that is the question you were asking. It is
10 entirely hypothetical. We do not know how deep this pit
11 was.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So if it was 2 metres deep and if it had straight sides
13 and if there was no back fill —-
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is three “ifs”, Mr Irving.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: — would you stop interrupting — you would get 1,500
16 bodies into that pit, is that right?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So if it was another metre deep, you would get another 750
19 in, so you can do an order of magnitude calculation, can
20 you?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the basis of those four “ifs”, yes, you can do any
22 calculation you like.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you can do a ball park calculation of two or three pits
24 of that kind of size and magnitude would hold of the order
25 of, say, three to 7,000 bodies?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, on the basis of those four hypotheticals, yes.
. P-39
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you bother to do such a check sum before you
2 criticised me?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did not know how deep the pits were, Mr Irving. My
4 criticism is that there is no evidence of the depth of the
5 pits. You do not provide any. You simply make all these
6 if, if, if assumptions and then somehow treat them as
7 facts.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you accept that when you are writing history and you
9 cannot get all these documents on hand, occasionally you
10 have to make common sense calculations and deductions?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is not common sense, Mr Irving. This is a systematic
12 attempt to undermine the figure given of 27,800 Jews,
13 suggesting that this is too large. This is typical of
14 your minimisation of the statistics of the numbers of Jews
15 killed in any number of instances.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. On to the next point, Mr Irving. I
17 think we have exhausted that.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, I just say, you do accept that I had a
19 document which stated the figure of 5,000, and that it is
20 within the order of magnitude that the pits would allow?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: When you write books, Professor, just as an after thought,
23 do you ever bother to look at photographic evidence like
24 that?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I look at photographic evidence, yes.
Section 40.26 to 78.18
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, we now come to the Himmler telephone notes. We
. P-40
1 have some brief after thoughts. November 30th and
2 December 1st. We are on page 351 —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If I can just tidy my desk?
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: While you are tidying, I can ask you, do you remember
5 yesterday saying that we had, of course, no evidence
6 whatsoever that Himmler telephoned Heydrich. It could
7 easily have been the other way round, could it not?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is a point you yourself made, Mr Irving,
9 about this telephone log. It does not say who telephoned
10 whom.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was this, in fact, the point you made because I am asking
12 the questions.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it matter? Does it matter in the
14 slightest? I mean, tell me if it does.
15 MR IRVING: Will you agree that on page 351 you on more than
16 one occasion state, as a matter of fact, that Himmler
17 telephoned Heydrich?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is an after thought I had on reconsidering this,
19 re-reading this suddenly. As a result of what you
20 yourself said, and you pointed out that one did not know
21 who was phoning whom and I took that on board.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you explain very briefly why it matters
23 one way or the other?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is additional uncertainty. The point at issue here, my
25 Lord, as you know, is that Mr Irving has on a number of
26 occasions claimed that this is a Hitler order given by
. P-41
1 Hitler to Himmler to transmit then to Heydrich and that
2 —-
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Well, you have got to get the link between Hitler and
4 Himmler.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is the link between Hitler and Himmler which has not
6 been established, and this is a phone log in which there
7 is some uncertainty which I think a responsible historian
8 has to point out. That is all.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, no, I follow why it could be of some
10 marginal significance.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not hugely important.
12 MR IRVING: You say that this is not hugely important?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The vital question is the link between Hitler and Himmler,
14 plus, of course, your misrepresentation in a number of
15 your publications of the contents of the message.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that this document is a significant
17 document or is it totally unimportant in the flow of
18 things?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is a significant document.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a significant document. Who first found it and who
21 first used it? Was it a revisionist?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think you described yourself as a revisionist
23 then, Mr Irving.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it a historian on whom you have generally looked down
25 throughout the last few days?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, I have not at any point disputed the fact that
. P-42
1 you have discovered large numbers of documents.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did anybody in the world bother to read those telephone
3 notes before I did?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, everybody accepts you deserve
5 credit for not only uncovering this document but a great
6 many others as well?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is what you do with them that is the problem.
8 MR IRVING: You mean I make use of them? Is that is the
9 problem?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, you misuse them .
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us get to the point.
12 MR IRVING: Will you look at the Peter Witte book, the Himmler
13 diaries?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a copy, please?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: If mine has not been nicked, then I will lend you mine.
16 Here we are. I say that with—-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Will you not need it yourself?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I know most of these documents off by heart.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Rampton, I think Mr Irving should have a copy, really.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: April 20th 1942.
21 MR RAMPTON: If you do not mind, I will keep mine.
22 MR IRVING: April 20th 1942.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where are we?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a horribly expensive book. It is over £100, I
25 believe.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That explains why I do not have one, does it?
. P-43
1 MR IRVING: April 20th 1942. While you are looking for it,
2 what significance did the date of April 20th have?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is Hitler’s birthday.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Adolf Hitler’s birth date. If Himmler was visiting Hitler
5 on that occasion, as he was, if he was at the Wolfschanze,
6 Hitler’s headquarters, is it likely he would have said
7 more than just, “happy birthday Mein Fuhrer, many happy
8 returns”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It says here that he goes to see Hitler at 12.30 and at
10 half past one he brings him the congratulations of the
11 SS. Then at half past two he has a kind of, I guess,
12 birthday lunch.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does he telephone Heydrich on that day?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At 12 o’clock, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is one of the references in that telephone message “keine
16 Vernichtung der Zigeuner”?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes it is.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: What does that translate into English?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “No annihilation of the gypsies”.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does that look like murder in that connection?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Clearly, they have been considering killing the
22 gypsies, but they are not clear about whether all the
23 gypsies should be killed. So he is ordering that they
24 should not be.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not clear? If somebody says “keine Vernichtung der
26 Zigeuner”, that seems pretty clear to me that an order is
. P-44
1 being given that gypsies are not to be killed. Would you
2 agree? If that is the word, “vernichtung”, in that case?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The Nazis of course divided the gypsies into mixed race
4 gypsies, who were the majority, and what they regarded as
5 pure bred gypsies, who were in a small minority, and for
6 reasons of his rather strange interest in racial history,
7 Himmler wanted to keep the pure bred gypsies alive to
8 subject them to investigation.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any indication of those considerations in this
10 telephone call? Is there any reference to pure bred
11 gypsies, or half-bred gypsies, or is it just to gypsies?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, as the footnote explains, 5,000 gypsies had
13 recently, just before this telephone conversation, been
14 killed in the woods in Chelmno, and it quotes an order by
15 Himmler, which is preserved in the Moscow archives, that
16 gypsies who were settled should not be proceeded against.
17 Of course, the fact is that the Nazis did kill very, very
18 large numbers of gypsies in the Second World War in
19 Auschwitz and elsewhere. They are the one racial group,
20 apart from the Jews, who suffered this kinds of genocide.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, although what appears to have been a clear order not
22 to kill the gypsies was issued by somebody at Hitler’s
23 headquarters on April 20th 1942, the Nazis killed large
24 numbers of gypsies?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We do not know how this was followed up, and we do not
26 know precisely which gypsies this referred to.
. P-45
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: The follow up appears to have been that large numbers were
2 killed.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we not wandering miles away? I am sorry
4 to keep interrupting, but we started off on 30th November
5 1941.
6 MR IRVING: We have moved on.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Altogether?
8 MR IRVING: I think so, yes, my Lord. We dealt with it at some
9 length yesterday.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right.
11 MR IRVING: That was an afterthought, as I said. We have now
12 moved on. I do not know if your Lordship considers this
13 item of relevance?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not quite sure where we are going. If
15 you could help me?
16 MR IRVING: This is one of the chain, actually. This document
17 I consider to be one of the chain of Hitler—-
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your argument is that, because there was an
19 order, and you say emanates from Hitler, that the gypsies
20 should not be killed, that indicates a concern also for
21 the Jews? I am not belittling the argument but that is
22 what it is?
23 MR IRVING: It is a high carat, a 22 carat piece of evidence,
24 if I can put it like that, written in the handwriting of
25 the mass murderer himself, Heinrich Himmler, in Hitler’s
26 headquarters, an order from somebody else to him.
. P-46
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, Mr Irving. Can I just quote this diary here?
2 “12 o’clock, telephone with Heydrich. Visit to Greiser,
3 so on, Poles, keine vernichtung der Zigeuner, no
4 annihilation of the gypsies”. That is 12 o’clock. “12.30
5 travel to Hitler’s headquarters, Fuhrerhauptquartier,
6 12.30″. Underneath that there is a line that says “RFSS”,
7 that is the Reichsfuhrer SS, that is Himmler, Mein Fuhrer,
8 with the Fuhrer. So the telephone conversation with
9 Heydrich which says, “keine vernichtung der Zigeuner”,
10 happened half an hour before Himmler even set off to see
11 Hitler.
12 MR IRVING: Pure chance then that this is on that day, April
13 20th, and there is no connection at all therefore in your
14 opinion with Adolf Hitler or the Fuhrer’s headquarters?
15 This is just Himmler suddenly having had a brainstorm,
16 saying, “let us not kill the gypsies”?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yet it happened after all, did it not? They were killed?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As I say, we are not quite sure how long this lasted. If
20 you can trace that up as literature, you can say how long
21 this lasted, which groups it applied to, and so on and so
22 forth. For the moment he is saying, “keine vernichtung
23 der Zigeuner”. It has nothing whatsoever to do with
24 Hitler. He had not seen Hitler at that time. There are
25 plenty of other things that he puts in this which also
26 appear to have nothing at all to do with the date, 20th
. P-47
1 April. “Termine”, for example, visit to Greiser. That
2 has nothing to do with Hitler’s birthday.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you consider it to be a significant entry in the
4 telephone log?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This? “Keine vernichtung der Zigeuner”? Yes, of course.
6 It is very interesting.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen it mentioned by any other historians
8 whatsoever at any time?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not seen any other historian claiming that this is
10 an order by Hitler.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have I got this document, Mr Irving?
12 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship really ought to have a copy of this
13 book.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have a feeling that somewhere the reference
15 —-
16 MR RAMPTON: I copied the relevant pages for 30th November and
17 1st December.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 30th November and the 1st, certainly.
19 MR RAMPTON: Those you have. I have never looked at this
20 before. There was a copy of it produced by Mr Irving at
21 some stage.
22 MR IRVING: This is probably in the Schlegelberger file.
23 MR RAMPTON: And I pointed out at that time that this took
24 place before Himmler had lunch.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I knew I had seen it but, if somebody
26 could give me the reference for it, I would be grateful.
. P-48
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes I will try to find it?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Would you look to borrow this, briefly?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would rather have the reference. Is it
4 J2? I have not got a J2, incidentally.
5 MR RAMPTON: Nor have I.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: These points just will not really get home
7 unless I have got the document. I am sorry, Mr Irving, to
8 interrupt.
9 MR IRVING: I can do it in a very nice way, my Lord, by lending
10 your Lordship the volume of the Himmler diary.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very kind. But in a way I would
12 rather have the actual document in a file that I am going
13 to be keeping, because I am not going to keep the book.
14 MR IRVING: I can have a photocopy of that page made during the
15 luncheon adjournment. That is the actual handwritten
16 text.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I am actually getting close to it. J
18 Yes, I have it. It is J1, tab 3, for the transcript page
19 23.
20 MR IRVING: Would you agree, Professor Evans, that this is an
21 odd way for other historians to write history, cheerily
22 omitting documents which you consider to be significant,
23 or which you agree to be significant?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is cited by, I think, by Zimmerman’s standard
25 work on the gypsies. I have to say that the gypsies,
26 until recently, were not a much studied group of victims
. P-49
1 of the Nazis. Once again, Mr Irving, it is not a problem
2 for me that you made use of this. It is the use that you
3 made, the way you use it.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you referenced this particular item in your report?
5 Can you remember what your criticism of my use of this
6 item is?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am making my criticism now. It is that you are claiming
8 that this is an order from Hitler when it clearly is not.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And, using your common sense, of which you are apparently
10 well endowed, you would not consider there is any
11 connection between the fact that this very unusual order,
12 for which there is no precedent, occurs only on the day of
13 Adolf Hitler’s birthday, when Himmler is at Hitler’s
14 headquarters?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have had that point.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was not at Hitler’s headquarters, Mr Irving.
17 MR IRVING: It is an exact parallel to the November 30th
18 episode then, is it not? Is that right?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was not at Hitler’s headquarters. He went to Hitler’s
20 headquarters after he made the telephone call. It says
21 here in black and white.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this an exact parallel to the November —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So you have just made a completely false claim.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this an exact parallel to the November 30th 1941
25 episode where the telephone call to Heydrich appears to
26 ante-date the visit to Hitler?
. P-50
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not an exact parallel but there are similarities.
2 The 30th November telephone call concerns one particular
3 train load of Jews. That is quite clear.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry to interrupt. I had better have a
5 photocopy from somebody of that page because it obviously
6 has more than I have at the moment.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We are back to 30th November.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
9 MR IRVING: My Lord I will provide you with a photocopy of the
10 facsimile, but also with a typescript copy.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That would be kind.
12 MR IRVING: Because the handwriting is, as we have discovered,
13 sometimes prone to misreading.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, on page 278.
15 MR IRVING: Page 278?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 13.30 Jew transport from Berlin. No liquidation. And
17 then 14.30 to 1600, lunch with the Fuhrer.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can you keep that page roughly open because we are
19 now going to go on to the December 1st item.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, have you misread any words in preparing
22 your expert report for this case?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I hope not, but one can never be entirely sure.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As you have said yourself many times —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: These things happen?
. P-51
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — one always makes errors and one does one’s best to
2 correct them. That is why I sent you an 18 page list of
3 corrections and amendments to my report on 10th January.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that mostly misreadings are quite
5 innocuous and have no serious consequences?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I hope that is true of mine. I do not believe that is
7 true of yours.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you remember The Spectator letter where the omission of
9 the one word “as” totally reversed the meaning of that
10 letter?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have been through that.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think that was my misreading.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are more concerned with the criticisms of
14 you, rather than the criticisms you make of Professor
15 Evans. I understand why you make them, but let us focus
16 on the point. I know the arguments now.
17 MR IRVING: It is a little bit more colour and flourish to the
18 argument about to develop, my Lord. Would you agree that
19 a historian who sits in a book lined cave taking printed
20 books off shelves, like the Himmler diary in front of you,
21 with a nice index and photographs and beautifully bound,
22 is less likely to make reading errors than somebody who
23 uses the handwritten original, what I might call a shirt
24 sleeves historian, who goes into the archives and reads
25 the microfilm? Is the latter, the shirt sleeved
26 historian, more likely, more prone to commit these stupid
. P-52
1 blunders of reading an E for an A, or something like that?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is easier, obviously, to read the printed text
3 than it is to read handwriting. It goes without saying.
4 I have done an enormous amount of reading of handwritten
5 German myself and I know how difficult it is.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Or can be. It depends a lot on the kind of handwriting,
8 of course.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may suggest it, I think probably the
10 best thing to do is to show the witness the script.
11 MR IRVING: We have two or three versions of it.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is only one manuscript version.
13 MR RAMPTON: No. There are two different forms of copy, my
14 Lord.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Show the better one.
16 MR RAMPTON: There is one that Mr Irving produced. I am quite
17 happy for Mr Irving to use the copy that he produced.
18 MR IRVING: I think that would be more fair.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is J1, tab 3, page 14 but I may
20 be wrong.
21 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
22 MR IRVING: We have the actual version I used here.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have the microfilm version.
24 MR RAMPTON: If Mr Irving is going to use his own copy, I would
25 like Professor Evans to have the same copy. No doubt, if
26 it is necessary, I can come back to the better copy, the
. P-53
1 microfilm, in due course in re-examination, if I have to.
2 But, if Mr Irving is going to use his rather worse copy,
3 then I think Professor Evans should have the same one.
4 Professor Evans will need the J file, J1, tab 3, at page
5 14.
6 MR IRVING: We are looking first at the November 30th entry
7 which is Judentransport?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Oh right, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will start with that one.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Then I have not got that here, I am afraid.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is no need to look at the actual wording. We are
12 going to look at the word “transport” very briefly, my
13 Lord.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We all know what the point is.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you point me to exactly where it is.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: J1, tab 3, page 12.
17 MR IRVING: My Lord, I have done a little research on the word
18 “transport” but I am sure Mr Rampton will not begrudge me
19 —-
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Put your question, which I could put for you
21 because I know what it is going to be.
22 MR IRVING: I will give my version of the question which is as
23 follows, Professor Evans.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that the Cassell’s German
26 Dictionary translates the word “transport” only as
. P-54
1 follows: “The German word transport has only these
2 meanings” in the Cassell’s Dictionary and I will give the
3 Langenscheidt one in a moment. The Cassell’s entry has it
4 in this order: “Transport, transportation, carriage,
5 conveyance, transfer, shipment”. So is it actually
6 referring to a vehicle or to a concept?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What date is this dictionary, Mr Irving?
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Cassell’s Dictionary has remained unchanged in this
9 particular one since 1935.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Are you quoting the 1935 edition?
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I spent a lot of money buying them at five year
12 intervals to see if it changed, and they just used a
13 photographic copy the whole way through.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I see a copy, please?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us refer to the Langenscheidt edition?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the witness is entitled to have the
17 contemporary Cassell’s Dictionary shown to him if he wants
18 to see it.
19 MR IRVING: My Lord, the point is, if you are looking at a word
20 without the surrounding context, and you are looking for a
21 translation, you pick the primary meaning. If you then
22 later on learn —-
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. We do not want to overdo this point.
24 You put that the dictionary meaning of “transport”
25 includes as one of the meanings “transportation” and you
26 say that has been the Cassell’s Dictionary definition
. P-55
1 since time immemorial. The witness says he wants to look
2 at the relevant one, which would be the one from the
3 1930s, and I think that is a fair request.
4 MR IRVING: Can I just show him the typed extract I made last
5 night?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it relates to the contemporary Cassell’s
7 Dictionary, yes.
8 MR IRVING: In that case I will just put to the witness this
9 1935 dictionary.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is it Cassell’s?
11 MR IRVING: No. This is now a different one. This is a Butler
12 &Tanner. It is a Routledge Dictionary and unfortunately
13 it is more abbreviated. It does not give the sense that
14 I was looking for in such detail. The point I was trying
15 to make, my Lord, is that it refers to “transportation”
16 rather than “a transport” in the sense of a train.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know what the point is.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Here, of course, it does not.
19 MR IRVING: It just says “transport” which is ambiguous.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Transport conveyance”, transport or conveyance.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Those are the primary meanings.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will have to put it to you to in an “if” form, then, and
24 on Monday bring the photocopy of the original. Professor
25 Evans, if the 1935 or if the contemporary wartime edition
26 of the Cassell’s Dictionary says that the meaning of
. P-56
1 “transport” in English is in this order of priority,
2 “transport, transportation, carriage, conveyance,
3 transfer and shipment”, is it unreasonable to assume, in
4 the absence of any contextual information, that this is
5 referring to a transportation, rather than to a single
6 train load?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is unreasonable, I think, yes, from the context here.
8 “Judentransport aus Berlin. Keine Liquidierung” quite
9 clearly means “the Jew transport from Berlin, no
10 liquidation”. I think it is likely that, had it said, had
11 they meant there should be no liquidation of any
12 transport, train loads of Jews from Berlin, then it would
13 have said something, they would have said so in the
14 plural, transporte, or he would have put down something
15 like people, emigrants, or people who were deported, or
16 whatever. Let us try and remember what it is that you
17 actually wrote in Hitler’s War in 1977.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am trying to narrow this down to a simple matter.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which is that Himmler was summoned to the Wolf’s Lair for
20 a secret conference with Hitler, I am quoting from your
21 book here, at which the fate of Berlin’s Jews was clearly
22 raised. “At 1.30 pm Hitler was obliged to telephone from
23 Hitler’s bunker to Heydrich, the explicit order that Jews
24 were not to be liquidated”. That is what you said in your
25 book. You did not mention Berlin there at all.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we keep to the language problem, which is to say, that
. P-57
1 if it was what you said—-
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sure you would like to, Mr Irving.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: — the Jew transport, would it not be “der Judentransport
4 aus Berlin”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because his telephone log, as you know perfectly well,
6 is in a very abbreviated form that generally leaves out
7 the definite article.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Leaves out the context, is that right?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No leaves out the definite article, is what I said. You
10 can go two lines up, “Verhaftung Dr Jekelius”. It does
11 not say “Die Verhaftung Dr Jekelius”.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: What you are saying, this is your expert evidence, is that
13 “Judentransport” could under no circumstances be
14 translated as “transportation of Jews from Berlin”?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not quite what I am saying.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you accept that it can?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Just let me answer.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Just say yes or no. Will you accept that it can?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am not going to say yes or no, I am going to give
20 you a full answer.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is what I am trying to avoid, because we really are
22 running out of time.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know you are trying to avoid it, Mr Irving.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are familiar with your full answers, unfortunately.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I did swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing
26 but the truth.
. P-58
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It will not be very long, this answer, I do
2 not think.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It says “Judentransport aus Berlin”. That is the
4 context. Jew transport from Berlin. It is clear it means
5 a single train load of Jews, “Keine Liquidierung”.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Are you saying it is clear to because you are now familiar
7 from the context of all the other documents we know, as
8 indeed I am also now, that that is the correct
9 translation. But my question to you is, if you are faced
10 just with that one line in a document that you read back
11 in 1970, knowing none of the surrounding documentation,
12 right, that it would be totally improper and perverse to
13 translate that as “transportation of Jews from Berlin”,
14 which was the sense that I gave?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That is what I am saying. And particularly perverse
16 to say that it is an explicit order which Hitler has told
17 Himmler to transmit that Jews were not to be liquidated.
18 No mention of Berlin at all there, Mr Irving. That is a
19 clear falsification of this document.
20 MR IRVING: Avoiding your renewed smoke screen which you are
21 laying across the question I put —-
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not going to have you saying that. The
23 criticism is that you misrepresented this document in your
24 book.
25 MR IRVING: That is a separate criticism, my Lord, with
26 respect.
. P-59
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the contrary, it is the whole point of the
2 criticism. It would not be made unless you had
3 misrepresented, as the Defendants say you did, this
4 document. We not be looking at this document at all.
5 MR IRVING: In that case I shall have to ask further questions
6 on the question of the meaning of the word, which
7 I thought I had established superabundantly to the
8 satisfaction of the court and everybody present, that a
9 primary meaning of the word is transportation and, when
10 one has no other document to go by, and the court has not
11 been shown that at that time I had any other document to
12 go by —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know what your case is, Mr Irving.
14 I really do, and I do not think you need spend any longer
15 on the pure linguistics.
16 MR IRVING: In that case I shall move on.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In the contemporary dictionary you showed me, Mr Irving,
18 the word “transportation” was not there at all. How can
19 it be a primary meaning?
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: In both Cassell’s and Langenscheidt “transportation” is
21 given as the primary meaning after “transport”. In the
22 Langenscheidt case it is given as the primary meaning.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not seen these dictionaries.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we have really spent long enough.
25 I know what the issue is.
26 MR IRVING: When, in your view, did adequate contextual
. P-60
1 material in this connection come into the public domain,
2 which would have enabled me to correct the misreading, let
3 me put it like that?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The adequate contextual material is there in the document
5 itself and consists of two words “aus Berlin”.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why, in your view, is that adequate contextual material as
7 to the nature of the transport or transportation?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You said adequate contextual material to correct your
9 error. Your error was that you said it is an explicit
10 order that Jews were not to be liquidated without any
11 mention of the fact that we are referring to Berlin.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are still concentrating on the word “transport” and
13 I am not looking at the “aus Berlin”. Will you now answer
14 my question? When, in your view did adequate contextual
15 material, and I am referring to other source documents,
16 come to light, come into the public domain, which would
17 enable one to put a proper meaning on that? I am
18 referring, for example, to the police decodes.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have already given the answer, which is that there is
20 adequate material in the document itself to make it quite
21 clear that it means “Jew transport from Berlin”.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: As opposed—-
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, really we must move on. I think
24 we are spending an absurd amount of time on an issue which
25 is quite clear to me, and I know what your case is. You
26 have put it perfectly adequately to the witness. You do
. P-61
1 not gain anything by going on putting it to him time and
2 time again.
3 MR IRVING: I am trying not to go into the meaning of the
4 word. I am asking about when I should have known. This
5 is the question.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You should have known when you read it.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The witness has said perfectly clearly that
8 the context of the whole document, the document, makes it
9 clear what is being referred to and that you
10 misrepresented it in your book.
11 MR IRVING: Which is, I respectfully submit, an absurd answer.
12 Anybody looking at that one document in 1970 could not
13 possibly have decided between different meanings of the
14 word.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is one of the things I will have to
16 decide.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Mr Irving, you did decide. You decided that it meant it
18 is an explicit order from Hitler via Himmler that Jews
19 were not to be liquidated. You refer to it frequently.
20 Hitler ordered on November 30th 1941 — I am quoting you
21 here — incontrovertible evidence that Hitler ordered on
22 November 30th 1941 that there was to be “no liquidation of
23 the Jews”.
24 MR IRVING: I am not going to get dragged back into that
25 argument again because his Lordship will not allow it.
26 Can we now ask the following question—-
. P-62
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is your interpretation of the document.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, you are ONLY provoking A
3 continuation of what I think has become an exhausted
4 topic. So let us move on.
5 MR IRVING: When the appropriate material came into the public
6 domain, by which I mean the police decodes, SS documents
7 and other materials in the 1970s and the 1980s, did I make
8 the appropriate adjustment in the publication of the book
9 the Goebbels biography?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What page?
11 MR IRVING: Well, this is the —-
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is about 379, I think. It says 379
13 towards the foot of the page.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At the bottom?
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Yes.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you made a partial strategic withdrawal, as it were.
17 MR IRVING: A strategic withdrawal, was it, not an appropriate
18 correction?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let the witness finish his answer,
20 Mr Irving.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I will read these two sentences from page 379, if I may.
22 “According to one army colonel who witnessed it, a train
23 load of Jews from Berlin — those expelled three days
24 before — arrived in the midst of this; Aktion, this
25 killing of the Riga Jews. Its passengers were taken
26 straight out to the pits and shot. This happened even as
. P-63
1 Hitler, hundreds of miles away in the Wolf’s Lair, was
2 instructing Himmler that these Berlin Jews were not to be
3 liquidated.”.
4 So you accept in that text that it refers to a
5 single train load of Jews, but you still maintain the
6 falsehood that it was Hitler who ordered it, with no
7 evidence whatsoever.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you now answer the question, which is, was this the
9 appropriate correction to the matter of one train load as
10 opposed to transportation?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. In that respect, it most certainly was.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you agree with me that historians or writers or
13 scholars sometimes differ on the inference they draw from
14 identical documents, that you will have one reading on it
15 from your political standpoint and I will have another
16 reading on it from mine?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We are now going back to what I have said we
18 must leave.
19 MR IRVING: Well, we now move on to the document of December
20 1st. I now want you to look at the handwritten page,
21 please. Can I ask the witness please also to look at the
22 original photocopy? That was the one from which
23 I worked. Near the bottom there is a telephone
24 conversation. You assume in your expert report that
25 Himmler telephoned General Pohl, but in fact all we know
26 is that there was a conversation. Is that right?
. P-64
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. As I say, I have revised my views of that as a
2 result of your pointing this out.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: It refers at one point to “Verwaltungsfuhrer der SS haben
4 zu bleiben”. Those two phrases are on two separate lines,
5 is that right?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: The words “haben zu bleiben” are pretty indistinct or
8 could you read it easily?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Of course, I have read this so often now, it is very
10 difficult to say what I would see on first coming to it.
11 The word “haben” is very distinct, it is very clear. “Zu”
12 is pretty readable. The “bleiben” is a little less good,
13 and the “SS” in the previous line is cut off by the edge
14 of the page. But, on the whole, it is pretty readable.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not Latin handwriting, is it? Do you know the
16 name for this German handwriting that is used?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Italene. I am very familiar with it.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are very familiar with it now, or as a result of
19 having worked on it for many years?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it really matters.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have worked on it for many years, Mr Irving.
22 I published an edition of documents written in it.
23 MR IRVING: You agree that not many modern Germans can even
24 read that handwriting, can they? No, that is true.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it is a difficult handwriting to read?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Well, it depends. As an actual style of handwriting
. P-65
1 you have to learn it. I train my PhD students in it. It
2 does not take more than a few weeks and a little bit of
3 practice.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: And you are going to say that it is totally impossible for
5 any reader reading that line for the first time without
6 the benefit of what I would call cheats, in other words
7 printed versions of the document, to mistake in that
8 ancient German handwriting “H A B E N” for “J U D E N”?
9 Is that going to be your answer?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I think you have to read this carefully. You thread
11 your way through it. When you are reading handwriting, if
12 you find something difficult to read or ambiguous, you
13 then search for other similar letters, the same letter in
14 other words in the same hand to try and figure out what
15 that particular hand’s version of a B or a D or an E or a
16 U actually looks like. What we are dealing with here is
17 your claim that that says, “Juden zu bleiben” or, as you
18 say in Hitler’s War in 1977, Himmler telephoned Paul with
19 the order that Jews are to stay where they are. Whereas
20 in fact it is “Verwaltungsfuhrer der SS haben zu bleiben”,
21 it is the administrative offices of the SS have to stay.
22 From this text there are a number of indications
23 which somebody who was not biased and looking for some
24 evidence to the contrary, that is say an objective
25 historian, that this is “haben zu bleiben”. First of all,
26 the fact that it is indented, the second line “haben
. P-66
1 zu bleiben” does suggest that it runs on from the first
2 line. The new entries here begin right next to the middle
3 of the page. They are not indented. Secondly, this
4 writer, as is common in this handwriting, generally puts a
5 kind of what you might call a little inverted circumflex
6 over a U.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Invariably or generally?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Generally. Obviously, this is written in some haste.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: So that is not the clue then?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a general tendency and you can see that above
11 “Besuch” with a little thing over the U.
12 “Fliegermeldungen” is another one there at the top.
13 There is another one over the U. So that is the general
14 habit of this writer.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: But not invariable?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you take that from — that is one of a number of
17 indications. That is the second one. Then you compare Bs
18 and Ds. You can see, when you compare the B of “bleiben”
19 with a B, or if that B in “haben” is a D, making it
20 “Juden”, then you look for another D to see whether that
21 is the way the writer writes, and so on and so forth. I
22 think we have been through this at some length in
23 cross-examination.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are going through it at some length, but can I now ask
25 you a simple question? You have gone through this at some
26 length. Does that indicate it is quite difficult to read
. P-67
1 words like this?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It was a conditional. I said, if you are having
3 difficulty, if you are finding it a problem, then that is
4 what you do as an objective historian. Myself, I think it
5 is very clear from this.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Of course, if you came to the conclusion that it was
7 reasonable, if you privately came to the conclusion it was
8 a reasonable kind of mistake to make when one is reading
9 that document for the first time, you would immediately
10 tell the court, would you not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes I would.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: You would have no hesitation in saying to the court that,
13 yes, this is a reasonable mistake for David Irving to
14 make. Although I do not like him, on this occasion I will
15 say this is quite right. You would do that, would you
16 not?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not dislike you, Mr Irving. I have no personal
18 feelings at all. But I do not think this is a reasonable
19 mistake to make.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I ask you two questions actually, one is
22 I cannot remember what “Verwaltungsfuhrer” is.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Administrative officers or leaders — Administrative
24 leaders.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: And the other is the extent of the textual analysis of the
26 kind you have just described that you undertake depends in
. P-68
1 a way on the significance of the document. I mean, some
2 documents you really are not going to spend ages trying to
3 work out. Is this a sufficiently significant document for
4 it to be reasonable to expect an objective historian to
5 undertake the sort of exercise that you just been
6 describing?
7 MR IRVING: My Lord, that is precisely question I was going to
8 ask.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have asked it for you.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The significance that Mr Irving places upon it does
11 require that, that is to say, when it says in Hitler’s War
12 that Himmler telephoned SS General Oswald Pohl with the
13 order that Jews are to stay where they are. That is quite
14 a significant statement and it, therefore, does require
15 that kind of textual analysis. Normally, when you are —
16 it is kind of the lowest form of historical imagination,
17 as it were, when you find handwriting difficult and you do
18 this. You can do it fairly quickly, in my view, with this
19 particular…
20 MR IRVING: Have you done this kind of textual analysis with
21 every single document you looked at, Professor? Does it
22 take you very long to write your books?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I mean, of course I do this with documents, yes, when
24 I am reading through them.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: You look at a letters, you look at little caps over the
26 Us, you look to see if it is a B or a D? You do this with
. P-69
1 every word you read, do you?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. You get used to a certain hand and if it is — if
3 you find difficulty in reading a word, as one frequently
4 does, then that is exactly what you do. I published an
5 edition of 350 handwritten police reports, as you know,
6 and they were quite difficult to read. I frequently had
7 to engage in this kind of exercise if they are written in
8 different hands by policemen who only had a very
9 elementary education.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: But it would be normal if somebody came to you and pointed
11 out and said, “Oh, I don’t think this word is this, that
12 word is probably that”, then you would do that kind of
13 textual analysis, but you would not necessarily do it with
14 every word before you came up against that particular —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, you would do it with words that were significant or
16 difficult to read. I mean, normally, as I say, you get
17 used to a hand and if you are reading through this, this
18 is not a particularly difficult example of this particular
19 script, in fact.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: There are two obvious corollaries to the questions which I
21 have to ask. The first question is, in your opinion, did
22 I deliberately make this reading in order to serve my
23 political bias? Was it deliberately perverse reading or
24 was it an inadvertent misreading?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it is a deliberately perverse misreading.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, I knew the correct meaning and
. P-70
1 I deliberately chose the other one? That is what the word
2 “deliberate” means.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, I knew it was “haben” but I deliberately
5 wrote it as “Juden” and I hoped nobody would look at the
6 original document, is that right
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is quite clear from this that it is “haben”. I
8 find it very difficult to think —-
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not, that is not what I am asking. You are saying,
10 “I knew that it was wrong and I deliberately wrote the
11 wrong word”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, we are getting a bit into psychology here. I mean,
13 as it, I am trying to second guess your thought processes
14 here, but I think you wanted to find a statement like
15 this, and when you found what you thought was a statement
16 like that, you just said, “Hooray” and you did not care to
17 look at it any closer. You misread this. You were
18 mislead by your overwhelming desire to exculpate the Nazi
19 leadership into misreading this as “Juden” instead of
20 “haben”; whereas to any objective historian, taking even
21 a minimal amount of care about reading this, it was very
22 easy to establish that this meant “Verwaltungsfuhrer der
23 SS haben zu bleiben”. To that extent, therefore, I think
24 you deliberately misused and abused this text.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I just explain to you the meaning of the word
26 “deliberate”? “Deliberate” means, and I am sure my Lord
. P-71
1 will correct me if I am wrong, I knew that the word was
2 “haben” and I deliberately wrote “Juden” in order to
3 serve a political end, is that what you are saying?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am saying that it is very obviously that this word
5 is —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is not the answer.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — “haben”; that any objective historian reading this
8 would have very little difficulty in establishing this as
9 “haben”, and you put it as “Juden zu bleiben” which
10 itself is grammatically an extremely peculiar phrase which
11 should alert anybody to the fact that it is not likely to
12 be what you say it is. You wanted it to read “Juden
13 zu bleiben” and you made it read “Juden zu bleiben”. That
14 is what I am saying.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So your submission to the court is that I knew it read
16 “haben” and I deliberately wrote “Juden”? I have to keep
17 asking this. Will you give a simple yes or no to that
18 question?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you got an answer “yes”.
20 MR IRVING: The answer is yes?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 MR IRVING: Thank you very much, my Lord. Now, the obvious
23 corollary to that is, if that sentence is taken out of the
24 book, does that in the slightest change the thrust of that
25 paragraph? In other words, was there any reason why the
26 sentence should have been put in?
. P-72
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me have a look at the paragraph, please. This is
2 Hitler’s war, 1977 edition.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. My Lord, this goes to the importance of the whole
4 matter really. If the answer is that it can be taken out
5 without changing the meaning, then the last 10 minutes
6 have been largely wasted.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think that is right at all. So
8 that you know why I do not think that is right, I will
9 tell you reason and it is simply this, Mr Irving, that you
10 might be able to say in relation perhaps even to every one
11 of the passages that are criticised, “Well, by itself,
12 that does not amount to much”, but I think the Defendants’
13 case, just so that you know what I am understanding it to
14 be, is that if you put them all together, then they are of
15 significance. I think that is the way it is put. I am
16 not saying for a moment I accept it but —-
17 MR IRVING: Then we would have to look at the word “all” and
18 see what “all” is.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, of course.
20 MR IRVING: Are we just going to look at three sentences and
21 pick two that are adjacent where two flaws have been made
22 or are we going to look at the whole book?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right, yes. Well, the paragraph —-
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 332 in the edition that I have, my Lord, Hitler’s War
26 1977, and it consists of an accumulation of falsifications
. P-73
1 of documentary evidence of which this is one.
2 MR IRVING: Do you agree that the sentence complained of was
3 cut out of the following edition?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could I have a look at the following edition, please?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or was it cut out of the Goebbels biography?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which do you want me to look at, Mr Irving?
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us look at the Goebbels biography.
8 MR RAMPTON: It is at page 427 of the 1991 edition of Hitler’s
9 War, I think.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right. Let us have a look at that first. Page 427?
11 MR RAMPTON: Yes, 427 at the bottom. I think it is there
12 actually. I do not think it is cut out at all.
13 MR IRVING: Well, that is why I suggested the Goebbels book
14 instead because the —-
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I have no doubt that is why.
16 MR IRVING: Well, obviously, the error was pointed out to me
17 relatively later on.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is exactly the same, I think.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly the same — I will take your word for it, my Lord.
20 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, do you agree that the error was
21 rectified in the Goebbels biography in the corresponding
22 passage?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where is this? Page, please?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: 377 approximately, is it not.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 377?
. P-74
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 377 again.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure about that.
3 MR RAMPTON: I think it is 379 actually, I think it is.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is right.
5 THE WITNESS: [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is rather difficult but, presumably, we are
6 looking for a lack of any mention.
7 MR IRVING: That is right but, in other words —-
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It has gone altogether, has it? Yes.
9 MR IRVING: — it has gone altogether?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But, see, you are essentially lifting paragraphs from
11 Hitler’s War and putting them into Goebbels, but changing
12 them slightly.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am relying on a reliable source, namely Hitler’s War,
14 when I write the Goebbels biography. Do you agree, to
15 answer my question, that I took the appropriate action
16 when the error was pointed out to me and that I excised it
17 from all future editions of the work?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can you give me some evidence to show when the error was
19 pointed out to you? I think it was pointed out — was
20 this one of the ones pointed out by Professor Bruchsal or
21 not? That is not really the issue, is it, though?
22 MR RAMPTON: I believe the evidence of Mr Irving was in
23 cross-examination that this error was pointed out to him
24 some time in the early 1980s, I think by Eberhard Jaeckel,
25 but I am not sure.—-
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am afraid I had forgotten that.
. P-75
1 MR RAMPTON: Which is why he retranscribed it in the
2 typewritten version that we have in J3 at page 13 —
3 sorry, J1, tab 3, page 13. I think his evidence was that
4 he retranscribed the word “haben” from “Juden” on a
5 typewriter which I think he said he had thrown away over
6 15 or 20 years ago.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So, mid 80s?
8 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I think it is early to mid 80s. I am open to
9 correction. That was done entirely from memory, but I
10 think that is what the evidence was about it.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you remember, Mr Irving, as a matter
12 of —-
13 MR IRVING: Well, unfortunately, the mid 80s would be a crucial
14 date because mid 80s is when the second edition went to
15 press.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, the 1991 edition? It could not have
17 been six years, could it?
18 MR IRVING: Books of this size are in the gestation period a
19 long time, and I sent it off to be edited down and cut
20 down and trimmed, and the first edition was 1975.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: ’77.
22 MR IRVING: Well, the German edition was 1975, my Lord. 1977
23 was the first English edition which means that it was
24 actually finished in 1974. So it is not an easy kind of
25 question to answer, that. So I think that is why it is
26 more sensible to look at Goebbels and say it is quite
. P-76
1 simply —-
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it has gone from Goebbels.
3 MR IRVING: It has gone from Goebbels —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: — and everybody accepts that.
5 MR IRVING: — so the appropriate action was taken.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not accept that, Mr Irving. I would need to know
8 exactly when you — when this was pointed out to you.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do not accept that it went from Goebbels.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, no. I do not accept that the appropriate action was
11 taken as soon as it was pointed to you, but in any case
12 that is not really what we are talking about. The point
13 is that it was in your books in the first place.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, so to summarize your evidence, your evidence is that
15 the reading of “haben” in old German handwriting as
16 “Juden” was a totally perverse and deliberate action
17 I took in order to exonerate Adolf Hitler?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that, in your opinion, therefore, even when you are
20 confronted with the original faded photocopy that I had
21 before me, and not the printed volume that scholars now
22 use, this was not a permissible misreading?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think anybody who reads the German handwriting and
24 approaches this with any degree of objectivity can see
25 that it says “Verwaltungsfuhrer der SS haben zu bleiben”.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: This kind of handwriting is pretty easy to read, is it? I
. P-77
1 mean, any historian can read it?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have we not really had that question asked
3 and answered?
4 MR IRVING: Well, I was going to ask one obvious follow up, and
5 that is if it so easy to read, why was it not until I used
6 it that it was ever used?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not dispute the fact that you were the first person
8 to read a number of documents. The point is, Mr Irving,
9 the misuse you make of them when you do read them.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is your contention that that was a sufficiently important
11 sentence in that paragraph that its removal makes no
12 difference to the thrust of my arguments?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think you have that sentence the wrong way round.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words that —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you remind me of the page again? I foolishly shut
16 the book.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Let us move on. We will move on then, for heaven’s sake.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think its removal does weaken the paragraph, yes.
Section 78.19 to 108.24
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you turn to page 357 of your expert report, please?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do I need this bundle still? Sorry, let me just clear the
21 decks again.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: You are accusing me of further —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Have we finished with this? Well, I will keep that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, you will not, I will have it. It is mine.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You have it back, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor Evans, you accused me of further
. P-78
1 misrepresentations and omissions in connection with the
2 Bruns Report and the subsequent events. Page 357 of your
3 report.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: The specific omission you accuse me of is not making use
6 of or not referring to a document, a letter, written by,
7 if you look at page 359, paragraph 6, a man called
8 Schulz-Du Bois?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: You do. You say: “However, he makes no mention of the
11 letter’s contents”?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is not the specific — I mean, I make a number of
13 points about this, but that is one of them, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: One objection you make to my use of the Bruns document is
15 that I rely on the fact that after these German Army
16 officers saw what was going on, the SS shooting Jews on
17 that morning November, 30th 1941, they discussed among
18 themselves who was going to bring it to Hitler’s
19 attention, is that right?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where is that?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: According to General Bruns? I am telling you what is in
22 the report.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right. Can you just point me to the paragraph and where
24 I say that?
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am telling you what is in the report and we have had
26 this evidence before the court.
. P-79
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In my report?
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the report by General (as he became) Bruns.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am looking in my report for where I make this
4 allegation.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Paragraph 1 on page 357 is your reference to it.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Irving relies on Walter Bruns as the source for his claim
8 that a report about the killings in Riga eventually
9 reached Hitler’s headquarters”. Does that refresh your
10 memory?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It quotes: “Hitler seemingly intervened at once to
12 order a halt to ‘diese Massenerschiessungen’ (these mass
13 shootings)” —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we take this stage by stage?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — “as soon as a report, signed by a junior officer, was
16 forwarded to him”.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you be responsive to the questions I am asking?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what you say.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read the Bruns Report?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does the Bruns Report describe how the Army officers who
22 witnessed these atrocities discussed among themselves how
23 to bring it to Hitler’s attention?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Do we have a copy of that?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, we must look at it.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We must look at it, yes.
. P-80
1 MR RAMPTON: It is a very bad copy, I am afraid. It is J1, tab
2 4, my Lord. It is very difficult to read.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do we have a page number?
4 MR RAMPTON: It is the beginning of tab 4.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, of course, that is right.
6 MR RAMPTON: So it is a wartime copy document.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
9 MR IRVING: Have you found the passage towards the end of the
10 report where they are discussing, the question was who was
11 going to bring it to the Fuhrer’s attention?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you agree that Colonel Bruns at that time was a senior
14 German Army Engineer Officer in Riga?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: At the time he is referring to, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the time he is referring to, but at the time of this
17 conversation that the British have overheard he is a Major
18 General —-
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: — in British captivity?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. It is, whatever you call it, a spying, a
22 record made by the British without the Germans, the
23 captives, knowing that it was being made.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of reliance would you place on a report like
25 this on the British intercept, if I can call it that, of
26 an overheard conversation? Is it liable to be dependable,
. P-81
1 used with caution, with proper circumspect?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: One should use all documents with proper circumspect and
3 caution, but it is certainly, since they do not seem to
4 have been aware that they were being recorded, it does
5 seem to be quite reliable.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: There might be a tendency to brag a bit or possibly even
7 to conceal things they had a guilty conscious about?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you got your answer “yes” is the
9 answer.
10 MR IRVING: The reason I am about to ask this is to say how
11 would this compare with the testimony given by somebody in
12 the witness box at Nuremberg, the same person? Would it
13 be more reliable or less reliable?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That would — I mean, one has to take all these things
15 individually and actually look at them. One would be
16 perhaps a little more suspicious at the testimony in the
17 witness box at Nuremberg, but one would have to take these
18 things on their merits.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Having read the Bruns Report or scanned it, would you
20 agree that he is describing something he actually
21 witnessed, the shooting of these people at the pits, the
22 girl with the flame red dress —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: “I see her in my mind’s eye even now”?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: The same General Bruns in 1948, did he not deny that he
. P-82
1 had witnessed these things? He said in the witness box
2 under oath that, yes, he had received reports on it and he
3 had sent people out to see what was going on?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, in fact, there are distinctions between the calibre of
6 evidence? Sometimes —-
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the witness has accepted that
8 already.
9 MR IRVING: Yes.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I mean, clearly here he did not think he was
11 implicating himself because he thought he was talking in
12 private, whereas in the witness box he was very careful
13 about making any admissions.
14 MR IRVING: So used with proper caution, a document like this
15 CSDIC report is a valuable source?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of cautions were then used about what one
18 accepts? Should one be careful about hearsay where they
19 are reporting what B has said to C, or is there any other
20 kind of caution you would apply?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, cautious in every — I mean, you take it on its
22 merits.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: A self-serving statement you would be cautious about?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it is obviously self-serving, yes, but, as I say, it is
25 less likely to be self-serving in these circumstances than
26 it is in the witness box.
. P-83
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with these CSDIC reports? Have you
2 worked with them in any detail?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have not, no.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have not?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is something like 50,000 pages of these overheard
7 conversations with top Nazis and you never used them?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, come on, Mr Irving, is that helpful?
9 MR IRVING: Page 359 — I am sorry, we had better have a look
10 at page 358 at paragraph 3. What happened to the report
11 that went up to Hitler, that was finally sent up to
12 Hitler? How did it go, do you know?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You tell me, Mr Irving.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it right that the report was drafted by a junior Army
15 officer was sent up through what one can call Army
16 channels and then across to intelligent channels to
17 Admiral Canaris?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That seems to be the case, according to the Schulz-Du Bois
19 document, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: When Schulz-Du Bois refers in his letter, which was,
21 apparently, written in January 1942, is that right?
22 I referred you to paragraph 6.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, yes, it is certainly uncertain. I mean, his wife
24 dated it to January ’42, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, Schulz-Du Bois did not survive the war?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
. P-84
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the foot of page 359, you say the report had been
2 forwarded to the top counter-espionage official. Is that
3 a reference to Admiral Canaris?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I presume it is, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you consider a statement made by Admiral Canaris as
6 against Adolf Hitler to be dependable or not? In other
7 words, if he had made a statement that was critical of
8 Adolf Hitler, would that be dependable?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Those are two different questions.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: The second question.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Again, one does regard this in the same way as other
12 sources. I mean, this is —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was Adolf Hitler a member of the anti-Hitler resistance?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You mean was Canaris?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry. Was Admiral Canaris — a Freudian slip — was
16 a member of the anti-Hitler resistance and was he hanged
17 for this on April 8th 1945?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was indeed, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So a statement made by Admiral Canaris to the disadvantage
20 of the Fuhrer should be viewed circumspectly, should it?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, no more circumspectly, I mean, than those of other
22 members of the resistance or any other source. One takes
23 all these things on their own merits. I do not think you
24 can simply discredit what members of the resistance said
25 about Hitler simply because they were critical of him.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Not necessarily untrue but —-
. P-85
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Though you would like to discredit everything that is
2 critical that is said about Hitler.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, a statement made by Canaris would not
4 necessarily be untrue —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: — but you might want to have a document to back it up,
7 another document, a second source?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I think you have to make it clear that Canaris is who
9 he is.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the top of the following page, of course, you quote
11 then what information came back from Canaris.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: “This man”, Canaris, “who has constant access to the
14 Fuhrer is said to have described the consequences and the
15 terrible nature of these methods, namely the killings, to
16 the F”, Hitler, “once more compellingly” —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “whereupon he”, Hitler, “is said to have said, ‘You
19 want to show weakness, do you, Mein Herr, I have to do
20 that for after me there will not be another one to do it”.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: In other words, “I had to do the killings”.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: And this is Canaris’ statement about what Hitler’s
25 response to him was?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-86
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: And is the fact that the channel of information that it
2 comes through Admiral Canaris not sufficient to make one
3 want possibly to quote that reference, but add a caveat at
4 the end and say, “Well, of course, Admiral Canaris may
5 have been reporting something genuinely, but it has to be
6 borne in mind that he was later hanged as a member of the
7 anti-Hitler resistance”?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not — I mean, I do not think that it
9 necessarily disproves it. I mean, the crucial thing
10 really is that this, this is obviously a second-hand
11 evidence and one has to make that clear, but I do not
12 think, as I say, you should discredit, or I do not think
13 you should say that I think it is unlikely that people who
14 disapproved of Hitler and his methods simply made up
15 things about him. I think the members of the German
16 resistance were honourable men.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you aware of the fact that I have large parts of
18 the private diary and official diary of Admiral Canaris
19 and his second-in-command, Colonel Naruzon, also? They
20 both kept diaries and I have parts of the Canaris diary
21 which were in British Cabinet Office files right up to
22 June 1943, covering this period, in other words?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You mean they are in British Cabinet Office files?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So what? What is the significance of that?
26 MR IRVING: I was going to ask in the best way I can that if
. P-87
1 there is no reference to any such remark by Adolf Hitler
2 in that diary, would that be one reason, if this
3 information had been before me at any time?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Too many “ifs” there; I would have to see the diary with
5 dates, but it does say here that he is, that he has said
6 to have described the consequences —-
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — whereupon Hitler is said to have said, so it is
9 clear. I mean, it is an important piece of evidence, but
10 it is very indirect and I think one has to make that
11 clear.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: So there are two parts of that statement, that he made the
13 report to Hitler which is probably credible because that
14 is why the report had been sent to him?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Whereupon, and this is the second part of the statement,
17 Hitler is said to have said something?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: And then at some point in time, two or three days later
20 about, a message comes back out to Riga saying, “These
21 shootings have to stop. These kind of mass killings, mass
22 shootings have to stop”. This is the first part. I know
23 we will come to the part you want to come to next.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have to be clear about the dates here.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sometime after 30th November 1941?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
. P-88
1 MR IRVING: Sometime after 30th November?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: January ’42 being the letter. So we do not know exactly
3 when this actually happened. It is a piece of supporting
4 evidence for what is in the Bruns document.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you look at the end of the Bruns Report where Bruns
6 describes going back at some time to see the man he refers
7 to as Altenmeyer, but in fact his name was Altemeyer —-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a 23 year-old SS gangster who was the big top brass on
10 the spot. Altemeyer says, “We have received this new
11 order saying that this kind of mass shootings have to
12 stop”, and then he adds a sneering comment afterwards
13 which we will come to in a minute?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, yes.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think perhaps one ought to read the whole
16 of what is quoted?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: One should read the whole thing.
18 MR IRVING: My Lord, I do want to take this in two parts, if I
19 may?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would help, I think, if I read the whole thing.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you should.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Altenmeyer triumphantly shows me, ‘Here’s an order that
23 has come that saying that mass shootings of this kind may
24 no longer take place in the future. That is to be done
25 more cautiously or discreetly”.
26 MR IRVING: Shall we take the first part of that first? If
. P-89
1 this order has come, that this kind of mass shootings have
2 got to stop, what does your supposition about whether,
3 knowing what you now do about the report that went up from
4 Canaris, through Canaris to the “F”, to the Fuhrer, and
5 that back comes this order saying, “This kind of mass
6 shootings has got to stop”, can you draw any conclusions
7 from that?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it would seem likely that the order derived from
9 Hitler.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: And is there any connection at all, do you think, with the
11 police decodes we looked at yesterday from Himmler,
12 December 1st 1941, where he orders Jaeckel straight to
13 Fuhrer’s Headquarters on December 4th and there is a
14 meeting between the two of them on December 4th, “These
15 arbitrary measures have got to stop. You have got to
16 stick to the guidelines. I will severely punish actions
17 like this.” Do you see any connection between all this?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, Himmler’s meeting with Jaeckel was in his own
19 headquarters.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you see any connection with this kind of general chain
21 of events, that killings were going on and they stopped,
22 that there are orders that these mass shootings have got
23 to stop and there are reports to Hitler? Do you see, does
24 your brain — I know it is difficult for you to grapple
25 with totally new concepts, but here is this matter. We
26 are trying to work out who possibly may have ordered,
. P-90
1 “These kinds of mass shootings have to stop”?
2 MR RAMPTON: Well, I am sorry, that just —-
3 MR IRVING: Mr Rampton, I do wish you would stop interrupting
4 every time we are doing something.
5 MR RAMPTON: Counsel, I am afraid, as his Lordship will tell
6 Mr Irving, has a right to intervene when the
7 cross-examination is proceeding on a false and time
8 wasting basis. He has a duty to the court and to his
9 client and to the witness. It is not possible for that
10 question to be answered as though the second sentence did
11 not exist, in my submission.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have well in mind the whole of it, and
13 I think one has to take the whole of it in end, Mr Irving.
14 MR IRVING: My Lord, we are very definitely going to come to
15 the second sentence, but I do respectfully submit that
16 I am taking this in the proper sequence, and we will give
17 each part of that second sentence the weight that it
18 deserves.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you see, I do not really see that you
20 can do that. If by taking half the sentence you really
21 significantly distort the sense of the whole of it, it
22 seems to me the question is being asked on something of a
23 false premise.
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the difficulty. I think what you
26 ought to do, if I may suggest it, is proceed the other way
. P-91
1 round, as it were, and deal with the latter part of it,
2 namely that the shootings are to be carried out more
3 discreetly, and put your case.
4 MR IRVING: If that will make my case more comprehensible to
5 your Lordship, I will willingly do that.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know what it is because you have just
7 mentioned it. I think that is the right way of doing it,
8 if I may say so, and it meets Mr Rampton’s objection.
9 MR IRVING: I appreciate why Mr Rampton keeps on interrupting
10 and it is now becoming statistically evident that every
11 time I am about to make what I consider to be an important
12 point —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I thought he were doing that, I would tell
14 him to desist.
15 MR IRVING: Because it does seriously disrupt the flow of
16 cross-examination when this occurs.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, do not let it disrupt it any more.
18 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, I referred just now to the message
19 decoded on December 1st. There were, in fact, three
20 messages, the first one on the morning of December 1st was
21 from Jaeckel to Himmler saying: “I need to have six more
22 tommy guns”. Can you accept that as being the fact? We
23 have seen them in court.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: The next one from Himmler’s staff to Jaeckel later on
26 December 1st says: “You are to report back to the
. P-92
1 Fuhrer”.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: “And tell us what means of travel your are adopting”.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Report back, not to the Fuhrer.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the second message is signed by Himmler himself, with
6 what I aver is greater urgency, saying: “This kind of
7 arbitrary action has exceeded the guidelines”—-
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it says: “Arbitrary actions”.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Arbitrary actions” —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not say: “This kind of arbitrary action”, does
11 it?
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not want to —-
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Eigenmachtigkeiten und zuwieder Handlungen,” or
14 something.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Und zuwieder Handlungen werden strengsens bestraft”.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, exactly.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is this not an indication that the shootings were done in
18 disfavour at one of the highest levels, if I can put it
19 like that?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, this relates to the shooting of the transport from
21 Berlin by Jaeckel which —-
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now we are coming to —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which Himmler, on 30th November, Himmler and Heydrich
24 clearly wanted to be stopped and did not get to on time.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Now we are coming to the point which his Lordship attaches
26 importance. Is there any hint in these messages that went
. P-93
1 from one of these highest levels out to Jaeckel, that
2 shootings could continue provided they were done in
3 surreptitious way?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The reference in those clearly refers to Jews who were
5 transported from Berlin. It clearly relates to the
6 trainload that came on 30th November and was shot, and it
7 quite clearly relates to the shooting of Jews who were
8 transported from Germany. Himmler and Heydrich wanted it
9 to stop and, indeed, it does stop. What the Bruns
10 document says is, in effect, that mass shootings must
11 continue but more discreetly. They do not —-
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we remain with the hard evidence which is the decodes,
13 please.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sorry, the hard evidence is, “here is an order that
15 has come saying that mass shootings of this kind” —-
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: No, we are referring to the decodes.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — “may no longer take place in the future. That is to be
18 done more cautiously”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Which is?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You interpret that as saying Hitler seemingly intervened
21 at once to order a “halt zu diese Masseneschiessungen” —
22 these mass shootings — whereas the word actually says:
23 “Der artige Masseneschiessung” — this kind of mass
24 shooting, and you leave out the sentence about this having
25 to be done more cautiously.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: If I can halt the flow of words for one moment —-
. P-94
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What Bruns is talking about is an order to continue them
2 more discreetly, and you are presenting this as an order
3 to stop them altogether. Indeed, what we know is that
4 four days after Jaeckel was given his dressing down by
5 Himmler about the shooting of transports from Berlin, the
6 rest of the Riga ghetto of local Jews was shot by Jaeckel.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I hesitate to halt this kind of flow of verbiage, but I
8 have to.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So presumably, Himmler must have therefore discussed with
10 Jaeckel the shootings of the Jews in Riga.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can we try and keep to the point. You referred to the
12 hard evidence, which is the harder kind of evidence,
13 decoded messages intercepted on the same day in real time
14 by the British, of which the SS have no knowledge that we
15 are decoding them whatsoever and which have been in the
16 British archives ever since then, or something said at
17 second or third hand by a German Army General four years
18 later? Which is the hard evidence, in your view?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Hard evidence of what?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we look at the documents. It is all so
21 unsatisfactory. Are we talking about J1 tab 3, page 17 or
22 some other document? If you want me to follow it, you are
23 going to have to tell me which document you are talking
24 about.
25 MR IRVING: I am referring to the police decodes of December
26 1st, 1941, on the one hand, and the Bruns document of
. P-95
1 April 1945, on the other?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us have a look. Let me see this decode.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know about the Bruns document. This simply
4 refers to guidelines, does it not?
5 MR IRVING: The simple question that I have asked first of all
6 is —-
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could you refer me to the decode, please.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the witness’s opinion —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is J1 tab 3, page 17.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 17.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I may be completely wrong, but I do need to
12 be anchored to a document.
13 MR IRVING: I agree, my Lord, and that has narrowed it down
14 these two documents.
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The decode says: “The Jews being out-placed to the
16 Ostland are to be” —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you answer my question first, please?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I just want to read this document that you are referring
19 to.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let him read it out. You see, he is just
21 reminding himself of what it says, Mr Irving. Just
22 because you do not want to listen to some of what is given
23 by way of an answer, you must not prevent him.
24 MR IRVING: We will get to his content later, but I must ask
25 him which class of information he considers to be harder
26 and he will not answer this.
. P-96
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Evidence is evidence of something; otherwise, it is just a
2 document.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just read out the bit and then say what you
4 are wanting to say.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “The Jews being out-placed” [this is an order from Himmler
6 to Jackeln decoded by British on
7 1st December]. “The Jews being out-placed to Ostland are
8 to be dealt with only in accordance with the guidelines
9 laid down by myself and/or by the
10 Reichssicherheitshauptamt on my orders. I would punish
11 arbitrary and disobedient acts. (Sgd. H HIMMLER)”. That
12 refers to the Jews being placed, being transported from
13 Germany, particularly Berlin.
14 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, you do not have to know the
15 content of a message to be able to answer the simple
16 question, in your opinion as a historian and as a person
17 who has written books on historiography, which kind of
18 evidence is harder, in other words, more dependable as a
19 primary source, something which is recorded at the time,
20 in real time by British interceptors of decodes, on the
21 one hand, or something reported at third hand in captivity
22 by a German Army general four years later?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: As a general rule, of course, it is the first. That does
24 not mean to say you discredit the second altogether.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: I agree entirely, but you have to attach the appropriate
26 weight to each of those sources in the absence of any
. P-97
1 other support.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right. So, our only information of what Altemeyer said,
4 that it has to be done more surreptitiously in future –
5 or whatever word he used more furtively – out of the
6 public eye, is a third-hand report by Bruns as overheard
7 by the British in April 1945?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but he also says, Mr Irving (the previous sentence):
9 “Here is an order that has come saying that mass
10 shootings of this kind may no longer take place in the
11 future, that to be done more cautiously”. You cannot say
12 that the second sentence is unreliable but the first is.
13 In your work, you make use of the first. You not only
14 make use of the first sentence, you know now that you are
15 just trying to discredit what Bruns says. You actually
16 manipulate and distort it by talking about these mass
17 shootings, instead of saying it is mass shootings of this
18 particular kind.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: What is the difference between the words: “These mass
20 shootings” and “mass shootings of this kind”.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is quite clear. “These mass shootings” refers to all
22 mass shootings, whereas “mass shootings of this kind”
23 refers to ones which are indiscreet. You gather that,
24 from me, you are incautious. You gather that, from the
25 second sentence, that two sentences belong together.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did you agree that the reference in the first part of the
. P-98
1 statement by Altemeyer, that: “We have received orders
2 from above that mass shootings” (let me put it like that)
3 “are to stop”, is a clear reference to the kind of signal
4 contained in the decode?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You are trying to —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: And that therefore one has hard evidence supporting that
7 part of his the statement, right?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not necessarily, because you are talking about the decode
9 that relates to transports from Berlin, whereas really
10 —-
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am missing something, Professor Evans, can
12 you help me?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The decode is said by Mr Irving to be hard
15 evidence and obviously one understands why he says that.
16 But hard evidence of what, because all that seems to me to
17 say is that the Jews, as you say from Berlin, are to be
18 dealt with in accordance with guidelines, but we do not
19 know what the guidelines are. So I do not quite see what
20 it is hard evidence of. Am I missing something?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think so, my Lord, no.
22 MR IRVING: Will you read that signal out in full in a clear
23 voice so that the court can hear it, please? The one
24 talking about arbitrary acts and acts against the
25 guidelines.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not frankly think it is necessary. It
. P-99
1 has just been read, it was read yesterday and today. What
2 is the point pout of reading it again?
3 MR IRVING: Because it make clear reference to the fact that
4 these shootings have found disfavour higher up and future
5 such actions will be severely punished, and he
6 simultaneously orders the man who does done it to come to
7 his headquarters?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it does not. It says: “The Jews being out-placed to
9 the Ostland are to be dealt with only in accordance with
10 the guidelines laid down by myself and/or by the
11 Reichssicherheitshauptamt on my orders. I would punish
12 arbitrary and disobedient acts”. So if you took that,
13 that could mean that they are only to be shot if Himmler
14 says they are to be shot.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It could mean anything, could it not? It could mean that
16 they were going to be sent to Butlin’s Holiday Camp, but
17 we are going to use common sense here, are we not?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think it could mean that, Mr Irving.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are going to use common sense here where it says that
20 there has been a mass shooting that very previous day
21 which has been reported to Hitler’s headquarters; the
22 words come up the grapevine; now the fat has hit the fan,
23 to put it that way, and heads are going to roll and this
24 has got to stop. I am going to punish this kind of thing
25 in the future. Come immediately to headquarters, which
26 then happens. And this the common sense sequence of
. P-100
1 events and we have back out in the fields, so to speak,
2 Bruns hearing then down the grapevine, as he says a few
3 days later – that is the word he uses. He goes to see
4 Altemeyer, the one who set the mass executions rolling at
5 the lower level, and he says that we have got this order
6 now from on top. The top brass has said that these mass
7 shootings have got to stop. But they are going to carry
8 on anyway, right? Is that the way it was done?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am sorry, let us look at this decode. “The
10 guidelines laid down by myself and/or the
11 Reichssicherheitshauptamt” could easily say something
12 about doing it cautiously or discreetly.
13 MR IRVING: They could, indeed.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I really think, Mr Irving, that we have he
15 batted this one backwards and forwards enough.
16 MR IRVING: Indeed, and we have, I think, discovered what the
17 harder of the evidence is, and why there are reasons why
18 one is entitled to discount, if I may put it this way, my
19 Lord, in the mildest possible way, the second part of that
20 sentence for we have no supporting evidence.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, you say that the first half of it is
22 reliable because of the circumstances under which was
23 provided then it was eavesdropped upon.
24 MR IRVING: And the consequences that flowed from it.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is reliable but second half is
26 unreliable.
. P-101
1 MR IRVING: The second part is less reliable, if I may put it
2 like that. Professor Evans, are you suggesting that the
3 letter of de Bois was in front of me at any time when
4 I wrote any of my books?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me come back and say that the point I am making is
6 that you have misrepresented even the first part of the
7 order on which you rely.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have moved on.
9 MR IRVING: I am looking at paragraph 6 of page 359.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, on your website.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Are you suggesting that at any time that the actual
12 letter has been in front of me?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Presumably that is why you mention it in the
14 website.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I refer to it on the website —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: — to draw people’s attention to it?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know where the letter is now?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would imagine —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it in the Institute of History in Munich?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The question is whether you had it in your
23 possession, is it not, Mr Irving, really?
24 MR IRVING: Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, did you or did you not?
26 MR IRVING: The answer is not, but I cannot lead evidence as a
. P-102
1 cross-examiner.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course you can. You can say: Were you
3 aware, Professor Evans, that I never actually had this
4 letter from Mrs de Bois?
5 MR IRVING: Yes. Can I put it this way? Professor Evans, in
6 writing in line 4, “However, he makes no mention of the
7 letter’s contents”, were you aware at the time you wrote
8 this in your report that I have never had the letter in my
9 hands in my life?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On this report I quote you as saying that there was this
11 letter and you say it was on your website, and I assumed
12 because you were referring to it and that it is about
13 killings in Riga that you must have known what was in,
14 otherwise why would you refer to it?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is it not just stated on the website that in fact there
16 are some interesting documents if people who want to
17 follow it up may wish to go and have a look at, and one of
18 them is the de Bois letter?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: How would you know it was interesting if you have not seen
20 it?
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because I am told by this correspondence. Could that be
22 possible?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is your case, Mr Irving, because you must put
24 it clearly and straightforwardly, that you were unaware of
25 what Mrs Schultz de Bois said in this letter?
26 MR IRVING: Yes, and your Lordship will have heard from the
. P-103
1 cross-examination over the previous ten minutes that I do
2 not attach very great importance to the remarks by
3 Canaris.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a different matter.
5 MR IRVING: But that the letter was not in front of me at any
6 material time anyway.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you think it was an important piece of evidence,
8 Mr Irving, and you did not have it, why did you not make
9 attempts to obtain it?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, winding up this chapter on page 362, once again you
11 have allowed yourself to dip into the dictionary of
12 insult. You say that I am totally discredited a few
13 months earlier; the document proved to be too useful to be
14 discard altogether; a more egregious institute,
15 manufactured manipulated, doctored, untenable, all the
16 words come out?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you prepared to withdraw any of those on the basis of
19 what you have been saying this morning?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Absolutely not, Mr Irving. The point is you acknowledge,
21 as I say on pages 360 to 361, concerning the — what it is
22 about is your persistent claim that Hitler told Himmler to
23 make the phone call to Heydrich attempting to stop the
24 killing of the transport of Jews from Berlin to Riga, and
25 you produced on your website on 17th May 1998 a document
26 which is now in the Himmler appointments diary edition,
. P-104
1 showing that Himmler only met Hitler after he phoned
2 Heydrich; and therefore that what you then call your
3 original theory, which in fact was presented as a matter
4 of incontrovertible fact that Hitler had told Himmler to
5 tell Heydrich to get the shootings stopped, was wrong.
6 Yet, even though you have done that in May 1998, it is too
7 nice a document for you really to let go of, so you post
8 another document on the website on 31st August 1998 in
9 which you argue that on 30th November Hitler
10 had, “demonstrably ordered that the Berlin Jews were not
11 to be killed”, whereas you knew that to be wrong. That,
12 to my mind, is an egregious instance of a completely
13 unscrupulous use of a manipulated source.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you prepared to accept that historians or scholars or
15 writers sometimes have differing opinions on the
16 interpretation of the identical sets of documents, and
17 that one scholar or historian will have one interpretation
18 because of his own particular mind set, and the other
19 historian will have perhaps better sources, he will be
20 familiar with the CSDIC reports which you yourself have
21 admittedly totally unfamiliar with; he will have worked
22 for many weeks months in the police decodes with which you
23 are also totally unfamiliar, and that this entitles to him
24 to reach conclusions on the quality of evidence which you
25 are not entitled to reach?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are missing the thrust of the
. P-105
1 criticism that Professor Evans is making there. The
2 criticism he is making is that at one point you are
3 actually admitting that you got the Himmler phone log
4 wrong, but having admitted that you later went on to
5 assert again your original interpretation of the log as
6 showing had Hitler had demonstrably ordered that the
7 Berlin Jews were not to be killed. That is the point.
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, I do not want to pick up his particular
9 words here —-
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am sure you do not.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am just trying to point out to you that
12 your rather long question missed the point of the
13 question.
14 MR IRVING: I am just about to take this point up. I do not
15 particularly, I repeat, wish to fall into the trap of
16 using the words used by the witness here, which is that
17 I knew it to be wrong. The fact that the Himmler agenda
18 indicates that there was a meeting between Hitler and
19 Himmler after the telephone call to Heydrich, does not
20 exclude the possibility that they met before the telephone
21 call. The fact that he had an appointment with Hitler at a
22 certain time, to say in the words, and your Lordship will
23 find it in the transcript, that he only met Hitler
24 afterwards, there is no proof of that, that he only met
25 Hitler afterwards. What we do know is that they were very
26 close, that they repeatedly went in and out of each
. P-106
1 other’s rooms and offices; that the appointment was at a
2 certain time; that upon arriving at Hitler’s headquarters
3 for some reason Heydrich had to make this extraordinary
4 phone call ordering a total reversal of this operation
5 going on in Riga, and any common sense historian is going
6 to come to the conclusion that A is in some way connected
7 with B. But we are dealing here with Professor Evans who
8 is not able to join the dots in this particular case and
9 says there is no link.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You join too many dots, Mr Irving, that is the problem.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is where we differ.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: To answer your —-
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: And to say that this is perverse or obtuse or a
14 manipulation or a distortion is, in my view, a perverse
15 use of the witness box, because you are privileged to make
16 these remarks. You know you can make these remarks
17 without fear of any kind of consequences, because this is
18 a court of law.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you like to leave that sort of thing to
20 me. If I thought Professor Evans were doing that, then
21 I would not let him do it but I do not, and it is not for
22 you to say that.
23 MR IRVING: The reason why I will say to your Lordship that
24 I have felt it perfectly proper to continue to rely upon
25 these documents in the manner I have, is that I have
26 perfectly properly, just as your Lordship will remember in
. P-107
1 the case of the Dresden documents, drawn it to the
2 attention of other historians that there may be a flaw in
3 this chain of argument. However, I have the right to
4 remain by my original position on the basis of my entire
5 knowledge which has been assembled, after all, over
6 thirty-nine years of working in the archives.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am beginning to wonder who is in the witness box, you or
8 me, Mr Irving.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but, Professor Evans.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure if there were any questions all involved in
11 those series of lengthy speeches.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There was not, so you do not need to answer.
13 Wait for the next question.
14 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am going to ask if we can — I would
15 normally at this point have asked for a five-minute
16 interruption, but in view of the fact that we are so close
17 to the lunch adjournment can I suggest we make the
18 adjournment now? I have come to the end of this
19 particular part.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am perfectly happy with that, but if
21 it does not cause any inconvenience I think we will resume
22 in an hour’s time at 10 to 2.
23 (Luncheon Adjournment)
Part III: Professor Richard Evans’ Cross-Examination by David Irving continued, Afternoon Session (108.25 to 207.26)
Section 108.25 to 129.22
24 (1.50 p.m.)
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving.
26 MR IRVING: My Lord, thank you very much for allowing me an
. P-108
1 earlier adjournment. That was a useful hiatus. We will
2 now proceed to the Schlegelberger memorandum, unless it is
3 not worth discussing. I think myself we ought to.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I certainly would not think it was not worth
5 discussing, no.
6 MR IRVING: This is page 363 of the expert report.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
8 MR IRVING: Professor Evans, just so that we can be certain
9 what we are talking about by the Schlegelberger
10 memorandum, do you have a little bundle of documents in
11 front of you?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you turn page 9 of that little bundle?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I have been overwhelmed with material here.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are only going to need the little bundle and your
16 report?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is bundle D, is it in J1?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Page 9 of that little bundle. This is the only bundle
19 I will be referring to myself.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: J1 we are in, are we?
21 MS ROGERS: Tab 7.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
23 MR IRVING: These are the only documents I shall be referring
24 to in my cross-examination, apart from the expert report.
25 Is document No. 9 in that bundle what we are going to call
26 the Schlegelberger memorandum for the sake of simplicity?
. P-109
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is in here.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the top left hand corner it has the number 01/111
3 crossed out?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have it.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen correspondence in the discovery that I have
6 made in this action which indicates that I was aware of
7 the existence of this memorandum in about 1970?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen correspondence indicating that in 1972
10 I dealt with the US National Archives in an attempt to
11 locate this missing memorandum? Can I take you straight,
12 please, to page 22 of the bundle?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you know who Robert Wolfe is?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You tell me.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is the head, or he was for about 30 years the head, of
17 the Foreign Document section of the US National Archives.
18 He may have retired by now. Having read that letter, does
19 it look as though I have asked the National Archives to
20 provide me with photocopies of documents in a Nuremberg
21 document identified at that time as PS-4025?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where they found everything except one item?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: That letter to me is dated May 5th 1972?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-110
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: So can you conclude from that that I had been searching
2 for some time for that document, specifically identifying
3 it by content?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. Just that you are asking them for it.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: A document, an alleged note on Hitler’s intentions.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: He writes, “With the exception of the alleged note on
8 Hitler’s intention to postpone the solution of the Jewish
9 problem”, he is supplying me with photocopies of the six
10 documents.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, the purpose of the next few questions for about
13 four or five minutes will be purely to establish where
14 these documents came from.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which documents?
16 MR IRVING: The Schlegelberger memorandum and the surrounding
17 documents, the other five documents, or the other six
18 documents.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Just for my benefit, was the one that
20 they were not able to find the original of the
21 Schlegelberger memorandum?
22 MR IRVING: Yes, absolutely.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That was not entirely clear. Thank you.
24 MR IRVING: Would you go to pages 18 and 19 of the little
25 bundle? This is a Staff Evidence Analysis sheet prepared
26 by the American prosecuting staff at Nuremberg.
. P-111
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is that right? About a year after the war was over?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does that describe a list of five documents that they have
5 found, and they give a brief summary of what each document
6 is?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: The title and nature is correspondence between the Reich
9 Chancellery and the Reich ministry of Justice on matters
10 concerning the treatment of the Jews?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: They put the date as March to April 1942?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: The fourth item on this list is simply stated as being a
15 note stating that Hitler intended to postpone solution of
16 the Jewish problem until after the war?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you understand why I was interested in seeing the
19 content of that note?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Indeed I can.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So I will tell you, Professor, that this Staff
22 Evidence Analysis sheet was provided to me by the
23 Institute of History in 1970 by a colleague working for
24 me, as I can identify by the red rubber stamp at the
25 bottom left hand corner “indexed”, which was my rubber
26 stamp.
. P-112
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I first was tipped off that this document had existed in
3 1970. I am still looking for it in 1972 and it is thanks
4 to the efforts of a German historian, Professor Eberhard
5 Jaeckel, that we finally obtained the actual document. Is
6 that correct?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: In about 1978?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, when you write on page 364, line 2, indeed it was
11 Jaeckel who first informed Irving of the document’s
12 existence, this is not correct, is that right? It was the
13 other way round?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I should have said perhaps whereabouts. That is
15 strictly true, I suppose, in the sense that it seems to
16 have been lost beforehand and nobody could actually
17 confirm its actual existence.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is true, that statement there.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going make anything of it, just a little bit of
21 flag waving.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You can wave your flag as much as you like, Mr Irving.
23 The point is there was no evidence before that that it
24 actually existed.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: No evidence that it actually existed?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It seemed to have been lost. It might have been
. P-113
1 destroyed but it turns out that it did and does exist, and
2 it was Eberhard Jaeckel who informed you of that fact.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you to go, in that case, please, to pages 15, 16
4 and 17 of the bundle? This is a little bundle of
5 documents issued by a British authority, the Political
6 Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office, even
7 earlier than that Staff Evidence Analysis sheet, November
8 16th, 1945?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it show as the final item which they have typed a
11 copy of, actually the contents of the Schlegelberger
12 memorandum, typed out in full with all the initials and
13 everything else?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it existed at that time, the British had it, but by the
16 time the Americans got their hands on the file of
17 photocopies, this particular item had somehow vanished?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, or been mislaid.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or been mislaid?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Could not be located. So there was no indication that it
21 still existed.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: How high would you rate the importance of this document in
23 the order of things as an historian? Was the document
24 linking Adolf Hitler by name with the Final Solution, or
25 with the solution of the Jewish problem? Is it an
26 authentic document? Do you accept that?
. P-114
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I think this raises the question of your double
2 standards in the evaluation of documents. If we turn to
3 the document itself, we have heard you in the course of
4 this trial, Mr Irving, using the most nit-picking
5 flimsiest excuses to try and discredit documents you do
6 not like. Here we have a document which has no security
7 classification, no date, no signature, no reference
8 number. It is clearly in a file that was made up after
9 the war, because the British Foreign Office list the
10 documents as documents found among the files of the
11 Ministry of Justice. So we do not actually know where it
12 came from. It is merely conjecture to say that it was
13 written by Schlegelberger, who was the acting Minister of
14 Justice in 1942. There is no letter head on it at all.
15 And, of course, as evidence of Hitler’s views, it is third
16 hand. That is to say, it is somebody, possibly
17 Schlegelberger, reporting on what Lammers had told him
18 about what Hitler had said. There is no indication of
19 actually who wrote this.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you answer the question?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If we were to apply your criteria, one would cast
22 tremendous doubt upon this document. But, of course, you
23 have not done that yourself because it is a document that
24 supports your own views.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you now answer the question? Does the document appear
26 to be authentic? Have you any reasons to doubt its
. P-115
1 authenticity?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It appears to be an authentic document.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you agree that this document comes with an amazing
4 pedigree by way of all the documents indicating where it
5 has been and in whose hands ever since the end of the war,
6 which we do not have in one single case in connection with
7 the documents whose integrity I have impugned?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. You said yourself it went missing for a long time.
9 But that is an amazing pedigree, Mr Irving?
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Can you agree that the document is referred —-
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is? A document has gone missing for many years. That
12 is an amazing pedigree.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you look back to page 22, please, which is the letter
14 from the National Archives to me in 1972? In the final
15 paragraph does it say: “The documents are black
16 photostatic reproductions of originals certified by R M W
17 Kempner to have been located among the Justice Ministry
18 files at the Ministerial Collection Centre in West
19 Berlin”?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. They describe it as an alleged note on Hitler’s
21 intentions and so on.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: We are looking just at the pedigree of the document.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is part of it. Clearly the National Archives do not
24 want to accept that it actually exists because they cannot
25 find it.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Could we proceed on the assumption that it
. P-116
1 has a lot of odd features, but you are prepared to accept
2 that it does appear to be authentic?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, certainly.
4 MR IRVING: To repeat my previous question, does this document
5 come with a somewhat better pedigree by way of documents
6 tracing its provenance than the document whose integrity
7 I have impugned?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: On which basis do you place that statement? The document
10 whose integrity I have impugned dated June 24th 1943 has
11 come without any pedigree whatsoever, it is just a
12 document which has turned up in the Auschwitz Museum
13 Archives, having been delivered to them by East Berlin?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This document is the document that has turned up in a
15 postwar file, claimed to have been located amongst the
16 files of the Ministry of Justice. We do not know. We do
17 not have that original pedigree.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to spend much more time questioning this,
19 but have you seen correspondence between myself and
20 Mr Kempner, who was the Deputy Chief American prosecutor
21 at Nuremberg, in which he accepts that this document was
22 genuine?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am accepting it is genuine, Mr Irving.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: So the whole of that was just a bit of a —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It was an answer to your question.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: The question I asked was, do you accept that this document
. P-117
1 is authentic, and now we have a yes from you?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. The question you asked, Mr Irving—-
3 MR RAMPTON: That is not fair because the question was two
4 barrelled, or sometimes five or six barrelled. The
5 question also was, do you accept this has a better
6 pedigree than the document which actually comes from two
7 archives, in two different forms, that Mr Irving impugns?
8 The answer to that is no.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: True, but that was another question. Yes,
10 I accept that. Anyway, we have now got to the point where
11 Professor Evans accepts, despite the odd feature, that it
12 is an authentic document. Shall we now see what it
13 actually means?
14 MR IRVING: Very well. Professor Evans, would you propose a
15 translation, or read to us the translation you have given
16 of the document on page 364, of the Schlegelberger
17 memorandum?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Audibly so that the courtroom can here, please?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I hope I always do this. Do I mumble, Mr Irving? It is
21 in the sort of past reported speech, which makes it
22 somewhat difficult to translate exactly.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Past reported speech?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. Herr Reich Minister Lammers informed me that the
25 Fuhrer had repeatedly, or has repeatedly, declared or
26 explained to him that he, well, wanted, literally wanted
. P-118
1 to know.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You can read out your translation on page 364, if you
3 want.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — wanted the solution of the Jewish Question put back
5 until after the war. Accordingly, the present discussions
6 possess a merely theoretical value in the opinion of Reich
7 Minister Lammers. But he will be in all cases concerned
8 that fundamental decisions are not reached by a surprise
9 intervention from another agency without his knowledge.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. It is actually written in the subjunctive, is it
11 not?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. It is reported speech.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: You indicate it as reported speech.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the equivalent of the perfect tense, I suppose. In
16 other words, “he has said”, “the Fuhrer has repeatedly
17 stated”, you have said “had” but, if we cannot agree on
18 that, we will move on to the next one.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: The initials that are on the bottom left hand corner, is
21 that where you would normally expect on a German document
22 the distribution list to be, who the document is addressed
23 to?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is addressed to State Secretary Freisler?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not necessarily. I think a possible reading of that is
. P-119
1 “17.7.Freisler” or, in other words, 17th July, which
2 would make it 17th July 1941. It is rather difficult,
3 because the S looks to me like “17.7.Freisler”.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say 1941?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because that more likely would fit in for other reasons.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I see, for extraneous reasons.
7 MR IRVING: I missed this. Where do we see the 41 then?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I have just asked.
9 MR IRVING: Thank you very much, my Lord.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I said it said “17.7”, which would be 1941 in more
11 likelihood.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you not accept that the first hieroglyph is the Zutelin
13 German handwriting S, followed by a T, followed by another
14 S, which is the correct abbreviation for State Secretary,
15 which is what his rank was?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Very obscure, but I think it is a possible reading of it,
17 that it is a 17.7.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If it was Freisler and if he was State Secretary,
19 you would not expect to see him there without a rank in
20 front of his name, would you? You would not expect
21 somebody just to write down just “Freisler”?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is rather peculiar. It looks almost as if there is a
23 capital F, and then somebody else has written in after it
24 the rest of his name. It is not his initials, it is not
25 the normal way in which he would himself indicate that he
26 received it. It is another peculiarity of this document.
. P-120
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Could you answer the question? You would not expect, if
2 he is the second most important man in the Ministry, that
3 he would be happy to get a document addressed to him just
4 as Freisler?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, we do not know who has put this on this. It might
6 well be somebody else at some other time.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: This goes back to my earlier question. Is this the place
8 where, on German Civil Service documents the distribution
9 list was always placed, on the bottom left-hand corner?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Normally. It has two, seems to be UB4 and U something 5
11 underneath it, UB5, which would be presumably divisions
12 where it was going to be sent to.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would I be right at this point in suggesting that your
14 reluctance to make progress with this document is because
15 you are very unhappy about this document?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. I am trying to point out, Mr Irving that, if you did
17 not like this document’s contents, you would be saying
18 everything that I am saying and no doubt a great deal
19 more. It is normal on a document, this is a kind of scrap
20 of paper with no letter heading, no date, no signature, it
21 would be normal actually on a formal important document to
22 type the distribution list on the bottom, particularly if
23 it was relating to a decision that was made.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you worked —-
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This looks like some kind of note made by somebody to
26 themselves as a kind of aide memoire.
. P-121
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: A minute?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, a minute. It is not a formal minute. It is clearly
3 a kind of aide memoire of a rather informal sort, as it
4 does not have any of the normal things that you get with a
5 formal document.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. It has some kind of paginated number in the top
7 left, which appears to be, as you state in your expert
8 report, probably put on there by the Nuremberg
9 authorities, is that correct?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, crossed out.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we were proceeding on the
12 assumption that it is accepted to be authentic?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. I am happy to go along with that.
14 MR IRVING: Yes. So it is a memorandum that has been drawn up,
15 unless I am wrong, for the attention of State Secretary
16 Freisler and two other departments of the Justice
17 Ministry?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes Freisler certainly seems to have been, I guess, an
19 addressee of it.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Somebody is passing on to him the information from Hans
21 Lammers, who is the head of the Reichschancellory, is that
22 correct?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. His own information about a meeting or a phone
24 conversation or something with Lammers. That is what he
25 is passing on. His own report on a meeting with Lammers.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: In which Lammers has passed on the not insignificant
. P-122
1 information that the Fuhrer has repeatedly said he wants
2 the solution of the Jewish problem postponed until the war
3 is over.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes,.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So it would be interesting, would it not, to find out when
6 this memorandum came into existence?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are opinions divided on that?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is very difficult because it does not actually have a
10 formal date on it, so you have to weigh up the
11 possibilities. I think there are two possibilities. One
12 is that it came into existence on 17th July 1941, which is
13 the day after an important meeting at which arrangements
14 were made about the administration of the Eastern
15 territories, at a time when the decision to, as it were,
16 solve the Jewish question in the Nazis’ own terminology
17 had not been taken. Or it is possible that it belongs in
18 a series of discussions that took place between the
19 Ministry of Justice and other instances in the spring of
20 1942, in the wake of the Wannsee conference about the fate
21 of half Jews and Jews in mixed marriages. That second
22 context indeed is the one in which it is placed in this
23 made up set of documents.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree that on the Staff Evidence Analysis sheet,
25 which is page 18 of the bundle, it states that the date
26 covered by the file is March to April 1942?
. P-123
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That is wrong, of course, because one of the
2 documents dates from 21st November 1941.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Is that document out of numerical sequence?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The documents are not in chronological order. That is to
5 say, it depends how you look at it, but sheet 153 is what
6 we are calling the Schlegelberger memorandum, and then
7 sheet 154 is a document of 21st November 41, sheet 155 is
8 12th March 1942, sheet 156 is the 18th March 1942, and 157
9 is 5th April, and 159 is 20th November. So, if you are
10 going in strict chronological order of the pagination on
11 the top right hand of the page, you would have to say that
12 this document came from 1941, because the next document is
13 21st November 1941. However —-
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Mr Rampton , do you want to say something?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — because this is a made up collection, you cannot be
16 sure that it is in chronological order.
17 MR RAMPTON: Miss Rogers — I will do at some stage — asks me
18 to point out that the clip that Mr Irving is using is
19 missing a document.
20 MR IRVING: In November 1941?
21 MR RAMPTON: No, no, no — is missing. If on that list is the
22 minutes of the meeting on 6th March 1942, it is missing
23 from Mr Irving’s clip.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure I quite followed that. Does it
25 matter?
26 MR RAMPTON: I am not sure that I do either.
. P-124
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we might just press on a little bit.
2 MR IRVING: Yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It could be 41, it could be 42. I think in
4 the end, if I have understood you right, Professor Evans,
5 you were inclined to accept that it might well be 42?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On balance, but it is a very fine balance, my Lord.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: I understand that.
8 MR IRVING: It is exactly the position I am trying to steer
9 towards.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: One has to make it very clear to anybody reading this
11 document its peculiar nature, uncertainties about its
12 date, its origination, who made it, and all of these sorts
13 of things.
14 MR IRVING: In that case I will put to the witness the evidence
15 that goes towards supporting the 1942 dating. Is there a
16 letter from Schlegelberger to Lammers after the March 16th
17 1942 conference?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will come back to the March 6th 1942 conference because
20 I know we want to discuss the contents of the memorandum.
21 At present we are just dealing with the dating.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there a letter from Schlegelberger to Lammers in which
24 he says words to the effect: I have read the report on the
25 meeting. Decisions appear to be brewing here which look
26 pretty murky. They must not get away with this. You are
. P-125
1 going to have to brief the Fuhrer. Can we talk about it?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Which document is this?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you must if you can — I know it is
4 difficult for you, but if you can help me a little as to
5 where one finds that document?
6 MR IRVING: I have only been given a very truncated version of
7 the Schlegelberger bundle, I am afraid.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
9 MR IRVING: It will be in the Schlegelberger bundle, one of the
10 25 pages, with a complete translation of that letter. It
11 will be dated March 1942. I have provided your Lordship
12 in that bundle with the complete translation of it. It is
13 about a whole page letter.
14 MR RAMPTON: I do not have the translation.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is page 13?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Page 2 is the translation that I have got in J1.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well done. We have found it.
18 MR RAMPTON: It is the document with 155 at the top right
19 corner and 371 at the bottom.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 MR IRVING: Would you agree with my brief gloss on it, that is
22 Schlegelberger saying that he has read the report on March
23 6th conference, things appear to be brewing, someone is
24 going to have to discuss this with the Fuhrer, can I meet
25 you first?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, not precisely. It is important to say that it says,
. P-126
1 “My assistant has just briefed me on the result of the
2 meeting of the 6th of the 3rd about the treatment of Jews
3 and mixed race Jews”. Then he goes on to say that there
4 are decisions in preparation which he says are completely
5 impossible, as you say. Then he wants to have a talk with
6 Lammers about this because of this. Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Before the matter goes up to the Fuhrer, is that right?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “As the outcome of the talks is to form the basis for the
9 decision of the Fuhrer, it would be urgently desirable for
10 me to have a personal talk with you in good time about the
11 affair”.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you agree this helps us to narrow down the period
13 when the meeting, the date of the memorandum?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is an indication, yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was there a meeting then between Schlegelberger and
16 Lammers in consequence of this? Did Lammers write back a
17 three or four line letter saying, sure, let us meet?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: What date is that letter, please?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is 18th March, and Lammers says he is coming back to
21 Berlin at the end of the month.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end of March he is going to come back to Berlin?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: He offers to meet Schlegelberger on this matter, whatever
25 the matter is?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, that is right.
. P-127
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: To which matter we will certainly come back, I assure
2 you.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is pretty obviously a reply to the previous letter,
4 which is about the treatment of Jews and mixed race Jews.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, on the balance of probabilities, the meeting between
6 Lammers and Schlegelberger was some time at the end of
7 March, or possibly running on into early April, as other
8 historians suggest now?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Jaeckel suggested it may have been a meeting on April
11 10th, which he has identified.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: There is no point really quibbling one way about ten days,
14 is there? We can accept therefore that, on the balance of
15 probabilities, if the 1942 scenario is correct, this was
16 when the meeting took place between Lammers and
17 Schlegelberger?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It looks like it, yes. There are other possibilities in
19 this very uncertain document.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is one possible interpretation. We are dealing with
22 matters of interpretation here.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: So if we can accept this is a minute written by or
24 dictated by Schlegelberger — and that is an “if” — then
25 when he begins by saying, “Reichsminister Lammers informed
26 me”, he may very well, on the balance of probabilities, be
. P-128
1 talking about something he has heard at the end of March
2 or early April 1942?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: About the Hitler desire that the solution of the Jewish
5 problem be postponed until after the war is over?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does your Lordship wish to ask any further questions about
8 the dating of the document?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. If I may say so, you have put it very
10 clearly.
11 MR IRVING: Thank you very much.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: May I just ask one question?
13 MR IRVING: Yes.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, is there anything (and
15 I cannot remember) between the date when Lammers says,
16 “Yes, we can meet”, and the date, the assumed date, on
17 the 1942 hypothesis of the Schlegelberger memorandum, to
18 indicate what the discussions were?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. It follows from the — it all follows from the
20 meeting of March 6th. So there is — it is an inference
21 that the so-called Schlegelberger memorandum belongs in
22 that period.
Section 129.23 to 153.10
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: What I am really getting at, is there any evidence what
24 the substantive discussion was about, whether it was about
25 Jews generally or whether it was about Mischlinger —
26 sorry?
. P-129
1 MR IRVING: That is what we are going to be dealing with in
2 this part of the cross-examination, my Lord.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would appear that what we are calling a Schlegelberger
4 memorandum is the indication we have that there was a
5 meeting or to suggest that there was a meeting.
6 MR IRVING: Now we will tackle the topic, Professor Evans. We
7 will try to mutually and jointly arrive at some conclusion
8 as to what was discussed in these deliberations. There
9 were two meetings of importance early in 1942, were there
10 not? There was the Wannsee conference on January 20th
11 1942?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: And there was this follow up conference on March 6th 1942?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Both of them, effectively, chaired by the
16 Reichssicherheitshauptamt, by Heydrich?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: And with representatives of a not very high level from all
19 the Ministries involved in the Jewish problem?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: The Wannsee Conference, I do not think we need to look at
22 in this context, unless you particularly want to make any
23 comments about it? Your submission is, of course, that
24 the Wannsee conference discussed the killing operations
25 because Eichmann admitted this under interrogation, is
26 that correct?
. P-130
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. It certainly reached — there was a
2 very elaborate lengthy discussion of what should be
3 treated, how the Jews of Europe should be treated, and the
4 memorandum — the minutes of the Wannsee Conference speak
5 in terms of evacuation and so on from all countries of
6 Europe, even those which were not yet under the Germans’
7 control. Eichmann said later when he was in the hands of
8 the Israelis that, of course, that is the language used
9 about evacuation disguised the fact that people had been
10 talking about killing.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Disguised it from whom, from the general public or from
12 each other?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: From anybody who should be, from anybody who should get
14 the minutes of the Wannsee Conference.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am only going to dwell a minute or two on the Wannsee
16 Conference, Professor. Your basis for saying that it was
17 disguised language and euphemisms is only the Eichmann
18 interrogation in 1961, is that right? None of the other
19 participants backed him up on that?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, one can infer from the fact that large scale
21 killings of Jews were already going on, that that is what
22 is meant by evacuation.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but none of the other participants, probably about a
24 dozen of them, were questioned about this after the war,
25 when questioned under various conditions either by myself
26 or by the American or the British interrogators, confirmed
. P-131
1 what Eichmann had said, the killing was talked about.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I think it is unlikely that they would wish to do so.
3 There was a representative, I think Freisler was there who
4 represented the Ministry of Justice, so the Ministry of
5 Justice knew perfectly well what the conclusions of the
6 Wannsee Conference were, whether they were concerned with
7 extermination or simply with forced evacuation of Europe’s
8 Jews from their resident countries to the East.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We do not want to get sidetracked. The point
10 about Wannsee was that there was not any particular
11 discussion about Mischlinger there or was there?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There was, my Lord, yes, yes — quite extensive. They
13 spent a great deal of time talking about them because,
14 although they seemed to have found it easy to decide what
15 to do with Jews, they found it extraordinarily difficult
16 to reach some decision about what to do with so-called
17 Mischlinger and Jews married to non-Jews.
18 MR IRVING: Yes, I think we can agree that the March 6th 1942
19 conference was almost entirely concerned with the question
20 of the half Jews and the Mischlinger, was it not?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, not almost entirely. It was entirely concerned with
22 Mischlinger and half Jews.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: It was entirely?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: And Jews in mixed marriages, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: As a component of the Final Solution?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-132
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there a document that establishes that?
2 Presumably there is.
3 MR RAMPTON: Yes, your Lordship has it.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, but I would just like to know where
5 it is.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am trying to get help with that. I have it
7 in a file I marked “Schlegelberger” which is terribly
8 helpful with quotes round it, mind. It is quite a long
9 document. I have it just before the 12th March letter.
10 MR IRVING: It is page 6 onwards. Is this the letter dated
11 April 5th?
12 MR RAMPTON: No, I am talking about the minutes.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 6th March, the minutes of 6th March.
14 MR RAMPTON: Yes, minutes of the Conference on 6th March.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It seems to me this is quite an important
16 document.
17 MR RAMPTON: It is an important document, yes.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And I have no idea where it is.
19 MR IRVING: That has not been in any of my bundles, I know.
20 That would have been in one of their bundles.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Mr Irving did not include it in the papers
22 he gave your Lordship, so we provided it separately.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not, I think, entirely fair. Anyway,
24 let us find it. It does not matter whose fault it is.
25 MR RAMPTON: All right, I can tell you. It is in H1(viii), if
26 your Lordship has it?
. P-133
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can somebody make a photocopy of it this
2 afternoon?
3 MR RAMPTON: It has been up there, but it has disappeared.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not start blaming me!
5 MR IRVING: Is it in English or in German?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: German.
7 MR RAMPTON: German.
8 MR IRVING: In that case, my Lord, I will —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that probably matters.
10 MR IRVING: — volunteer to obtain an English translation for
11 your Lordship over the weekend.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very kind.
13 THE WITNESS: [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do have my own copy of this document. Thank
14 you very much.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am ready when you are.
16 MR IRVING: Very well, my Lord. I am in the witness’s hands
17 here which places me in some dread. Would you give a
18 brief overview of what the conference was about? It was
19 about the treatment, we have agreed, of the problem Jews,
20 the half Jews, the quarter Jews, the people married to
21 Jews?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, or the Jews married to non-Jews.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, and various — basically, various proposals were
25 thrown about at this meeting and there were some proposals
26 that they should be sterilized and this raised alarm
. P-134
1 bells. I am just trying to find my own …
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Why would this be, because of the immense burden that this
3 would place on German medical services or the —-
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the alarm bells in —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: — red tape?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — the Ministry of Justice because there are legal
7 proposals. Right, I have got this here now.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it a very daunting task in any way, to carry out the
9 sterilization?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There was a proposal that they should be compulsorily
11 sterilized and remain in the Reich, but some thought that
12 would not be — that it is not impossible during the war
13 — it was not possible during the war. Mass
14 sterilizations would take up medical facilities needed for
15 the war wounded, and that in any case this would still
16 keep them alive, as it were, and that would be a problem.
17 There was an alternative proposal put forward which says
18 that half Jews would be equated with Jews and “evacuated”
19 possibly to special so-called settlements set up for
20 half-Jews alone.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does it use quotation marks around “evacuated” or does it
22 use the word “evacuated”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, I am saying that — they are my quotation marks
24 because it is, I think, quite possible that that means
25 they would in the end be killed. It may well be a
26 euphemism at this stage of events if we are talking here,
. P-135
1 well, we are talking about 6th March 1942; and there were
2 other proposals, that there be a law passed which would
3 dissolve marriages between Jews and non-Jewish Germans and
4 that was opposed for various legal and other reasons and
5 that it should be made easier for them to divorce. So
6 there was a great deal of talk about all these various
7 different kinds of solutions.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, does it look like a whole bunch of problems they are
9 conjuring up for themselves?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, they are kind of agonising over what to do, given
11 their basic anti-semitic premises, it is a problem for
12 them.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: What position was Germany in in March 1942? Was Germany
14 pretty well down to its uppers? Was it fighting a
15 desperate battle on the Eastern Front? Had it nearly lost
16 the entire Eastern Army in the previous winter?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not as desperate as it became later.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: So they had quite a lot of things on their plate apart
19 from dealing with these domestic problems?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but it was part of their mentality, as you could see
21 from the space devoted to the Mischlinger question in the
22 Wannsee Conference, that they should kind of split hairs
23 and spend a lot of time talking about what seems to us to
24 be completely ludicrous problems, but they took these
25 extremely seriously —-
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, these lawyers, they sat around all day talking about
. P-136
1 pernickety little details, did they not?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid they did a lot of the time, yes. But for
3 them, of course, it was very serious.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: For the lawyers or for Germany?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: For the lawyers.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: But Germany, you agree, was fighting desperate battles on
7 the on Eastern Front; the air war was just beginning;
8 they had manpower problems developing; they were trying to
9 control an ever expanding Empire; they had unrest?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I mean, that is a very long
11 question. In the end, it is pretty neutral because the
12 fact is they were doing it. That may be odd, may be not.
13 MR IRVING: I am moving on to the point of the question.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Good.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you were Adolf Hitler — perish the thought — and
16 somebody came to you with all this red tape and said, “We
17 are tackling this problem now, Mein Fuhrer”, what would
18 your response be?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But what do you mean by “this problem”?
20 MR IRVING: Whatever the problem is, whatever —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That begs rather an important question, I
22 think. I mean, that is the whole point of the discussion
23 you are having at the moment.
24 MR IRVING: If anybody, if you were the Fuhrer or if you were a
25 Dictator of a State in a desperate military situation, and
26 somebody came to you with any problem which was not
. P-137
1 directly related to winning the war, what would your
2 response be?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would depend on the problem, Mr Irving.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you not say, push this on one side, “Let us, for
5 heaven’s sake, leave that until this war is over. Let us
6 win the war first and then we will tackle this problem”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, Mr Irving. I think you could say that Hitler
8 repeatedly the previous December made speeches,
9 statements, about what was to happen to the Jews. He
10 spent a lot of time thinking about the Jews and this had
11 gone on into the Wannsee Conference.
12 Hitler was an obsessive anti-Semite in whom
13 there was really little distinction between the process,
14 the progress of the war and the Jewish question. He
15 regarded the war as having been started by the Jews. He
16 thought they were responsible for it. When America came
17 into war on 11th December 1941, Hitler thought that the
18 Americans had been put up to this by — I know he declared
19 war in America, but he thought that the American support
20 for the allied side was a result of Jewish machinations.
21 And all of this weighed extremely heavily upon his mind.
22 On the other hand, the kind of legalistic, you
23 know, and to go on, I mean, he also, of course, considered
24 that the Soviet Union was run by Judaio Bolsheviks and
25 that the Jews were behind that as well. He was completely
26 obsessed with this. Therefore, he does not, kind of, he
. P-138
1 does not even make a distinction between the exigencies of
2 the war and what he regarded as the problem of the Jews of
3 Germany, Poland and the rest of Europe.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is there any evidence —-
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On the other hand, just so that I may finish answer the
6 question — I apologise, it is rather a long answer, but
7 it is an important question to get straight — of course,
8 when the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of
9 Justice and so on, and all the various other instances
10 start agonizing at considerable length as to what to do
11 about the half Jews, the quarter Jews, Jews married to
12 Germans, where do you draw the line and so on, then it is
13 quite likely that Hitler would have said, “Look, this is
14 all too complicated. We have got the main problem of the
15 Jews solved, we are taking them all out to the East and we
16 are killing them in large numbers, let us leave this
17 relatively small group, let us put that off to the end of
18 the war”.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is the spin you put on this document, is it, on the
20 Schlegelberger memorandum?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you want to date it, if you date it to this period, to
22 the kind of bureaucratic fall out of 6th March 1942
23 meeting, then that seems to be the reasonable
24 interpretation.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you read —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you want to date it to July 1941, then I think you have
. P-139
1 to put a different and broader interpretation on it. It
2 is a matter of balancing out which you think is more
3 equal, which are more likely with this rather problematic
4 source.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Look at the evidence for the 1942 one first, and if that
6 is sufficiently compelling, I will invite his Lordship to
7 decide whether we ought to go back and have a look at the
8 1941 scenario.
9 Have you seen any testimonies of the people who
10 were present at these meetings, or on the staff of the
11 people involved in this, in which they describe how they
12 approached Lammers for a decision and Lammers informed
13 them that he had taken it up with Hitler and that Hitler
14 had said he wanted it postponed until after the war was
15 over? I am referring to the names of Boley, Ficker and
16 other members of the various Ministerial staffs who were
17 present at the March 6th 1942 conference?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: So that helps to narrow it down to this 1942 period, does
20 it not?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That depends how much you rely on their testimony. One
22 has to be rather cautious with it.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because they were Nazis or anti-Semitic? Is this, I mean,
24 the usual story, that we are not going to accept them
25 because they were in some way loaded?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, not necessarily not going to accept them, but
. P-140
1 I think again what you have here is postwar evidence from
2 memory by people who were involved in these decisions who
3 were quite clearly concerned not to incriminate
4 themselves. I think one has to approach that kind of
5 evidence with a great deal of caution. You yourself,
6 Mr Irving, have gone on repeatedly about the superior
7 nature of contemporary evidence over this kind of
8 evidence.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: If Lammers, for example, had said in the witness box that
10 he wanted to find out for himself and he fixed an
11 appointment with the Fuhrer, “whereupon the Fuhrer told me
12 that, yes, it was quite right that he had given the
13 evacuation order to Himmler, but he did not want to hear
14 any more briefings about this Jewish problem during the
15 war”, is that all very much part of this scenario?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You will have to provide me with the documents, I am
17 afraid.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: If you would look at page 10, please, of the little bundle
19 I gave you?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry?
21 MR IRVING: My little 25 page bundle of documents.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The one you put in yesterday?
23 MR IRVING: No, it has been before your Lordship for about 10
24 days. It is bundle B, I think.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is J1, is it?
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes?
. P-141
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: J1, tab 7.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: You may found this unsatisfactory, but these are the
3 original source notes and end notes for Hitler’s War, as
4 you will see —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on, just let us try to — the documents
6 are in such a mess, I am not even sure that I know which
7 clip you are —-
8 MR IRVING: Bundle B, my Lord, pages 10 and 11 — no, bundle
9 D. Bundle D.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I am there.
11 MR IRVING: Yes. These are the end notes for the original
12 edition of Hitler’s War which we are already at page
13 2,653. It is the original note 63 which was never
14 published, but it does contain this quotation of Lammers
15 speaking at Nuremberg, volume 11, page 61. I accept it is
16 a brief excerpt and you are entitled to impugn it on
17 that ground.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does this not appear to refer to this particular episode?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not very satisfactory. One would wish to see the
21 original.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The original document, yes?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mean, we are relying on your notes here, Mr Irving — it
24 is always a risky thing to do.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you accept that this bundle has been before the
26 instructing solicitors now for some two weeks, and that if
. P-142
1 I had got it wrong, no doubt one of their army of
2 researchers would have by now brandished it and Mr Rampton
3 would have been on his hind legs.
4 MR RAMPTON: Thank you very much for that, Mr Irving. You may
5 keep your insults to yourself. The fact is — and,
6 indeed, imply them to yourself if you wish — this
7 document, whatever it may be, if Mr Irving has relied upon
8 it, should have been disclosed by him.
9 MR IRVING: By what?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: By you.
11 MR RAMPTON: By you.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks as if it was though.
13 MR RAMPTON: “What” may be the right description.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It looks as if it was.
15 MR IRVING: It has been disclosed.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is 2653, is it not.
17 MR IRVING: Oh, 2653 is part of the discovery.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I thought.
19 MR RAMPTON: No, no, no, the original document.
20 MR IRVING: Well, the original —-
21 MR RAMPTON: If I am looking at page 10 of what Mr Irving calls
22 his —-
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the answer is it will be in Munich,
24 will it not?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 MR IRVING: Well, no, my Lord. The answer is it will be one of
. P-143
1 the 46 blue volumes of the Nuremberg trial proceedings,
2 which are no longer in my custody, possession or power, of
3 course.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because they are in Germany?
5 MR IRVING: Well, they are probably in every major library in
6 the world.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then why can we not — why do you say the
9 Defendants have to go and get it?
10 MR IRVING: I provided this excerpt, but I can certainly
11 provide the entire passage and your Lordship is quite
12 right —-
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you have just accepted this really is
14 not all that helpful by itself.
15 MR IRVING: Yes, you are absolutely right, my Lord, and I will
16 certainly provide the entire excerpt.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we chase that up?
18 MR IRVING: Yes. But my point there is it has been now, both
19 by way of discovery of the original German text and also
20 in this bundle before the Defence now for two weeks, in
21 this excerpted form, and I feel quite sure that had there
22 been any discrepancy we would have heard about it.
23 So, witness, if I can ask you the question,
24 Lammers there is appearing to say that at some time he
25 took the matter up with Hitler, including evacuation,
26 whatever is meant by that, and Hitler said, yes, he had
. P-144
1 given the evacuation order to Himmler, he did not want to
2 hear any more about this whole thing until after the war
3 is over?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He did not want any more briefings, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. So this is very much in the same kind of line as the
6 Schlegelberg memorandum, Schlegelberger memorandum?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On your interpretation of it?
8 MR IRVING: On any interpretation, my Lord.
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: On your interpretation.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am just saying it is in line, in the same kind of line.
11 I am not talking about being a dilatory Fuhrer — somebody
12 who was always postponing things until tomorrow. Now we
13 have more interrogations, if we have finished with that
14 particular one, Professor?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, you yourself have quoted at somewhat greater
17 length than I have interrogations of people like Ficker
18 and Boley?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I just start off by looking at my excerpts? If you
21 wish to draw attention to any further excerpts that you
22 have made — this is page 12?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Cabinet Counselor Hans Ficker of the Reichs Chancellery
25 stated in 1947: from the invitation to the March 6th
26 meeting ‘it was evident that evacuation or sterilisation
. P-145
1 were on the agenda’. They took minutes. Lammers took
2 this minute to the Fuhrer, and returned with a
3 memorandum, ‘The discussion of the whole affair is to be
4 postponed until the after the end of war'”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: That must have been in March 1942, full stop, and he
7 continues, “‘To our horror, we learned that that then
8 continued behind the scenes'”?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the original German is on the following pages,
11 I think. Now, do you agree that on the basis of that
12 evidence they did not just discuss sterilization, but
13 wider matters as well?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, no. This is rather unreliable evidence, particularly
15 this, “‘To our horror, we learned that that then continued
16 behind the scenes'” —-
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I understand you do not like that, yes.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — which I think is a very obvious piece of
19 self-exculpation.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Unless it is true?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ficker, if you look at the Himmler Dienstagebuch, Ficker
22 actually had dinner with Himmler seven times in 1942 to 3
23 at the height of the extermination of the Jews and it
24 beggars belief to suppose that it continued. It also
25 beggars belief to think that the, I suppose he means
26 extermination of the Jews here, carried on behind the
. P-146
1 scenes without Hitler or anybody in the senior positions
2 knowing about it. Ficker and Boley, Ficker himself
3 admitted that he and Boley were together in an internment
4 camp after the war, and they discussed the meeting of 6th
5 March 1942 more than a dozen times. In other words, they
6 cooked up a story, or a kind of version of the events,
7 between themselves, which would exculpate themselves.
8 That does not mean to say that everything they said was
9 wrong, but one has to regard what they said with extreme
10 caution, particularly what Ficker says, because he was not
11 actually at the meeting of 6th March 1942 himself.
12 There is also a problem when you look at what we
13 are calling the Schlegelberger memorandum, because that
14 simply reports Lammers’s view that Hitler, in a kind of
15 ongoing way, had said, repeatedly said, that he wanted the
16 solution to the Jewish question postponed until after the
17 war. It does not say that there was a specific meeting
18 about the event. So I think we have to regard all of
19 these later documents —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Unless Lammers had gone to Hitler and Hitler said, “Herr
21 Lammers, how often have I told you I do not want to hear
22 about this”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think he would have said that he had gone to Hitler
24 because then that would have meant that he had got from
25 Hitler a kind of decision about this, and that is not what
26 happened. That is not what happened.
. P-147
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: We do not know. We are just tied to the documents in
2 front of us.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In you take the contemporary documents, still remembering
4 that it is uncertain whether it really was from the spring
5 of 1942, and if you regard the contemporary document as
6 superior evidence of these cooked up stories from after
7 the war in allied captivity by people who were trying to
8 save their skins, then I think there is no indication that
9 Herr Lammers did go specifically to Hitler. I think, if
10 Lammers went specifically to Hitler and got a ruling, as
11 it were, then it would have been in a different form from
12 this rather unsatisfactory scrap of paper we have.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, do you think that that is
14 borne out if you look at the text of the Schlegelberger
15 memorandum? Because whatever the tense of “habe” and
16 however you translate that, what it appears to me to be
17 saying is that the Fuhrer has been on and on about
18 postponing the solution of the Jewish question.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Then he (Lammers) infers that the present discussions,
21 which you say are about Mischlinge, are only of
22 theoretical value.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly, my Lord.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: Which is a very odd way of expressing himself if he had
25 actually gone to Hitler and had, as it were, an
26 instruction from Hitler.
. P-148
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Precisely the point.
2 MR IRVING: Is it possible, my Lord, I discussed this question
3 with your Lordship, that Lammers, being an experienced
4 Civil Servant, did not want to burn his fingers by taking
5 it up with Hitler again and just said this to the
6 minister?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not your case.
8 MR IRVING: No, it is not. But it is dangerous to speculate
9 too far, to go too far outside —-
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Of course. I agree.
11 MR IRVING: — the parameters of the documents. We are just
12 trying to establish what the document can have meant, who
13 knew about it and whether in fact these statements are
14 self serving. Professor Evans, if there were a number of
15 people who were at this meeting and they were all held in
16 allied internment camps, would there not have been a
17 strong temptation for one of them to have purchased early
18 release by shopping the others? Did that not happen quite
19 a lot?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought you said we should not speculate too much.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I ask you if you have ever heard the witness Wilhelm
22 Hottl H-O-T-T-L, who was an SS officer?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Where does he appear in relation to the Schlegelberger
24 memorandum?
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is a typical example of a witness at Nuremberg who
26 purchased favourable treatment by providing statements
. P-149
1 that the Allies wanted to hear.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What has this to do with the Schlegelberger memorandum?
3 Which of these people, I mean Ficker or Boley? Ficker was
4 not there so we discount him. Is it Boley then, whom you
5 are saying purchased —-
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not trying to trick you into an answer. I am just
7 asking you if it is not likely that, if there were several
8 people in the allied interrogation centres or internment
9 camps who had knowledge of this very delicate matter, and
10 one of them had information that is the kind of
11 information that the Allies wanted to hear, he would have
12 been quite happy to shop his colleagues by turning it in
13 in order to get an early release date?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is totally hypothetical. Which person are you
15 talking about here who did that in relation to the
16 Schlegelberger memorandum, and what is the evidence for
17 it?
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was Gottfried Boley present?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, at the 6th March meeting. Indeed.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did he on September 14th 1945 — I am now on the second
21 paragraph of my page 12, my Lord — describe Eichmann’s
22 uncouth behaviour at this conference and say how Eichmann
23 used language about Jews being supplied like cattle or
24 being shipped around? One man had objected, “one can’t
25 proceed against the Jews who behave correctly”, and
26 Eichmann’s number 2 said, “that comes under our police
. P-150
1 judgment”. Is that a self-serving statement, do you
2 think, a man describing that the conference was conducted
3 in these uncouth terms?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think, if he had been really self-serving, he would not
5 have said not “one man”, he would have said he protested.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but why did he have to put in these ugly details
7 about a conference that he attended?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If I had been Boley and wanted to exculpate myself,
9 I would have that I was the man who objected. I would
10 have said, “I said one cannot proceed against Jews that
11 have behaved correctly, and I raise objections to all
12 this,” but he does not do that, does he?
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: His final statement on June 10th 1947 in the final
14 paragraph, where he says that Kritzinger sent him to the
15 conference, Eichmann was in the chair, there were 20 or 25
16 participants, and he then testifies at this conference
17 there was no talk of “really grim things”, but of the
18 preliminaries, the evacuation and sterilization.
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Exactly so.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: You have read those interrogations in full, have you not,
21 or your researchers have?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: We have read them, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did they find anything which contradicts the impressions
24 he gives there?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let us take one step back. The March 6th meeting was
26 about so-called Mischlinge and Jews married to non-Jewish
. P-151
1 Germans, and the discussions there, as I tried to
2 summarize them, when you asked me to earlier, Mr Irving,
3 were precisely about evacuations, sterilization,
4 preliminaries, presumably meaning legal, the passing of
5 laws to do with divorce, and so on. That seem to have
6 been fairly accurate.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure where this all goes, Mr Irving.
8 MR IRVING: I am trying to pin down what actually happened at
9 the conference and to find out whether the ambit of the
10 conference is wider than just sterilization issues or
11 whether it was on a broader field, whether really ugly
12 matters were discussed and apparently they were not, and
13 also to establish the credibility of these witnesses, in
14 particular the first one, who says that afterwards
15 somebody took the memorandum, Lammers took this minute to
16 the Fuhrer and returned with precisely the wording of this
17 memorandum, in fact, and here he is remembering it in June
18 1947 in very much the same terms as the document itself.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say that Boley was talking about
20 the 6th March meeting in that little extract you have on
21 your page 12? That could have been Wannsee, could it
22 not?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was, my Lord.
24 MR IRVING: It is all March 6th.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why do you say that? Was this conference not
26 at the RSH?
. P-152
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think Boley was at the Wannsee conference.
2 MR IRVING: I do not think he was either. No, he was not
3 there.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But he was at the March 6th conference and he is talking
5 about that. The point is once more that the minutes of
6 the March 6th conference are all about Mischlinge and Jews
7 in mixed marriages. Schlegelberger in his testimony in
8 his trial at Nuremberg said that is what the conference
9 was about, and the fall out from it in this set of
10 documents is clearly about those questions.
Section 153.11 to 169.4
11 MR IRVING: Professor, if we can pause to draw breath here, one
12 point that divides us on the Schlegelberger memorandum,
13 apart from the possible discrepancy on the date, you think
14 there may be a possibility it was 1941, is that you would
15 believe that the Schlegelberger document refers only to
16 the mixed race issue.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: And the bureaucratic red tape connected with that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, if you date it to March 42.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I say that the significance of the document shows a
21 general reluctance on Hitler’s part to be sucked into talk
22 about the Final Solution?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it is not that. Let us remind ourselves of what it
24 says.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Lammers says the Fuhrer had repeatedly explained to him
. P-153
1 that he wanted the solution of the Jewish question put
2 back until after the war. Now you have to ask yourself in
3 this context what does the solution, losung, of the Jewish
4 question, Judenfrager, in this memorandum actually mean?
5 It can mean one of three things. It can mean
6 extermination. Well, if Hitler is talking about
7 extermination being put back until after the war, he must
8 have known about the extermination at this point, and you
9 said, I think, that if Hitler knew about the extermination
10 between the end of 1941 and October 1943, when you admit
11 that he did know about it, then he would approved of it.
12 I do not think it means that.
13 Then does it mean evacuation? Well, evacuation
14 has already been going on. They started pushing the Jews
15 out of Berlin the previous autumn, as we saw this
16 morning. So why is he suddenly turning round now? Have
17 people been disobeying him? That is an absurd supposition
18 as well. So, if we date it to March 1942, the only
19 reasonable context that a historian would put it in would
20 be the series of discussions about Jews and mixed
21 marriages, which comes under the general heading of
22 solution of the Jewish problem, because it is one aspect
23 of that.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: These are the theoretical discussions, are they not?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, all this stuff about the Mischlinge and so on,
26 sterilization or other terrible things that they want to
. P-154
1 do to them, they are saying it is too difficult
2 classifying people, perhaps there are too many problems,
3 we know it in early 1943, for example, when they finally
4 did try and deport the Jewish husbands of non-Jewish
5 German women from Berlin to Auschwitz, there was a mass
6 protest by these very brave women in public in Berlin ,
7 which stopped it, so there was a fear that this would
8 raise trouble. There are all kind of reasons why they
9 should have wanted, Hitler and others, this solution to be
10 put off.
11 As I said, the Justice Ministry was particularly
12 concerned about the legal implications of trying to deal
13 with this. There were problems about the resource
14 implications of having a mass sterilization programme.
15 There were many reasons why they want to put this off.
16 Decisions about what was going to be done about the great
17 mass of Jews who were not in this situation were neither
18 Mischlinge nor in mixed marriages, they had already been
19 discussed at great length in the Wannsee conference.
20 Indeed, what was left over from the Wannsee conference was
21 precisely this problem, what to do with these marginal
22 problematical minority groups.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can I bring you down to earth now with the actual content
24 of the memorandum? If we look at the second sentence,
25 Lammers says in the first sentence, that the Fuhrer has
26 repeatedly said he wants the solution to the Jewish
. P-155
1 problem postponed until the war is over.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Pause there, Mr Irving. If you are right
3 that the Wannsee conference really decided on a policy of
4 extermination, which as I understand is what you say there
5 happened, that is a very odd thing to have somebody as
6 senior as Lammers saying.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Indeed, my Lord, at this point.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How do you explain it?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because it is to do with — the Jewish question here, he
10 means the aspect of the Jewish solution to the Jewish
11 question that has to do with the Mischlinge and the Jews
12 in mixed marriages.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not think that really would do.
14 That is the gloss that Lammers is putting on it. He is
15 saying in effective response to what is to be done about
16 the Mischlinge, “well, the Fuhrer has consistently said
17 postpone the solution until after the war”. My question
18 to you is, how could he really be saying that, if you are
19 right about what had been decided at Wannsee, because
20 Hitler would have known what was decided at Wannsee? And
21 Lammers would have known too?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is one reason, my Lord, why I think that there is a
23 strong possibility that this is dated from 1941.
24 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: But you accepted on balance of probabilities that actually
25 it was likely to be 1942?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Because of where it is in the file, which means it was
. P-156
1 selected by the Americans, or whoever selected it, to put
2 in this particular postwar file.
3 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So the only answer that you can really give to my point,
4 as it were, is, well, I put it back to 1941?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you think that “losung der Judenfrager” means the whole
6 package, as it were, then it is a deeply implausible thing
7 to be saying at this particular time because so much was
8 going on.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: That is really my point.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There are so many uncertainties with this document. If
11 you read that little note in the bottom left hand corner,
12 17.7, that pushes it back to 1941, and then, on 17th July
13 1941, it is plausible to say that Hitler repeatedly said
14 he wanted the whole solution put back until after the war,
15 because he was saying that in other quarters and to other
16 people.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I follow the point.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You can follow this up through a chain of documents which
19 I go into my report at this time in 1942, which are headed
20 things like “gasuntlosung der Judenfrager” or “Losung der
21 Judenfrager”, which then consist entirely of material
22 about the Mischlinge and the half Jews. So it is not
23 entirely implausible whether he was giving this kind of
24 meaning to the Mischlinge. I agree it is another
25 problematical aspect of this document.
26 MR IRVING: I think the basic problem, my Lord, if I can put it
. P-157
1 like this, is that the whole operation of whatever the
2 Final Solution was is so ramshackle, and so multi-headed,
3 so hydra-like, that to try and systematise it in a law
4 court 50 or 60 years after the event on the basis of basis
5 of not complete documentation is a rather hopeless
6 undertaking. We all have to try and do the best we can.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I understand.
8 MR IRVING: Can I now go back to where I was in the
9 cross-examination?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I am sorry.
11 MR IRVING: I mean no criticism of your Lordship but I will
12 start again and concentrate on that second sentence.
13 After we looked at the first sentence, which says, Reich
14 Minister Lammers informed me that the Fuhrer had
15 repeatedly stated to him that he wants to know that the
16 solution of the Jewish problem has been postponed until
17 the war is over; therefore, or accordingly, rather, the
18 present discussions in the opinion of Mr Lammers have
19 purely theoretical value. What are the “present
20 discussions”? That was the mixed race discussions, was it
21 not? So therefore that cannot be what they are referring
22 to about being postponed. It is the whole problem is
23 being postponed because the mixed race discussions are
24 referred to separately in the second sentence, saying for
25 that reason, these other discussions about mixed races are
26 going to have purely theoretical value. Do you see the
. P-158
1 point I am getting at?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I see the point. I do not accept it. What I would
3 like to know is what do you think “the solution to the
4 Jewish question” means in this document?
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sure that, if it had been said the other way round,
6 if it had been put, the Fuhrer has insisted that the
7 solution to the Jewish problem be pressed with the utmost
8 possible and radical speed, then you would have no
9 difficulty in telling me what you meant by that phrase,
10 would you?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am just puzzled. You put it to me what you actually
12 understand that phrase to mean, “the solution of the
13 Jewish question”? What is it here that is being put back
14 until after the war, if it is not the —-
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: The whole of this absurd doctrinaire business of plucking
16 the Jews out of the arms factories, plucking the Jews out
17 of their homes, putting them into scarce transport base,
18 shipping them east and west, taking up scarce police
19 forces to escort them, all this business, all the red tape
20 that went with it, which was so pointless in the winter of
21 1941 to 1942, and Hitler is repeatedly saying in his
22 ineffectual way, “why on earth are we doing this? We have
23 a war on, fellows. Let us finish the war first and then
24 tackle the problem”.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think the problem for the historian, Mr Irving, if you
26 say that then it means the forced evacuation of Jews to
. P-159
1 the East.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This had been going on for several months by this time, on
4 Hitler’s orders, a fact that you have accepted many times
5 and in many places.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was it on Hitler’s initiative, do you think, or was it
7 because people like Goebbels came nagging him, saying
8 “Mein Fuhrer, I want to get them out of Berlin, please
9 allow me to do that”, and Hitler kept on saying, “Oh very
10 well, Dr Goebbels”?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This relates to a whole set of other documents. It was
12 Hitler’s initiative. I think you have accepted many times
13 that Hitler ordered the deportation of the Jews from
14 Berlin, and subsequently elsewhere, beginning in the
15 autumn of 1941.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think this is a very important and very useful
17 discussion.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If it refers to that, then how can he possibly now
19 suddenly in March 1942 turn around and say that he has
20 repeatedly said that this should not happen? It goes
21 against all the other documentation we have of Hitler’s
22 orders and Hitler’s views on this matter.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: We do have a problem, do we not? We have, on the one
24 hand, people like Goebbels and Himmler saying, do this,
25 the Fuhrer has placed this order on my shoulder, the Reich
26 is going to be emptied out of the Jews, all these
. P-160
1 documents that you and I are familiar with. Yet here is a
2 document saying precisely the opposite, not just a mixed
3 race problem because that is in sentence two, saying
4 therefore the mixed race problem has purely theoretical
5 value.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, it does not say that. It says, “according to the
7 present discussions”, and discussions are on particular
8 policy proposals within the mixed race complex, that is to
9 say —-
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: March 6th?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, sterilization, or deportation, or laws to enforce
12 divorce of mixed marriages, all these various things.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: My Lord, I do not think we can extract very much more
14 usefully.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Nor do I .
16 MR IRVING: On this particular matter. Like so many issues, it
17 is going to be left open, which does not harm my case one
18 bit of course.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I follow that.
20 MR IRVING: I will just draw your Lordship’s attention to two
21 rather disturbing matters about the report that has been
22 prepared by this witness on this matter at page 383.
23 Professor Evans, will you look at the indented paragraph
24 on page 383?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: You quoted testimony of Ficker. Just skim down to where
. P-161
1 he says that the Fuhrer suggested postponement, line 5.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Postponement for the time being of the whole problem,
4 i.e. what to do with half Jews and mixed marriages”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you look at the German original and tell me if that
7 passage is in there?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. That is why I provide the German original to make it
9 clear that that is my interpolation, my explanation.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where does the reader find out that that is your
11 interpolation if he is not going to check the German?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is there. That is why it is put there. It is to enable
13 you to check the German, and anybody else.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you put it in round brackets or square brackets?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is in round brackets there. Sorry, that is a
16 typographical — I also have many other interpolations
17 just to help the reader there. The minister being
18 Lammers, the incorrect statement about the address and so
19 on.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: So you did not wish us to assume that this was part of the
21 original document then?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, how could I? It is quite clearly not there in the
23 original that I quote. Otherwise, if I was hell bent on
24 deceiving you, I would have put that in the original
25 document, would I not, in the German?
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I do not think you would do that, but you in your
. P-162
1 scientific and academic texts insert helpful passages like
2 in square brackets or in round brackets?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It depends.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you elsewhere in this report insert square brackets?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am not sure I actually — there is a square bracket
6 there. I mean it is not typographically very clean, I am
7 afraid.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. If you look at the following page now, please, the
9 second paragraph, you rather grandly say, “Further
10 testimony by Ficker makes it clear that all that was
11 discussed between Lammers and Hitler was the issue of half
12 Jews and mixed marriages”. That is a rather grand
13 statement there to make with no kind of source reference
14 because that is precisely what is at the root of this
15 whole argument this afternoon, is it not, what was
16 discussed between them?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is his testimony on 20th December 1946.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Where do we know that? You just say “Further testimony by
19 Ficker makes it clear”.
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. It follows on. It is covered by the paragraph
21 saying it is his testimony on the 20th December 1946.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: But you appreciate you have not given us any source
23 reference for what that testimony is?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The source reference is down there. You can check it
25 out. It is the interrogation on notes 36 and 37. It is
26 quite clear that refers to that. You can check it up.
. P-163
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: On page 386, line 2, you say that Hitler made tasteless
2 remarks about cross breeding between Jews and non-Jews.
3 Is that right?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In Mein Kampf.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I said cross breeding and bastards, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point about that?
8 MR IRVING: I am wondering whether in fact a portion of the
9 Jewish community also do not argue against cross breeding
10 between Jews and non-Jews. I am wondering whether he was
11 not actually serving their interests in some odd kind of
12 way. They also are against mixed marriages, is that not
13 so, Professor.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am obviously missing the point. Let us go
15 on.
16 MR IRVING: On page 388, paragraph 27, you have a meeting under
17 the heading “Endlosung der Judenfrager”, and you say it
18 was entirely devoted to the issue of half Jews and mixed
19 marriages. Was that what the “Entlosung der Judenfrager”
20 actually means, then? Is it just the mixed marriages and
21 mixed races?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Certainly not, but it is the heading that they have used
23 for this particular meeting.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. I am nearly finished with this particular meeting
25 document. On page 389, paragraph 1, there is a little bit
26 of mealy mouthed reporting here by you. You say the
. P-164
1 detailed investigation by David Irving is wrong to claim
2 with certainty that the document was dictated by Franz
3 Schlegelberger in spring 1942.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: In the very next sentence you say this is the most
6 convincing explanation.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think you have the emphasis wrong.
8 Wrong to claim with absolute certainty. I think that is
9 the point that Professor Evans is making.
10 MR IRVING: He still continues by saying this is the most
11 convincing explanation.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, you are missing the point,
13 I think. The criticism of you is not so much — tell me
14 if I am wrong about this — that you have the
15 interpretation of the Schlegelberger memorandum wrong,
16 because I think Professor Evans probably would say it is a
17 possible explanation, but I think the criticism is that a
18 responsible, objective historian would indicate to the
19 reader that it is not quite as crystal clear as your text
20 suggests.
21 MR IRVING: Perhaps I can ask a couple more questions to bring
22 that out, my Lord.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that misrepresent your view?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does, my Lord. What I am saying is that Mr Irving has
25 used this document in his work to trumpet what he regards
26 as Hitler’s declaration that the Jews should not be
. P-165
1 exterminated or evacuated, and he is in difficulties there
2 because, as I have already explained, if it means
3 exterminated, then Hitler must have known about it. But
4 any responsible historian who did not want to use it for
5 that particular biased purpose would inform the readers
6 that this is an extremely problematical document, that
7 because of its lack of dating, difficulties about its
8 provenance, uncertainties about who wrote it, who it was
9 addressed to, and so on and so forth, all the things that
10 we have been through, should alert the reader to the fact
11 there are a number of possible different interpretations
12 and that, as we have seen in the discussion, almost any
13 one of them actually throws up rather serious problems
14 when you compare them with other documents. I think that
15 would be the way that a responsible, objective historian
16 would proceed. That is what I am saying.
17 MR IRVING: Can I therefore draw your attention to my treatment
18 of this very document in the Goebbels biography on page
19 388 of the Goebbels biography?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. That is exactly what I was looking
21 for. Actually I was looking at Hitler’s War.
22 MR IRVING: I will not said I am sadder, but I am certainly
23 wiser than when I wrote Hitler’s War. I think the
24 Goebbels one is the most up to date version of my state of
25 mind. Page 388, paragraph 2. The treatment I give it is
26 as follows: On the following day he took note of an
. P-166
1 extensive report prepared by Heydrich’s office, probably
2 on Wannsee conference. Was that accurate, do you think,
3 that Goebbels had received this report and it probably was
4 a summary of the Wannsee conference, in other words the
5 January 20 conference?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would have to check. Does this really matter?
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: It does not really matter, no, but, if Goebbels received
8 it on March 5th or March 6th, I think this is the only
9 point there, there were still 11 million Jews in Europe.
10 He dictated, Goebbels, summarizing the document, for the
11 time being they are to be concentrated in the East until
12 later, possibly an island like Madagascar can be assigned
13 to them after the war. Undoubtedly there will be a
14 multitude of personal tragedies, he added airily, but this
15 is unavoidable. The situation now is ripe for a final
16 settlement of the Jewish question. In a covering letter
17 Heydrich invited Goebbels to a second conference on March
18 6th. Goebbels sent two of his senior staff. Eichmann
19 talked crudely at this meeting of forwarding the Jews to
20 the East like so many head of cattle.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is Boley presumably, so you accept that there?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: But you cast doubt on it a few minutes ago.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. I asked if it was a self-serving statement.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You do not say it is a self serving statement there do
26 you?
. P-167
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: “The Ministry of Justice handled the report on this new
2 discussion like a hot potato”. This is a reference to the
3 March 12th letter in which Schlegelberger asks Lammers “it
4 looks like ugly things are brewing, we are going to have
5 to take this up, you and me, before this goes to the
6 Fuhrer”. The Reichschancellery referred it all to Hitler?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That relies on Ficker and I do not think that is an
8 accurate statement.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Hitler wearily told Hans Lammers that he wanted the
10 solution of the Jewish problem postponed until after the
11 war was over, a ruling that remarkably few historians now
12 seem disposed to quote”?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. That is a complete misrepresentation of what we are
14 calling the Schlegelberger memorandum.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: In what way is it a misrepresentation?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us go through it all over again.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is nothing weary about it. He did not tell
18 Lammers. There was not a ruining. The Schlegelberger
19 memorandum was not a ruling transmitted to the Ministry of
20 Justice, otherwise why would the Ministry of Justice have
21 gone ahead quite shortly afterwards and arranged for the
22 Jews in State prisons to be taken out and sent off for
23 extermination? It beggers belief that this is actually a
24 ruling which then does not leave a paper trail, as you
25 describe Hitler rulings doing, throughout the bureaucracy
26 saying, oh, the Fuhrer has ordered that the solution has
. P-168
1 to b e put off, hold it everybody, let us stop. The whole
2 thing goes on. It goes on in the Ministry of Justice
3 which is actually where this document comes from. It is a
4 completely incredible interpretation you are giving there.
Section 169.5 to 178.4
5 MR IRVING: You have just referred to a subsequent decision to
6 take the Jewish prisoners out of prisons and send them to
7 be exterminated. Was that your word?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: And what is your source for that?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me have a look here. It is one of my arguments.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Your expert report pages 391 to 392, paragraph 4.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: September 1942, you say a meeting between Himmler and the
14 new Minister of Justice at which they decided on
15 annihilation through labour. Have you given us the
16 original document or the original German of that?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I cite it in the footnote there. The German is in
18 footnote 51 about again the October 1942 note.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you provided the German for the phrase “annihilation
20 through labour”?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not there, no.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you hazard a guess at what the German was?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Vernichtung deutsche arbeit, yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have already seen on several occasions that the word
25 “vernichtung” is not necessarily totally identical and
26 equivalent to killing?
. P-169
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think it means at this time in the war it is. I would
2 like you to provide me with information that it is not in
3 this context. It mostly is. “Vernichtung deutsche
4 arbeit”, there is no doubt what that means. They are to
5 be worked to death. Tirak explains. He says: “The
6 judicial system can only contribute in small measure to
7 exterminating members of this race.” He is talking about
8 the —-
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you tell us what word was used for exterminating?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is “ausrotten”.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Ausrotten”. Are you going to accept that the word
12 “ausrotten” is capable of all sorts, an entire spectrum
13 of different shades of meaning?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Do we want to talk about “ausrotten” now?
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: No. I am going to deal with the Germans on that who know
16 German.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I know German, Mr Irving, and I can tell you that by this
18 time in October 1942 “ausrotten” means extermination.
19 I would like to see documents where it does not from this
20 period, and in this context, above all, that is what it
21 means. I suppose the exact meaning is extirpation. But if
22 you look —-
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen a document —-
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: If you look up in the Oxford English Dictionary you will
25 find that extirpation means total destruction.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen a document from Himmler to Martin Bormann
. P-170
1 dated February 1944 where Himmler is reporting on [German
2 spoken] in which Himmler rights to Bormann saying: [German
3 spoken]?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but I think that depends on the context.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Ah.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: In this context it means extermination. It is quite
7 clear. There is no doubt about it. Tirak is saying
8 that. What else does he mean?
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can it not just equally mean that we are going to take
10 these people out of society?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. They have already done that.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can it not equally well mean that we are going to send off
13 to slave labour camps where in fact 1,000 of them were
14 shortly shipped?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He says there is no sense in conserving such persons for
16 years on end in German prisons and penitentiaries.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: So we will send them off to work in slave labour camps
18 until they drop?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is deliberate extermination of these people by giving
20 them small rations and working them to death, such as
21 happened in the concentration camp at Mounthausen which is
22 the one mainly reserved for these people.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: You then say the police can take their measures or their
24 steps free of the threat of legal persecution and you
25 assume that these measures, these steps are also going to
26 be killing?
. P-171
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: At a time of grave manpower shortage in Germany they need
3 the slave labour they can get?
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. This is the time when the mass extermination of the
5 Jews was at its height, some 20 thousand state prisoners
6 were taken out of the prisons with a very elaborate and
7 extremely well documented operation and handed over for
8 killing through labour. One should not fall into the trap
9 of supposing that the Nazi regime was a rational regime
10 which devoted all its resources to winning the war. As
11 I have already said, it regarded the war as a racial war
12 in which the destruction, murder of the Jews and of other
13 groups was part of the war effort.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we are going round and round.
15 MR IRVING: We are, my Lord. We are not getting further. It
16 is the meaning of words again which I am not going to deal
17 with this witness on.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please do not. For reference only, unless
19 you want to pick it up, reference in the transcript that
20 is, it is page 464 of the 1991 edition of Hitler’s War.
21 I am not encouraging anyone to go to that.
22 MR IRVING: My Lord the next item in the expert report would be
23 the Goebbels diary entry of March 27th 1942, but I propose
24 putting the report aside for the remaining three quarters
25 of an hour and looking just at the rest of the documents
26 in the chain. Professor Evans, do you have this bundle?
. P-172
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is this the green piece of paper?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we now, before forgetting to ask you
3 this, decide where it goes? I think somebody said J2.
4 Miss Rogers probably said J2, but I say again I have not
5 got a J2. I have said that many times.
6 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship is in not in that.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Rampton, but it does not help
8 any of us.
9 MS ROGERS: I am sorry about that, my Lord. I had always
10 understood that your Lordship had a J1 and a J2.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No.
12 MS ROGERS: Because the documents which have been produced on a
13 daily basis I had thought were being put into separate
14 tabs in, essentially, the Claimants’ files, J1 and J2.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, well, not as far as I know.
16 MS ROGERS: If they are not, we can provide your Lordship with
17 a file — we can give you an empty file now and perhaps we
18 will update it.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That will do, except I probably ought to know
20 what you have already put into J2. Anyway, can I have it
21 for the moment?
22 MS ROGERS: It will all be altogether, my Lord.
23 MR IRVING: So the first one would be December 14th 1941, they
24 are in roughly chronological order.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Again this document is not strictly part of the chain, but
. P-173
1 it is one that would probably be held against me, so
2 I thought it would be not unfair to include it in this
3 part.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Which document are you going to?
5 MR IRVING: December 14th, 1941.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Rosenberg, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am not going to spend very much time on this document.
8 Does your Lordship have the document?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
10 MR IRVING: Is this an aide memoir or note by Rosenberg having
11 had a conversation with Hitler on December 14th 1941?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, and what do you think is significant about this
14 document in the context that we are talking about today,
15 the Final Solution?
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, he has, Rosenberg has previously made a speech where
17 he has referred rather openly to the extermination of the
18 Jews. I am trying to find a reference to it in my
19 report. I am leafing back. Then there is a declaration
20 of war on America on 11th December, and then Hitler gave a
21 speech to the Gauleiter on 12th December where he made it
22 quite clear that the entry of the Americans into the war
23 had altered things. He spoke in an unusually open fashion
24 about his famous prophecy, the 30th January 1939, being
25 fulfilled. The war, he said, the extermination of the
26 Jews would happen if the world war broke out, now the
. P-174
1 world war is there —-
2 MR IRVING: When did he say that, in 1939 or —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: — or on this occasion?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He said — the prophecy in 1939, he recalls that in his
6 speech.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: But in 1939 he said “vernichtung des Judentungs”, did he
8 not, that word again?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. We would have it look it up. I am not sure it is
10 “des Judentungs”.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Take it from me that he says “vernichtung”.
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I will not take it from you, no. I am lost in my
13 report now, I am afraid.
14 MR RAMPTON: If the witness is looking for the Hitler speech of
15 12th December 1941, it is on page 412 of his report.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Thank you. I have just got there.
17 MR RAMPTON: There is the Rosenberg reference as well.
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, it is the Rosenberg reference there.
19 MR IRVING: Yes. Basically —-
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is just after the —-
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Declaration of war.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — first killings in Chelmno, and there are, this is the
23 annihilation, the vernichtung — where are we?
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: The destruction of Jewry?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is right, this is the 12th December, and he says that
26 the destruction of the Jews will, it will now happen
. P-175
1 because it is the, because we have the war there. Then
2 there is the discussion, and Rosenberg now meets who is
3 responsible, the Minister responsible for the East,
4 Eastern areas, and says, I mean, that is the context and
5 he now says, “Well, I have discussed it with, on the
6 Jewish question”, he talks then about the New York Jews,
7 and then he says, “I took the standpoint of not talking
8 about the extirpation of Jewry”, the “ausrotten des
9 Judentungs”. “The Fuhrer approved of this position and
10 said, ‘They had forced the war on us and they had brought
11 destruction. It was no wonder if the consequences
12 affected them first’.”
13 So that, in other words, “Judentung” there
14 refers quite clearly to “the Jews” because he goes on to
15 talk about “they”, and the context of this is your claim
16 that he is talking about the stamping out of Judaism
17 I think is the phrase you use in your book.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I was just asking you what inferences you would draw
19 from this document?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, the inference is that you have manipulated and
21 falsified the document in your presentation of it, Mr
22 Irving.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, I am asking you what inferences you will draw from
24 the content of this document, rather than the way I have
25 written about it in any way.
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The inference I would draw is that, the inference I would
. P-176
1 draw are that Hitler is approving the notion, and
2 Rosenberg together are discussing the killing, mass
3 killing, of Jews, they think it is a good idea, but you
4 have got to keep it quiet.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Rosenberg is informed, of course, of the killings on the
6 Eastern Front?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He knows what is going on, of course, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: He is informed because we have just read yesterday the
9 letter to him on November 15th, a few pages earlier in
10 this file, about seven pages earlier, from Lozer, who is
11 the boss in Riga, who has asked him, “What are we
12 supposed to be doing with the Jews? I cannot find
13 anything in the brown file”. Do you remember that one?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: So there is no directives, even in mid November, and now
16 here on December 14th they are talking vaguely about the
17 extirpation of the Jews, but there is still nothing
18 specific being written down by anybody, even at this time,
19 even by Rosenburg who is writing a private diary, he does
20 not say, “Well, the Fuhrer says he is fully aware of what
21 is going on and says, ‘Keep on doing what is being done in
22 Riga’.” Why does nobody write anything down explicitly, I
23 guess, Professor, this is what I am asking. Perfectly?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we had been through that, that is
25 camouflage, is it not?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-177
1 MR IRVING: Even in their own private diaries, my Lord, in
2 their own private papers?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You have made that point, Mr Irving. I mean,
4 I have the point.
Section 178.5 to 207.26
5 MR IRVING: I did say I was not going to spend very long on
6 that document. I will ask, however, about documents which
7 are not in this bundle. Are you familiar with the private
8 diary of Otto Brottigan(?)?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: Otto Brottigan was, I think, the liaison officer between
11 Rosenberg and the German Army High Command?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Did Brottigan refer in September 1941 to a situation that
14 had arisen because Stalin had rounded up all the so-called
15 vulgar Germans and could they now not take reprisals on
16 Jews?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: What was Hitler’s response to that?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Can I see the document, please? I had better see it.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the document?
21 MR IRVING: It is not in any of the bundles. The witness has
22 said he is familiar with the diary of Brottigan —-
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, but when we are going to discuss it in detail,
24 I think I need to have it in front of me.
25 MR IRVING: Did Hitler say, “Let us keep all these Jews alive
26 as hostages to keep the Americans out of the war”?
. P-178
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I would need to see the document, I am afraid, Mr Irving.
2 I do not mean to cause difficulties, but I really do find
3 it very difficult to discuss these things without having
4 it in front of me.
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you, therefore, now — we will abandon that.
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Is that a fair request, my Lord?
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will go on — I just put to you the content of the
8 diaries, but if you do not want to —-
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I personally think that it is fair.
10 MR IRVING: It is.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have all been talking about context until
12 we are blue in the face, and I think, you know, one is
13 entitled to see the context.
14 MR IRVING: Yes. It was a matter which occurred to me quite
15 simply because the witness talked about the entry of
16 America into the war.
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I know, but I mean there is no dispute that
18 up until Hitler declared war on the USA, which is one of
19 the stupidest things he ever did, amongst others, there
20 was no question about that there was some kind of a plan
21 to keep the Jews as hostages to try to prevent the
22 Americans joining the war. It failed partly, as I say,
23 because Hitler made the mad decision to declare war on the
24 United States, but there it is.
25 MR IRVING: He had bad counsel, did he not?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I personally do not get much help from
. P-179
1 that because if it is designed to show that Hitler was
2 merciful, it does not seem to do anything of the kind.
3 MR IRVING: Can we now move on to the handwritten document of
4 18th December 1941?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Again very briefly. This is Himmler’s notes originally
7 for a conversation with Hitler, the conversation to take
8 place at 4 p.m. on 18th December 1941. Do you have the
9 handwritten notes?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I do.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: In my bundle?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: In my little bundle?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have it.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the left-hand side Himmler has written as one topic
16 “Judenfrage”?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Jewish problem” — unmistakable the word there because it
19 is very clearly written?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the right in a slightly different handwriting, probably
22 in his green crayon, he has written “als partisan” and
23 “als surotten”?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: How do you translate that?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “To be extirpated as partisans”.
. P-180
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, not “like partisans”?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, “as partisans”. In other words, they are to be
3 treated, the Jews are to be treated as partisans and
4 killed. It is another of these, this rather thick, there
5 is a kind of thickening of documents from the documentary
6 record immediately after the declaration of war on
7 America, and this is one of the documents that follows
8 from that. Probably a fall out of Hitler’s speech to the
9 Gauleiters on 12th December.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: On the following page but one, the next page but one, we
11 have a table talk dated July 24th 1942?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is not from the Henry (sic) Heim table talks now,
14 this is from the —-
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Heinrich Heim.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: Heinrich Heim. I am sorry, before we do that one, can
17 I direct your attention to one of the little documents
18 I brought in this morning for you? Right at the end, it
19 is typed in big typeface, it is a note on a conversation?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not think I have got it. It is a picture is the last
21 one.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Two or three pages before that, you should find two pages
23 typed in large typeface?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Consisting of what?
25 MR IRVING: Henrich Heim?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Henrich Heim.
. P-181
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have that.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 1862 is the number on the top right-hand side of it. It
3 is in the small bundle beginning with the type, with a
4 kind of —-
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have the bundle, but mine, obviously,
6 does not extend as far as everybody else’s.
7 MR IRVING: In that case I will leave it then. It was purely
8 the man who did the table talks who had — perhaps that
9 could be given? Do you have a copy of it, witness?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: Right. Is this a memorandum drawn up by Henry Heim?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Heinrich Heim.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Heinrich Heim?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 1968.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Rather a long time after the war.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. Does he describe a conversation that he records —
18 was he the man who wrote Hitler’s Table Talk?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was one of the three people who recorded Hitler’s Table
20 Talk, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Will you look just briefly at the third page that is in
22 front of you there which is another typescript page — do
23 you have it — of an actual page of Hitler’s table talk in
24 German.
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, with a “page 4” on top?
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think so, yes.
. P-182
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No. 4, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is one of the Henry Heim table talks which —-
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Heinrich Heim, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: — he himself typed, is that right?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is Heinrich Heim and Henry Picker. You must not
6 confuse the two. Yes, it looks like it. There is no date
7 or anything on it.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was in a position to know things. He was at Hitler’s
9 table or at the next door table writing notes during his
10 table talk? That is what he did, is it not?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was the adjutant to Martin Bormann?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Irving]: In 1968, he remembers Adolf Hitler in December 1941, for
15 what it is worth, and I throw that in and you will comment
16 on that, does he not say: “I remember Hitler clearly
17 saying in December 1941, ‘I do not know what the Jews are
18 complaining about. All I ask of them is that they go and
19 do some good hard labour somewhere. I do not know even
20 ask of them to go and serve in the armed forces'”?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you think that conversation took place or that remark
23 was made by Hitler? He says there, “I forgot to write it
24 down at the time”?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does he not? Would you attach any kind weight to that
. P-183
1 remark?
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I mean, not a great deal since Heim was a dyed in the wool
3 old Nazi who —-
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: Was he a war criminal? Was he arrested?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — was described by people who knew him as not really
6 living in the real world and always had this incredibly
7 rosy view of Hitler.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: He was Hitler —-
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This is about 40 years, nearly 40 years, after the event,
10 and he is trying to tell everybody that Hitler cannot have
11 known about Auschwitz. So I treat this with a certain
12 degree of scepticism.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well it was not 40 years, was it? It was slightly less.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: 1941 to 1968.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes. But if he had said that in —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Take off three years, if you like.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: — a German court of law at or about the same time there
18 were numerous trials going on that had been quoted by the
19 expert witnesses in their footnotes of German trials in
20 the 1970s, so it is not impossible — he says that this
21 remark does keep coming back to him. He keeps on
22 remembering it, does he not? Hitler having said, “I do
23 not know what the Jews are complaining about. I just want
24 them to be sent off to do hard work. I am not even asking
25 them to go and fight in the armed forces”?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, just so that I am clear, you rely
. P-184
1 on that as being Hitler’s state of mind at this time?
2 MR IRVING: According to this source —-
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. My question was you rely on this
4 document as establishing that that was, indeed, Hitler’s
5 state of mind?
6 MR IRVING: As far as I think the German Jews are concerned,
7 yes. I do not think Heim is specific about which Jews he
8 is talking about. I do not think he is throwing in all
9 the wretched Jews in the Russian cities who have fallen
10 into German hands. It is a document in the Institute of
11 History. It is in their archives. They have conducted
12 several interviews with Heim and, for what it is worth, I
13 have put it in as yet another indication that the people
14 who were close to Hitler never heard him saying anything
15 different. On some occasions they heard him say things
16 like this. Now, we —-
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I mean, it is difficult to digest this, just having
18 first seen it. I mean, I would not place a great deal of
19 credence on this —-
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry you have just seen it. It has been in
21 discovery for about 18 months.
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — on this document. Well, it is just not a very
23 convincing document. It may well be that Hitler made some
24 kind of cynical remark like this, that Jews — he was
25 always saying the Jews had reason to be grateful to him.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
. P-185
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: All he wanted from them is work. But I think that is just
2 a cynical remark —-
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — in the winter of 1941 to ’42 and it does not —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: Professor, I think you may very well be right, you may
6 very well be right.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not support the rather kind of romantic things
8 that he goes on to say about Hitler later in the document.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Can you now look to a table talk written, not by Heim or
10 probably not by Heim, but by Henry Picker who succeeded
11 him?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: July 24th 1942?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Right.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is the end of the first —-
16 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Sorry, this is your — you are still on page 4, is it?
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: I am sorry, it is in my bundle —-
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Ah, yes, your bundle.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: — of my chain of documents?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, I have that.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: At the end of the first full paragraph —-
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving]: — is Hitler quoted as saying: “After this war is over”
24 — there is that phrase again, is it not — “after this
25 war is over” —-
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-186
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: — “I am going to stand rigorously on the standpoint that
2 I am going to knock these cities’ heads together”, if you
3 can put it like that, “if the Jews don’t come out and we
4 get rid of them to Madagascar or some other Jewish
5 national state”?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Do you detect there two lines that I have been constantly
8 putting to this court, first of all, the tendency of
9 Hitler to postpone things until after the war is over and,
10 secondly, the tendency for a geographical solution rather
11 than for a homicidal solution, if I can put it like that?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: What I detect there, Mr Irving, is pure camouflage by
13 Hitler. He is telling a group of people at dinner this
14 complete porky pie about wanting to send them off to
15 Madagascar. It is 24th July 1947, the time when the
16 extermination programme is already in full swing. The
17 camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz are already in
18 operation, Treblinka had just got its first contingent,
19 and on 10th February 1942 there is a Foreign Office
20 document who, in fact — in which the official had first
21 proposed the Madagascar plan, many months earlier than
22 this document, says that the Fuhrer has decided that the
23 Jews should be pushed off, not to Madagascar, but to the
24 East. Madagascar, therefore, does not need to be foreseen
25 for the Final Solution any more.
26 So, on his own orders, the plan had been
. P-187
1 abandoned in February, and here he is spinning this kind
2 of smoke screen, to use your phrase, about it in his
3 circle of acquaintances and officers and so in July 1942.
4 So I think this is a —-
5 Q. [Mr Irving]: So he is living in cloud cuckoo land then, is he not?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, he is deliberately trying to deceive his audience.
7 Q. [Mr Irving]: Or living in cloud cuckoo land?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, deliberately trying to deceive his audience.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Well, your sentence that he is deliberately trying to
10 deceive presupposes that you can produce evidence that he
11 knew precisely what was going which is what we have been
12 searching for for several weeks.
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, I do not think — there is plenty of evidence,
14 Mr Irving.
15 Q. [Mr Irving]: I think we have dealt with that document now. Can we now
16 just go on to the next one which is July 28th 1942? It is
17 a white on black document. This is a document that you
18 yourself also quote, do you not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes — if I can find it.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mine is almost illegible and in German?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, mine is very difficult to read.
22 MR IRVING: I am only relying on the first paragraph, my Lord,
23 and I will read it out to you in English, if I may?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is what worries me.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: There should be a dark version and a light version.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have only got a — no, wait a minute, no.
. P-188
1 Actually, you are quite right. There is a page in between
2 in my clip.
3 MR IRVING: Obviously done at some ungodly hour in the morning.
4 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: July 1942.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, what is it and what are we —-
6 MR IRVING: It is an interesting one because it is talking
7 about — this is Himmler writing to Berger, General
8 Berger, SS General Berger, right?
9 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving]: [German] Berger. On July 28th 1942, which is an
11 interesting period, is it not?
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact, it is a Top State Secret document, highest
14 classification. Is Himmler saying to Berger responding to
15 his minutes or memoranda: “I urgently ask you that there
16 should be no kind of ordinance about what the word ‘Jew’
17 is, the meaning of the word ‘Jew’. With all these stupid
18 determinations, we are just tying our own hands”.
19 Then he continues, does he not, by saying: “The
20 occupied Eastern territories are going to become free of
21 Jews. The execution of this very grave or burdensome
22 order has been placed on my shoulders by the Fuhrer”?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Nobody can take that responsibility off me in
25 consequence”?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
. P-189
1 Q. [Mr Irving]: “So I forbid anybody to interfere”.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: And “What can we” —-
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you put how you rely on that document?
5 MR IRVING: I was going to ask the witness, Professor Evans,
6 what interpretation would you place on that, that “The
7 Fuhrer has given me the job, placed on my shoulders a job
8 of rendering the occupied Eastern territories free of the
9 Jews”?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, well, we are talking about July 1942, as I have said,
11 when the death camps were already in full swing. There
12 are large numbers of Jews from the occupied territories
13 are being gassed in Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz,
14 Treblinka, and so on. So I think, given that context, it
15 clearly means that the Fuhrer has told Himmler to kill the
16 Jews in the occupied Eastern territories.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: That is how you would read between the lines of that
18 document?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It does not require too much reading between the lines.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is not actually in the document, though. You are
21 entitled to do this; as an historian, you are entitled to
22 extrapolate, are you not?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Well, it is not a very grand extrapolation, given the
24 context of what was going on at the time.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, but in view of the fact that this is precisely what
26 we are trying to determine here, we had to be a bit
. P-190
1 careful how far we allow ourselves to extrapolate.
2 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I think that is a legitimate extrapolation.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: In fact, all the document says is: “The Fuhrer has told me
4 to clean the Jews out of the occupied Eastern territories
5 and” —-
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, he does not say that, Mr Irving.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, it says “will become free of Jews” and
8 that can either mean “free” because they are being booted
9 into the further East or murdered.
10 MR IRVING: Oh, indeed, yes.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is difficult to say that they could be booted further
12 East because that is where the Red Army was, the battle
13 front.
14 MR IRVING: Did large numbers of the Jews find themselves being
15 booted over the Euro mountains? Have we seen documents in
16 that connection?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not believe we have.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, we have, but, was that not much
19 earlier?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Have we?
21 MR IRVING: Or taking flight?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 100,000 going over the Eurols?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right, yes. I have not seen that.
24 MR RAMPTON: That was in September 1941.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is why I said I thought it was rather
26 earlier.
. P-191
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes, and they were not booted, they ran.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, “booted” was a colloquialism.
3 MR IRVING: Can we now turn the page? I am making progress as
4 rapidly as I can, my Lord, as you will see. We are making
5 huge progress.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not want slow you down, but can you put
7 what you say the right interpretation of this is,
8 Mr Irving, to the witness?
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, your Lordship will know precisely what
10 I am going to say, that one should not go further than
11 what the document actually says, and that one should say
12 what the document says and leave the reader to form their
13 own conclusions.
14 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I cannot accept that.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I can.
16 MR RAMPTON: This is a document which plainly shows, unless
17 Himmler is lying, that Himmler has been given an order —
18 “order” is the word he uses I think.
19 MR IRVING: Yes.
20 MR RAMPTON: A very difficult order by Hitler to make sure that
21 the occupied Eastern territories are going to be or are
22 becoming free of Jews. Now the question Mr Irving has to
23 grapple with and put to this witness is where were they
24 going? Were they still going to Madagascar, is my
25 question?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that articulates rather better than
. P-192
1 I did what I was really inviting you to do, which is to
2 say — I mean the Defendants say this is quite an
3 incriminating document. I think if your case is, Mr
4 Irving, that it is not an incriminating document you
5 should explain, or not explain, put to the witness why
6 not. Do you follow me?
7 MR IRVING: My Lord, you know my method. I will churn around
8 inside a document as long as I can before moving on to the
9 next document which makes the point I am about to made,
10 which I will now do, if I may.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If that is really right then that is fair
12 enough. The next document?
13 MR IRVING: The next document is the document headed in
14 handwriting at the top right-hand corner September 1942.
15 It is typed.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Not in my bundle.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Not in mine. Is this NG2586? I have the one.
18 MR IRVING: Does this appear to be a typed transcript of the
19 same kind of agenda for discussion with Hitler, as we have
20 previously seen in December 1941?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, indeed.
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: The tentative date 17th September 1942, but it might have
23 been 22nd. Is paragraph (iv) headed “Volkestung” which
24 I suppose is nationalities and settlement?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Races I think.
26 Q. [Mr Irving]: Race and settlement?
. P-193
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Race and settlement.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the first topic “Juden auswandern”?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: How would you translate that “Juden auswandern”?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Jewish emigration.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Does he then ask the question which he is going to ask
7 Hitler: How should we carry on or continue?
8 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then there is a tick indicating that, yes, they did
10 discuss it?
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Then the next line says: The settlement of the district of
13 Lublin. They are looking at various people who they can
14 send there, the people from Lorain, Germans from Bosnia?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: And so on. They are going to discuss this with this
17 Globos. Who is Globos?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is a nickname for Globocnik.
19 Q. [Mr Irving]: Who was the Police Chief in Lublin, is that right?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: What kind of conclusions can we draw from these admittedly
22 very sketchy notes by Himmler on a talk with Hitler, or
23 for a talk with Hitler? Is this more camouflage?
24 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is difficult. It is an extremely cryptic remark.
25 Q. [Mr Irving]: “Auswandern” is that another euphemism?
26 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It would seem to be at this point in September 1942
. P-194
1 I think certainly a euphemism. The basic point is that
2 they are talking about moving. I mean, the Nazis,
3 particularly Himmler and his agencies, had this grand
4 scheme of resettling Eastern Europe and moving ethnic
5 Germans from other parts of Europe in there, and what he
6 has here under 2 is settling the Lublin area with what
7 they classify as ethnic Germans from Lorain, Bosnia and
8 Bessarabia. Of course the point here is that, in order to
9 move them in and create space for them, Jews were moved
10 out by being deliberately exterminated. That is really
11 the connection between those. It seems that in the
12 previous couple of days there was a conference in which
13 Himmler had taken part on a kind temporarily agreeing to
14 keep a small number of Jews on to work, as in indeed
15 everyone will be familiar from the film Schindlers List.
16 Q. [Mr Irving]: So, do you translate “Juden auswandern” as murdering the
17 Jews?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, translated as Jewish emigration, but it would seem to
19 me at this time in the war that it really means killing.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: This is another —-
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Irving, I am bit a puzzled
22 about that because “auswandern” is an odd word to use,
23 even if it is a euphemistic.
24 MR IRVING: It is not the usual word used as a euphemism. They
25 use “Evakuierung”, do they not? That has a sinister
26 connotation.
. P-195
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: “Auszedlum” is another word they use. There is a whole
2 battery of euphemisms that they use.
3 Q. [Mr Irving]: Have you seen “auswandern” used before as a euphemism? I
4 do not want to hang too much importance on this.
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Obviously not.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How would you translate “auswandern”?
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Emigration.
8 MR IRVING: Literally “emigration”, wandering abroad, wandering
9 out. It is not one of the regular catalogue of euphemisms
10 which with we have become familiar.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This again at the absolute height of the mass murders, the
12 mass gassings, the mass shootings, all over this part of
13 Europe, and it really I think beggars belief to think that
14 they are simply talking some other nice kind of emigration
15 somewhere to Madagascar or somewhere like that. I think
16 this is talking about killing.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: It is a terrible problem, is it not, that we are faced
18 with this tantalizing plate of crumbs and morsels of what
19 should have provided the final smoking gun proof, and
20 nowhere the whole way through the archives do we find even
21 one item that we do not have interpret or read between the
22 lines of, but we do have in the same chain of evidence
23 documents which are quite clearly specifically shown
24 Hitler intervening in the other sense?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I do not accept that at all. It is because you want
26 to interpret euphemisms as being literal and that is what
. P-196
1 the whole problem is. Every time there is a euphemism,
2 Mr Irving, or a euphemistic or a camouflage piece of
3 statement or language about Madagascar, you want to treat
4 it as being the literal truth, because it serves your
5 purpose of trying exculpate Hitler. That is part of the
6 problem of the way in which you manipulate and distort the
7 documents.
8 MR IRVING: We know I am a manipulator and distorter, we have
9 established that point.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just ask question? Am I right in
11 thinking that at this time, which is, is it September
12 1942?
13 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: There was still what I think somebody described as
15 deghettoization going on, namely Jews were being taken
16 from cities in the East within the German jurisdiction and
17 transported to concentration camps?
18 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: To be killed, yes. At this time there seem to have been
19 about 300,000 Jews in the General Government left alive
20 out of about 2.3 million of the original.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So that was still going on?
22 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: So this was going on right through this time. If one
23 looks back in Dienskalendar to 18th July 1942, that is the
24 point at which Himmler had given the original order to
25 resettle ethnic German in the Lublin area, and he said to
26 make room for them: “The Jews must finally disappear from
. P-197
1 the town”, so the two processes are directly connected and
2 the disappearance there again is another not so
3 mealymouthed euphemism for sending them off to be gassed
4 or shooting them.
5 MR IRVING: What makes you think that “Juden auswandern” refers
6 only to the generalgouvernenent? It might equally refer
7 to France or any of these countries where they were
8 carrying out these inhuman measures.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But they were not going westwards any of
10 them, were they, at this time?
11 MR IRVING: It does not say. It just says emigrating.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not your case that Jews were moving
13 en bloc in a westerly direction?
14 MR IRVING: This is Himmler going to Hitler with that word
15 written in his calendar saying: “Emigration of the Jews.
16 How are we going to carry on? How are we going to proceed
17 with this?”
18 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry to intervene, but this is all rather
19 odd to my mind, the possibility of that the Jews were
20 going to West to East, from France, Austria goodness knows
21 where.
22 MR IRVING: We do not know where they are going.
23 MR RAMPTON: No, but if they are emigrating from, let us say,
24 France to a death camp in Poland, it is perfectly logical.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was that happening at this time, Professor
26 Evans?
. P-198
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: European Jews?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: What one might call non-German European Jews?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: September 1942.
6 MR IRVING: But it might perfectly well be somebody saying,
7 “Well, why don’t we have them all sent to French North
8 Africa”, because at that time that had not been invaded,
9 Operation Torch had not happened.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I find that somewhat unlikely, Mr Irving —-
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: All that I am looking at —-
12 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: — in view of the fact there is this mass extermination
13 going on in the area, for which Globocnik was responsible
14 at this very time. The fact it was discussed with
15 Globocnik quite clearly means that this part of the
16 package of things that was discussed, if have the man who
17 is actually responsible for this involved.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was Globocnik involved in transportation as
19 opposed to extermination?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: He was the Police Chief for the area, so he was involved
21 in all of these things.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray]: So he was both.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
24 MR IRVING: He was obviously involved in the resettlement of
25 the Lublin district, as is shown by the reference in this
26 connection.
. P-199
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, bringing these people in.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: I will just ask the question once more. Have you seen the
3 word “auswandern” used anywhere as a euphemism where it is
4 clearly so, used as camouflage, on any other occasion?
5 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I do not recall it having been, that does not mean to say
6 it is not so used, but, as I say, they used a whole
7 variety of euphemisms.
8 Q. [Mr Irving]: We will very rapidly turn the page, and 10th December, we
9 now have the abshafen of the Jews from France.
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving]: We have dealt with this. I am just going to look, not at
12 the numbers here, but do you agree the figures of 600 to
13 700,000 are not accurate for France as far as Jews are
14 concerned?
15 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, because I think this probably included the French
16 colonies.
17 Q. [Mr Irving]: How would the Germans get their hands on the Jews in the
18 French colonies?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: You just said that they were thinking about sending Jews
20 to Madagascar. That is one of them.
21 Q. [Mr Irving]: Are you familiar with the fact that on 8th November 1942
22 the first major Anglo-American amphibious invasion
23 operation had taken place and that the French North of
24 West Africa was the target of that, and so there had been
25 a major change in the geographical situation before this
26 conference took place?
. P-200
1 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: That is right. Just before this conference, a few weeks
2 before South of France was occupied by axis troops. This
3 is at a point when the transports of Jews from France had
4 already begun. It began in the early Spring 1942 directly
5 to Auschwitz and carried on through the Summer. About
6 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris in July. Transports
7 then began from the Vichy region. The background to this
8 is the fact that they have now got control over the whole
9 of France and they are not reliant on the Vichy government
10 any more. So in the following February more transports in
11 considerable number began to Auschwitz and Sobibor.
12 Q. [Mr Irving]: Very briefly, you will find on those two pages of December
13 10th 1942 that two words were used for how the Jews were
14 going be moved on disposed of: Abshafen on one document
15 in Himmler’s handwriting, and in the typed memorandum he
16 then says they are going to be abtransportiered?
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Would you like to tell the court what your conclusions are
19 from the use of those two words?
20 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: This first document is just Himmler’s own private note, is
21 that right?
22 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: The second one is a document for circulation.
24 Q. [Mr Irving]: Is the typed version which then was generated after that?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. So he is, in other words, using a euphemism in the
26 document that has to be circulated, and being more
. P-201
1 explicit in his own notes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving]: How would you translate “abshafen?
3 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: ” Abolish.
4 Q. [Mr Irving]: To dismiss, to abolish and to remove, is that right?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you accepted earlier on that did mean
6 liquidate, Mr Irving.
7 MR IRVING: No, my Lord, not necessarily.
8 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving’s translation is no more helpful, except
9 of course than perhaps “abolish”. He accepted, it is
10 somewhere in one of his books, the translation “dispose
11 of”.
12 MR IRVING: Yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: I do not know about in German, but in English it
14 is difficult to apply that to people, unless it has an
15 entirely sinister sense.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that may be what I had in mind.
17 MR IRVING: If we then go to the next document, the third
18 document in this series which is dated just December 1942,
19 you agree that here Himmler is contacting Muller and
20 saying there is going to be a special camp set up to house
21 valuable Jews from France and other nationalities, is that
22 right?
23 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, this is a scheme, is an order by Himmler that
24 Hungarian, Romanian and French Jews stay together, all
25 those who have influential relations in America should be
26 put in a special camp, and he sees a number of about
. P-202
1 10,000 for this special camp of the wealthy Jews from
2 these three countries who have influential relations in
3 America. They have got to work there, but he adds the
4 unusual condition that they have to work under conditions
5 which keep them alive and healthy.
6 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
7 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Good for him. So it is a rather different matter. Yes,
8 that is what it says.
9 Q. [Mr Irving]: Because I am sure when we come to be questioned about the
10 Kinna document we are going to find out that the Jews were
11 regarded as being a less preservable species in camps,
12 were they not? There was less importance attached to
13 keeping them alive?
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes, this is a very special category of a rather small
15 minority. One would guess maybe that this document came
16 before the outbreak of war with America. It is difficult
17 it say, but this is the hostage idea again I think.
18 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes, this document is December 1942, is it not?
19 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Yes. There is no day though on it.
20 Q. [Mr Irving]: Yes.
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: There is no day. It is just the month, my Lord.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, bottom left.
23 MR IRVING: My Lord, the only other document I am going to look
24 at in the chain is October 1943.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Looking at the chain for what purpose, Mr
26 Irving, can you remind me? It is so long since we started
. P-203
1 it I cannot remember.
2 MR IRVING: The chain started off as the chain of documents
3 showing Hitler acting in a benevolent manner, holding out
4 his hand to protect categories of Jews.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought that was probably the answer.
6 MR IRVING: But occasionally other documents I have put them
7 into it out of straightforward fairness to Mr Rampton,
8 because I thought that otherwise he will say: Well, what
9 about this and what about that?
10 MR RAMPTON: And he is still going to say that.
11 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: Let me comment there, the second document about the
12 special camp for wealthy Jews from three countries with
13 relations in America, it does not actually involve Hitler
14 at all. This is an idea of Himmler’s.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Anyway, it rather suggests that the other
16 Jews are not going to have such a happy fate.
17 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am afraid it does, my Lord, yes, particularly where he
18 says they have to be kept in work camps under conditions
19 that keep them alive and healthy, which suggests that is
20 rather unusual.
21 MR IRVING: Was this a time when there were major epidemics
22 raging in the camps? In other words, this is not just
23 simply saying that you have to take great care that no
24 epidemic breaks out in this camp?
25 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: It is not just that. They are saying they are not to be
26 worked to death and special care is to be taken that they
. P-204
1 do not die of epidemics, unlike the rest of them is the
2 implication. This is a very special category of people we
3 are talking about here, with rich relations, influential
4 relations in America.
5 MR IRVING: My Lord, all Mr Rampton has indicated he is not
6 going to discuss the Roman Jews, because it is part of my
7 chain I just want to spend the remaining five minutes
8 looking at the two documents on that, if I may.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Because this is the case where you say Hitler
10 intervened to save them?
11 MR IRVING: As you will see, my Lord, yes, again under very
12 similar circumstances.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
14 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: My Lord, if we are going to discuss this we will have to
15 discuss it at length, I fear. I understood we were going
16 on to half past 4 today?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause for a moment, Mr Irving.
18 MR IRVING: I am shaking my head.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. What have you managed to do
20 about Monday?
21 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I am able to come. I have made arrangements to come on
22 Monday.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. I see why you say that, because the
24 Roman Jews are quite complicated.
25 MR IRVING: Shall we leave it until Monday then?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am inclined to have a go.
. P-205
1 MR IRVING: Have a stab at it now and see if we can deal with
2 it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have you rather put them to the back of your
4 mind because they seem to have not really featured in the
5 case?
6 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: I thought we were not going to discuss these.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The position is Mr Rampton has not relied on
8 it, but that does not stop Mr Irving reintroducing that
9 issue. If you say you need to bone up on it?
10 A. [Professor Richard John Evans]: No, I am happy to do it now.
11 MR IRVING: I certainly rely on them.
12 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving does. He may be making a mistake there,
13 because he does not know the reason why I decided not to.
14 That is his privilege to put his foot in his mouth, if
15 that is what is going to happen. I do not know. I do
16 worry that it may take more than a quarter of an hour
17 though, because it is quite complicated.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am quite keen to use up all the available
19 time, because I am anxious to get Professor Evans out of
20 the box on Monday.
21 MR IRVING: I can promise definitely that I will do everything
22 I can to have him out of the box. We now have reached
23 October 1943 which is of course, as far as I am concerned,
24 the watershed and Hitler’s knowledge.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: True, but remember Mr Rampton may have some
26 re-examination.
. P-206
1 MR IRVING: I will leave him more than enough time for that
2 I am sure.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we be open about it, because I am quite
4 happy to adjourn now if we are sure we will get Professor
5 Evans out of the box.
6 MR RAMPTON: I can speak only about my re-examination at the
7 moment which consists of but two topics.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So it may be an hour, an hour and a half?
9 MR RAMPTON: Nothing like that. It may be half an hour, maybe
10 three-quarters of an hour.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you reasonably confident?
12 MR IRVING: Totally confident and, if not, then it is my own
13 fault.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would not want to leave it on that basis.
15 Then I think let us adjourn now.
16 MR IRVING: I think we have broken through the barbed wired.
17 We are right through the mine field now and we are out in
18 the open desert and our guns are blazing.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had forgotten about the Roman Jews as
20 well. So we are not sitting tomorrow, but Monday at 10.30
21 < (The witness stood down)
22 (The Court adjourned until Monday, 21 February 2000).
23
24
25
26
. P-207