text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 12: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 154 of 154
1996 I. No. 113
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Monday, 31st January 2000
10Claimant -and-
14The Claimant appeared in person
15MR RICHARD RAMPTON Q.C. (instructed by Messrs Davenport Lyons and Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of the First and
16Second Defendants
17MISS HEATHER ROGERS (instructed by Davenport Lyons) appeared on behalf of the First Defendant Penguin Books Limited
18MR ANTHONY JULIUS (of Mishcon de Reya) appeared on behalf of
19the Second Defendant Deborah Lipstadt
21(Transcribed from the stenographic notes of Harry Counsell
&Company, Clifford's Inn, Fetter Lane, London EC4
22Telephone: 020-7242-9346)
23(This transcript is not to be reproduced without the written permission of Harry Counsell &Company)
1 <Day 12 Monday, 31st January 2000.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving?
3 MR IRVING: My Lord, there are two or three minor housekeeping
4matters left over from the testimony of Professor van
5Pelt. If I can put them to you. There are five points,
6actually very minor ones. Firstly, I was wrong about
7Tauber in one respect and it is quite right that I should
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What, bending down?
10 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon? Bending down, yes. It was the
11witness Bendal who had bent down. The reference is to
12crematorium (iv) and not (ii) which was, if you remember,
13the one we were shown with the shutters on the wall on the
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, the 30 by 40 centimetres?
16 MR IRVING: I beg your pardon?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 30 by 40 centimetres?
18 MR IRVING: The shutters, yes, but obviously I was wrong on
19that. It was with reference to the other eyewitness.
20I was right about the air raid. It was on May 5th 1943.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say air raid in the singular -- just the
23 MR IRVING: Just the one. There had been an air raid before
24the document dated May 5th 1943. The night before there
25had been an air raid. You amy remember Professor van Pelt
26saying he thought there was no air raids until 1944.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Was that an Russian air raid or an Allied?
2 MR IRVING: That I do not know, but it is referred to in a
3volume known to the Defence, the Auschwitz Chronicle,
4which is a relatively authoritative work.
5 Your Lordship enquired one or two days earlier
6what the reference was for the fact that Professor van
7Pelt alleged in his report that I had only disclosed the
8existence of the Almeyer report after it was referred and
9after solicitors for the Defendants obtained it. The
10reference is page 390 of his report. My Lord, I have
11these points listed on a sheet of paper which I can hand
12to your clerk.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is probably a good idea, if you would
14not mind?
15 MR IRVING: My Lord, you remember we described the witness
16Olaire, the artist, and I referred to an incident with
17sausages, the SS-made sausage from the victims , according
18to Olaire, and I was not able to find the specific
19reference. It is in Pressac, as I said, on page 554. It
20is on the fourth column of the page, lines 17 to 22.
21 Finally, my Lord, I asked witness van Pelt if he
22was familiar with a book by Mr Brugioni, B-R-U-G-I-O-N-I,
23called "Photo Fakery". He was one of the CIA experts who
24had first published the air photographs with the dots on
25the roof. That is the jacket of the book, my Lord.
26 Those are the only which points I wish to refer
1to and, with your Lordship's permission, I will now call
2my witness, Professor McDonald.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just before you do, can I just mention two
4things to Mr Rampton? The first is that Professor van
5Pelt was going to do a little sort of elementary ----
6 MR RAMPTON: He was going to, yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: -- sketch, I do not mean drawing but...
8 MR RAMPTON: Diagram, plan.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And a little explanation of what was where
10and so on.
11 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is just to remind you about that. The
13other thing is -- this goes back a few days now --
14Mr Irving's various speeches on which you rely, mostly in
15the US and Canada and some in Australia, I think I have
16already asked if it would be possible to have, ideally on
17tape, the excerpts that you rely on.
18 MR RAMPTON: On tape?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
20 MR RAMPTON: You mean if they are ----
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On a disk.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is that something you have got in hand?
24 MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is all in hand.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
26 MR RAMPTON: What your Lordship will get in the end -- your
1Lordship has a hard copy file of the denial passages
2marked up already; for other categories of statement, that
3will also happen -- is a disk also marked up in the same
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can see why it is going to be physically
6much easier to handle.
7 MR RAMPTON: It is going to make it a lot easier, yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
9 MR IRVING: My Lord, can I enquire? When you refer to the
10bundle of transcripts, does your Lordship take cognisance
11of the entire transcript, even if a particular passage is
12not relied on here?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have said this in court already
14and, if I have not, I will say it now. I really want to
15know what they are relying on. You can always take the
16point that it is taken out of context or it does not put
17the true flavour of what you have said, but the starting
18point must be that I know what they rely on.
19 MR IRVING: Indeed, my Lord, but if there were other passages
20there which caught your eye which I would otherwise
21normally have required to address your Lordship on, I am
22not aware of that. There is a danger, therefore, that you
23may take these as gospels when, in fact ----
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can be quite open about it. Once this
25disk is to hand, then you can see it and, if there are any
26particular points you want to make on it, then you can.
1Right. Professor McDonald? I am bound to say, having
2read his report, I am not clear to what issues a lot of it
3goes, but perhaps you can ----
4 MR IRVING: Will I be allowed to examine him briefly to start
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you should because that may ----
7 MR IRVING: Help to bring out some of the issues on which we
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- reveal to me what is not at present
10clear, namely how his evidence is really relevant to the
11issues I have to decide.
12 MR IRVING: I appreciate that, your Lordship, and your Lordship
13will have noticed possibly that there is a bundle there
14which has freshly grown on your desk called bundle E,
15which I am not asking your Lordship, of course, to look at
16today. I am only going to rely on one document in it or
17two documents, in fact, including the covering letter as
18far as today is concerned. It is a document from the
19Defendants' own discovery, so I am not actually springing
20it on them. This is a bundle of documents which,
21I suggest, shows that I have been the victim of an
22international endeavour to destroy my legitimacy as an
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, yes, but remember- ----
25 MR IRVING: Of which the Second Defendant has made herself a
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Remember the Defendant is Professor Lipstadt
2and, therefore, it is her activities or activities for
3which she can be held accountable which may have some
5 MR IRVING: Yes, but if she has made herself part of a broader
6endeavour, then that goes to my claim that this is an
7aggravated libel, I would submit, and ----
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us see how the evidence turns out.
9 MR IRVING: --- let us see how we get along, my Lord, shall we?
10Professor MacDonald.
11 < PROFESSOR KEVIN McDONALD, sworn.
12< Examined by MR IRVING.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor McDonald, if you want to sit down,
14please feel free to do so.
15 MR IRVING: Professor McDonald, I must ask you to speak up and
16also slowly because of the burden placed on the
17transcribers and also the difficulties with the language,
18of course. You are Professor Kevin McDonald?
19 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] You are Professor of Psychology at California State
22 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] And you have a Doctorate in Biobehavioural Sciences from
24University of Connecticut?
25 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving] You are the author of six books?
1 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] That is correct.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] Would you describe in very brief terms to the court the
3three major books which you have published, beginning with
4"A people that shall dwell alone", just in two or three
5lines setting out ----
6 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Right. My background is a evolutionary biology, and
7beginning in the early 1990s I started writing what turned
8out to be three books on Judaism from an evolutionary
9perspective. The first book was "A People that shall
10dwell alone", Judaism as an evolutionary, a group
11evolutionary strategy, just basically describing Judaism
12from the standpoint of my evolutionary biology, including
13the ideology of Judaism, the segregation of the Jewish
14gene pool from surrounding peoples, resource competition
15between groups, and so on, co-operation within the group
16and so on.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Can you describe that roughly then as the relationship
18between the Jewish community as a whole and the rest of
19the world?
20 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, but it was focused mainly on describing Judaism and
21its relationship, yes, with...
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Was that book well received in academic circles? Has it
23been generally accepted almost as a standard work?
24 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, it has had good reviews within evolutionary, you
25know, periodicals, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Irving] You are also a member of the executive board of the Human
1Behaviour and Evolution Society?
2 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] That is correct.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] And your second book was "Separation and its
4Discontents". Would you again in two or three lines just
5describe what the content of that book is and its thrust?
6 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] "Separation and its Discontents" focused anti-Semitism
7from the evolutionary respect and from the perspective of
8social psychology, in other words, trying to develop an
9understanding of anti-Semitism within the purview, you
10might say, of modern and social science, and so it is
11focused on anti-Semitism but also on the tactics that
12Jewish organisations use to combat anti-Semitism.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] What kinds of tactics are you referring to when you say
15 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, in the chapter where I described the tactics the
16Jewish organizations have used, I, in fact, mentioned the
17St Martin's Press rescinding a publication of the
18Goebbels' Diary which is why Mr Irving contacted me.
19 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. So in that particular book you actually refer to the
20manner in which a New York publisher suppressed a book
21under pressure from the Jewish community?
22 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, from the Anti-defamation League, yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think that can only be relevant,
24surely, if it can be established that the Defendants were
25in some way involved in St Martin's Press cancelling that
1 MR IRVING: In that case I would draw you attention then when
2the time comes to a third document here, my Lord, which is
3the Washington Post on the morning before St Martin's
4Press took its decision and they quoted the Second
5Defendant as an authority for their decision.
6 Your Lordship may consider it to be tenuous or
7you may consider it to be relevant.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I do not consider it to be tenuous.
9I just wonder how this witness can help on this.
10 MR IRVING: Well, setting it in its broader context, as saying
11this is not just a misfortune that has befallen me, but is
12part of a group strategy, my Lord, and difficult though it
13is to establish, I will do what I can for the next five or
1410 minutes and then turn him to whatever cross-examination
15Mr Rampton desires to make.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I understand the way you put it. Thank
18 MR IRVING: So you perceived the Jewish community as working in
19a certain way in order to suppress a certain book?
20 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, there were several tactics the Jewish organizations
23have used. That was another one.
24 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. You have had a chance to read most of this bundle,
25which is identified by me as bundle E ----
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, I have.
1 Q. [Mr Irving] --- over the weekend, is that correct?
2 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, I have.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] Could you, again in just a very few lines, describe how
4the documents you have read in that bundle support or
5refute your own -- I have to ask what these papers are
6that you are looking at.
7 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] This is simply a statement that I wrote out.
8 Q. [Mr Irving] I think we will have to ask you to testify really from
9within yourself rather than from the written paper.
10 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes. I was not aware of that.
11 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. Having read the bundle of documents, would you
12describe roughly what the bundle of documents comprises?
13 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, the bundle of documents comprises a record of
14suppression of David Irving, cancelling of speeches,
15avoiding of contracts, as a result of pressure of various
16Jewish organizations in different countries.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Just from one country or from several countries?
18 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] From several countries -- Canada, South Africa, Australia,
19I believe.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] You would put the suppression of that book within that
22 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes. If I had known about that actually, I would have
23explained in that section, including more examples of
24that, showing some examples of that.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] Have you seen items in this bundle which lead you to
26believe that the Second Defendant has made herself a part
1of that endeavour?
2 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, I have. There was an article in the Washington Post
3quoting her -- I do not have the exact quote here. I can
4read it.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you are going to rely on it in some way,
6perhaps you could tell me what it says?
7 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
8 MR IRVING: It is ----
9 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] OK. In the Washington Post of April 3, 1996, she is
10quoted as saying: "In the past ... it says that in every
11generation there shall be those who rise up to destroy
12us. David Irving is not physically destroying us, but is
13trying to destroy the memory of those who have already
14perished at the hands of tyrants. They say that they do
15not publish reputations, they publish books, but would
16they publish a book by Jeffery Damer on man, boy
17relationships? Of course, the reputation of the author
18counts and no legitimate historian takes David Irving's
19work seriously". It is that last part that certainly drew
20my attention because I have seen historians praise his
21work, but also just the fact that she was literally part
22of the pressure on St Martin's Press.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Can I ask you to go to page 250 of the bundle?
24 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] I do not have a copy here.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] I will give you a copy. This is bundle E, if you go to
26page 250 of bundle E?
1 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] Is that a letter from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre to the
3Second Defendant, Mrs Deborah Lipstadt?
4 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, it is on the head of Simon Wiesenthal, signed by Saul
6 Q. [Mr Irving] Does it make reference to a student paper I sent to you?
7 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Irving] Does Mr Litman who wrote the letter conclude the letter
9saying, "Please recognize that it is not for publication
10or direct quotation. It is, after all, an unedited
11student's work and contains many phrases and comments that
12neither you or I would use in a situation which clearly
13involves considerable delicacy"?
14 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, that is a direct quote.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] Would you now turn to page 251?
16 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] Is this, apparently, an anonymous report of
18approximately ----
19 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] 25 pages.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] --- 12 pages or thereabouts called, "History Rewritten,
21the World of David Irving"?
22 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Have you seen anything in that report which indicates that
24there has been a deliberate attempt made by an
25organization to destroy my legitimacy as an historian?
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, yes, on page 253 ----
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What do you say this document is that you are
2looking at, Professor McDonald?
3 MR IRVING: It was a document that was provided to the Second
4Defendant by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, my Lord.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is the one referred to in the letter you
6have just taken us to?
7 MR IRVING: We have to presume so, my Lord. It took a certain
8amount of fight to obtain a copy of this for the
9solicitors. I had to obtain court order finally to
10obtain a copy of it.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see.
12 MR IRVING: They provides what looks like the covering letter
13in a separate episode and gave it the same discovery
14number, No. 500. But all I propose to do is to rely on
15the content of this document which went to the Second
16Defendant, and you have drawn our attention to page 253,
17and which paragraph do you consider is suggestive of an
18attempt to destroy my legitimacy as an historian?
19 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] In the first full paragraph, is still in the introduction,
20it refers to quotes later on from you, but then it says in
21the middle of that paragraph: "These quotes serve as a
22clear example of why he should not be allowed to
23disseminate his message of hate as freely in other public
25 Q. [Mr Irving] Which paragraph is that again?
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] The first full paragraph on page 253.
1 Q. [Mr Irving] Beginning with the words "The focus of"?
2 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] "These quotes serve as a clear example of why he should
4not be allowed to disseminate his message of hate as
5freely in other public forums"?
6 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] That is quite correct, and further ----
7 Q. [Mr Irving] At the bottom of that page, can I draw your attention to
8the sentence beginning, "The importance of" ----
9 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] --- "such work is to deny Irving the legitimacy he so
11desires in his attempts to spread his anti-Semitic and
12racist messages", and are there any other passages in that
13which indicate an organized attempt to destroy my
15 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, just a minute here. It probably bears mentioning on
16page 256 that, although the author of this report does
17view David Irving as a flawed historian, it is
18acknowledged that his revisionist themes are interspersed
19with genuine historical insight. Again, that is, sort of,
20what exercises me, but at the bottom of page 258, the last
21paragraph on page 258.
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Would you read it out, please?
23 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] The entire paragraph?
24 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] "David Irving's techniques challenge the most educated
26minds to adopt his version of reality. By revealing
1Irving's methods, the illusion is portrayed as facts and
2his writings have been unveiled. Hence, while claiming to
3be a legitimate historian, Irving can now be identified
4with his underlying purpose, to morally rehabilitate Adolf
5Hitler and the Third Reich. Given this accurate version
6of reality, it is all the more clear why his activities
7must be curtailed and why his alleged legitimacy must be
9 Q. [Mr Irving] There is one particular passage, is there not, that you
10have read where they actually talk about the need to
11destroy my legitimacy as an historian?
12 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, I believe that was the main one. The final -- no,
13OK, yes, on page 273.
14 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] The author goes into various possibilities of how to deal
16with David Irving, one of which was just to go for free
17speech, but the other suggests, it says, "In the case of"
18-- this is on page 253 ----
19 Q. [Mr Irving] "In the case of David Irving", right?
20 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] It is after the indent quote -- what?
21 Q. [Mr Irving] The third paragraph, right?
22 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] OK, yes. "In the case of David Irving, in his brand of
23Holocaust denial, the ultimate response is to cease
24providing him with a forum to convey his skewed version of
25history and to negate his attempts to obliterate the
26memory of millions of victims."
1 And I might point out also the last paragraph on
2page 276, where he quotes John Keegan: "No historian of
3the Second World War can afford to ignore David Irving".
4So, again, despite the fact that he is regarded among
5historians as important, some one must read, there are
6attempts to make, to curtail his freedom of speech, and so
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor McDonald, how does that establish
9that Professor Lipstadt is part of this conspiracy to
10discredit Mr Irving?
11 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] To my knowledge and my only, the only linkage between
12Professor Lipstadt and this is the Washington Post
14 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] What has this to do with the Washington Post?
15 MR IRVING: My Lord, this document was from Professor
16Lipstadt's own discovery.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that. It is a document that she was
18sent, apparently unsolicited, by the Simon Wiesenthal
19organization. What does that prove against her?
20 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, OK, this document -- there is not, but my impression
21was that David Irving has a general complaint about
22persecution by Jewish organizations and that is what
23I thought we were addressing here.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see. Thank you.
25 MR IRVING: My Lord, your Lordship said "unsolicited". In
26fact, there are other documents in this bundle where we
1see the second Defendant specifically writing to all these
2bodies asking, effectively, what dirt they have on me,
3both in Canada and in the United States and in London.
4There is a whole list of them whom she thanks in her
5introduction, whereupon your Lordship will see from this
6bundle on a later date -- I shall draw your Lordship's
7attention to it -- that I made an application for specific
8discovery of these items. Unfortunately, we are not going
9to have a chance to cross-examine the Second Defendant on
10the completeness of her discovery, and I have done what
11best I can to establish what information she had. May
12I proceed?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, please.
14 MR IRVING: Professor McDonald, have you seen correspondence in
15this bundle between the Second Defendant and the Yad
16Vashem and, in particular, with Professor Yehuda Bauer,
18 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, I have.
19 Q. [Mr Irving] What was the content of that correspondence in brief? We
20can look at the correspondence ----
21 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Do you have the page number for it? In brief, the content
22was to remind Professor Lipstadt of the importance of
23including David Irving in the book.
24 Q. [Mr Irving] Had she not then included me in the original draft of her
25book from the correspondence that you have seen?
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] I believe it was that you were mentioned in that, but the
1clear intent was to emphasise you to a greater extent than
2it was before.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] So Professor Bauer, who was the commissioning, the head of
4the Institute which paid the commission to Professor
5Lipstadt to write this research project originally,
6received the original draft and he said, "Not good enough,
7we need more on David Irving", is that what he said?
8 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] That is a fair summary.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] I will see if we can find the exact letter.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 161.
11 MR IRVING: Thank you very much, my Lord. I am indebted to
13 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] 161.
14 Q. [Mr Irving] Will you please turn to page 161?
15 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving] He says, and it is fair to say this, in a letter to the
17Second Defendant: "The book is extremely well written and
18fascinating", this is 1992, "but I suppose what you want
19is a critique. What I miss in the main is the world wide
20perspective". Then he goes on a bit lower down to say
21that, in his view, the author has concentrated too much on
22North America and I believe on France. "Irvin is
23mentioned but not that he is the mainstay of Holocaust
24denial today in Western Europe". So what do you think
25Professor Bauer is asking her to do?
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] He is clearly asking her to expand the coverage on you.
1 Q. [Mr Irving] Right. If you will now turn to page 163, a month later we
2have a letter from the Second Defendant to an Englishman,
3Anthony Lerman, who wears various hats. Here he is at a
4newspaper or magazine called "Patterns of Prejudice", and
5is it fair to say this is a letter asking her for more
6information on David Irving because she has now been given
7the job of shoe-horning this British author into the book?
8 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, that seems to be the import of that letter.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] Does she say,"I am just finishing up the book and, as you
10can well imagine, David Irving figures into it quite
11prominently". Do you have in your files a few Irving
12articles from recent months?" So would you say that she
13is now asking for whatever various bodies around the world
14because there were other letters, are there not, of this
16 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, and she clearly views him as one of the most
17dangerous figures.
18 Q. [Mr Irving] My Lord, the reason I am asking these questions is as a
19means of putting these letters before the court.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see your difficulty and I see what you
21are doing. This seems to me to be more relevant than the
22general sort of evidence that the Professor was giving
23earlier. So let us see what the reply was, shall we?
24 MR IRVING: I hear what you say. I am very nearly finished, in
25fact, with the examination.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, this is not irrelevant.
1 MR IRVING: On the following page, page 1674, does Anthony
2Lerman, now on the headed notepaper of the Institute of
3Jewish Affairs, say that he is going to fax a lot of
4material to her?
5 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Irving] From your reading of this file, have you observed that
7various Jewish organizations maintain files on people like
9 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] It is quite clear, yes, from this file plus from other
10things I have read, yes.
11 Q. [Mr Irving] Do you know any names of other famous authors that they
12have kept files on, both Jewish and non-Jewish?
13 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Noam Chomsky comes to mind -- I cannot think of specific
14names right now.
15 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well. Do you think that these organizations give a
16chance to the victims of their dossier keeping to have a
17look in those files to see if the materials they keep in
18them are correct or not?
19 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Not without a great deal of legal proceedings. I should
20say there are other people, like people associated with
21the Institute of Historical Review and other so-called
22revisionists, and they are, well, they do keep documents,
23dossiers, in there.
24 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. Did you see an affidavit in this file from the
25Director of a British organization, a similar British
26organization, in which he confirms that he provided
1material on me to the Canadian Government indirectly?
2 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes. I do not recall the page again, but, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] And for the purpose purely of abrogating my freedom of
4speech in Canada? Would you agree that is correct?
5 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] That is correct, and there are several instances in which
6your talks and so on were -- there was pressure placed on
7organizations, hotels or wherever the venues were, to
8cancel these talks and so on.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] So we are now going from the particular of what you have
10seen in this file very briefly back to the general, do you
11consider what you have seen in this file by way of
12evidence in my particular case, over the last 10 years, to
13be part of a group strategy that has been evolved by the
14Jewish communities around the world to protect themselves
15or to preserve their interests?
16 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Yes, I think that anti-Semitism is, you know, a perennial
17problem, and Jewish organizations have developed very
18sophisticated ways of dealing with it. This is one way of
19dealing with it. Anti-Semitism or any anti-Semitism is
20fought very, very intensely. They take it very seriously
21and they do quite a job, obviously, of suppressing it,
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Whom do you mean by anti-Semites, people who go round
24scoring swastikas on synagogues or people who have a
25genuine grievance?
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Well, yes, the term they will use is very broad. The word
1-- I am not saying, I am not implying that you are an
2anti-Semite, I am saying that people they view as being
3detrimental to their interests. Some of them might -- the
4term "anti-Semitism" is hard to define anyway.
5 Q. [Mr Irving] Have you seen references in this file to the Second
6Defendant and others describing me as being "a danger"?
7 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] Absolutely. It says right in the previous document we
8have just mentioned.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] Particularly dangerous?
10 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] The Second Defendant mentioned you as a very dangerous
12 Q. [Mr Irving] In what way am I dangerous, do you suspect? Am I the kind
13of person that they think I may place a bomb in their
14letter box or what kind of danger are they referring to?
15 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] No, obviously, they view you as a danger because of your
16intellectual -- because of your writings.
17 Q. [Mr Irving] But a danger to what?
18 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] I believe they think it is a danger to their, what they
19view as an important, that their version of events be
20accepted as the truth, and that the dissent from certain
21of these tenets should be viewed as beyond the pale of
22rational discussion.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Finally, in order to pre-empt a question Mr Rampton may
24wish to ask, do you consider me to be an anti-Semite from
25your knowledge of me?
26 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] I do not consider you to be an anti-Semite. I have had
1quite a few discussions with you now and you have almost
2never even mentioned Jews and, when you have, never in a
3general negative way.
4 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. So from your discussions in private with me, or from
5your perceptions of me in company with circles who might
6be considered to be receptive to such remarks, you have
7never heard me expressing any anti-Semitic utterances of
8any kind or beliefs?
9 A. [Professor Kevin McDonald] No.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] I do not think I have any further questions of this
11witness at this stage.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, was the material promised by
13Mr Lerman in the letter at page 164 ever provided?
14 MR IRVING: It is identifiable in the discovery, but only
15fragmentary. There are pages missing. I made application
16for the missing pages without much success. I was
17informed that I could go behind her affidavit when the
18time came to cross-examine her, and as your Lordship now
19knows, I am going to be denied that opportunity. So it is
20a rather unhappy position.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But is it in this bundle somewhere, or not?
22 MR IRVING: It is certainly in the discovery, my Lord, and it
23was of the nature of press clippings and that kind of
24thing which I may have included in part, but it would not
25have served any purpose in this bundle.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right. Thank you very much. That was
1economically done. Thank you, Professor McDonald.
2 MR RAMPTON: I have no questions.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much, Professor McDonald.
4There is no cross-examination so that concludes your
6 MR IRVING: Is the witness released, my Lord?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you are released. You are free to go.
8 < (The witness withdrew)
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, as I understand the plan, you are
10going back in the witness box to be cross-examined
12 MR IRVING: We have one witness which we are calling on
13Thursday, I believe, Mr Peter Millar, in my timetable.
14I try occasionally to adhere to my timetable.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is Goebbels diaries, is he not.
16 MR IRVING: That is correct. He is Moscow.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not know whether the idea of reducing
18the ambit of the evidence on that issue has brought forth
19any fruit. If it has, well and good.
20 MR IRVING: I did hear Mr Rampton mention that they were going
21to try and plead section 5 on Goebbels, and no-one would
22be happier than I, because I think it would place him in
23an indefensible position if they were to do that.
24 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, that is a misapprehension. I fall
25back on section 5 if I need it, but essentially the plea
26in relation to Moscow is that the substance of what was
1said is true. Mr Peter Millar helps to prove it.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is remaining an issue -- I just had an
3idea that it would be possible and obviously desirable to
4maybe have some admitted facts with a view to reducing the
5ambit of the oral evidence.
6 MR RAMPTON: There is an admission by Mr Irving in writing
7already. If we can get him by writing to him to admit
8that what Mr Peter Millar says in his witness statement is
9correct, then we do not need to call Mr Millar.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is the sort of thing I had in mind. It
11is only a suggestion, obviously.
12Yes, Mr Irving, would you like to go back into
13the witness box?
14 < MR DAVID IRVING, recalled.
15< Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC.
16 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, there is one thing I would like to pick
17up from Auschwitz, which is now more or less a closed
18book, which arose during the course of your
19cross-examination of Professor van Pelt. Do you remember
20the radio signal of 15th September 1942 ordering a car
21from Auschwitz to Lodsh?
22 A. [Mr Irving] With the feldofen, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember that you produced a translation in court
25which translated the German word feldofen as field
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] His Lordship drew your attention to that translation or,
3one might say, mistranslation.
4 A. [Mr Irving] No. His Lord asked who made the translation.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said you did.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said that you made it at 2 o'clock that morning, and
8that there was an element of stress, thus accounting for
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could I ask you to look at a piece of paper, please?
12(Same handed) Do you recognize that piece of paper?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It is from my web site, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Despite what you told his Lordship about having that
17done that mistranslation under stress at 2 o'clock in the
18morning the same day, that has been on your web site since
19at least 24th November last year.
20 A. [Mr Irving] This is true. However, what I said is also true.
21I re-translated it that morning. This was presumably put
22on my web site a year and a half ago so, rather than go to
23the web site to find out what translation I used for two
24and a half lines a year and a half ago, I just
25re-translated it.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving. It was a repetition of a deliberate
1mistranslation that you had already put on your web site,
2was it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I strongly resist the phrase "deliberate mistranslation."
4In fact, I have had e-mails from Germans all over the
5world who have read my web site within the last 24 hours
6who said that the translation "field kitchens" for
7"Feldofen" is entirely acceptable and intelligable. The
8word "ofen" is a stove as in a kitchen stove and, without
9knowing what the background was of the document, it was an
10entirely plausible translation.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you had a chance to consider that report from Zamoysk
12of 5th May 1943? No sorry, wrong date, 16th December 1942
13that you said you wanted time to think about?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you remind me what that was about, Mr
16 MR RAMPTON: It relates to a transport of 644 Poles to
18 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I was going to make a submission about that
19report. You remember this is one which the Defendants
20received anonymously, so they say, on the very day before
21the ----
22 MR RAMPTON: No "so they say", please, Mr Irving. If I tell
23the judge on instructions from my solicitor that we
24received it the day before, you can take it that it is
25true, unless you can prove otherwise.
26 A. [Mr Irving] That is precisely what I said. They say they received it
1anonymously the day before.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is the case.
3 A. [Mr Irving] That is not the point I am about to make, my Lord. May I
4make a submission on that?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see the document if you can
6tell me where it is.
7 MR RAMPTON: I did hand it in together with the document about
8keeping the plan secret.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where did it go?
10 MR RAMPTON: It did not go anywhere, but I have a spare.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is loose, I probably still have it.
12 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, my Lord. It should go into K2 in due
13course. Let me pass it up. (Same handed).
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. I have now found it, actually.
15 MR RAMPTON: It can go into tab 4 of K2 in due course, my Lord.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If it is going ever to go there, can it not
17go there now?
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes. My only question at the moment is whether
19Mr Irving is yet willing to be cross-examined about it.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I said that I wished to make a submission to his Lordship
22about this. My Lord, you know the circumstances in which
23this report was provided now? It has been supplied
24anonymously to the Defendants. Whether "anonymously"
25means it is anonymous in as much as we are not to be told
26the source?
1 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Or whether it is anonymous in as much as they know the
3source but do not intend to identify it to me? There is a
4substantial difference there, my Lord.
5 MR RAMPTON: Let me make it quite clear. We know who the source
6is. I think I said actually when I produced the document,
7the source did not wish to be identified.
8 A. [Mr Irving] This is an entirely unsatisfactory state of affairs, my
9Lord. I should be placed in a position where, if
10necessary, if the source is within the jurisdiction, and
11I am sure Mr Rampton will be willing to tell us that, I
12should be put in a position where I can issue a subpoena
13duces tecum for the production of surrounding documents.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: At the moment this is just a bit of
15typescript. I do not think myself that the identity of
16the person who actually physically handed it to the
17Defendants really is either here or there. Its
18authenticity is not going to, I think, depend on the
19identity of the person who made it available to the
21 A. [Mr Irving] It is clearly unsatisfactory that I should be supplied
22with an orphan stray document. We are required to rely on
23the assurances of the Defendants that it is authentic,
24that it comes from a proper provenance. I should be
25placed in a position, my Lord, where I can, if necessary,
26see the surrounding documents which we were informed by
1Mr Rampton also exist.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am with you to this extent, Mr Irving, that
3I do think that I have to be told something by the
4Defendants which at any rate makes it, on the face of it,
5an authentic document. For all I know at the moment, this
6was typed yesterday on some rather old fashioned
7typewriter. There must be a limit to the way in which
8documents surface in court.
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Mr Irving has the document. Had this been
10discovered by us earlier, it would have been in our list
11of documents and he would have been enabled to
12investigate, and if he found it appropriate to do so,
13dispute its authenticity. I am only asking him whether he
14now accepts its authenticity. If he does not, I will shut
15up about it until such time as I can tell your Lordship
16exactly from which archive it came.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is what you need do, if I may
18respectfully say so.
19 MR RAMPTON: That is why I asked if he was ready to be
20cross-examined about it. The answer seems to be no.
21 A. [Mr Irving] The question was not whether I accept its authenticity.
22The question was whether I am willing to be cross-examined
23on it and the answer is that I was already planning to
24make the submission that I did to your Lordship, that we
25should be told more about where it comes from so that, if
26necessary, I can subpoena the remaining documents. We had
1a very good example with the cross-examination of
2Professor van Pelt on that Feldofen document, where the
3document has, on the face of it, a perfectly innocent
4explanation until you know the surrounding documents of
5which Professor van Pelt was aware, which gave it a very
6sinister connotation. In this case it may be precisely
7the reverse.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think what I am going to say about this,
9Mr Rampton, is that you can return to it when you are in a
10position to say which archive it came from, which should
11not be all that difficult.
12 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. I think I know the answer but I am
13not going to say it in case I am wrong. I am going to get
14chapter and verse.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then you can cross-examine on it.
16 MR RAMPTON: I will find out which archive it is in and how
17long that archive has been open to us.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is right. I am going to put it
19in as 51, I think. Do you agree? K2 tab 4, page 51.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Of course I have already asked all my advisers around the
22world what their take on this document is. I have not
23been idle over the weekend, but I have to have time.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is fair.
25 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I want to turn to something completely
26different, if I may, which is a meeting I think at
1Klessheim which I think is somewhere in Austria?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Schloss Klessheim, spelt either with one S or two Ss.
3I think it is spelt both ways. It is a castle, a chateau,
4near Salzburg.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] That means that it is a place in Austria, I suppose, or
6was then. That meeting, I believe, took place on 16th and
717th April 1943, did it not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if we know which meeting you are referring to.
9On those days Adolf Hitler had a number of meetings with
10foreign leaders.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] He met Admiral Horthy, who was the Hungarian leader. I do
12not know whether he was President or Prime Minister or
13whatever he was.
14 A. [Mr Irving] He was the Head of State.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Head of State at Klessheim on 16th and 17th April 1943,
16did he not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] One of the topics which was discussed between them on both
19those days was the attitude of the Hungarian government
20towards its large Jewish population.
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know how many Jews there were in Hungary, but it
23was a very large number, was it not? It was over
25 A. [Mr Irving] Of the order of a million. I think there were 500,000 in
26Budapest alone.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] You correct me if I am wrong. I am summarizing, my Lord,
2relevant part of Professor Evans' report is page 437 and
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. I was just looking for that.
5 MR RAMPTON: What I am putting to Mr Irving is taken from that.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is helpful to have the reference thank
8 MR RAMPTON: I hope Mr Irving has it. May I ask you, to save
9my asking questions ----
10 A. [Mr Irving] What page are we on?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] 437 it starts. Is it right, as Professor Evans writes in
12paragraphs 1 to 8 of the introduction of this part of his
13report, that from about the middle of 1942 until January
141943, the Nazis had been making attempts to persuade or
15lean on the Hungarians to be, what shall we say, more
16severe with their Jews than they had hitherto been willing
17to be, and in particular to allow them to be deported out
18of Hungary?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is correct, is it not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Since the summer of 1942.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. So is it right that one of the topics discussed
23between Hitler and Admiral Horthy on 16th and 17th April
241943 was the Nazis' position that they thought that the
25Hungarians ought to buck their ideas up about getting rid
26of Jews from Hungary?
1 A. [Mr Irving] The Nazis regarded the Hungarians as dragging their feet
2on this issue.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Were the proceedings at those meetings recorded by a
4plan called Otto Schmidt?
5 A. [Mr Irving] No. They were recorded by a man called Paul Schmidt.
6 MR RAMPTON: Sorry, wrong man.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Both are right. Paul Otto Schmidt.
8 MR RAMPTON: We are both right, Mr Irving, for once. Isn't
9that nice.
10 A. [Mr Irving] There were two Paul Schmidts, and also they were recorded
11by hidden microphones on disk.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. The discussions were reproduced in a book by
13somebody called Hillgruber, were they not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] The Schmidt records were microfilmed by a German Foreign
15Office official called Lersch, to whom Professor Donald
16Watt referred. Thanks to the Lersch microfilms we have
17that transcript, and they were printed by Professor
18Andreas Hillgruber in two volumes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I then please pass up two pages? Actually, it is four
20pages, but they are double pages, from Professor
21Hillgruber reprinting of these. My Lord, bureaucrats are
22at work!
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think the bureaucrats are probably right.
24Otherwise I am going to get completely submerged with
26 MR RAMPTON: That is for Mr Irving. (Same handed) That is a
1Hungary file.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we give it a letter of the alphabet
3rather than Hungary? It has one already. Is there going
4to be a translation, Mr Rampton?
5 MR RAMPTON: Yes. The translation appears on page 441 of
6Professor Evans' report, the first page that I intend to
7refer to.
8 Professor Evans' translation given on page 441
9at paragraph 1, in the English begins "On Horthy's retort,
10what should he do with the Jews then ...", that is to be
11found in the middle of the German on the left hand column
12at page 256 of the original, "Auf die Gegenfrage Horthys",
13does it not, Mr Irving?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could you please read from "Auf die Gegenfrage Horthys"
16down to the end of the first paragraph on the following
17page 257? I do not mean read out loud. Just read them to
18yourself and tell us please when you have finished doing
20 A. [Mr Irving] (Pause for reading) Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you then look, please, at the translation in
22Professor Evans' report in paragraphs 1 and 3?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you agree that Professor Evans has accurately
25translated the words in the German from after "Auf die
26Gegenfrage Horthys" down to "Moglichkeit gabe es nicht"?
1That is the exchange between Horthy and the Reichs Hausen
2minister Ribbentrop.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Also the passage starting at the bottom of page 256, "Wo
5die Juden sich selbst uberlassen waren", down to the end
6of the first paragraph on the next page, and this is what
7Hitler is recorded as having said, is it not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is in the subjunctive, so it is Adolf Hitler
9speaking, quoted in reported speech.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Whether accurate or not, it is a report by Schmidt
11or the tape recorder or both, the hidden microphone, of
12what both Ribbentrop and Hitler are said to have said on
13that occasion?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, if it is in reported speech, it cannot
15be a transcript of a tape, can it?
16 A. [Mr Irving] It is the way the diplomats worked. It is the same with
17the meeting between Churchill and Stalin. The interpreter
18would take notes as he went along but, as he interpreted
19between the two of them, he would take down what Hitler
20said, write down a note ----
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] This is not a transcript, you are saying?
22 A. [Mr Irving] No it is not, but it is a very accurate transcript.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] It is an account of what was on the tape.
24 A. [Mr Irving] It also accurate reflects the language used, too.
25 MR RAMPTON: You have used it yourself as being a reliable
1 A. [Mr Irving] Schmidt is a very accurate source.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not in dispute that it is an accurate account of
3what was said.
4 A. [Mr Irving] He was a professional diplomat of very high calibre.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could I then ask you to look at how you represented this
6meeting on 17th April 1943 between Horthy and Hitler?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Apart from the mix up on the dates, right?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, there is rather more to it than that, I am afraid,
9Mr Irving. "Mix up" is not the word that I am going to
10use when we look to see what was said on the 16th, but
11there is more to it than that, I am afraid. Could you
12look, first of all, please, at Hitler's War 1977, page
13509? It is the second volume, D 1 (ii).
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to start, if I may, with the first complete
16paragraph on page 509:
17 "Nor was the language Hitler and Ribbentrop used
18to prod the Hungarian regent into taking a sterner line
19over his Jewish citizens very delicate. The Nazis found
20it intolerable that 800,000 Jews should still be moving
21freely around a country in the heart of Europe-
22particularly just north of the sensitive Balkans. For
23many months Germany had applied pressure to the Hungarian
24Jews to be turned over to the appropriate German agencies
25for deportation to 'reservations in the east'".
26 A. [Mr Irving] Note the quotation marks.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. This is the 1977 version, I remind you, Mr Irving.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] "It was argued that so long as they remained they were
4potential rumormongers, purveyors of defeatism, saboteurs,
5agents of the enemy secret service, and contact men for an
6'international Jewry" now embattled against Germany.
7 "Events in Poland were pointed to as providing
8an ugly precedent: there were reports of Jews roaming the
9country, committing acts of murder and sabotage. The
10eviction of the Jews ordered by Hitler had recently been
11intensified by Himmler's order that even those Jews left
12working for armaments and concerns in the
13Generalgouvernement were to be housed collectively in
14camps and eventually to be got rid as well. In Warsaw,
15the 50,000 Jews surviving in the ghetto were on the point
16of staging an armed uprising -- with weapons and
17ammunition evidently sold to them by Hitler's fleeing
18fleeing allies as they passed westward through the city".
19 A. [Mr Irving] They would be Italians.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Himmler ordered the ghetto destroyed and its ruins combed
21out for Jews . 'This (that to say this uprising) is just
22the kind of incident that shows how dangerous these Jews
24 To whom in those quotation marks, Mr Irving, did
25you intend to attribute that sentence?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Presumably to Himmler.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your very next sentence is this: "Poland should have been
2an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued".
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This is a new paragraph. This is another topic, the
4first sentence of the coming paragraph.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving. What you are trying to suggest there is
6that Hitler used the Warsaw ghetto uprising, which in fact
7did not happen until two days later, as a means of
8prodding Horthy into taking sterner measures against his
9Jews, are you not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] No. I said quite clearly that the Warsaw ghetto uprising
11was about to happen. In other words, it had not happened
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Himmler ordered the ghetto destroyed and its ruins combed
14out for Jews. 'This is just the kind of incident that
15shows how dangerous these Jews are'".
16 A. [Mr Irving] We are on the point of staging an armed uprising, so it
17has not happened yet. I can only repeat that.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Poland should have been an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler
19argued. He related how Jews who refused to work there
20were shot; those who could not work just wasted away".
21The German word is Verkommen, is it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, which means wasted away, to rot away.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Jews must be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, he said,
24using his favourite analogy. Was that so cruel when one
25considered that even innocent creatures like hare and deer
26to be put down" (the German word was getturtit).
1 A. [Mr Irving] Put down means killing, does it not?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Killed.
3 A. [Mr Irving] This is a very accurate precis so far of what is in a much
4longer paragraph by Paul Schmidt, I think.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] -- "To prevent their doing damage? Why preserve a bestial
6species", the German is die bestien, which means the
7beasts, does it not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but remember we are writing a literary work which is
9by David Irving, not by Paul Schmidt.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, actually by Adolf Hitler. "Whose ambition was to
11inflict bolshevism on us all. Horthy apologetically noted
12that he had done all that he decently could against the
13Jews: 'But they can hardly be murdered or otherwise
14eliminated', he protested. Hitler reassured him: 'There
15is no need for that'. But just as in Slovakia, they ought
16to be isolated in remote camps where they could no longer
17infect the healthy body of the public; or they could be
18put to work in the mines, for example. He himself did not
19mind being temporarily excoriated for his Jewish policies,
20if they brought him tranquillity. Horthy left
22 Where in that transcript of the meeting of 17th
23April, Mr Irving, do we find that passage?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Which passage are you talking about?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "There is no need for that".
26 MR RAMPTON: From"Horthy apologetically noted" down to "Horthy
1left unconvinced".
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I would have to have time to look at these
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take your time, because those words are in
5quotation marks.
6 MR RAMPTON: I would not trouble taking too much time,
7Mr Irving. It was said on the 16th, as the second piece
8of extract from Schmidt, that you got there will tell
10 A. [Mr Irving] On which page.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] On page 245.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] At the bottom of the fourth paragraph we find words, if
14you want to check the paragraph to see that I am right,
15attributed to Horthy: [German- document not provided].
16He is saying, "Well, all right, but I do not think that we
17can murder or otherwise kill them", is he not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is difficult because we have only got three pages of
19this transcript here.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have more or less the whole extract if you are fussed
21about that, Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving] And, of course, your imputation is that this is the only
23source that I have used, is it not?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. Carry on reading, please. You can make your point in
25a moment.
26 A. [Mr Irving] You asked where I got this quotation from and I was trying
1to answer your question.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, which quotation are you talking about?
3 A. [Mr Irving] "They can hardly be murdered or otherwise eliminated".
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you se, that seems to be an accurate
5representation of what you have just read out.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes. What you have done is lifted what was said
7on 16th and put it on 17th to make Hitler look better,
8have you not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] How does it make him look better if I get the date wrong
10by one day? How does that make him ----
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You quote precisely what Hitler said on 16th.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is [German - document not provided].
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, well, OK, you have found it.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] "There is no need for that"?
16 A. [Mr Irving] You have found it then, good.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is on 16th, Mr Irving.
18 A. [Mr Irving] As I said about five minutes ago, there was mix up of
19dates when we wrote this first edition by one day.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] A mix up, Mr Irving?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] What you have done is deliberately to transfer something
23gentler that Hitler said on 16th in order to mitigate or
24water down the brutality of what he said on 17th?
25 A. [Mr Irving] How could it possibly mitigate it? It is ridiculous. And
26what is your evidence for saying I deliberately did it?
1Let me explain, in case his Lordship does not realize,
2that when I wrote this book it was written on the basis of
320,000 pink filing cards, and it is very easy when you are
4writing a manuscript and you have 25 filing cards to the
5left of your typewriter which you have collected over the
6previous five or 10 years to juxtapose two filing cards so
7you get one date wrong. There is nothing deliberate about
8that. These things happen.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] You transposed an earlier date, it is quite clear -- do
10you have a copy of this Hillgruber book?
11 A. [Mr Irving] I will write a formal admission for you if you want.
12I got the date wrong by one day, but to say that this is
13deliberately done for a purpose is perverse.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You actually repeated it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] What you do not like is Adolf Hitler saying, "We cannot
16kill them".
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I accept that Adolf Hitler did not say that anyway, he
18said, "That is not necessary"?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] I accept that he said that.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that is what you do not like.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not mind what Adolf Hitler said. He is not on trial,
23Mr Irving. In a sense, what is on trial here is your
25 A. [Mr Irving] You are absolutely right.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is a bent piece of history?
1 A. [Mr Irving] You are absolutely right, but to say that I got the date
2wrong by one and, therefore, this is a deliberate
3misrepresentation of Adolf Hitler's views.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, if you have an entry for 167th and an entry for 17th?
5 A. [Mr Irving] A filing card for the 16th and a filing card for the 17th.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] It involves removing from the 16th and transferring to the
717th something which was said the day before, and you know
8that, do you not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Well, maybe you can explain to the court because it
10certainly surpasses my understanding how that in some way
11mitigates Adolf Hitler's guilt or otherwise or how it can
12be said to be a deliberate perversion, the fact that a
13date is wrong by one digit.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Ribbentrop, which you do not quote at all in the main text
16 A. [Mr Irving] The book is about Hitler, not Ribbentrop.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Ribbentrop makes a murder reference to a choice
18between extermination and concentration camp.
19 A. [Mr Irving] In what terms does he make that reference? Shall we go
20back to it and see.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it is here. I will read it from Professor Evans
22which you have accepted is an accurate translation?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Ribbentrop says: "The Jews must be either annihilated",
24"vernichte", "or taken to the concentration camps. There
25is no other way".
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Of course, once again we are up against that word
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Never mind that. Hitler goes on 11 lines later ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] And your experts always choose the perverse meaning of the
5word "vernichte".
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think the word which Professor Evans has used is the
7literal one, annihilated?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. You remember I gave the distinction between
9"annihilated" and "exterminated" once?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] You can argue with my experts later on down the line,
11Mr Irving.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I shall try to avoid wasting the court's time.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us try to deal with matters of substance, shall we?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Excellent.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Ribbentrop expressed a murderous or barbaric choice
16between annihilation and transport to concentration camps?
17 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Eleven lines later in the text Hitler jumps in with an
19analogy which is based on the justification for killing
20wild animals, killing wild animals, in case they should
21cause damage. Now, that left the matter as plain as a
22pikestaff at the meeting on 17th, whatever might have been
23said on 16th, the Nazis' blunt final point of view was,
24"They have got to be killed", and that came from the
25Fuhrer himself. You have always known that, have you not,
26because you ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, you have taken me by surprise. You said
2Hitler said they have got to be killed?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] In effect, yes.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Or are you just trying to slide this in under the door
5while no one is watching?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will read it in English. This is unvarnished. "Where
7the Jews were left to themselves", this is Hitler, "as,
8for example, in Poland", nothing about the Warsaw
9uprising, this is general stuff, "gruesome poverty and
10degeneracy had ruled. They were just pure parasites. One
11had fundamentally cleared up this state of affairs in
12Poland. If the Jews did not want to work, they were
13shot. If they could not work, they had to "verkommen"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] And you are saying that I concealed all this from my
15book. I did not mention any of this? I concealed it?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, I am not saying that.
17 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, I put it exactly in the third paragraph
18of that page, and yet I am called a Holocaust denier.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] "They had to be treated like tuberculosis bacilli" ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] All that is in there too.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- "from which a healthy body could be infected. That
22was not cruel if one remembered that even innocent,
23natural creatures like hares and deer had to be killed so
24that no harm was caused. Why should one spare the beasts
25who wanted to bring us Bolshevism more. Nations who did
26not rid themselves of Jews perished." Now, there is
1nothing following that ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just read to you the five lines in my book which
3accurately reflect exactly what you read out?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but you have to read the whole of it. "Poland should
5have been an object lesson to Horthy, Hitler argued. He
6related how Jews who refused to work there were shot", the
7word you emphasised, "those who could not work just wasted
8away. Jews must be treated like tuberculosis bacilli, he
9said, using his favourite analogy", Hitler's favourite
10analogy. "Was that so cruel when one considered that even
11innocent creatures like hares and deer had to be put down
12to prevent their doing damage?" So what have I left out?
13Tell me what I have left out.
14 MR RAMPTON: Will you please read the rest of the paragraph?
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, just to put the criticism,
16I personally do not see anything wrong with your
17paraphrase there.
18 MR RAMPTON: Nor do I.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I think is the criticism (and it is
20important we get the nub of it) is that you have really
21watered down the effect of your accurate paraphrase of
22what Hitler said by adding, as if it were part of the same
23conversation, a reassurance by Hitler, "There is no need
24for eliminating them". That, I think, is the criticism.
25 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I have said that this is quite accurate, you are
26absolutely right. We got that quotation wrong by one
1day. But the fact that a man makes it on one day rather
2than the next does not alter the fact that he said it. He
3said, "There is no need for that", and I can understand
4Mr Rampton's disquiet about it. But the fact that it is
5taken down by an accurate recorder like Paul Schmidt,
6Hitler saying, "There is no need for that" cannot be
7ignored, and the fact that I put it down on 16th instead
8of 17th or the 17th instead of the 16th is -- I think it
9is a very shaky position on which to build a $5 million
10trial on.
11 MR RAMPTON: No, Mr Irving. You see, your problem is this. You
12were concerned that if left unvarnished, according to
13Schmidt's text, what Hitler said would appear to be fairly
14conclusive evidence that he intended the physical
15annihilation of the Jews?
16 A. [Mr Irving] So why did I just not leave out the whole thing about the
17hares and the rabbits and the putting down and the
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because everybody else can read Schmidt, and what you
20actually did to mislead your English readers was to
21transfer a palliative remark by Hitler from the previous
22day's meeting and stuff into the text for this day?
23 A. [Mr Irving] You say everybody else can read Schmidt, but, of course,
24at the time I wrote this the Hillgruber was not
25available. I used the original microfilms. All this kind
26of stuff became available much later on. Are you
1imagining that your average reader of Waterstones is going
2to go and get a copy of Hillgruber and find out what is in
3the original text? No. I put that in when I could
4perfectly easily have left it out and, of course, I did
5not because I was writing an honest, accurate paraphrase
6of what happened.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Hillgruber was published in 1970 in Frankfurt.
8 A. [Mr Irving] But I could perfectly easily have left it out, could
9I not?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you did not bother to change it when you wrote your
111991 edition either, did you?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Because I certainly attached no importance whatsoever to
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, then, why is Hitler's palliative remark in there at
15all? It has no business to be there at all. It is a
16complete rewrite of what actually happened, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Hitler's palliative remark, when Hitler says, "There is no
18need for that"? I should have left that out? Your
19experts would have left that out; that is quite plain.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, my experts give the correct account.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Your experts have a record of leaving out documents that
22they cannot explain.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, come on. This is not the playground. My
24expert has given the correct account chronologically. He
25describes how on 16th, Horthy said, "But surely I cannot
26murder them?" and Hitler said, "There is no need for
1that. As with the Slovakians, they can be put in
2concentration camps".
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] On the next day the thing hots up, headed by Ribbentrop
5swiftly followed by Hitler and there is no palliative or
6mitigating element in that, and you knew it so you
7transferred the previous day's remark to this day?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Deliberately, right?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
10 A. [Mr Irving] And you have no evidence whatsoever for that adverb, none
11at all.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] It speaks for itself, perhaps.
13 A. [Mr Irving] These things happen when you are writing books of 1,000
14pages. Index cards get mixed up, you get a date wrong by
15one day, sometimes by one month, sometimes even by a year,
16and to say that this is deliberate and perverse, if your
17case depends on that, then I am really sorry for your
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I am going to press this, Mr Irving, you see,
20because when we get to the 1991 edition ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] Are we not going to deal with the Hungarian version of the
22same meeting, the Hungarian records?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not have the Hungarian version.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, of course, I had that and your experts did not.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Are you telling me that the Hungarian version has the
26palliative remark of the 16th recorded as having been said
1on 17th?
2 A. [Mr Irving] No, but we are interested in what it does not have which
3is any German demand for the killing of Jews.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us, if we may, turn to how you dealt with it in ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] You see, this again is something your experts have not
6used. I have not just used the books on the book shelf.
7Your experts sit in their book lined caves taking down
8their handy reference works. I do the work in the
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we have, my Lord, it is volume 2, it is D1 (v)?
12 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is effectively the same, is it not?
14 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not. I mean, the substance of what
15I have just put is exactly the same, but there is one
16crucial passage which has been missed out,?
17 A. [Mr Irving] You appreciate this book is the abridged version?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I ask you if you are have in court the unabridged
20 A. [Mr Irving] I am saying the 1991 version is the abridged version of
21the 1977 version. It was produced originally as a
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is interesting, I am going to suggest, Mr Irving, to
24look at what you have left out of the 19 ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] What has been left out? Remember, I am not necessarily
26the person who did the editing.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] This book comes out, this 1991 edition, following your
2conversion to there was no Holocaust, does it not? What
3we noticed if we look at 542, that is your account of what
4Hitler said, you still fudged together the 17th and 16th,
5but your account of what was said on ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it had not been pointed out to me at that time, of
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your account of what said on 17th stops short at the
9reference to tuberculosis bacilli. Unlike the 1997
10edition, you have missed out, omitted, the whole of the
11passage relating to the killing of innocent animals to
12prevent them from causing damage, have you not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] It did not really add very much. If you are abridging a
14book and you see that you have three sentences which
15repeat the same thing, then you are going to cut out one
16of them. We had shorten to book by one-third.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] You missed out the rhetorical question, "Why should one
18spare the beasts who wanted to bring us Bolshevism?"
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but not for any perverse reason; purely because we
20are shortening the book by one-third and everything gets
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But, having said that, would you agree,
23Mr Irving, that it does portray Hitler in a slightly more
24sympathetic light than if one had had the whole of that
25quote set out in the 1991 edition?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No, my Lord, I would not agree that because the whole
1paragraph has been shortened, and so that actually
2enhances the effect of the ugly sentence that is left in.
3If we leave in ugly sentences and shorten the paragraph as
4a whole without cutting out all the ugly sentences, if we
5were following Mr Rampton's argument, I would have cut out
6all the ugly sentences and not just one in three which is
7what you do when you are shortening a work.
8 It is very easy to do this kind of exercise, go
9through a book that has been abridged and point out that
10sentences have been cut out, but that is the only way to
11shorten it for American -- this was an American edition
12which was produced originally in paperback.
13 MR RAMPTON: I think you were aware of the mix up of dates long
14before the second edition came out because it was pointed
15out to you by Martin Broszat in 1977?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Possibly, but you have seen how little importance
17I attached to the mix up in dates.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you not think it appropriate when you are writing a
19history book, if that is what this is, to make it clear
20that, whereas when Horthy referred to his unwillingness to
21kill Jews on 16th, Hitler had said, "There is no need for
22that", by the 17th it is quite apparent from Schmidt's
23notes that the attitude of the Germans, Ribbentrop and
24Hitler, had considerably hardened?
25 A. [Mr Irving] You say this, but I do not agree. Remember, I have not
26given dates. I have not said, "On April 16th Hitler said
1this. On April 17th Rippentrop said that". There are not
2dates there. I summarized both conferences in one
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you transferred the earlier conversation to the later
5conversation as though it took place after Hitler had
6remarked upon the need to kill animals?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I do not agree. I did not say this was said on 17th or
8this was said on 16th. I have put everything into one
9paragraph. I have not said all this was one conference or
10all this was on the first conference. I have assigned
11no ----
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you agree that what Hitler was actually
13talking about on 17th was actually the extermination of
14the Hungarian Jews?
15 A. [Mr Irving] In what sentence, my Lord?
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, "extermination" meaning killing them?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I would have to see exactly which sentence you are
18referring to.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I am referring to the whole of the quote, including the
20deers and rabbits and "Why preserve or spare these
22 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes, he is talking about not killing them, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Not killing them?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, "There is no need for that".
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, I am sorry. I was asking about the 17th.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And asking you whether the words that Hitler, apparently,
2used actually contemplated the killing of the Hungarian
4 A. [Mr Irving] He says that how Jews who refused to work are shot, and so
5on, yes, that is killing. But this is the grizzly logic
6he introduces. He says, "You can always find excuses to
7kill them if you want to". And I am not going to argue
8with that, but this falls far short of some overall order
9for the Final Solution, unless your Lordship may feel
10differently, but I think ...
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No. I am just asking you what your view as an historian
13 A. [Mr Irving] Not on the basis of that one sentence. I would hesitate
14to hang such a major conclusion on just one sentence like
15that. I tend to attach more importance to him saying, "We
16could hardly do that" which tends to go very much more
17strongly in the opposite direction. Whether it was said
18on one day or the next day, I do not think is of great
20 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I would like now to move on to something
21else which, I am afraid, is going to have to be
22Reichskristallnacht. That is because the Dresden file --
23Dresden is quite complicated chronologically and it is
24very desirable that everybody has the same set of papers
25in the same order. It is not yet ready. It will be ready
1 A. [Mr Irving] My problem with the Dresden file is that a lot of the
2letters that you have included in it are illegible. It
3may well be the same in his Lordship's file.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I am told that may well be right.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not got it.
6 MR RAMPTON: There is not much point including ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] But if I know that you are going to be dealing with that
8tomorrow, then I will read the microfilm tonight of the
9original letters so that I have boned up on them.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I think that is probably a good idea. But, my Lord,
11I have another problem which is though I have got a
12Reichskristallnacht file, your Lordship has not yet. It
13is being copied at the moment. I would prefer if it were
14possible to wait until it is ready. It went away to be
15copied this morning. It should be ready quite soon,
16should it not.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am bound to say I am finding -- I mean,
18I can understand why you want to go to the source
19material, but I am finding it usually possible to follow
20these things in Professor Evans's report.
21 MR RAMPTON: Well, in that case ----
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean, Mr Irving can always say, "Well, you
23know, Professor Evans has got it wrong or he has missed
24something crucial out", but it does not seem to me always
25necessary to go to the original source material. Is that
26wrong? Do you disagree with that?
1 MR RAMPTON: I agree with it when it is right and I disagree
2when it is wrong.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That sounds reasonable. Is it often wrong
5 MR RAMPTON: I do think the Reichskristallnacht documents are
6important. I am not talking about postwar testimony or
7anything like that, selective interviewing or whatever.
8I am talking about the contemporaneous documents. They
9provide a circumstantial base -- quite a lot of it not
10even mentioned in Mr Irving's Goebbels' book -- for
11proposing that it is more or less certain that, contrary
12to what Mr Irving contends, Hitler knew perfectly well
13what was going on and probably authorized it.
14 That being so, I am afraid I think it is
15probably helpful, at the very least, to have the file.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The logic is that we all go away until the
17photocopying has been done which I am a bit reluctant to
19 MR RAMPTON: I know, but, on the other hand ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] I do consider the original documents are of importance in
21some cases.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, in some case that may be, but as a
23general ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Because I work from original documents in preference
25to ----
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I know you do and I respect that, but,
1as general rule, one can manage very well with the
2quotations that one finds in Professor Evans. I am sure
3there are odd instances where you need to go to the source
5 A. [Mr Irving] I think Professor Evans' report is highly tendentious and
6I am very loath to rely too much on it.
7 MR RAMPTON: In this particular case, we say because it is not
8ready, we say nostra culpa, nostra maxima culpa, if it be
9needed. It is our fault, it should have been, but I think
10in the end, if I may say so, it will save time because
11what is going to happen, I know, and quite naturally, I am
12going to refer to something in Evans and Mr Irving is
13going to say, "Well, I am sorry, I do not accept that, we
14have got to look at the document"?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Almost certainly.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When is it going to be ready?
17 MR RAMPTON: It will certainly be ready -- someone has just
18gone to phone to check. Can we take five or 10 minutes to
19find out what is happening and I will come back into court
20and report to your Lordship. I do apologise. I mean, we
21should have had it ready.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If we cannot do Dresden and we cannot do
23Reichskristallnacht, is there anything else we can do?
24 MR RAMPTON: Well, there is nothing much of any interest left,
25apart from Hitler's trial in 1924. That is very easy. I
26can ask one more question in relation to early Hitler
1which if I get the answer "yes" puts that in the cupboard.
2(To the witness): Mr Irving, do you accept from his own
3written and recorded words that Hitler was deeply
4anti-Semitic from, at any rate, the end of the First World
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes -- until he came to power.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Do you also agree that anti-Semitism in one form or
8another was one of the foundations of the Nazi, the
9NSDAP's, what shall we call it, political platform?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, indeed.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] That was one of the 24 points.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, that gets that out of the way.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that get rid of Hitler's trial in 1924
15altogether, as it were?
16 MR RAMPTON: No, it does not.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I am accused of having distorted again.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am accused of having distorted again, am I not?
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, looting the shop?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No, the choice of witnesses, that I should have known,
22I should have known more about the witness that I rely on.
23 MR RAMPTON: Tell me, when you relied on the witness Hofmann?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Hofmann, yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you know that he was a long standing Nazi mate of
1 A. [Mr Irving] No.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I would not use those words, but I knew nothing at all
4about his background. That was not before the court.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not know anything about him; you just quoted him,
6did you?
7 A. [Mr Irving] You have heard what I said, Mr Rampton. I knew nothing
8about Hofmann's background that was not before the court.
9I read the entire court transcript, which was many
10thousands of pages, which was adequate for writing a
11biography of Hermann Goring.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you did not know that Hofmann actually participated in
13the Putsch of the 8th and 9th November 1923?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Not from the transcript parts that I have read, no.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you did not notice the judge saying to Hofmann, "It is
16nice testimony that you are speaking out on behalf of your
18 A. [Mr Irving] Those are not the words he used. Would you like to quote
19the actual German to us?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Es ist ein schones Zeichen von Ihnen, wenn Sie zu Gunsten
21Ihres Fuhrers aussagen".
22 A. [Mr Irving] "It is very good of you to speak on behalf of your Fuhrer,
23on behalf of your leader", yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. It was obvious, was it not, that Hofmann was likely
25to be a tainted witness?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Tainted? It is possible, but he was giving evidence on
1oath, and I can only say that what was before the court
2was what was before me.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you got Professor Evans's, what is it called, report
5 A. [Mr Irving] Have I got what?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans' report? Yes, you have.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Of course, I am writing a biography of Hermann Goring and
8I am not writing a book about the Putsch. You appreciate
9that, do you not?
10 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but, Mr Irving, you are an historian and
11historian when, for needs of reference or whatever else,
12when they make reference to some event in the past, they
13can generally be expected by their readers to have some
14regard for accuracy, authenticity and so on, can they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Let me give you the impression of how much attention I pay
16to accuracy. In order to write that one or two sentence
17passage about Hofmann and the looting of the delicatessen,
18I read 6,000 pages of transcript of the trial of Adolf
19Hitler and others.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] In Goring, page 59 -- I have not got it with me, but this
21is quoted on page, my Lord, 225 of Evans, at the bottom of
22the page, you wrote this: "Meanwhile, Hitler acted to
23maintain order. Learning that one Nazi squad had
24ransacked a kosher grocery store during the night, he sent
25for the ex-army lieutenant who had led the raid. 'We took
26off our Nazi insignia first!' expostulated the officer -
1to no avail, as Hitler dismissed him from the party on the
2spot. 'I shall see that no other nationalist unit allows
3you to join either!'" That is Hitler, apparently.
4"Goring goggled at this exchange, as did a police
5sergeant who testified to it at the Hitler trial a few
6weeks later"?
7 A. [Mr Irving] That was Hofmann, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was Hofmann?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The whole episode is based on Hofmann.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Goring goggled at this exchange"?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] How do you know Goring was there?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Have you ever heard of author's licence?
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Author's licence or ----
15 A. [Mr Irving] Are you criticising "Goring goggling" or being there?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am asking both questions, I think, am I not, Mr Irving?
17Do you know that Goring was there?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is -- he was there because it is evident from the
19timetable of Einsatnacht(?) that he was there.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] And how do you know that Goring goggled?
21 A. [Mr Irving] That was author's licence.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You mean it was an invention?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a piece of fiction?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, when you write a book that is going to be read, as
26opposed to work written by learned authors like Professor
1Evans, you occasionally help the reader along by saying,
2well, I mean, this was rather a surprising exchange. Here
3is Adolf Hitler ticking off an Army lieutenant, one of his
4Nazis, for raiding a Jewish shop and throwing him out of
5the party for doing it. You would imagine that any other
6Nazi, like Goring standing nearby, is going to be saying
7-- doing a double take of this or am I wrong?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are completely wrong. It is a quite illegitimate
9licence you have taken with a record of history, but there
10it is. It may not be the biggest point in the case, but
11it is there.
12 A. [Mr Irving] How am I completely wrong? How am I completely wrong?
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You attribute a reaction to Goring for which you have no
15 A. [Mr Irving] But it is reasonable to assume that if Hermann Goring, who
16was a dedicated Nazi, standing next to Hitler, and here is
17Hitler throwing somebody out of the party on the spot for
18having taken action against a Jewish kosher store that
19night, the Nazi is going to be saying, "What is going on
20here?" and he is going to be doing what is called a double
21take. I think it is a very reasonable inference to draw,
22and it is only two words.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is reasonable to assume that Hitler, very disturbed at
24what had been happening and trying to restore law and
25order, sent for the lieutenant if, in fact, as Hofmann
26said, the lieutenant just happened to be there?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am sure that the ex-Army lieutenant was not
2hanging around in Hitler's presence the whole time.
3Presumably, he was somewhere hanging around the bierhall
4and Hitler learned he was there and said, "Bring that
5fellow in. I want to tell him what I think of him".
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you not see what you are doing all the time, Mr Irving?
7With every single one of these little fictions, these
8little author's licence ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Are you saying that he did not throw the man out of the
10party for having done what he did that night? This is the
11major point. You are looking for words ----
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Just let me ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] --- just the same as in the other one where we have Hitler
14saying, "You cannot do that, you cannot kill the Jews" and
15you are picking on the date.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving.
17 A. [Mr Irving] And here we have evidence that Hitler threw the person out
18of the party for having taken his squad to ransack a
19Jewish store, and you are picking on whether he was sent
20for or not.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] We will come to that in just a minute, Mr Irving. Please
22tell me this. When you wrote that passage about Hitler's
23reaction to this looting of a Jewish delicatessen, or
24whatever it was ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- had you read Hofmann's testimony?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Most of it.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you knew that Hitler had not sent for the lieutenant,
3did you not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] This was written, what, 14 years ago so I do know what
5I knew.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see, all your little fictions, your little tweaks, of
7the evidence all tend in the same direction, exculpation
8of Adolf Hitler, do they not?
9 A. [Mr Irving] How does sending for him or not ----
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is a much more severe measure than just saying to the
11chap, "Well, look, I gather you are the bloke that did
12this out of the party", is it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] That makes a big difference?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] It makes a little difference.
15 A. [Mr Irving] No, the exculpation is not the sending for. The
16exculpation is throwing him out of the party and that is
17not denied.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] And, "Goring goggled, 'Good heavens! Adolf really is not
19anti-Semitic after all'"
20 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, come...
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I mean, really!
22 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think I actually wrote that, did I? Now you are
23taking liberties, you are writing things into the text.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we look at the German? My Lord, I was told that the
25Reichskristallnacht bundle will be ready in what was 20
26minutes and, therefore, presumably, is 18 now, so I have
1only a couple of questions and perhaps we could then have
2a short break until it arrives.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, certainly.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Or you can spin it out the way you are doing now.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, Mr Irving. That is quite unnecessary. It is my fault
6because Mr Rampton wanted an adjournment altogether and I
7was trying to use the time.
8 MR RAMPTON: Why should I spin it out, Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Well, by trying to make some mileage out of the word
10"sent" when, in fact, you say he was on the other side of
11the room and said, "You are the one, come over here".
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We were going to look at the German.
13 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Look at the English first on page 227.
14 A. [Mr Irving] He is complaining that I did not identify the source.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no.
16 A. [Mr Irving] He does.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could I ask your Lordship and Mr Irving just to read the
18English in paragraph 2 on page 227?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "That gives a bad impression of the party".
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Could you then read the German at the
21bottom? It goes over to the other side at the bottom of
22228 as well.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Can I draw attention to the fact, of course, that he
24has used a different source from the source that I have
25used? I have used the original microfilm which is -- I do
26not know whether it was longer than this or not. My
1microfilm is 6,000 pages long, and I have got no idea
2whether they reproduced the entire text of the trial or
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I just cannot grapple with that, I am afraid, Mr Irving, I
5do not know.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but it is important because if I am being accused of
7putting things in or adding to the text, it may well be --
8I am just saying this, it is 14 years since I wrote that
9passage -- that I was using the original microfilm,
10looking at the original court stenographer's version, and
11he has been using some printed edited text.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] The last three lines of German on page -- you must forgive
13me my accent -- 227, almost the last three lines:
14"Zufallig" - does that mean "by chance" - "ist der Fuhrer
15der Gruppe dagewesen"?
16 A. [Mr Irving] By chance the leader of this squad was there, a young Army
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. Are you telling me that that is different from the
19text that you read?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, he was there. He was no doubt hanging around.
21"There" does not mean to say he was sitting at Hitler's
22desk or wherever. He just had to be on hand.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Zur Rede gestellt hat diesser gesagt" -- "called on to
24speak" is a fair translation?
25 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is not. "Zur Rede gestellt", challenged.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Challenged?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Very good. He said: "I took off the party" ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] Emblem.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Insignia".
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Hitler said "Damit". What does that mean?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Thereby you have admitted or recognized that you did not
8consider yourself to be a member of the party at that
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
11 A. [Mr Irving] But you did that.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
13 A. [Mr Irving] With your entire squad you are thrown out of the party
14immediately, and I will take care that you will never
15again be taken up by a nationalist fighting unit.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Has it occurred to you, Mr Irving -- again this would not
17be in Adolf Hitler's favour of course, so maybe it has
18not -- that what actually made Hitler cross was not so
19much what they had done but the fact that they took off
20their party insignia before they did it?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is actually what it says. That gives a
22bad impression of the party.
23 MR RAMPTON: Exactly.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Where does it say that gives a bad impression of the
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] In the translation.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the translation, four lines down.
2 MR RAMPTON: The relevant English is: "I took off the party
3badge, that is the lieutenant. Hitler said, by doing
4this you admitted that you do not belong to the party at
5the moment when you committed that act. You are
6expelled ... " Has it occurred to you, Mr Irving, that
7what actually was meant by Hitler was, if you are going to
8do things like that, do not be a coward and keep your
9party insignia on when you do?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I think this is a very far-fetched
11interpretation. It is an alternative interpretation but
12I think far-fetched and the less plausible of the two.
13I do not think that, if this Hofmeister, if I can continue
14my argument and I think this will destroy your argument
15entirely, if this Hoffmann, rather, imagined he was doing
16Hitler a service when Hitler was on trial for high
17treason, that he was going to do Hitler a service by
18saying that Hitler had said, "By taking off your badge,
19you created a bad impression, you should have done that as
20a Nazi", that would not have helped Hitler at all in that
21trial, would it.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] But do you not think the two things really go together?
23Hoffmann might have said that Hitler said, "This is a bad
24thing to do, worse still you took off your party badge"?
25 A. [Mr Irving] That is not what he said. He said quite clearly, "By this
26action you have damaged the party", or, "By this action
1you have admitted you were not a member of the party, and
2therefore I am going to throw you out anyway". He
3certainly would not have helped Hitler at a treason trial
4by suggesting that Hitler had taken deliberate
5anti-Semitic actions against, or that he endorsed
6anti-Semitic actions against, this grocery store. If this
7was outside the courtroom, in other words, your
8explanation could have been plausible. But inside the
9courtroom, and Hoffmann giving evidence on behalf of
10Hitler is totally implausible, to put that interpretation
11on it.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is not a good reason for doubting the credibility of
13what Hoffmann said, I suppose?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure he wanted, as the judge said, to get Hitler off
15the hook.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you tell your readers that?
17 A. [Mr Irving] It is quite evident, is it not, when you are relying
18something? How much do you have to spell out everything
19to your readers every time? I am not, as I said once
20before, putting eight pages of sludge into a text in the
21way that a Professor can in an academic treatise. I have
22to write a book that will sell.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] What you do, if it is a mere side reference in a book
24about Goring, if you have a doubtful source like that, is
25you leave it out entirely. You do not make some elevating
26reference to Hitler's protection of the Jews in passing,
1if you are doubt at all about the credibility of the
2source. You just leave it out.
3 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, this is a most illuminating example. It
4is a very earlier example of exactly how Hitler acted in
5the second world war, where he repeatedly interceded
6against Nazis who had committed excesses against by
7actions against the Jews. We have already had, and we are
8going to have a lot more before this case ends,
9innumerable cases where Hitler has interceded, and this is
10a very early one in 1923.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You cannot have it both ways, Mr Irving. Either Hoffmann
12is reliable and was not skewing his evidence in order to
13help his leader out of a tight corner, in which case you
14should have given the whole account, or else he was an
15unreliable witness and you should have just left it out.
16Is that not right?
17 A. [Mr Irving] You are the one who is trying to have it both ways,
18Mr Rampton. You want to have him as an unreliable witness
19who is trying to help Hitler, but at the same time hacking
20Hitler on the shins by what he says, saying that Hitler
21was angry because the guys who attacked the grocery shop
22had had the effrontery to take off their Nazi badges.
23That would not have helped Hitler at all, would it?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] What about what you described as the requisitioning of
25funds by Hitler's armed thugs?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Oh that was obviously some prank that they carried out.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] A prank?
2 A. [Mr Irving] He sent them out to go and steal the entire contents of a
3bank to pay people back or something, did he not?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He sent them out?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Hitler sent these people out to go and rob a printing
6works and steal all the money.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] He sent them out to rob the bank?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I put this in the book, I think, no doubt Mr Rampton
9will tell us.
10 MR RAMPTON: You said in Goring that Hitler sent armed men into
11the city to requisition funds?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It is rather the same way as the great train robbers
13went to requisition funds.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] "It took 14 and a half billion Reichsmarks from the Jewish
15bank known as Parvis &Company and gave a Nazi receipt in
16exchange. Meanwhile Hitler acted to maintain order". The
17truth was that these thugs just went and stole 14 and a
18half billion Reichsmarks from the Jewish printers, did
19they not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] That is right, which was of course just paper. They went
21and stole all the paper and left a Nazi receipt.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why did you not write it like that, requisition,
23Mr Irving? Really! They were not even the government.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know if you have read Noel Coward's poems? This
25is the way the English write. They write with a delicate
26touch. They do not write acres of stodge if they can help
1it if they are not professors of sociology or history.
2They write books that are going to get read. To send a
3Nazi gang to go and requisition funds from a printing
4works is like the great train robbers requisitioning
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How is the reader going to gather that from
7what you have written?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, maybe I have not written it with as much dexterity
9as normal, but the intention was to put a light touch on
11 MR RAMPTON: Then finally this, Mr Irving ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] Giving a Nazi receipt in exchange surely gives the
13flavour, does it not?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] The attack on the Jewish delicatessen and Hitler's
15supposed reaction to it, which you used in support of the
16statement that Hitler acted to maintain order,
17notwithstanding that he sent thugs to steal a large sum of
18money from some Jewish bankers, that raid on the
19delicatessen was not part of the putsch of the 8th and 9th
20November, 1923 at all, was it?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. You tell us.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you have read Hoffmann's testimony, you would know that
23it referred to some earlier and quite unconnected
25 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. Does Professor Evans say this?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes he does.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps you can draw attention to it.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Last bullet point on page 228.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot accept that without knowing what he relies on.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think you will see at the top of 229 what he relies on
5in Hoffmann's testimony.
6 A. [Mr Irving] He just says "It is quite clear that". Frankly, I do not
7accept that unless he gives us a source. You remember, I
8have read the 6,000 pages of testimony and he has just
9read some printed text.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I think what he is probably referring to, which is
11perfectly obvious if you look at it, and I am grateful to
12Miss Rogers, is on page 227, the very first line of the
13quote from Hoffmann is: "Apart from this, I want to
14mention a previous incident because acts of violence which
15individuals have committed have always been ascribed to
16him. I once went along to Hitler when I was still in the
17force and said to him: this and that have happened
18again. Some elements had attacked..."
19 It was a quite separate occasion, nothing
20whatever to do with Hitler's restoring order during the
21putsch of 1923.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, will you read the German original of that
23first line, please?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Austerdem mochte ich einen Fall vorher erwahnen..."
25 A. [Mr Irving] Not "einen vorher Fall erwahnen". He does not say, "I want
26to mention a previous incident". He says, "I would first
1like to mention an incident".
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but read on.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see.
4 A. [Mr Irving] It is a bad translation, of course.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You say vorher qualifies erwahnen, not einen Fall?
6 A. [Mr Irving] It is an adverb, my Lord, it is not an adjective.
7 MR RAMPTON: You can take that up with Professor Evans. It is
8no good arguing with me about that.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I have quite a few things to take up with Professor Evans
10when he comes.
11 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I do not think I have anything more on
12this little topic.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I think that was better than just
14adjourning for 20 minutes. We have actually had the 20
15minutes and the file is here or is not here?
16 MR RAMPTON: It is.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is.
18 MR RAMPTON: Can we have five minutes just to sort it out?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes of course. I will adjourn for five
22 (Short Adjournment)
23 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship should have a new red file.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have, L2.
25 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, for this purpose I am going to
26concentrate on your latest account of Reichskrissallnacht
1which is that given in your 1996 book on Goebbels. If you
2tell me that you want also to refer to what you have
3written on Hitler's War or on any other book, I will come
4back to is that tomorrow.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Would you your Lordship like the book itself?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I will probably operate off the
7transcript, thank very much, then I can mark it.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I have a spare copy.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have one already actually of Goebbels.
10 MR RAMPTON: Can we start on page 273, and I am not going to
11going to read out page 273. What you do there is give an
12account of what had happened in Paris, and earlier, on 7th
13November 1938 which was that it was said that an assassin
14called Grynszpan had shot a Nazi diplomat called vom Rath,
15is that right?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] He did not die immediately. I think he died some time in
18the afternoon of the 9th. Is that not right?
19 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] The news of his death was transmitted to Berlin at about
215 o'clock that evening, or a bit earlier, and then was
22released on the news?
23 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whether directly or indirectly, as a consequence of that,
25a number of disturbances began to take place in different
26places in Germany which were all directed against Jewish
1property. Is that a fair account?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I think the disturbances actually begun before the death
3was announced.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] After the shooting?
5 A. [Mr Irving] After the shooting the disturbances begun, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Prompted by the shooting. Can I start right then at the
7bottom of page 273: "Events that evening, November 9th,
8are crucial to the history of what followed. As Goebbels
9and Hitler set out to attend the Nazi reception in the old
10city hall, they learned that the police were intervening
11against anti-Jewish demonstrators in Munich. Hitler
12remarked that the police should not crack down too harshly
13under the circumstances". Your source for that -- have
14you got it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] 274. Your source for that, I think, is eyewitness
17testimony, is it not? The footnotes are on page 612 and
18following, I can tell you that.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. It was a statement by Juttner.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] What follows next, however, is a quotation from the
21Goebbels' Diary written, no doubt, on the 10th?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Not necessarily. If you remember, the Goebbels' Diary,
23over these days, was written up subsequently, I think, so
24it is dangerous to assume that a diary was written ----
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not. I have no quarrel with Dr Goebbels' Diary in
26this part of the tale, I have to say.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] "'Colossal activity' the Goebbels diary entry reports,
3then claims: 'I brief the Fuhrer on the affair. He
4decides: Allow the demonstrations to continue. Hold back
5the police. The Jews must be given a taste of the public
6anger for a change'." So when you say in the earlier part
7that Hitler remarked that the police should not crack down
8too harshly, that means that they should not crack down
9too harshly on the anti-Jewish demonstrators, is that
11 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct, yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] What word did Goebbels use to represent his report of
13Hitler's decision that the police should be held back?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. Can we see the diary?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think it is probably best, neatest, easiest, to see it.
16Sorry. It is easiest for everybody else if we look at it
17on page 240 of the Evans' report, although it is in this
18new bundle.
19 A. [Mr Irving] The sense that I give is clearly that Hitler wanted the
20demonstrations against the Jews to continue.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but my question was what word did Goebbels use which
22you translate as "hold back"?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Zuruckziehen".
24 A. [Mr Irving] You must remember, it was eight or nine years since
25I actually wrote this. It is eight years since I saw
26Goebbels diaries.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, the answer is "Zuruckziehen", I think, is it not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] "Zuruckziehen".
3 MR RAMPTON: If Goebbels had meant "hold back", he would have
4written something like "Zuruckhalten would he not"?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Or "Zuruckneimen", yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Zuruckziehen" is more active, it means ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Pull back.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Pull them out"?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Pull back, yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] "And let the demonstrators get on with it"?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] And he says simply that the Jews for once shall feel the
13anger of the people. That is all he says in the next
14sentence, is it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] "The Jews must be given a taste of the public anger for a
16change", yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where is the "taste" in the German?
18 A. [Mr Irving] What is the difference? I have talked before about the
19need to make literate translations or literary
20translations of diaries. The Goebbels diary presents
21particular problems because it is written in the
22vernacular, and it is very difficult to give the exact
23flavour, or in this case the taste, of the vernacular in
24the translation you give. He is writing slang. It would
25be like translating cockney into German. Frequently he is
26writing in a Berlin cockney.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] But it is perfectly correct to translate it as Professor
2Evans does, "The Jews must for once feel the people's
3fury". That is more accurate.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, can we see the actual German original perhaps?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] The German original is at the bottom of page 240 of Evans.
6You want to see the actual document?
7 A. [Mr Irving] No, no, I just want to no. "Die Juden sollen einmal den
8Volkszorn zu verspuren bekommen" -- "The Jews must have a
9taste of the people's anger". My translation is better
10than his, I am afraid.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You say so.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Verspuren" means track of, or something like
13that, does it, or trace of?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I think "to have taste of something", to have a taste of
15the public anger.
16 MR RAMPTON: Now, much more important than that ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] I hope so.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- well, much more important than that, Mr Irving, is
19this, really it is the foundation, is it not, of your
20whole account of this event, or series of events, which
21later came to be known as Reichskristallnacht? Goebbels,
22it must be, according to you, when he wrote that the
23Fuhrer said, "Let the demonstrations go on and withdraw
24the police"?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Goebbels must be lying? Because, on your account, Hitler
1did not know anything about it and was shocked and angry
2when he found out what was happening early on the morning
3of 10th?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Surely this is a reference to what has been going on
5during the day before the Kristallnacht.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Big demonstrations against the Jews in Kassel and Dessau?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Synagogues set on fire and businesses demolished?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This was during the day even before the
10Reichskristallnacht began, the outrages began.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] "The death of the German diplomat vom Rath is reported in
12the afternoon. But now the goose is cooked. I go to the
13party reception in the Old Town Hall. Colossal activity".
14That means at the reception, I take it. "I brief the
15Fuhrer about the matter," what matter?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Can we see the entire passage, please?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I will have to find it.
18 A. [Mr Irving] This is very important and we really have to go over it
19line by line.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, it is terribly important, not from the historical
21point of view. Tab 3, is it? Tab 3, page ----
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 3 of what L2?
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, page 1.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Unfortunately, we do not have the first pages of this
25diary entry. Had I known, I would have brought my
26transcript of the diary with me.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Presumably, this is all in one of the other
3 MR RAMPTON: No, we have not got it.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I published the Goebbels 1938 diary in a separate
5edition before this edition came out. Of course, I am the
6first person to have transcribed these handwritten
7diaries, and it is quite plain when you look at these
8diaries that this particular day is written up one or two
9days later, so it is very difficult to be certain about
10the sequence of events. You have really to ----
11 MR RAMPTON: Well, it is pretty clear, is it not, Mr Irving?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if you ----
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] What time of the day was the rally or whatever it was in
14the old Rathaus, the old Town Hall?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It was a dinner.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] A dinner?
17 A. [Mr Irving] A dinner, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] According to Goebbels, he went with Hitler to the dinner?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Although Hitler did not stay?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] But they were obviously talking about the violence which
23had broken out in different parts of Germany against
24Jewish property as they went or when they got there, were
25they not? Look at the text on page ----
26 A. [Mr Irving] I am very clearly looking at the text and I am going to
1translate as I go along. Paragraph -- the first, the
2third full paragraph: "In Kassel", right?
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, please.
4 A. [Mr Irving] "In Kassel and Dessau great demonstrations against the
5Jews. Synagogues are set on fire and the shops are
6demolished. In the afternoon the death of the German
7diplomat vom Rath is reported. Now it is" [something or
8other], the word is unplain, illegible, "I go to the party
9reception in the old Town Hall. A lot going on there.
10I tell the Fuhrer about it. I tell -- I report the matter
11to the Fuhrer". It is obviously the fact that vom Rath is
12dead. That is what he has told Hitler about. The news
13has come over the wires, Goebbels is the propaganda
14minister and he has passed on to Hitler the fact.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Read on, Mr Irving, really.
16 A. [Mr Irving] And he says, "Let the demonstrations carry on. Pull back
17the police", yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] What he has told Hitler about is the death of vom Rath.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, that is a complete, if I may ----
21 A. [Mr Irving] OK, I will take your one, I do not mind. It makes no
22difference either way. I will take your interpretation.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] What Goebbels done is to tell Hitler, Hitler surely
24already knows about the death of vom Rath, after all ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you have no evidence for that.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, he sent his personal physician over to Paris to try
1to save the man's life, does he not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] But you do not have any evidence for the fact that Hitler
3knew when Goebbels went to him -- well, OK, even accept
4that, I do not mind. Let us carry on.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Look at the thing realistically, Mr Irving. The news gets
6on the public radio by 5 o'clock in the evening. Are you
7telling me that Hitler would not know? Of course, he
9 A. [Mr Irving] Are you giving evidence that it was on the radio as
10opposed to coming over the wires?
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am just trying to push into the bushes an absurd, off
12the cuff answer by you. I am not going to hold you to it.
13 A. [Mr Irving] It is not off the cuff. I have researched this matter in
14enormous depth. I am the first person to have transcribed
15the Goebbels' diaries on the Kristallnacht.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, what does "die angelegenheit"
18 A. [Mr Irving] The affair, the matter, the business, ras in Latin.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So that is equivocal?
20 A. [Mr Irving] It could be anything. It could refer to either thing.
21But I do not see that it makes any difference either way
22and I am quite happy to accept Mr Rampton's
24 MR RAMPTON: Hitler's response is nothing to do with, "Oh,
25isn't it awful? Yes, what a shame it is about vom Rath".
26Hitler's response is all to do with the demonstrations
1against the Jews and the destruction of their property, is
2it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I am quite happy to accept that. I do not really see that
4it makes any difference what the matter was in this
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes, it does because what Hitler says is: "Let the
7demonstrations continue"?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Draw back the police, pull out the police"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] "Let the police -- let the Jews have the taste of public
11anger", yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right, and that may well be Goebbels' (because he
13often puts those little words in, does he not)
14observation. You know, do you not (and I am sure you do,
15although we do not have find it in your book, I do
16not think), in February of the following year, 13th
17February or so, the Nazi party judicial system (which is
18nothing whatever to do with the official state prosecution
19or court service) held some kind of tribunal or enquiry
20into what had happened on 9th and 10th November 1938?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Into the excesses committed by Nazi party members, yes,
22against the Jews.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. How many Nazi party members were actually
24prosecuted, fined or imprisoned by the State courts?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Prosecuted or fined or imprisoned?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well take them in order, if you like?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Very few, I suggest.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if that is your evidence, but I do not know either
4way -- not without consulting the records.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you look in tab 2 of this document?
6 A. [Mr Irving] They were prosecutions, definitely, for people who had
7murdered Jews for ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
9 A. [Mr Irving] --- shall we say -- on one occasion a Jew was murdered
10because he was going to give evidence in a libel action,
11I believe, and he was prosecuted for it -- the murderer
12was prosecuted for it, yes. Can I look at ----
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is not the State justice machinery, is it, this party
14tribunal or whatever it is?
15 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is not.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It calls itself "Der Oberste"?
17 A. [Mr Irving] It is the supreme party court.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Der Oberste ----
19 A. [Mr Irving] Under Walter Buch.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- Parteirichter?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Walter Buch -- B-U-C-H.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and this is its report to General Field Marshal
23Hermann Goring, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you would like to turn over the page?
26 A. [Mr Irving] What are we looking at?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am so sorry. Are you not in this file? Tab 2.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Tab 2.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is dated 13th February 1939.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] What it says, which is of significance for present
6purposes, is to be found on the next page, page 2. If you
7would not mind just translating it? In the middle of the
8page, it says: "Geheim! Geheim!" which is "Secret",
9presumably, then it says "Bericht" which is "Report on",
10and then what is it reporting on?
11 A. [Mr Irving] A report on the episodes and the party court procedures in
12connection with the anti-Semitic demonstrations on
13November 9th 1938.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. Now I would like you to read the next paragraph
15and down to the line below "seite 2".
16 A. [Mr Irving] Read it?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] I mean translate it for us, please?
18 A. [Mr Irving] "On the evening of 9th November 1938, the Reichs
19propaganda director, party member Dr Goebbels, informed
20the party members who had met for a comradely evening in
21the old Town Hall in Munich that there had been
22anti-Jewish demonstrations in the gaus, G-A-U-S, of
23Kurhessen and Magdeburg-Anhalt, A-N-H-A-L-T, and that
24Jewish shops and synagogues had been smashed -- and the
25Jewish shops had been smashed and synagogues had been set
26on fire. The Fuhrer had decided on his briefing that such
1demonstrations were not to be prepared by the party, nor
2were they to be organized by the party. In so far as they
3occurred spontaneously, they were, however, not to be
4opposed or stopped".
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Well, now, whereas I suppose you might say that
6Dr Goebbels might lie to his diary ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- he is not likely to lie to the Alten Rathaus gathering
9of old party comrades, is he? He is representing to them
10what he and Hitler have been discussing and what Hitler
11has told him before that dinner which Hitler did not
12attend, is he not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do we find that speech by Goebbels at the Alten Rathaus
15referred to anywhere by you in your Goebbels book?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I believe that I had the version given by the British
17Consul in Munich which he reported to the Foreign Office
18and he obtained an account of what Goebbels had said, and
19I have referenced that as the source. Obviously, there is
20no transcript of it.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] You see, if Goebbels was telling the truth to the party
22court ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] He was not actually one of their witnesses.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, no. If this is an accurate report of what Goebbels
25said at the Alten Rathausen on the evening of 9th
26November, probably after Hitler had left, why, then, the
1idea that Hitler did not know what was going to happen is
2absurd, is it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] We are talking about scale, I think, more than anything
4else. It is quite evident from Goebbels diary that Hitler
5had said, "OK, so the Jews are going to have, they are
6going to get ruffed up, pull the police back, let it
7happen, let the Jews have a taste of the public anger this
8time". But what is evidenced from all the records that
9I have seen is that, like a lot of fires, it got out of
10hand, and by midnight, so to speak, it was quite plain
11that this was turning into an extremely unseemingly pogrom
12which in an organised, national Socialist State was
13something desired certainly not by Hitler, and in the
14following morning not by Goebbels either, because it
15reflected badly on them all.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to ask you look at one sentence in Goebbels on
17page 276, your book on Goebbels?
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just, before you do that, get an
19impression of the scale of the problem at it was known to
20Hitler. This document we are looking at is referring to
21events in Kurhessen and Magdeburg-Anhalt. Where are they?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, they were provinces in central Germany hundreds of
23miles away from Munich, and he is getting reports of a
24synagogue set on fire here and the demonstrations there.
25 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, perhaps a bit more than that, but, at any rate,
26Jewish businesses being trashed and ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Elsewhere, certainly not in Munich yet and not all over
2Germany, not a huge forest firing spreading with
3uncontrollable speed across the country.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I just wanted to be clear, thank you.
5 MR RAMPTON: Can I just then -- I want to do two things. One
6will need his Lordship's permission, but the first does
7not. Could I ask you to turn to page 276 of Goebbels?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] And look at the last paragraph. It is precisely because
10of what you have just said that I want you to look at
12 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just draw attention to the first sentence of the
13full paragraph: "The pogrom was soon out of control" on
14that page.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not trying to trick you. I just want to know what
16you mean.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I think that together you and I will find out what
18happened that evening.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think I know, Mr Irving. I do not need your help, I do
20not think. "What of Himmler and Hitler? Both were
21totally unaware of what Goebbels had done until the
22synagogue next to Munich's Four Seasons hotel was set on
23fire around 1 a. m."
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. What did you mean by saying that Hitler was
26totally unaware of what Goebbels had done until the
1synagogue next door to the hotel went up?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Goebbels, if my memory of events is correct, that evening
3had sent out an igniting telegram, which I would describe
4as an igniting telegram, in which he had called for
5widespread acts of arson and violence against the Jewish
6community and their property.
7 Hitler was also not present when Goebbels made
8this speech to the old fighters, to the old comrades.
9Those are the two elements on which I base that sentence.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes?
11 A. [Mr Irving] When he made literally the fiery speech, the inflammatory
13 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I, therefore, have a suggestion to make,
14that your Lordship might consider rising now because
15I would wish for the afternoon your Lordship and
16Mr Irving, if he needs to do so to remind himself, to read
17the whole of pages 273 to 277 towards the halfway break in
18the page, until we get to the aftermath which is 10th and
1911th because it will ----
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not quite sure why. I mean, I have read
21it before. What is to be gained by reading it again
22without knowing what questions you are going to ask?
23 MR RAMPTON: Well, because it puts my questions in context. I
24am quite happy to ask questions, but your Lordship or
25Mr Irving may find it difficult it follow.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure Mr Irving will not, but I might,
1I suppose.
2 A. [Mr Irving] But it is eight years since I wrote this passage and
3I have moved on to other things since then, of course.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you would like the opportunity to re-read
5it, would you?
6 A. [Mr Irving] If Mr Rampton thinks it would be useful.
7 MR RAMPTON: Well, I do because otherwise I am going to dot
8around from one page to the next. One will not have the
9context unless we read out all the pages in court, and
10that is time consuming and also somewhat tiresome.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I can read it during the lunch hour.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. So now is the moment do that, is it?
13 MR RAMPTON: We have only lost eight minutes if we do it that
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, OK. We will say 2 o'clock.
16 (Luncheon adjournment)
17(2.00 p.m.)
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes?
19 MR RAMPTON: Now, Mr Irving, have you had a chance to reread
20those pages of your book?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I have, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Good. What I would like to do, if I may, is to draw your
23attention to the documents in the file which you have. As
24far as possible I will try to do it in chronological
25order. Then what I want to do is to see and, if the
26answer is you have, whether you have treated them in this
1passage and, if you have, how you have treated them and,
2if you have not, why not. First of all, can you please
3turn to page 2 of the first tab in this bundle?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you look at this, I do not know what the nature of this
6publication is. I think it is probably a Nuremberg
7document. Do you?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Here is a telegram from Muller, who is head of the
10Gestapo. It is the right hand column, my Lord. 377 is
11the internal number.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
13 MR RAMPTON: It is sent at 5 to 12 on the night of 19th
14November 1938, is it not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is addressed to -- what are Stapostellen?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Local Gestapo officers.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] And Stapolizeistellen?
19 A. [Mr Irving] They are the office immediately above them.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the date of it? I cannot find it.
21 A. [Mr Irving] 9th November 19 --
22 MR RAMPTON: It is Berlin No. 234, 404, 9.11, 23.55 which is
23the time. Is that right?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I see, but no year.
26 MR RAMPTON: No year, no. But you have seen this document
2 A. [Mr Irving] The original is in the Hoover library in Stamford
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is the answer to my question yes?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] When did you first see this document?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Probably about 20 years ago, 25 years ago.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] I am saying I have seen the original of the original
10document, not of this Nuremberg one, which I did not use.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does not make an appearance in your Goebbels book, does
13 A. [Mr Irving] Do I not refer to igniting telegrams?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] In a footnote but it is not in the text, is it?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It makes the appearance in the footnote, yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you just glance at it again, you are no doubt familiar
17with it, and tell us what it says?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is instructing local police officers that in a short
19time there is going to be an outbreak of operations
20against the Jews, in particular against their synagogues
21all over Germany, and that there are to be certain
22precautionary measures to make sure that other buildings
23are not -- and also the arrest of 20 or 30,000 Jews is to
24be prepared.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] That arrest of 20 or 30,000 Jews was explicitly on the
26order of Hitler, was it not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] I believe you are right, yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] And Goebbels said so, and it was so reported in, I think,
3the proceedings of the -- maybe I am wrong about that, but
4I think you have stated it as a fact in your book?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] No doubt deriving it from Goebbels diary entry?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I just would like to enter the caveat at this point of
8course that I first wrote this 15 years ago, and the last
9time I drafted this manuscript was eight years ago. From
10then until now I have not really had any reason to read it
11again, but I think you are right.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] On page 276 you write: "'The Fuhrer', claimed Goebbels in
13the diary, 'has directed that 20 or 30,000 Jews are to be
14arrested immediately'".
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, where are you reading? I know
16which book but can you tell me where on the page?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry, my Lord, 276, middle of the page, just before
18the indented quote?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see. Thank you.
20 MR RAMPTON: In fact, an order from Heydrich went out at 1.20
21in the morning?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] As well as this one, did it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is quite plain.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are saying that.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Heydrich later report to the Goring, I think on the 11th,
2that that had in fact been achieved, did he not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This Fuhrer order refers specifically of course to
4the arrest of the Jews.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] And particularly the well-to do Jews? Is that right?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Not in my book, it does not.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, no. Here on the page.
8 A. [Mr Irving] On the document, do you mean?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes (German).
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] In paragraph 1 it says that there will be taking place, or
12there are taking place, you tell me which it is, in the
13near ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] There are to take place in the near future in all Germany
15operations against the Jews.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Against the Jews especially against their synagogues?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then it says [German- document not provided], which means?
19 A. [Mr Irving] They are not to be interrupted.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is in exact consonance with what Goebbels reported
21Hitler as having said to him just before the dinner on the
22evening, is it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you not think that this telegram ----
25 A. [Mr Irving] It does not add much to our knowledge.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] No, but I referenced it in a footnote as being a telegram
2with an igniting function, if my memory is correct.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Then the next one I would like you to look at is the
4one on the first page, in this bundle?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am just a little puzzled by
6great stacks of documents in German being handed up. Is
7there anything to be gained by having a translation of
8them? What am I meant to do with all this?
9 MR RAMPTON: Well, if the witness has translated them in the
10witness box and I have not contested his translation, then
11one can take it -- his German is very good -- that what
12he said is accurate.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was really thinking of my own position,
14that it is not entirely satisfactory having to correlate
15this document that is referred to on day 12 with such and
16such a page of the transcript.
17 MR RAMPTON: I know.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Can I also point out, of course, that this was not the
19only order issued? Goebbels had previously issued an
20order during the day. I am not if you caught that,
21Mr Rampton. This was not the only order issued, of
22course. Goebbels had previously issued an order earlier
23that day to which he refers on the following day when he
24rescinds his order.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] But Goebbels does not issue orders to Muller, does he?
26 A. [Mr Irving] This is part of the problem that night. We find Goebbels
1issuing orders to police officials and to gauleitung
2officials over which he has no direct control whatsoever.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where are these Goebbels orders?
4 A. [Mr Irving] If you look at the page 279 of my Goebbels book and you
5look at the caption to that, on November 10th Goebbels
6issued an urgent circular telegram all gau propaganda
7chiefs cancelling the Aktionen against the Jews ordered
8the day before.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] First of all, what time of day does this message go?
10 A. [Mr Irving] That one went out at some time on November 10th, which is
11the day after it all happened.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] It has all happened by then, has it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Second, you notice that this message from Goebbels which
15comes the following day is sent to the propaganda chiefs.
16It is not sent to the SA or to the Gestapo at all, is it?
17 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I am completely lost. I do not
19know what the point is at all. We have just looked at a
20document, I now cannot remember where it was, tab 2.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there a point made on that document?
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes. If your Lordship would be a little patient
24with me, the point I shall be making at the end it so that
25it is all clear is this. Orders were given throughout the
26night, apparently on the express authority of Hitler,
1first of all that certain kinds of property were not to be
2damaged or burnt, but by no means extending to all Jewish
3property, and, second, that it was repeatedly said, again
4on the authority of Hitler, that the police were to
5hold back, they were not to interfere.
6 A. [Mr Irving] But you keep on interpolating the words "on the authority
7of Hitler" which is the very moot point of course.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because some of them actually say so. I am explaining
9something to the judge, Mr Irving.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Let Mr Rampton explain because I am not
11following the criticism of you at the moment.
12 MR RAMPTON: The point of it is, if you unvarnish by
13Mr Irving's interpretation, if I can call it that, in
14these pages, one looks at the original documents as a
15piece of original chronology, if I can call it that. What
16one sees is that it is inconceivable, when you look at who
17they came from, when they came from, that this did not
18originate with Hitler and was approved by him as
19Dr Goebbels said it had been.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. That is very helpful to know that,
21but can I tell you why I am a little puzzled? Before the
22adjournment I think we had reached a point where Hitler
23had gone home or wherever he went before the dinner, which
24was at about 9 o'clock in the evening. We have now got to
25about midnight. Did nothing happen in between times?
26I think that is what Mr Irving is suggesting, that there
1was another Goebbels order.
2 MR RAMPTON: I do not think even Mr Irving is saying that.
3Things had already happened before ever Hitler and
4Goebbels had a conversation about it in the late afternoon
5or the early evening. It had already starting happening.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that, but are you saying nothing of
7relevance happened between 9 o'clock in the evening and
8the date of this message from Muller? That is the point.
9 MR RAMPTON: There is nothing recorded in the documents as
10having happened, save that it must be a reasonable
11inference that it was all still going on.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I mean happened anywhere in connection with
13Kristallnacht, not the actions against the Jews in the
14synagogues there. Did Goebbels, for example, not make a
16 MR RAMPTON: He did and, as we saw this morning, during that
17speech to the old party comrades at the old town hall he
18actually said on the Fuhrer's orders that this is to be
19allowed to continue.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It would obviously help me if we could be
21chronological about it.
22 MR RAMPTON: That is what I am trying to be. The last thing
23I looked at was the Nazi party court report of February,
24which records what Goebbels said at the 9 o'clock dinner
25on the 9th. That is tab 2, my Lord, page 2.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is what Goebbels said in his speech that
1night, is it?
2 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It says: "On the evening of 9th November
31938 the Reichs propaganda minister, Dr Goebbels, ...
4said ...". We had a translation of that from Mr Irving
5this morning?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is one of the problems about operating off
8a German text. Anyway, this is Goebbels speech. I am
9afraid I had not realized that. Yes.
10 A. [Mr Irving] It continued by saying that he said that the Fuhrer had
11decided on his briefing that demonstrations like this were
12neither to be prepared by the party, nor were they to be
13organized and so on, but however -- --
14 MR RAMPTON: What he said was that, in effect, rather like the
15pogroms shortly after Barbarossa, it was OK so long as, as
16it were, they were anonymous. The police were not to
17interfere of course, which meant that the thugs could have
18a free hand. Your Lordship will find, if the translation
19is a problem, some translation of that on page 244,
20paragraph 5, of Evans, where Evans unsurprisingly makes
21the point that I made this morning, that whereas Goebbels
22might have lied to his diary, he certainly was not very
23likely to lie to the old party comrades at the dinner.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I would thought it would be the other way round.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well?
26 A. [Mr Irving] If Hitler had given him those instructions, he would have
1written it in his diary.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] He did write it in his diary, Mr Irving, did he not?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We have not looked at the diary on this, have
4we, yet?
5 A. [Mr Irving] We have not and, if we do, we will not find that Hitler
6gave the instructions.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I must say I think it would be easier to work
8off Evans than doing this.
9 MR RAMPTON: As I say, the problem with that is that every time
10I try and use Evans, the witness disputes what Evans has
11written and insists on going back to the original.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Vehemently.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then I ought to have translations of any
14documents that matter. Anyway, let us try and press on.
15I am just getting a bit puzzled by the sequence.
16 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, can I back? The starting point is the
17Goebbels diary entry of 10th November 1938, recording his
18meeting with Hitler, his conversation with Hitler, before
19the dinner that evening on 9thth November.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving has accepted that, although he
22translated it somewhat differently, I think he has
23accepted, that translation by Professor Evans is accurate.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 240, paragraph 4.
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, top of the page, 241. The German is on 240.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
1 MR RAMPTON: The top of 241 is Professor Evans' direct
2translation. "I brief the Fuhrer about the matter. He
3orders: let the demonstrations go on. Withdraw the
4police. The Jews must for once feel the people's fury".
5 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is the starting point. Then Goebbels goes to the
7dinner, and in effect says more or less the same thing to
8the assembled company at the dinner. Then, so far as
9I know from the documents, there is not any record of
10Goebbels or anybody else having said anything about what
11was to happen or not happen until five to 12?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What you have just said has actually
13clarified my mind. Thank you very much.
14 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is probably my fault.
16 MR RAMPTON: I am trying to go as fast as I can.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is just that sometimes one plunges into
18things and one needs to be --
19 MR RAMPTON: I know. I do recognize. We are all so familiar
20with it that sometimes somebody who is not quite so
21familiar may easily get left behind and I do apologise for
22that. I will try to take it more slowly. Can I then jog
23back one step to page 2 of tab 1 of the new bundle?
24 A. [Mr Irving] The Muller telegram?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, please.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Which of course is sent from Berlin, not from Munich.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I understand that.
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is quite important, as Hitler is in Munich and
3Goebbels is in Munich.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] You mean Muller and Hitler, leave Goebbels on one side if
5you will for the moment, cannot communicate by telephone?
6 A. [Mr Irving] It would have been an unorthodox chain of command because
7Muller ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] The strict chain of command would have been this, would it
9not, Mr Irving? Hitler speaks to Himmler, and you
10remember there is a British diplomatic report saying that
11Himmler and Hitler were in close conversation before the
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Himmler speaks to Heydrich, Heydrich speaks to Muller?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Or, more likely, that Muller gets word from his local
16police officers that Goebbels has issued instructions,
17which we have heard about, for these kind of things to
18happen, and Muller then sends out this telegram, which
19begins with the words, "There are going to be outrages
20against the Jews in a short time all over the Reich", and
21the orders are that no one is to intervene.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right. Now, do you really think that Muller,
23whose immediate boss is Heydrich, whose immediate boss is
24Himmler, whose immediate boss is Hitler, would have
25written [German- document not provided], they are not to
26be interfered with, the demonstrations, on the faith of
1some utterance by Goebbels? It has to come from his own
2chain of command, has it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we are not advised by the document as to what
4actually happened.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. We are not, but we are trying to be honest, open
6minded, objective historians, looking at the true effect
7of the evidence?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Each in his own way, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the fact is, is it not, Mr Irving, that, if Muller is
10prompted to send that telegram at five to 12 on 9th
11November 1938, he has had authority to repeat what Hitler
12has already said to Goebbels, that the police are to be
13held back?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] And he will have got that authority not from Goebbels, he
16will have got it from Heydrich Himmler or Hitler.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we are not informed by the available documents you
18have managed to dig up so far. All we can say is that
19these instructions are not broadly different from what we
20know from other sources that Hitler was saying, namely,
21"Do not intervene, fellows".
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, exactly.
23 A. [Mr Irving] "Let things run their path".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Do not intervene, fellows. Bad as it gets, do not
25intervene". Now look at what was sent on the evening of
269th November. Turn back to page 1, please. My Lord, I am
1going to try make this easy by finding it in Evans. My
2Lord, 249 is the correct reference, paragraph 6. I will
3read it from Evans, first of all.
4 "The leader of SA group Nordsee, Bohmcker, in
5the evening of 9th November 1938 issued the following
6instructions from Munich to his subordinates: All Jewish
7shops are immediately to be destroyed by SA men in uniform
8... Jewish synagogues are to be immediately set on fire,
9... The police are not permitted to interfere. The
10Fuhrer want the police not to interfere ... All Jews are
11to be disarmed. In case of resistance immediately shoot
12them down". How many Jews were killed in the course of
13this period?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I think overnight 36 were reported as being killed.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] The eventual total was about 91, was it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The same order of magnitude, yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now, if you look back at page 1 of the new bundle ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] Just looking at this telephone message from Munich, it
19does not really advance us. It just repeats what we know
20from the other sources also.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, it does. It is another event in the unrolling
22catalogue of events that take place during the night.
23 A. [Mr Irving] The only sentences of interest really to the court I think
24is the Fuhrer wants the police not to intervene, which is
25exactly what we know from other documents.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Is there any point during the whole of these events
1at which, on the evidence, Hitler intervened to save the
2day for the Jews?
3 A. [Mr Irving] You know very well there is.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which?
5 A. [Mr Irving] 2 a.m., the message signed by Rudolf Hess's office of the
6Deputy Fuhrer, on the orders from the very highest level.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is your version of Hitler's intervention to stop the
8rot, is it?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Shall we look at that straightaway?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can if you like, but it would help me if
12one was doing there chronologically.
13 MR RAMPTON: I am trying to.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought you were being distracted then.
15 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, he asked. He knew what the answer was. He knew
16perfectly well I was going to bring up that telegram.
17 MR RAMPTON: It is on my list. It is not 2 o'clock, it is 2.56
18actually, is it not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] You have a different version from the one that I use, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] But it is in Hess's office and he sends a message at 2.56
21in my copy.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but on my copy you will find it is headed "The Deputy
23of the Fuhrer", signed Deputy Fuhrer.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Absolutely fine. I am quite happy with that, Mr Irving,
25because it is 7th on my chronological list. We will look
26at it in due course.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, if you would not mind doing it that
2way, it is going to be much easier for me.
3 MR RAMPTON: I am now on 3, which is Heydrich's telex of 1.20
4a.m. which we find on page 4 and 5 of this bundle, but
5I will not trouble you with the German because I think
6I can find the English, I hope I can, in Evans. The
7trouble is that they are all over the place, but the text
8is set out on page 263 of Evans.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Again, it does not advance us one iota from where we were
10with the previous telegrams.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think you may be wrong about that.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Except that this one comes from Munich.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] It comes from Heydrich, does it not, who is a rank above
14Muller, is he not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] On page 3 we do not have any signature. We do not know
16who sent it -- of the documents.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which?
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am looking at the bundle of documents, page 3.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, if you would not mind, you will see Gestapo to
20Muller on page 3 at 378 of the document.
21 A. [Mr Irving] 378 of what?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] 378 of the actual document, page 3 of the bundle.
23 A. [Mr Irving] OK.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry?
25 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. It is Mr Irving's fault, my Lord,
26I have to say.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 378 of what? I have about four things open
2and none has a 378.
3 A. [Mr Irving] It is printed page 378, my Lord, of the book.
4 MR RAMPTON: It is an erroneous diversion.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Nowhere on that page is it evident that it is sent by
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 3 of what, Mr Irving?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Of the bundle of documents, page 378. We are looking at
9the same document.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you are looking at the wrong document, Mr Irving.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Page 378?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] 377, 378 is the 11.55 telex from Muller.
13 A. [Mr Irving] And 378, the next item is the 1.20 a.m.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you would not mind, Mr Irving, if you turn over to page
154 of the bundle and then to page 5 of the bundle, you will
16see the whole text of the Heydrich telex.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Very good.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] And it is signed by Heydrich ----.
19 A. [Mr Irving] This one is now the complete text, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] - on page 6, thank you. Do you agree that the essential
21guts of the Heydrich telex are set out in English on page
22263 of Evans's report, (a), (b), (c) and (d).
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you agree that the Heydrich telex again, whilst it
25makes some provision for protecting German property from
26the consequences of arson against Jewish property, and
1while it makes a prohibition against looting whilst
2encouraging destruction ----
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] - and provides some protection for foreign nationals,
5even if they happen to be Jewish, it also says, if you
6look at the text of the actual document, in the right hand
7column of page 5 of the bundle, once again that the
8demonstrations are not to be hindered by the police?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. But I am mystified as to how this takes us any
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is a developing tale of what happened in the hands, not
12of Dr Goebbels but of the other branch, if I may call it
13that, the Himmler branch of the hierarchy ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] The executive branch.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] - in consequence of what Hitler had said to Goebbels
16earlier that evening. Are you following me?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So Himmler sends this order out?
18 MR RAMPTON: Heydrich is Himmler's subordinate.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather, Heydrich does, in consequence of what
20Hitler said to Goebbels? Is that the proposition?
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, because Himmler and Hitler have spoken
22together before the dinner as well.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I know it would have no effect whatsoever on you,
24Mr Rampton, but you will notice that nobody refers in any
25these telegrams to having received orders from Hitler.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] The one we just looked at did, did it not?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Not the one we were looking at present, not the 1.20 one.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Here we go, page 5. Look at the file again, page 5,
3Mr Irving.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] The paragraph before it starts (a), (b), (c) and (d).
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Will you just read it to us in English?
8 A. [Mr Irving] In this conference the political leadership is to be
9informed that the German police has received from
10Reichsfuhrer SS and Chief of the German police the
11following instructions, and that the political leadership
12is to adapt their measures to these.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly.
14 A. [Mr Irving] So the instructions came from Himmler.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] They came from Himmler, and Himmler and Hitler, as we
16know, had already been in conversation at just before the
17dinner on the evening of the 9th, had they not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is it not really irresistible that -- this is nothing to
20do with Goebbels -- Himmler and Hitler had exactly the
21same sort of conversation as Goebbels had had with Hitler,
22and that Himmler had taken his orders from Hitler that
23this was to be allowed to go on and that the police were
24not to interfere, but that German property should be
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The answer is yes?
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is a reasonable inference. It is not in the document
3but it is a reasonable inference, up to this level of
4course. They are not talking about an immense nationwide
5pogrom which was subsequently developed overnight. At
6present they are talking just about a punitive measure
7from which the police were to be withdrawn. Adolf Hitler
8certainly gave instructions for that to be allowed, as
9I make quite plain in the Goebbels book.
10 MR RAMPTON: I am going to persist in this chronological
11exercise because I promise we are coming to your famous
12order of Hitler's intervention. The next document I would
13like you to look at is on page 7 of this bundle.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is it in Evans?
15 MR RAMPTON: It is 253, I think, my Lord.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
17 MR RAMPTON: The trouble is they do not run consecutively.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see why not.
19 MR RAMPTON: They go backwards and forwards. There is, for the
20future, a helpful chronology prepared by Miss Rogers which
21is at the front of that little bundle.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
23 MR RAMPTON: It does not have all the cross-references to
24Evans, but most of them. That is how she is managing to
25coach me.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
1 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship will see an account of this
2document, it is rather a bad copy in the bundle, at
3paragraph 5 on page 253. This is to rebut something that
4we will see in a moment in Mr Irving's book. He says,
5does Professor Evans,.
6 "Most importantly, if he (that is Eberstein)
7really had found Hitler 'livid with rage' about the
8pogrom, then why did Eberstein send a telex later the same
9night to the Gestapo in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Wurzburg and
10Neustadt, repeating the order that the police were not to
11interfere in the 'actions against the Jews' which were
12taking place all over Germany".
13 Well, Mr Irving, what is the answer to that?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Right. This telegram is signed by Eberstein, who is the
15police chief in Munich and it is signed to the police
16offices in Augsburg, Nuremberg, Wurzburg and Neustadt.
17The time on the copy we have is 2.10 in the morning. It
18is not an original. It is the time -- it is a copy which
19has been made in Augsburg by some police officers.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does not get any reference in your book, does it?
21 A. [Mr Irving] A lot of telegrams do not get any references in my book.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it is more important than that, Mr Irving. Can you
23look at page ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] The reason why is because this telegram repeats almost
25verbatim what the other igniting telegrams have repeated,
26and there is a limit to the number of times you can repeat
1a telegram without your readers getting board. You can do
2it here in court because you have all the time in the
3world, but my readers do not.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] It repeats what Muller had said in his telegram before
5midnight, had it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. In other words, this is already old hat. This is
7being rapidly overtaken by events, even as this telegram
8is going out.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes, you say so.
10 A. [Mr Irving] It is not just me who says so. All Adolf Hitler's staff
11say so.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not yet been told what is in the
13document we are looking at the moment.
14 MR RAMPTON: It is what written in Evans essentially.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Evans does not actually quote it. It is
16repeating the order that the police were not to interfere
17with any action against the Jews.
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is basically reiterating.
19 MR RAMPTON: It is practically verbatim.
20 A. [Mr Irving] It is reiterating the instructions from Berlin.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] They are not to be interfered with, the demonstrations
22that is to say.
23 A. [Mr Irving] What Eberstein is doing is repeating an order that has
24come to him from his superior headquarters in Berlin to
25his junior headquarters, to ones beneath him in Augsburg
26and the other cities.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Absolutely?
2 A. [Mr Irving] He is required to do that quite obviously, but in the
3meantime this is very rapidly being overtaken by orders
4from the boss himself.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you say. Turn, please, to page 276 of your book,
6Goebbels, the Mastermind of the Third Reich.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Just scan -- well, I will read it: "What if, Himmler
9Hitler, both were totally unaware of what Goebbels had
10done until the synagogue next to Munich's Four Seasons
11Hotel was set on fire around 1 a.m."
12 A. [Mr Irving] Not that time, "around 1 a.m."
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Indeed I do. "Heydrich, Himmler's National Chief of
14Police, was relaxing down in the hotel bar. He hurried up
15to Himmler's room, then telexed instructions to all police
16authorities to restore law and order, protect Jews and
17Jewish property, and halt any ongoing incidents."
18 A. [Mr Irving] There is a source for that.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is your account of the Heydrich' telex, is it?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Let us see what telex that is an account of perhaps.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is one sent at 1.20.
22 A. [Mr Irving] 276.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] The footnotes are on 612 and following.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I would not have invented that. I would definitely have
25had the telegram in front of me when I wrote that.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Really? Well, let us have a look. What is the reference
1you give for it?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Nuremberg document 3052 PS.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] 30 -- well, if you look at page 4 of the bundle, maybe you
4have the number wrong, document ----
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 4 of which tab?
6 MR RAMPTON: Tab 1, my Lord. We have looked at it already.
7This is the Heydrich telex to which you are referring I
8suspect, Mr Irving, I suspect, 3051 PS. This is a
9Nuremberg document. If this is the document to which you
10refer in the text, it says nothing like what you said?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Well, quite clearly this is not the document because it
12has a different number. I have 3052 and you have 3051.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you say. Do you have that document?
14 A. [Mr Irving] No, I do not have it here, but it would have been in my
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where do you get 3052?
17 A. [Mr Irving] From my footnotes in the book, my Lord.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You said they have 3051 and you have 3052.
19 A. [Mr Irving] They challenge me with a different document.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes, but where do you get the number off the document that
21they have produced?
22 MR RAMPTON: The number on our document is on page 4, my Lord,
23bottom of the right-hand column, document 3051 PS. My
24Lord, on page 362 of his report Professor Evans says:
25"The footnote in Goebbels mistakenly refers to Nuremberg
26document 3052 PS instead of 3051 PS."
1 A. [Mr Irving] On what page does he say that?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] The bottom of 262, footnote 262.
3 A. [Mr Irving] 262.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you going to want me -- I am finding this
5extraordinarily difficult to follow.
6 A. [Mr Irving] I want to know on what basis Evans says that I have got
7the wrong document number.
8 MR RAMPTON: Are you aware of another Heydrich telex of this
9date and time, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] There was a whole flurry of telegrams that night. I mean
11I do not think how long we will be discussing this, but I
12certainly bring what I find from my files here for the
13court tomorrow.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to have to leave it like this, Mr Irving, that
15you have deliberately misrepresented in your text, and one
16can tell this, if it be right, from looking at page 263 of
17Evans, where the guts of it are translated, you have
18deliberately misrepresented the text of this Heydrich
19telex. If you can lay hands on a different telex which
20says what you say in the text, well, then I shall climb
22 A. [Mr Irving] But, with respect, Mr Rampton, you are being perverse.
23I have quoted a different telegram with a different file
24number, with a different content, and you are saying it is
25different from the one you are showing the court.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Nothing more and nothing less.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, it would not be the first time that you have
3given the wrong Nuremberg reference number, would it?
4I am not suggesting that is deliberate, but it can happen
5to anybody, can it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I am still going to tell the court of other examples.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us go on to other examples.
8 MR RAMPTON: If it be that it was this document which is before
9you that you were purporting to describe in the last
10paragraph on page 276 of Goebbels, it is right, is it not,
11that what you have written in Goebbels is a total
12misdescription of the contents of the telex?
13 A. [Mr Irving] That is ridiculous hypothesis. You are comparing one
14document with another. Professor Evans, if he had done
15his job properly, should have said document No. 3052 is in
16fact a letter from Adolf von Schirott to somebody else and
17totally unrelated to this issue. But he has not. He has
18just advanced the bald statement that I got the number
19wrong, when quite clearly the number is different and the
20content is different.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And the time is different.
22 A. [Mr Irving] And the time is different.
23 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, my Lord.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The time is different. This is 1.20 whereas
25the -- no, it is not timed actually.
26 MR RAMPTON: No, it is not timed. The timing actually fits
1because the text of Goebbels says: "The Four Seasons was
2set on fire around 1.00. Heydrich", etc. etc., then he
3went upstairs and then he sent his telegram ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] He could not have done all that in 20 minutes for a start.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- and bingo 1.20.
6 A. [Mr Irving] He certainly could not have done all that in 20 minutes,
7but we are arguing in the dark here until I can bring the
8actual document.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] We should, Mr Irving. I will chase it up and if you would
10be so good you too, but you may not care to. If this is a
11wrong assumption and there is a Heydrich telex which says
12what you say it says, then, as I say, I shall climb down.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Eat humble pie.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I shall simply climb down. I shall apologise.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait and see what happens, see who is
16going to eat what. Mr Rampton, I really do think that if
17there are perhaps eight important documents on the
18sequence of events that night, the night of 9th, I must
19have translations. It is just not good enough to hand in
20a whole lot of German documents and expect me to make
21sense of it all. I probably could but it would take
23 MR RAMPTON: Some of them are summarised or translated or
24partly translated.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but then I have to dart around trying to
26find whereabouts that is summarized.
1 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, we can share the burden. I will translate half
2tonight and they can perhaps translate half.
3 MR RAMPTON: I agree with your Lordship.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not mind who does it.
5 MR RAMPTON: Those that are important, as most of them are, we
6shall have translated.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
8 MR RAMPTON: But not, I hope, now because it would take too
9long. "The hotel management", you go on at page 276 of
10Goebbels, "telephoned Hitler's apartment at Prinz-Regenten
11Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going
12on. He sent for the local police chief, Friedrich von
13Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage."
14What is that actually based on, Mr Irving?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Two or three sources. I secured the confidence of the
16personal Adjutants on Hitler's staff who lived in the
17apartment directly below him in Prinz-Regenten Platz.
18They actually received the telephone call from the hotel
19there and they went up to Hitler's headquarters to warn
20him that something was happening and that they had
21received this phone call from the hotel. So this was
22either Colonel von Below, or he was a major then, who was
23the air force adjutant, B-E-L-O-W, or the Naval adjutant
24Captain Futkammer. If I look at the notes no doubt I can
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You just referred to somebody called?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Nicolaus von Below in an interview with him in 1968 which
2is now 32 years ago. I will try to remember it as best as
3I can. In fact it was a verbatim interview recorded on
4tape. The transcript has been made available to you.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, yes, I am sure. When was that interview taken, May?
6 A. [Mr Irving] May 1968.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but one has to be very mistrustful of long-remembered
8eyewitness accounts, does one not, Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving] I think you are probably right. By that time it would
10have been 20 years since the event occurred.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would it not have been better to have made reference to
12the message that Eberstein sent at 10 past 2 that morning?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I disagree, because the message does not add
14anything to the other messages that went before it. As
15his Lordship rightly said, it just repeats what the
16previous one said. It is also not physically signed by
17Eberstein. It just uses Eberstein's number which is a
18common German practice. They will send a message out over
19the boss's name, which does not mean to say that Eberstein
20was actually in the room when the message went out. As we
21know, he was actually with Hitler at that time having
22strips torn off him.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] We do not know that.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I know it because I have the eyewitnesses.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] The eyewitnesses, I am afraid, will not do if they are
26inconsistent with contemporaneous documentation,
1Mr Irving. We know that, do we not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] With concrete evidence, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] What concrete evidence?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the evidence of the documents.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, that is right. Eberstein sends a message at 2.10,
6presumably some time after he has witnessed Hitler's
7apoplectic rage about the consequences of what he, Hitler,
8has authorized, and he sends a message saying "Carry on,
10 A. [Mr Irving] I disagree. If the news from the hotel came that the
11synagogue next door was on fire, and the telephone call
12went to Hitler's Adjutants, "Come and get your baggage
13from the hotel luggage room because the hotel is now
14endangered by the flames", and they then go up to see
15Hitler and Hitler says, "What's going on?", and there is
16this kind of enquiry that has begun in Hitler's apartment,
17all this thing does not take a fraction of a second. They
18send for the police chief, Eberstein, who then as to come
19over from police headquarters. He comes over from police
20headquarters. By now we are looking at 2 a.m. in the
21meantime what is happening at police headquarters behind
22Eberstein's back, we do not know, but presumably this
23telegram which has come from Berlin headquarters has now
24been forwarded to the lower units with his name on it,
25that is nothing new. But at the same time Eberstein is in
26Hitler's apartment having strips torn off him and Hitler
1saying, "What on earth is happening now? Put an end to
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you mean "at the same time"? Mr Irving, your
4chronology, if I may say so, is sometimes quite
5extraordinarily, what shall I say ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] I am afraid you were not listening because you were doing
7something else. I think it is quite plain.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] I was listening.
9 A. [Mr Irving] It is quite s plain that round about 2 a.m. the important
10confrontation between Hitler Eberstein took place to which
11Hitler's Adjutants were the witness.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why do you say it is round about 2 a.m.?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Because we know that sometime afterwards Rudolf Hess was
14then required to send out a message to all the Gauleiters
15on orders from the very highest level, ordering that this
16nonsense had to stop immediately, and if the deputy Fuhrer
17sends out a message quoting orders from the very highest
18level, we can presume, I think, without stretching the
19bounds of credulity too much, to whom he is referring.
20That is the kind of concrete evidence I am referring to.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am just going to break the chronology. It is not
22actually breaking the chronology. We will go on now and
23look at this famous message from Hess's office, shall we?
24It is at page 9 of this bundle.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Has nothing happened between 2 a.m. or 2.10
26a.m. and 2.56?
1 MR RAMPTON: Not so far as I know. There is something which
2comes after it, but we will look at that in a moment,
3because again it is something Mr Irving has got in his
5 A. [Mr Irving] I am curious that you have used a different version of the
6telegram from the one that I provided in discovery, which
7has the heading of Rudolf Hess's deputy of the Fuhrer.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, I doubt it. Your text says: "At 2.56 a.m.
9Rudolf Hess's staff also began cabling, telephoning and
10radioing instructions to Gauleiters and police authorities
11around the nation to halt the madness", footnote 49. It
12is interesting that the time is the same, is it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] You missed what I said, that you have chopped off the
14heading or this version chops off the heading, which makes
15it the deputy of the Fuhrer. Also it chops off the line
16which says, "This is a repetition of the telephone calls
17that we have been making", in other words ----
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see what you say has been cut
20 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I am not saying it has been cut off this. This
21is a different version of the same telegram. Now the
22other one is in my discovery with these ----
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That will be in court somewhere, will it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Is my discovery in court? If not I will certainly bring
26 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, look at page 9 of the bundle.
1 A. [Mr Irving] If a copy of the War Path is here in court, then it is a
2facsimile in that book.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is.
4 MR RAMPTON: I do not know.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It needs to be chased up.
6 A. [Mr Irving] Because it does have the important line saying: "This is a
7repetition of the telephone calls we have already made",
8when I was sending a telex to confirm what we said.
9 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
10 A. [Mr Irving] It also has a reference number, No. 136/38.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] This document I think comes from Berlin, whatever that
13 A. [Mr Irving] The Berlin Document Centre.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and yours comes from where?
15 A. [Mr Irving] It came from exactly the same folder.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, there you go.
17 A. [Mr Irving] But my one was more significant because it had the heading
18of the Deputy of the Fuhrer on it.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that may be right. Anyway, is it not
20somewhere in court?
21 MR RAMPTON: I am not concerned about whether it comes from the
22Deputy Fuhrer or not. I am quite willing to accept that
23it does. What I am concerned about are two things. First
24of all, it is time which is not in dispute between us?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] 2.56 a.m. right?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then it is text. I remind you what you wrote: "At 2.56
3 A. [Mr Irving] m.", that is unequivocal?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Rudolf Hess's staff also began cabling, telephoning and
6radioing instructions to Gauleiters and police authorities
7around the nation", and these are your words, "to halt the
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. Now look at the text. You are not saying the text
11of my telegram is different from yours, are you?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I know the text of that telegram off by heart. I have
13quoted it so often in speeches.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I bet you do. Now tell us what it says, would you?
15 A. [Mr Irving] "On express orders from the very highest level", which is
16always ----
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is Hitler.
18 A. [Mr Irving] --- which is always a reference to Hitler.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I agree.
20 A. [Mr Irving] "Acts of arson against Jewish shops or the like are under
21no circumstances and under no conditions whatsoever to
22take place".
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Good. Then?
24 A. [Mr Irving] "Please confirm immediately by receipt."
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is underlined -- and is it underlined in your copy as
1 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is not, but the words here underlined are "acts of
2arson against Jews businesses or shops".
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is it underlined on the copy I have?
4 A. [Mr Irving] This is underlined in pencil, my Lord. Somebody has
5underlined the copy in pencil or pen. It is not a
6typewritten underlining.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But by whom?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I have not seen the particular copy.
9 MR RAMPTON: I cannot answer that. I have no idea. It may be
10some later underlining by somebody who thought the word
11significant, I suppose, may it not, Mr Irving?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Quite possibly, yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Shops or the like"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is "like", maybe garages, little workshops?
16 A. [Mr Irving] The German is a bit big ambiguous. You do not know
17whether it is acts of arson and the like or acts of arson
18against shops and the like.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am quite happy with that, "but we are not here in the
20presence of a general prohibition against damage to Jewish
21property, are we"?
22 A. [Mr Irving] They do not mention synagogues.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] They do not mention houses. They do not mention
25 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct, yes, they do not.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do you remember Heydrich's telex which talked about being
1careful that arson to Jewish shops did not, as it were,
2affect German property?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is what this reflects, is it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] No. I think they realized now that the big boss is not
6very pleased about the way that things are spreading, and
7they are sending out the most briefest possible message
8they can. Instead of sitting down dictating a
915-paragraph message which is going to take ages to telex
10out and to be printed out at the other end, they are
11sending out a very brief message to saying, "This has got
12to stop".
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] They are not. They are saying: "Jewish shops are not to
14be burned", are they not?
15 A. [Mr Irving] "And the like".
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whether Jewish shops, Jewish workshops, Jewish garages, or
17burned or whatever the like to burning is I do not know.
18 A. [Mr Irving] We do not know, as I say, whether "the like" refers to
19acts of arson or stores.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] But, Mr Irving, this is not a general order to stop
21damaging Jewish property, is it?
22 A. [Mr Irving] It is not a general order. He does not mention
23synagogues. He does not mention other property.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] What buildings were the principal victims of this
25appalling two nights or night and a half?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Subsequently of course the Germans realized they had
1inflicted a colossal injury on themselves, because the
2actual properties were owned by non-Jews and just rented
3by Jews.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] How many synagogues were destroyed during the course of
5this 24 hours?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Of the order of 100 or so I believe, several hundred.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] All over Germany?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] How would you put it in German if you were Opdemhoff
10writing on Hess's explicit orders derived from Hitler:
11"This madness has got to stop. All Jewish property must
12be left alone from this moment"?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Not very differently from that, but I agree he could have
14added in things like synagogues and things like that.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you mean "things like synagogues"? Hundreds of
16synagogues or 100 synagogues were destroyed.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but this is an order coming from Hitler to order an
18end to the damage. Even in the most narrowest, even in
19the narrowest interpretation this is an order coming
20clearly from Hitler to limit the damage.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, when I asked to you to translate it, and I did
22it deliberately, you are a good German speaker, you
23translated it as "shops or the like", did you not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] "Geschafte" is also businesses.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Businesses, OK. What about houses and synagogues?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we do not know what "the like" is referring to. It
1is ambiguous German. It is a poorly phrased telegram.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is the German word for "property"?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Well, "eigentum" would be.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Hess's staff began cabling, telephoning and radioing
5instructions to Gauleiters and police authorities around
6the nation to halt the madness."
7 A. [Mr Irving] If you read on you will see that at the end of that
8paragraph I said: "20,000 Jews were already being loaded
9on to trucks. Hitler made no attempt to halt this
10inhumanity. He stood by and thus deserved the odium that
11now fell on all Germany."
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] He had ordered it.
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] He had ordered the arrest of 20,000 to 300,000 preferably
15prosperous Jews, had he not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] This little sentence in your book at 256 down to "halt the
18madness" is just another piece of invention, is it not,
19Mr Irving? No such thing that cable from Hess?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the burning of all these Jewish businesses and the
21like was total madness.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] They are now businesses, are they? I see.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Total madness.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there any evidence of what actually
25happened as a result of that message going out 2.56?
26 A. [Mr Irving] You find it trickling down through the system and then
1people frantically back peddling, inasmuch as you can try
2to halt a forest fire by sending out a telegram in the
3middle of the night. This confirms precisely what
4Hitler's adjutants told me, both from the content and from
5the timing.
6 MR RAMPTON: Only one last little thing on this interesting
7tale, Mr Irving. On the same page in the preceding
8sentence, you say: "Fritz Wiedemann another of Hitler's
9adjutants, saw Goebbels spending much of that night of
109th/10th 'telephoning ... to halt the most violent
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] The reference is to ----
14 A. [Mr Irving] A handwritten manuscript by Wiedemann which he wrote in
15February 1939.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Am I right that the handwritten manuscript of Wiedemann
17says: "There is absolutely no doubt that this action
18slipped out of the hands of those who instigated it"?
19 A. [Mr Irving] What are you reading from now?
20 MR IRVING: Page 278 of Evans. "'It is reliably reported that
21Goebbels as well repeatedly telephoned from Munich during
22the night to stop the worst outrages"?
23 A. [Mr Irving] If that is a quotation from the Wiedemann manuscript that
24I used, then that is probably an accurate translation,
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not got the point, Mr Rampton.
1 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am sorry. Fritz Wiedemann, another of
2Hitler's adjutants, saw Goebbels spending much of that
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see that. What do you get from 278 of
6 MR RAMPTON: What Wiedemann actually said was: "It is reliably
7reported that Goebbels repeatedly" -- Wiedemann never saw
8him at all, did he? Did he, Mr Irving?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Not on the basis of this particular source, no.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, why did you write that he did?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Well, now I do not know whether you have got the same
12source that I have or not. Wiedemann, he handwrote his
13notes in a very illegible handwriting and I used the
14original handwritten text. He also over subsequent years
15typed up notes, which may or may not have differed from
16the original handwritten version. I would have to go back
17and have a look at my Wiedemann file before I gave you a
18definitive answer on that. It may well be you are right,
19Mr Rampton. I am not going to argue with you on that, but
20it is 14 years or so since I actually wrote that passage
21and I do not know what the actual handwritten text said.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the problem, is it not, Mr Irving? (A) you are
23dealing with post events eyewitness testimony?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] (B), if I am right, if this is right, you are dealing with
26hearsay. You cannot convert that into a categorical
1statement of historical fact that Wiedemann saw Goebbels
2telephoning round trying to put a stop to it?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I do not mind conceding that I may have made a mistake on
4that. I may have read his text and taken it as being that
5he was an eyewitness of this when, in fact, it was just
6reliably reported to him by those who had seen it.
7Wiedemann, of course, was on very good terms with all the
8rest of Hitler's adjutants, but at this time, February
91939, he had been posted to San Francisco as Consul
10General and it was on the boat that he wrote this passage
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can I finally ask you to look at page 280 of Evans'
13report? Now at page 281 -- I am sorry, the page numbering
14is confusing because we are about the same place in
15Goebbels -- you quote somebody called Ulrich von Hassell?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, are we on Evans or Irving's book?
18 MR RAMPTON: I am on both. It is 281 of Irving's book and page
19280 of Evans.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
21 MR RAMPTON: You have quoted, I think, Ulrich von Hassell, have
22you not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] What Professor Evans writes is this: "What Irving does
25not do, however, is to quote the following passage in von
26Hassell's diary, relating to a conversation he had on 17th
1December 1938 with the Prussian Finance Minister, Johannes
2Popitz, about the destruction and violence of 9-10
3November". Quote from von Hassell's diary: "'Popitz said
4to Goring, those responsible must be punished. Answer'",
5quote from Goring, "'My dear Popitz, do you want to punish
6the Fuhrer?'" Now, were you aware of that entry when you
7wrote this book?
8 A. [Mr Irving] I probably did, yes. I probably was aware of it.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you not think it right to draw to your readers'
10attention, at the very least, some evidence at the least
11that in Goring's mind the person responsible for what had
12happened was Hitler?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, it would be marginal to put it in or leave it out.
14It does not add very much to our knowledge and I would
15certainly consider that covered by that sentence that i
16read out to you, "Hitler made no attempt to halt this
17inhumanity. He stood by and thus deserved the odium that
18now fell on all Germany".
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was the arrests.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where was Goring? Was he in Munich or
22 A. [Mr Irving] Goring was in Munich and he travelled back to Berlin that
23night by train because as he arrived, as the train went
24past Haller he saw the planes in the sky and he said,
25"What is going on?"
26 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So he would not have been around at what you might call
1the material time that night?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that is precisely how I would regard that kind of
3evidence, as iffy. But an interesting and a quotable
4quote, and there is a great temptation with the diary of
5Hassell to use the material because it is very quotable,
6it is usually in quotation marks and very apposite, but
7sometimes you have to resist the temptation.
8 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. There is one thing about Wiedemann
9that I got stuck on the first part of 278. I meant to go
10on to the second part, starting at paragraph 9 on 278 of
11Evans: Wiedemann claiming, in fact, by reference to some
12hearsay report that Goebbels had spent the night on the
13phone trying to stop the outrages which you represent as
14his having seen Goebbels do it. Paragraph 9: "In any
15case, Wiedemann's suggestions are incorrect. Goebbels was
16certainly not engaged in stopping excessive violence
17against Jews, as Irving well knows. What Goebbels was
18actually saying on the phone on the night in question is
19amply documented by other reliable historical sources.
20The Supreme Party Tribunal report of 13th February 1939"
21-- my Lord, that is pages 9 and 10 of tab 2 of the new
22bundle -- "states that when Goebbels was phoned at around
232.00 in the morning on 10th November 1938 with the news of
24the first death of a Jew in the pogrom: 'According to the
25statement of the deputy Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria,
26Party Comrade Dr Goebbels answered to the effect that the
1man reporting it should not get upset because of one dead
2Jew; thousands of Jews would have to believe in it in the
3coming days".
4 A. [Mr Irving] That is a very poor translation, "they would have to
5believe in it" is the German expression for "going for a
6burton". So it actually means "would have to die over the
7next few days".
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the trouble, my Lord, when one tries to use Evans.
9I am going to go directly then, if I may ----
10 A. [Mr Irving] "Daranglauben" is a German ----
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Go, please ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] --- vernacular.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please, Mr Irving, can you turn to tab 2 in the new
14bundle? Turn to page 9 which is a red number in a red
15circle on the bottom right-hand side of the page, bottom
16right-hand corner of the page. You can probably start
17with the sentence which begins "Der Inhalt dieses
18Berichts..." at the bottom of page. Do you see that?
19 A. [Mr Irving] What page are we on?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 9 in a red circle, 187 with a stamp, 28 in print.
21 A. [Mr Irving] The content of this report confirms this view.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Read on, please.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Moreover, the last main session in the affair of the
24trial of Schenk has resulted in the information that the
25first known death, a case for the killing of a Jew, and it
26was a Polish national, was reported to Reichs propaganda
1minister, Dr Goebbels, at about 2 a.m., towards 2 a.m.
2"gegen 2 Uhr", on November 10th, and that on this
3occasion the view was expressed that something must happen
4to prevent that the entire operation, the entire Aktion,
5got out of hand, became dangerous, according to what the
6deputy Gauleiter of Upper Bavaria said. Dr Goebbels
7replied in the sense that the messenger should not get so
8upset about the death of one Jew. Over the next few days
9thousands of Jews would be going for a Burton.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Can you just read on?
11 A. [Mr Irving] At this time most of the killings could have been
12prevented, could still have been prevented, by an
13amplifying directive. If this was not issued, if this did
14not happen, from this fact, as also from that remark by
15itself, you had to draw the conclusion that the result
16that happened was actually desired, and at the very least
17was considered to be possible and desirable.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Could you finish the paragraph, please?
19 A. [Mr Irving] It is terrible, translating German.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am terribly sorry and it is entirely our fault for not
21having a translation which you agree with.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Translating it on the fly is difficult and I have been
23accused of distorting and mistranslating and here I am
24going on the record with my translation.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is most unsatisfactory.
26 MR RAMPTON: There is a translation in Professor Evans. It is
1one you will not accept and therefore I have to ask you to
2do it.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Quite clearly, if he says that somebody is going to have
4to believe in it when in fact the correct German sense is
5someone is going to go for a Burton, then it is a very
6gross mistranslation.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry about this. I know it is tiring and I do
8sympathise. I mean that sincerely. Could you please just
9finish this paragraph?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Then the individual actor or perpetrator has not
11only put into effect the intended, but also the
12uncertainly expressed but properly recognized desire of
13the leadership, and for that he cannot be punished.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right and so no doubt he was not.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] He would be one of those who was not handed over to the
17State prosecution system?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Numbers were and numbers were not.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Two things about it, Mr Irving, and I do apologise.
20I will not make you do it again this afternoon or ask you
21to do it, I should say. Two things about that. It is
22quite strong evidence, is it not, that, so far from what
23Wederman said he had heard reported, Goebbels was not on
24the telephone that evening trying to stop the rot. He was
25on the telephone rejoicing in the death of one Jew and in
26the thought that many thousands more were going to die.
1Moreover, the one that did kill the one Jew on this
2occasion was let off because the Nazi tribunal perceived
3that he had been carrying out the will of the leadership.
4That is right, is it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] The latter part is true. The former part I would dispute
6or I would amplify it to the following effect. This
7telephone call reporting the death of the one Jew is
8stated in this document as having been shortly before
92 o'clock, or towards 2 o'clock "gegen 2 Uhr". I think
10around 2 o'clock is when Goebbels got his epiphany, when
11the news came of the burning of the synagogue next to the
12Hotel Vierjahreszeiten, when Hitler was alarmed as to what
13was going on, things were getting out of hand, the police
14chief was sent for, and shortly afterwards at 2.56 Rudolf
15Hess sent out that famous message to all the Gauleiters
16ordering a stop to whatever they were stopping.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] You just looked at the message?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but I think that it fits perfectly into the
19time-scale which says that it was around about 2 o'clock
20or shortly thereafter that Goebbels realized he was
21barking right up the wrong tree.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You translated it, the order from Hess is simply that
23shops and other things like that are not to be burned.
24 A. [Mr Irving] The order from Hess says that there is to be no burning of
25shops and things like that.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is there really no indication even of how
2that Rudolf Hess's message was interpreted?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I did say, my Lord, that it trickled down through the
4system during the night and that things were then stopped
5but by that time everything is ablaze. The following
6morning Goebbels realizes that things have got out of
7hand, it is very bad for Germany's image, the image of
8Germany as a state of law and order has been badly
9shattered by this. But the hours between 2 a.m. and 3
10a.m., the crucial hours which I have tried to look at in
11this particular night, and we have the eyewitness accounts
12from Hitler's private staff, we have that one telegram
13from Hitler's deputy going out, very much in a negative
14sense. Mr Rampton says it was in a narrow negative sense,
15I would say it was in a broader negative sense.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] If you look at it in the round, can you think of a reason
17why Jewish businesses or shops should have been singled
18out for protection, if that is the right interpretation?
19 A. [Mr Irving] You can certainly see reasons why, my Lord. You can say
20the businesses and shops were probably a shoe shop in the
21centre of a big apartment block, and, if you are going to
22set that on fire, you are going to endanger a lot of
23non-Jewish property. Put it like that. I can certainly
24see that there are other reasons that may have justified
25the narrower meaning. But we have added on to it the fact
26that it is not only the acts of arson, but also the like
1have to be stopped.
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I follow that.
3 A. [Mr Irving] It was a message that was sent out in great haste. It is
4certainly does not fit in with the general pattern of
5trying to trigger or to ignite things. This is very much
6with a minus sign in front of it.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Were the Jewish businesses -- maybe this is too broad a
8question -- and shops Jewish owned?
9 A. [Mr Irving] This came out in the subsequent enquiry that Herman Goring
10held, that most of the damage that had been inflicted had
11been inflicted on the German economy for several reasons.
12Firstly, the plate glass windows that were smashed had to
13be replaced with plate glass supplied by Belgium at the
14cost of foreign currency. Secondly, the insurance that
15the Jews had taken out on their property had to be paid by
16the German insurance companies. Thirdly, the stores and
17even the stocks that they sold were being sold on
18commission. They were stocks physically owned by German
19banks and being sold on commission by the Jewish vendors.
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Would all or any of that explain why the businesses and
21shops were singled out?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Not at this time, my Lord. This was an ugly realisation.
23We are very well informed on that because two or three
24days Herman Goring held a conference at the Air Ministry
25which was recorded in shorthand, and we have the entire
26stenographic record where everybody is pointing a finger
1at everybody else and saying you are to blame for this.
2Herman Goring utters the famous phrase, it is about time
3that Dr Goebbels got a little bit of public enlightenment,
4which was the name of his ministry.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Mr Rampton, for interrupting.
6 MR RAMPTON: That is all right, my Lord. I am just wondering
7whether I would go back to something else but I think not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] It gave me a chance to display what I know.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] In any event, Mr Irving, however you like to characterize
10that message, it is not, is it, a blanket prohibition
11against the destruction of, or damage to, Jewish property
13 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is not.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. My Lord, I am in this position now. We are all
15waiting for Dresden with bated breath, but the file will
16not be ready until tomorrow. We need help from Mr Irving
17with it anyway because the copies we have of his
18discovered documents are in many cases very difficult to
19read because they are photocopies of microfilm, a lot of
21 I have one more brief topic with which I can
22deal this afternoon, but I cannot sensibly make a start on
23Dresden unless everybody has the documents.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you cannot, you cannot.
25 MR RAMPTON: We are running to catch up with each other. We
26could spend time reading Civil Evidence Act notices
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On what topic?
3 MR RAMPTON: On any old topic really just so that they are read
4into court. I do not want to waste the court's time.
5There is no point in my starting. Dresden will be the last
6of my Evans topics. I shall certainly comfortably
7complete that tomorrow and then I shall start on something
8else, as it were, more modern.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: More modern being what?
10 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving's recent utterances.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Denials?
12 MR RAMPTON: Denials I think we have done, apart from Moscow,
13which I can also do tomorrow. The last topic, either
14Moscow or this, is where the speeches are made and who the
15people were.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
17 MR RAMPTON: The political associations, which means that
18I think that my cross-examination of Mr Irving will finish
19comfortably this week.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
21 MR RAMPTON: Probably Thursday morning, maybe Wednesday
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is a witness coming on Thursday.
24I cannot remember who it is.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Peter Millar. I do not think he will be more than about
26an hour.
1 MR RAMPTON: Which presents this difficulty, I am afraid, if
2that is right, because I do not think Dresden will take
3more than one day, perhaps less. We may have to find
4something to do for the rest of this week.
5 A. [Mr Irving] I can bring another witness. I can have Dr John Fox in.
6 MR RAMPTON: That would be very helpful because my Professor
7Browning is not arriving until Monday.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I can bring in Dr Fox eye this week.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Is Browning your next expert?
10 MR RAMPTON: He is my next witness.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than Evans?
12 MR RAMPTON: Yes. It is a matter of academic convenience.
13That is the only reason. Browning has a full calendar
14after next week.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
16 MR RAMPTON: I do not think he will be very long, so I will
17have to have somebody lined up for the later part of next
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You said you had something else that
20you want to deal with.
21 MR RAMPTON: I do. I want to deal very briefly with
22Ribbentrop's testimony at Nuremberg. It starts at page
23478 of Evans.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you dealing, Mr Rampton -- I am sorry to
25keep asking. I just want to know where we are getting in
26terms of the summary of your case. Are you going to be
1dealing with the aftermath of Kristallnacht?
2 MR RAMPTON: No. I made a judgment about that in the light of
3the cross-examination this morning.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does that mean that you are not relying on it
5or that it is something that you are relying on but do not
6think it is helpful cross-examine on?
7 MR RAMPTON: It is difficult to rely on whatever Professor
8Evans may say about it. It is difficult to rely on it if
9it has not been put in cross-examination for Mr Irving to
10deal with, I would have said. I do not know what your
11Lordship thinks?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Could your Lordship explain what that exchange is about?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. You should understand. You remember in
14the summary of case which has superseded the defence,
15there has been set out in really a very helpful way the
16various bases of the criticism that you have manipulated
17data and skewed documents and all the rest of it. Oddly
18enough, Kristallnacht is divided into two, (1) the events
19of the 9th, I cannot remember what it was, December, and
20as a separate section, the events following Kristallnacht,
21later events. What Mr Rampton has just told me, in
22effect, is that he is not really pursuing that as ground
23of criticism.
24 MR RAMPTON: Would your Lordship forgive me for one moment
25while I take my orders?
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not feel you have to decide this on the
2 MR RAMPTON: I can always come back to it.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think one want to think about these things,
4and there are other categories.
5 MR RAMPTON: I am not going to bother with the Roman Jews.
6That is just argy-bargy between me and Mr Irving and
7I think I have had enough of that. I got the one line
8answer that I expected I might get in relation to Hitler's
9anti-Semitism. I got that this morning. Prewar
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we are now on Ribbentrop?
12 MR RAMPTON: I have dealt with the 1924 trial and
13Reichskristallnacht itself. If I have your Lordship's
14permission, the last topic I want to deal with today is
15Ribbentrop's testimony at Nuremberg. Mr Irving, the first
16reference that Professor Evans makes to your writing is
17the footnote on page 851 of the 1977 edition of Hitler's
18War. I will need help with that because my Hitler's War
19footnotes do not have numbers on the pages.
20 A. [Mr Irving] 877.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, but I am afraid my edition has no pages beyond the
22end of the text. I do not know why that should be.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mine is the same but I think I have been
25 A. [Mr Irving] Would you like to borrow the book?
26 MR RAMPTON: I would like to be sure that what Professor Evans
1says there is correct, that is all. If you tell me what
2page is to footnote 2, I can find it.
3 A. [Mr Irving] 851.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] 851.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Now I understand it.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I do not know. It is difficult for me to find it.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That cannot be right?
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is not on page 851, my Lord.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The book does not go up to page 851.
10 MR RAMPTON: I think it may be, Mr Irving, that Professor Evans
11was using a different edition than the one we have in
13 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps he translated the number wrongly.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not want to spend a lot of time on this because all
15I am concerned about is that you should be sure that what
16Professor Evans has quoted in paragraph 1 on page 478 is
17what you wrote in the footnote. I am not able to check it
18myself because I cannot find it. It is a very short
19point, Mr Irving.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I left something out, did I not, allegedly?
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I think you did.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So far you are pretty blameless, Mr Irving,
23because it appears that Professor Evans has the page
24number wrong.
25 A. [Mr Irving] He may have translated it wrong.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: There is not much translation in the figures,
1is there?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I would not put anything past him when it comes to
4 MR RAMPTON: All right. Let us turn to page 479 of Evans where
5the German is printed in at the top of the page and the
6full text in English in paragraph 2.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. I left out the last sentence, did I not?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did leave out the last sentence, Mr Irving. Why did
9you leave out the last sentence?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well, that comes with the patch of being a writer. You
11are always leaving bits out of documents because otherwise
12you will end up writing eight pages of sludge every time.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know that I could accept that to include the last
14sentence has this effect on what Ribbentrop is reported
15as, or actually wrote? He wrote it himself I think, did
16he not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] He wrote it in his death cell, yes, when he was about to
18be hanged.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you include the last sentence. So it is not a question
20of his being bullied or interrogated or tortured by the
21Allies, is it?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I have never had the misfortune to sit in a death cell so
23I cannot imagine what psychological condition one is in.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but you have relied on it yourself, have you not,
25minus this last sentence?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you include the last sentence, what you are trying to
2do is to see Hitler through the eyes of people that knew
3him well, as indeed Ribbentrop must have done.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] However unpopular he might have been with others. The
6impression you leave is that in Ribbentrop's mind there
7was no doubt at all that Hitler could not have ordered the
8extermination of Jews because it was not in his
10 A. [Mr Irving] That is not what he says. He says how things came to the
11destruction of the Jews, i just do not know as to whether
12Himmler began it or Hitler put up with it. I do not know.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] But that he ordered it -- and the italics are yours, not
15 A. [Mr Irving] That he ordered I refuse to believe.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Because such an act would be wholly incompatible with the
17picture I always had of him".
18 A. [Mr Irving] That is the part that I considered to be significant.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can see that at once, Mr Irving. We are not going to
20argue about that. But do you not agree that, if you add
21the last sentence, then the picture of Hitler's
22personality which one derives from Ribbentrop's written
23words is a very great deal more equivocal, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] I agree. It is a defeated man about to be hanged, who
25then writes, on the other hand judging from his testament,
26one would suppose that he at least knew about it, if not
1even ordered it, in his fanaticism against the Jews. What
2kind of evidence is that? Supposition.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is just as good evidence as the bit that you did
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. They are both equally bad.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] So why quote one bad bit and leave off the other bad bit
7which supplies the balance?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it does not just supply the balance. It also makes
9the passage twice as long and it is bad enough quoting one
10supposition without putting in two suppositions, the
11second of which is really a piece of resigned wish-wash by
12the man who says, well, anyway, who knows? Who knows?
13I suppose, if you read his testament, he does look like a
14different man.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You quoted it as ever, all these little or big, all these
16alterations, suppressions, transfers, and so on that over
17the weeks we hope we have demonstrated, all these
18adjustments which you make to the evidence, all tend in
19one direction, Mr Irving. That is to say, the exoneration
20of Adolf Hitler.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I totally disagree. You have no idea what other passages
22I cut out of documents because they were too long. If a
23document is too long, I will cut it, regardless of what
24the content is, and sometimes I cut matters which lean one
25way, sometimes I cut matters which lean the other way, and
26this was a typical piece which cries out to be cut and it
1got cut. It was chopped. I know that my opponents clutch
2at these sentences like drowning men in the hope that this
3may save them. I think, if this is the best they can do,
4then it is pathetic.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I told you a long time ago, Mr Irving, that I was not
6pinning my hopes on any one document, any one little error
7by you, because of course errors can go in any direction.
8I am pinning my case on some very big adjustments and some
9little ones, which converge to the same conclusion.
10Whenever there is something adverse to Hitler, it is
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I look forward to hearing things you are pinning
13your hopes on.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have heard most of them already, I think.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, gosh!
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I will be about the same business, Mr Irving, when we
17get to Dresden tomorrow.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Would you, for my benefit, Mr Rampton, let me
19know if there are any of the points in your Defendants'
20summary of case which ----
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I will.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- you are not pursuing and then I can ----
23 MR RAMPTON: The Roman Jews your Lordship can ----
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
25 MR RAMPTON: I think the only other thing at the moment that
26I have not finally -- because I need to take my orders --
1decided about is the aftermath of Reichskristallnacht.
2There may be some little pieces from the Adjutants that
3I will use, there may be not, but as soon as we have made
4a decision, we will let you know.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And Madame Valliant-Couturier -- have we had
7 MR RAMPTON: We have had her, yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving] She was the one with the beating machine.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. So, I do not myself see any point in
10just reading Civil Evidence Act Notices just for the sake
11of it. If they arise in connection with the point we are
12happening to deal with, then, by all means, let us see
13them, but none, I think really arise on the topics we have
14been dealing with today, do they?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Can I ask, will you be calling the Russians or?
16 MR RAMPTON: I have not made a final decision about that yet,
17Mr Irving. I think the probability is not, no. I do not
18want to waste the court's time and my client's money.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Well, what is decided? Because, obviously, I have to do a
20great deal of preparation for the cross-examination of
21these witness, and it would be nice to know sometime
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, no, I promise you, I have been quite good
24about that, I think, my Lord. As soon as I have made a
25final decision that I am not going to, I will let you
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we are very well prepared for Professor Terassof.
2We were hoping he was going to bring the glass plates with
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, well, do not think I need listen to
5this debate. But, obviously, it is right that Mr Irving
6should have ample opportunity of anything that is not
7being pursued, that is not being called, because he has a
8lot on his plate anyway and ----
9 MR RAMPTON: I know.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Time is a very scarce commodity for me.
11 MR RAMPTON: I am well conscious of that.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So 10.30 tomorrow.
13 < (The witness stood down)
14(Court adjourned until the following day)