text:
Holocaust Denial on Trial, Trial Transcripts, Day 13: Electronic Edition
Pages 1 - 186 of 186
1996 I. No. 113
2Royal Courts of Justice
3Strand, London
4 Tuesday, 1st February 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 13Tuesday, 1st February 2000.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving?
3 MR IRVING: May it please the court. Your Lordship will have
4appreciated that the Defence relied to a certain degree on
5that document about crematorium capacities.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
7 MR IRVING: I was going to ask your Lordship's leave to have
8Professor van Pelt back in the box for 10 minutes to put
9further points about it to him which he may not be able to
10answer, but which would give the chance then for their
11other experts later on in the procedure to come back and
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think your position on that document was
14that you doubted its authenticity. Is that fair?
15 MR IRVING: This is, I think, the only document whose integrity
16I am challenging.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is the only one but it is
18certainly one that you are challenging.
19 MR IRVING: It is a very important document. I did not
20appreciate at the time that we went over it the degree to
21which Professor van Pelt was going to rely on it. You
22remember the diagram he drew with the tall green column,
23and so on?
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Subject to what Mr Rampton says, as Professor
25van Pelt is here, I do not see any reason why he should
26not be further cross-examined, do you?
1 MR RAMPTON: No, I do not mind at all, provided he does not.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not sure he has a choice.
3 MR RAMPTON: He has not got any of his papers and I do not have
4the document here myself.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sure he will manage. Let us have him
6back, shall we, now? Professor, would you mind coming
8 < PROFESSOR VAN PELT, recalled.
9< Further Cross-Examined by MR IRVING.
10 MR IRVING: It is in the Auschwitz core file No. 2. I have
11provided a set of documents to the Defence to operate
12with. It is under tab 4, item 49.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I have it. What about these odds and
14ends, Mr Irving? Where are you suggesting we put them?
15 MR IRVING: If we come to Dresden during the day, my Lord.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: These are Dresden, are they?
17 MR IRVING: They are Dresden, my Lord.
18 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] This is Kristallnacht, so this is my own report.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can he have a copy of K2?
20 MR IRVING: This is the actual document. The first thing is
21that Jean-Claude Pressac on page 247 himself points to the
22fact that this document did not surface until 1981. Would
23you agree with that, Professor?
24 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, I do not agree, because it was available in the Vienna
25trial. The first copy I found was in the Vienna trial.
26What I actually had in my hand was, I think, in file OM
1461 at the Dejaco and Ertl trial.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] When was that trial?
3 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That trial was in 1971.
4 Q. [Mr Irving] Are you aware of any earlier occasions when that document
5surfaced, shall we say?
6 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I think that Jan Sehn had it his hands in the early 50s,
7but I cannot be sure about that. When I talked about the
8Domberg version of the document -- there is a version of
9that document, as far as I know, in the Hoess trial
10transcript, and that would have been there in '48. I am
11not yet absolutely sure any more that I have seen that
12document in the Hoess trial transcript. I went through
13the Hoess trial transcripts. This was in 1990, but I am
14not absolutely any more sure that I have seen the Domburg
15copy in that transcript. I thought it was brought up -- I
16have certainly seen the Domburg copy. A copy was
17elsewhere in the Auschwitz und Bauleitung files.
18 Q. [Mr Irving] These would be useful pointers to the defence to research
19the document over the next few days.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, Professor van Pelt, you referred to
21the Domburg document. I do not know what you mean by
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] There is an archive in the DDR, in Domburg. They sent at
24a certain moment a copy of that document to the State
26 MR IRVING: Would that be in 1959 that that transfer took
2 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I am not sure. If indeed it is in the Hoess trial
3transcript it should have happened earlier because Hoess
4was in 1947, and then, of course, the other camp SS men
5were tried in 1948, and some of these files of the Hoess
6trial and that of Grapner and the others are
7actually combined, so it is kind of difficult to determine
8exactly what comes from where.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] The operative word in that response is the word "if" of
10course, "if it was in the trial". Is it right that the
11document as published, or a version of the document as
12published, in a 1957 volume published by the East German,
13the DDR, the German Democrat Republic?
14 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I am not sure. I wonder, do you remember -- do you mean
15the Petsalt book?
16 Q. [Mr Irving] I do not know the title of the book.
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I cannot comment on that. I am not absolutely sure,
18I think that Petsalt did it, but I thought the Petsalt
19book was later.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] Can I now draw your attention to the document in front of
21you which is in facsimile? This is taken from the Defence
22bundle, the Auschwitz core file No. 2.
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Irving] This is an original document, is it not? It is not a
25postwar transcript, to the best of your knowledge?
26 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, this is a copy of an original document. I mean a
1wartime copy.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: A 1943 document?
3 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
4 MR IRVING: Yes. But you have not seen this particular one in
5the Auschwitz archives, or have you?
6 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, this one is in Moscow.
7 Q. [Mr Irving] This one is in Moscow?
8 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] This is from the captured files of the Auschwitz
10construction office which are at present in the Moscow
12 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Irving] I draw your attention to the first line, the date 28th
14June 1943, right?
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Irving] How many documents have you seen in carbon copy which do
17not include the word "Auschwitz" and the following word,
18"Den", D-E-N?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] If this is a carbon copy, I presume it was a carbon copy
20of an original which was on a letter head.
21 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] On the letter head it does actually say "Auschwitz", so in
23carbon copies one can have quite often just the date and
24no information about the place.
25 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well.
26 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] But I cannot give a quantity in this case of how many
1documents I have seen.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] We go down now to the next line, which is what I will call
3the letter register line, which begins with the
4No. 31550. You will notice that that number is typed in
5and not handwritten in?
6 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
7 Q. [Mr Irving] How many documents have you seen in the Auschwitz
8construction archives that have that letter register
9number typed in on a carbon copy?
10 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I cannot say. I have seen it, but I cannot say how many
12 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well.
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] If I had my files with me right now, maybe I could show
14you examples of it typed in, but at the moment I am
15standing here just with one document.
16 Q. [Mr Irving] I agree. I draw the attention of the Defence to what
17I call this discrepancy. The next event in that line is
18an oblique, stroke, followed by "JA.", JA period.
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] How many items have you seen in the Auschwitz construction
21office files which have a period after the JA?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I am sorry. I cannot answer that.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes. I appreciate that. I draw your attention to the
24next item which is an oblique stroke and the initials
25"Ne.-". How many items have you in the Auschwitz
26construction office files which have the initials "Ne" as
1a secretary, signing a letter dictated by Jahrling or
2Jahrnish, or by the man whose initials are "JA"?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not quite sure I follow that question.
4 MR IRVING: I am sorry. Let me phrase it in two parts. Am
5I correct in saying that the man whose initials are "JA"
6was the man who dictated the letter?
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is Jahrling?
9 MR IRVING: Yes. Am I correct in saying that the following
10initials "Ne" would be his secretary?
11 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Irving] Have you seen any other letters whatsoever in the entire
1350,000 documents in the Auschwitz archives which have a
14secretary whose initials are "Ne"?
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Since you brought up the challenge a few days ago,
16I thought it was an "M" here. I mean, it seems to read as
17"M". I actually checked. I think I mentioned the name
18of the secretary a couple of days ago. It should be in
19the transcript because I checked. A 28 year old woman
20employed as a secretary at that moment in the
21Zentralbauleitung, I think.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You cannot remember her name?
23 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Sorry, I cannot remember her name. I had all the
24documentation with me on Friday and on Wednesday.
25 MR IRVING: Very well. Are you aware that his secretary,
26actually her name began with an "L" or his name began with
1an "L", and that of the 50 items which are in the
2collection which we control or which I am advised exists,
3dictated by this man, 49 of them have the secretary's
4initials as "L" or "Lm"?
5 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I cannot comment on that.
6 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well. And that in none of these cases is there a
7period after either the "JA" or after the secretary's
8name? Can you comment on that?
9 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] No, I cannot comment on that.
10 Q. [Mr Irving] Clearly, the reason I am saying this, my Lord, is to give
11the Defence a chance to come back possibly with documents
12proving me wrong on these points?
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think that is fair.
14 MR IRVING: Will you now look five or six lines lower down to
15the address: "SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungs-hauptamt,
16Antsgruppenchef C". I draw your attention now to the
17following line. Is there anything missing from that line
18"SS Brigadefuhrer u. Generalmajor"?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Generalmajor SS that would have been normally.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] Generalmajor der Waffen SS?
21 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Irving] Have you seen any other documents whatsoever in the entire
23construction files of the Auschwitz office, either in
24Moscow or in the Auschwitz archives now, in which the
25words "Der Waffen SS" are omitted after the
1 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I cannot comment on that.
2 Q. [Mr Irving] In other words, the address is improper in its present
3form; is that correct?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, he cannot comment.
5 MR IRVING: Yes. Well, my Lord, it is an incorrect rank.
6 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] It is an incorrect designation of a rank -- a very
7important one because they were very particular,
8particularly if they had the rank of a Brigadier General.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You can be a Brigadefuhrer.
10 MR IRVING: They were a Brigadier General in the SS and
11simultaneously they had a military rank in the Waffen SS.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you make it clear that it was an SS rank
13you were talking about, is that your point?
14 MR IRVING: No. What I am saying, my Lord, is that the correct
15rank, the proper designation, of Hans Kammler was SS
16Brigadefuhrer und Generalmajor der Waffen SS, and in every
17other document which exists it is written out in full.
18 Those are the only comments I have to make on
19the face of the document, but possibly, Professor, you are
20qualified to comment on the content, and I am now purely
21dealing with the crematoria. Am I right in saying that
22crematorium (i) was already out of service on July 19th
24 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] It was taken out of service shortly before, but the
25crematorium was completely intact, which means it was
26never dismantled. The incinerations, because, as we have
1seen, in May and June 1943 the total incineration capacity
2in the camp was so much larger than anything really the
3Germans needed at that moment.
4 It was absolutely no problem to take out, to
5decommission the incinerators of crematorium (i) because
6they were next to the SS, the house of the Kommandant and
7the laseret and the Kommandantur, to move all incineration
8capacity to Birkenhau and so that the SS quarters at the
9Stammlager would be spared the kind of environmental
10disadvantages of having a working crematorium right next
11to it. So this crematorium remained actually on stand-by
12throughout 1943, and these incinerations were only finally
13dismantled in late '44.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the capacity still exists?
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The capacity still exists.
16 MR IRVING: The capacity still exists. Are you aware that on
17the date of this document, June 28th 1943, crematorium No.
18(ii) was also out of service?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, but it was being repaired at the time and it was
20brought back into service a month later.
21 Q. [Mr Irving] You are familiar, presumably, with the letter from the
22Topf firm dated July 23rd 1943, which states, "Since the
23crematorium has been out of service for six weeks now" in
24one sentence? In other words, this particular crematorium
25was stated on July 23rd already to have been out of
26service for six weeks, so obviously it was a major problem
1with crematorium (ii) and yet they list it here as being
2capable of operating.
3 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, but this is a general accounting. This letter goes
4back to a request which was actually made early in January
5when Hoess wanted to have, the first indication anyway
6that he wants to have an accounting of total cremation
7capacity in the camp.
8 Indeed, crematorium (ii), after having had an
9overload of incinerations in March and April, had shown
10problems with the flues, actually the flues started to
11collapse, and was taken out of commission in May for
12repair. It took the Topf workers some time to actually
13determine exactly what had happened. It took them even
14more time to actually decide who was to blame, because the
15chimney maker said that it was Topf who was to blame, and
16Topf blamed the chimney makers. So they were, basically,
17negotiating who was going to pay for all of this
18throughout June. Finally, in August, the crematorium was
19brought back into operation. But throughout this time,
20I mean, when you look at incineration capacity in general
21in the camp, this letter does not refer to actually that
22day, but to the general capacity available in the camp.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Professor, do you not agree that in that case, since these
24crematoria were so frequently down, out of service and
25under repair and being squabbled over, it was improper for
26a document to exist giving an overall figure which made no
1reference to the fact that at any one given time, 20 or 30
2per cent of the capacity might be down?
3 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] That was not yet known in June 1943. We know in hindsight
4that indeed crematoria (iv) and (v) showed many problems,
5and that ultimately even the incinerators were at a
6certain moment left alone for later '43 and early '44, but
7the fact that we have, in hindsight, acknowledged does not
8mean that on 28th June '43 that knowledge existed.
9 Q. [Mr Irving] Very well. One final question: in view of the
10discrepancies I that have drawn to your attention and
11which I allege exist in this document, will you be
12undertaking any steps to investigate whether there are any
13similar documents with a similar letter registry number
14and which contain similar discrepancies in the rank and
15other items to which I have drawn your attention?
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is really a question for Mr Rampton, not
17for Professor van Pelt.
18 MR IRVING: I want it to go on the record, my Lord. That is
19all. I have no further questions.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, do you want to re-examine on that
22 MR RAMPTON: I would like the Professor -- I am sorry, I have
23only got the German with me. I have not got the
24Professor's report, unfortunately, or any of the other
25documents with me because I had no notice of it. I would
26just like him -- his German is pretty good -- if he will,
1just to read the text. (To the witness): Leave out the
2figures in the middle, if you will, Professor, but just
3read the text of the letter to us in English starting with
4"Unter den Eichen 126 - 135", will you?
5 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] So, OK. There is the address, "Unter den Eichen 126 -
6135", which seems to be the correct address, as far as
7I remember. "I announce the completion of crematorium
8(iii) on 26th June 1943. With this all of the crematoria
9which were ordered, which were commanded, have been
10completed. The capacity of the now available crematorium
11when used at a 24-hour work cycle", and then we get the
13 Q. [Mr Irving] Then you get the numbers and the total at the bottom. I
14have one other question only. To your knowledge, did they
15ever actually use any of these crematoria for a full
1624-hour period?
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The time that they would have used it -- we have no
18account. Quite literally, we use it 24 hours or 16 or 18,
19whatever like that, but the only period in which they
20would have had to use these crematoria on a 24-hour cycle
21would have been in May and June 1944 during the Hungarian
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Were they using all five of these crematoria in the
24Hungarian action?
25 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] They certainly used No. (ii) and (iii) which were in full
26function at the time. (iv) and (v) were repaired for the
1Hungarian action, shortly before the Hungarian action,
2because they had been out of commission. But during the
3Hungarian action (v) and (iv) showed problems, and I think
4that ultimately (v) was a crematorium where the
5incinerator collapsed. We always have to make the
6distinction between the incinerating and the gas
7chambers. The gas chambers of (iv) and (v) were in full
8operation during the Hungarian action, but ultimately they
9created these outside incineration pits during the
10Hungarian action to compensate for the problems in
11crematoria (iv) and (v).
12 Q. [Mr Irving] Just to complete the picture of potential capacity, if we
13go on to the Hungarian action in the early summer of
14'44, what about bunker 2?
15 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Are we talking about gassing capacity?
16 Q. [Mr Irving] Yes bunker 2 was brought back into operation during the
17Hungarian action because they felt that the gas chambers
18of crematoria (ii) to (v) would not be able to cope with
19the arrivals.
20 Q. [Mr Irving] Where did they incinerate the people that were killed in
21bunker 2?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] They were incinerated in open air pits which followed the
23example developed by Stammamptfuhrer Bloebbel in Chelmno
24which Dejaco Hussler had inspected in mid September 1942.
25 MR IRVING: My Lord, this re-examination is rather exceeding
26the bounds of the original cross-examination.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are quite right, it is. But I want to
2ask you a question which I hope does reflect the
3cross-examination, and that is this, Professor van Pelt.
4Taking on board, as it were, all the points that have been
5put to you by Mr Irving about the authenticity of this
6document, do you have a view about it? Are you doubtful
7about it?
8 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] If this document were to pop up right now, after having
9not been seen for 50 or 60 years, given the kind of
10challenges which have been made by Holocaust
11denier/revisionist historians, however one would want to
12call people who challenge the historical record, I would
13be more suspicious, because, you know, where does this
14document come from? The issue is, however, that this
15document has been in existence, and the records of these
16documents before ever a challenge was being made to the
17incineration capacity of the crematoria. In fact, this
18document shows a much lower incineration capacity of the
19crematoria than we find in the testimonies of Hoess and
21 So what I do not understand is what purpose
22would have been served, let us say, in the 1950s by, let
23us say, somebody who wants to make a case that Auschwitz
24was an extermination camp, by creating a document, by
25falsifying a document, which shows a lower incineration
26rate for the crematoria than that which has been attested
1to under oath by the German eyewitnesses. That is the
2discrepancy. So, given the fact that it is lower, and
3given the fact that it appeared at a time that no one was
4challenging the incineration capacity, because the German
5testimony on it was kind of self-evident, and given the
6fact also that this document, I think, shows a very good
7convergence with Tauber's testimony, and Tauber's
8testimony which after 1945 really was not published until
9Pressac did it, and Tauber describes in detail the way the
10corpses in the incinerators were incinerated, with many
11corpses at the time, and he gives times for this, and in
12fact Tauber's figures do converge with this one, I think
13there is absolutely no reason to doubt the authenticity of
14this document as far as the content is concerned.
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Can I ask you one more question? When did the issue about
16incineration capacity really surface?
17 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The issue of incineration capacity really started to
18surface, I think Faurisson mentioned it. Faurisson in the
19late 70s really concentrated on the issue of the gas
20chambers. The first major challenge which was made
21I think was Fred Leuchter in 1988. Butts in 76 also made
22an issue of it, but in some way this was buried, I think,
23in the larger context of his work.
24 Q. [Mr Irving] In the 70s anyway?
25 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] In the 70s, after this document had been admitted as
26evidence in the Vienna court.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, there is a bit of a new point
2there, so do you want to ask any further questions?
3 MR IRVING: I do wish to re-examine just briefly. I do not
4want to go into the matter of the burning pits. I think
5that that is a side issue that was raised in
6cross-examination. I do not think it should have been
7because we had not mentioned the burning pits, but I do
8want to raise just two or three of the points you
9mentioned there. You referred to the witness Hoess, and
10you relied on his figures. Is it correct that the witness
11Hoess in his statements said that 2.8 million Jews were
12killed in Auschwitz?
13 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I feel uncomfortable discussing what Hoess says without
14the documents, but since I discussed it in length in my
15expert report, Hoess ultimately comes down to 1.125
16million. He makes a detailed calculation, and he does it
17actually on two or three different occasions.
18 Q. [Mr Irving] Did he use the figure 2.8 million at any time?
19 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] As a general, he said there were different ways to account
20to it. He said he had one kind of figure based on, he
21thought how many people had been killed, but then at a
22certain moment he corrects himself and he says but the
23real way to calculate it is by looking at how many Jews
24arrived by the transports. Then I come to 1.15 million
26 Q. [Mr Irving] If somebody oscillates between 2.8 million and 1.1 million
1under oath, how can you place any reliance whatsoever on
2his other figures?
3 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] I think that there is the issue of how do you calculate
4the figure? There is one thing. He had no documents in
5front of him because no record was kept. He at a certain
6moment tries to reconstruct without having any figures,
7and of course we must remember that Hoess was, in the
8crucial time of the camp's history, Hungarian, actually
9late 43, he was not any more Kommandant of Auschwitz. He
10left Auschwitz. He was attached to the inspectorate in
11Oranienburg. So he only came back later to Auschwitz.
12 Q. [Mr Irving] We are only talking about the reliability of his figures.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, we have to confine this. We cannot
14have an open ended further cross-examination. Confine it
15to the authenticity of the document.
16 MR IRVING: That did go to the authenticity because he relied
17on Hoess as a source of statistical evidence, my Lord.
18Secondly, is it correct that the version of this document
19which is in the Auschwitz State museum was provided to
20them by the East German communist authorities? In other
21words, not the other way round, as one would expect?
22 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes.
23 Q. [Mr Irving] Thank you.
24 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] The version in Auschwitz, but this is the Moscow version,
25so we are talking here about the Moscow document. It is a
26different document. It is a different object, so to
1speak. The object means the actual sheet of paper which
2came from East Germany.
3 Q. [Mr Irving] The final question is on the question of why the matter
4has only just recently been raised. Is it not correct to
5say that the Moscow archives have only become available
6for purposes of comparison over the last ten years or so?
7 A. [Professor Robert Jan van Pelt] Yes, that is true.
8 MR IRVING: Thank you very much. I have no further questions,
9my Lord.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much, Professor.
11 < (The witness stood down)
12 MR IRVING: Your Lordship may have considered that a rather
13useless exercise but, as it is such a crucial document,
14I thought that we ought to examine it in greater detail.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I personally think that the issue of
16authenticity of this document is important for the
17purposes of this trial.
18 MR IRVING: It is almost pivotal, along with the roof. Thank
19you very much.
20 MR RAMPTON: I certainly do not agree that it is pivotal. It
21may be an important document in some senses.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The challenge to it may be important.
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, absolutely. If I feel the need to meet that
24challenge beyond what the Professor has said in the
25witness box, I will do so.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The Moscow archive presumably can be, as it
1were, consulted to see if the document is there.
2 MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, but, if it was in the Vienna trial in
31971, I do not know that the Moscow archives have a lot to
4do with it.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What now? Mr Irving back into the box?
6 MR RAMPTON: Shall I give your Lordship a little plan?
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you do, can I say something which
8I actually said yesterday? I think it became called L2,
9I think my L2 has gone back to you, but, in trying to go
10through yesterday evening, it really is impossible for me
11to follow it in the transcript when all I have is German
12documents, some of which have been partly translated in
13odd bits of Professor Evans' report. It is a nightmare
15 MR RAMPTON: It will not surprise your Lordship to be told that
16I took that on board. What I am going to do today will
17involve no reference to German documents by me. It will
18consist of a document prepared with, I have to say, the
19most extraordinary skill and expedition by Miss Rogers in
20relation to Dresden. There is a file of Dresden
21documents. They are mostly in English. I shall not make
22reference to them myself, because they have been
23summarized in the little document that Miss Rogers has
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good.
26 MR RAMPTON: Contrary to my feeling yesterday evening, I am
1going to go to four topics in the aftermath of
2Reichskristallnacht, but I am going to do those, unless
3again I am pushed by Mr Irving to the German, exclusively
4from Professor Evans' report.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do think that is easier. Can I at the same
6time make this enquiry? It is important that we are clear
7for later on. Looking at Kristallnacht, not the aftermath
8of Kristallnacht, there are several points made in Evans
9and Longerich, I think, which I do not think you
10cross-examine to specifically. It is not a criticism
11obviously, but does that mean they have gone out of the
12case, or what?
13 MR RAMPTON: It is very difficult. I am very conscious of the
14amount of time that this case could take. That means I am
15also conscious of the amount of money it could cost my
16clients, never mind court time and the time of all the
17people involved. I have taken the view, right or wrong,
18that, if I have three or four, or maybe two or three, or
19even five or six, dead cert winners, to use a
20colloquialism, in any particular topic, I am not going to
21spend a lot of time having argy-bargy about minor points
22with Mr Irving. I have one more what I regard as dead
23cert winner to finish which is this business about ND3052
24or ND3051 because I have chased that it and I know the
25answer. But if your Lordship should take the view at the
26end of the cross-examination of my expert witnesses that
1certain points have gone from the case, well, why then
2they have gone, but if Mr Irving should take up with my
3expert witnesses things I have not cross-examined him
4about, why, then they will come back into the arena.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But at the moment they are not in the arena.
6 MR RAMPTON: No.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is rather what I thought, but I think it
8is quite important to be clear about it.
9 MR RAMPTON: If I have missed something out, something
10important, I miss something important and that is just too
11bad. But there has to be a sense of proportion in all of
12this, in my belief.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It might be something -- I have not got them
14in mind now -- there are some points that I think Evans
15attaches importance to on Reichskristallnacht which maybe
16we have not really touched on.
17 MR RAMPTON: I agree there are some things in relation to
18eyewitness testimony. I am as mistrustful of that in
19general as is Mr Irving, and I prefer the original
20documents, and that is what I did yesterday.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
22 MR RAMPTON: I am going back to one other original document in
23a moment.
24 MR IRVING: I thought there was going to be a complex on the
25Adjutants we were going to hear about.
26 MR RAMPTON: There may be something about the Adjutants along
1down the road, but I have not got to that yet. It is a
2separate topic.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That clears the air a bit.
4 MR RAMPTON: I have not given thought to what, if any,
5Adjutants I am interested in.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, if you go back we are starting
7off now on Dresden.
8 MR RAMPTON: No. I am going to finish Reichskristallnacht and
9then I shall go to Dresden.
10 < MR DAVID IRVING recalled.
11< Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your Lordship and the witness will need a document which
13we dug out yesterday.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I will need my L2 back too, will I not?
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I do not know where it has gone. (To the
16witness): Mr Irving, can you please go back to your
17Goebbels book at page 276? At the bottom of that page we
18saw yesterday, we are going to read it again, you write:
19"What of Himmler and Hitler? Both were totally unaware
20of what Goebbels had done until the synagogue next to
21Munich's Four Seasons Hotel was set on fire around 1k
22a.m. Heydrich, Himmler's national chief of police, was
23relaxing down in the hotel bar, he hurried up to Himmler's
24room, then telexed instructions to all police authorities
25to restore law and order, protect Jews and Jewish
26property, and halt any ongoing incidents." You give us
1the reference No. 43, you give us the reference for that
2on page 613, ND3052-PS?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now please look at the document I have just handed in.
5 A. [Mr Irving] Well, in fact, there are two sources there. I have also
6referenced Karl Wolff.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Will you please look at the document I have just handed
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] 3052 -- yes, there is a mistake in the number.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have mistaken the number?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Professor Evans is right?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] The correct number is 3051, is it not?
17 A. [Mr Irving] It is probably 3051. There may be another one, but this
18is clearly the wrong one, but I have also referenced Karl
19Wolff as my source.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we please look then at what Professors Evans used as
21the translation of the key part of 3051 at the top?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Which, of course, I have not referenced.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you have not. But, Mr Irving, I suggest that you had
24it in front of you and you simply made a slip of the pen
25(as we all can) and called the document 3052 when, in
26fact, it was 3051.
1 A. [Mr Irving] You may be right, but you may be wrong.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say "you may be wrong", you mean
3there is another document very similar to 3051 which you
4did in have in front of you?
5 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, note 43 also refers to Karl Wolff which is a
6source which I also used.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] That is another matter.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I would have to look and see what Karl Wolff said which
9may very well be the source of that.
10 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, forget Karl Wolff. You have given ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] No, because -- I am not going to forget him because he is
12given in the footnote 43.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have given 3052 as the reference?
14 A. [Mr Irving] As one of the references.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is wrong, as you can plainly see from the document?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] It follows, does it not ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] It was another document.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- that the overlying probability is that you meant 3051
20which is, indeed, a telex from Heydrich at 1.20 a.m. on
2110th November?
22 A. [Mr Irving] That is one telex from him at 1.20 yes, but if ----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Wait, Mr Irving.
24 A. [Mr Irving] --- if you look at the time scale, if you look at the time
25scale, these instructions I am referring to are unlikely
26to have got into a telex machine at 1.20 a.m. It would
1be closer to 2 a.m. that things like that went out, by the
2time he has got back to police headquarters.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say he "hurried up to Himmler's room"?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but they would not have had a telex machine in
5Himmler's hotel room, my Lord. He would have had to go to
6the local Gestapo headquarters or telephone instruction
7for local headquarters and tell them to type a telex and
8get this kind of thing out.
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So your suggestion is there is another telex from
11 A. [Mr Irving] Another source. I am not suggesting it is another telex.
12I am suggesting it is another source and I have referenced
13there Karl Wolff.
14 MR RAMPTON: Let us suppose for a moment that a three year-old
15child will not buy that story, Mr Irving, and compare what
16301 says of what you wrote in the text, may we?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, shall we do that?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, let us look at the top of 263 of Professor Evans'
19report. The German is printed at the bottom. So if you
20want to read the German first, please do.
21 A. [Mr Irving] "On Himmler's instructions, they were to be sure some
22restrictions placed on the action", is that correct on the
23foot of page 262?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. That is absolutely right. Now you see what they are
25on page 263.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I have read that.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now tell me what foundation that provides for your
2assertion that Heydrich's telex was "to protect Jews and
3Jewish property and halt any ongoing incidents".
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, clearly, this is a different message I am referring
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving. Clearly, you have deliberately
7misrepresented the effect of this telex from Heydrich.
8 A. [Mr Irving] No, Mr Rampton. You are looking at a different message,
9and you are saying, "This does not look like the one you
10are quoting" which is just what I am saying. You are
11right. It is not the one I am quoting.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is what you call 3052? Where
13physically is it?
14 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, they have had complete access to all my files and
15we do not know which signals they have put in and which
16they have not put in.
17 MR RAMPTON: It does not exist, Mr Irving?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It may not be a signal. It may be what Karl Wolff
19reported. Karl Wolff was with him at that time. I have
20referenced Karl Wolff in footnote 43 which your Professor
21Evans has overlooked.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] The first reference you give -- I am only going to ask
23this once more -- is 3052, is it not?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] The reader will suppose that that is a reference to the
26text of the Heydrich telex?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, no. The 43 refers to everything from the beginning
2of that paragraph, "What of Himmler and Hitler?" onwards.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, the reference you give for the Heydrich telex
4is 3052, is it not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] One of the two references, yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. It so happens that the true Heydrich telex is 3051?
7 A. [Mr Irving] It so happens that a Heydrich telex is 3051.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] It so happens that 30512 has nothing whatever to do with
9Reichskristallnacht at all?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] What do you think is the probability -- that had you some
12other document which has disappeared which had the
13No. 3052 on it?
14 A. [Mr Irving] My documents have not disappeared. As you are familiar,
15I have given all my documents to the German archives.
16I have provided to you what relics I have, what remnants
17I have, of my document collection.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, now I would offer you the same opportunity,
19Mr Irving, as you kindly offered to us. You find 3052 and
20the text of a Heydrich telex which carries the information
21which you have put in the book.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, perhaps if you have the Karl Wolff's statement from
23the Institute files No. 317, then you will find precisely
24the content that I referred to.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can we move on now, please?
26 A. [Mr Irving] If you thought I was wrong, you would have actually
1produced to the court 317, the Karl Wolff statement, and
2said, "Mr Irving, can you find that in 317?"
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are perfectly entitled to do that
4yourself, but it does not, I think it is fair to say, meet
5Mr Rampton's point which is that one of your references is
7 A. [Mr Irving] One of the references has a digit wrong, this is correct.
8 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] And the ball, if I may say so, is in your court to produce
9the document that you say is 3052.
10 A. [Mr Irving] If I can do so, having given all my records away, this is
11true, but I shall certainly attempt to do so.
12 MR RAMPTON: Now, Mr Irving, I want to come to the aftermath of
13Reichskristallnacht. I want to move on now to the
14aftermath, the next day, starting with Mr Goebbels --
15Dr Goebbels, I do beg his pardon. Can we start, please,
16and I promised I would stick Professor Evans and that is
17what I am going to, at page 281 of Professor Evans'
18report, please.
19 A. [Mr Irving] What does he mean by "the inevitable Goebbels diary"?
20Does that not suggest a mind cast on the part of your
21expert in paragraph 1?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you look at paragraph 2, please, Mr Irving -- you can
23ask Professor Evans any number of questions you like
24subject to his Lordship's control, but I am not going to
25answer your questions, I am afraid. Paragraph 2 on page
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] "In his account of the events of 10th November 1938,
3Goebbels wrote: 'New reports rain down the whole
4morning. I consider with the Fuhrer what measures should
5be taken now. Let the beatings continue or stop them?
6That is now the question'."
7 You, when you wrote about this in your Goebbels
8book, said: "Goebbels went to see Hitler to discuss what
9to do next. There is surely an involuntary hint of
10apprehension in the phrase". Why did you write that?
11 A. [Mr Irving] I am, first of all, checking to see the original German
12text because he has not provided it to us, has he, or has
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Check it by all means. If we have to go
15through it, we will have to go through it, but we are
16trying to avoid doing that.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the reason for that is the translation of the word
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You can tell us.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Can you confirm that the word he has used for "now" is not
21"nun" but "nunmehr"?
22 MR RAMPTON: I have no idea.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am telling you -- I have a pretty good memory of these
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why does it matter?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Why does it matter? Indeed. So what? "Nunmehr" conveys
1the hint of apprehension. "What do we do now?"
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You translate it in your book -- what you write is 277 of
3Goebbels: "As more ugly bulletins rained down on him the
4next morning, November 10th 1938, Goebbels went to see
5Hitler to discuss 'what to do next'"?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed, "nunmehr".
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is the apprehension in that?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if you understood German and you knew the nuances of
9the German language, and any German sitting in this room
10would know there is a difference between the words "nun"
11nad "nunmehr". Am I correct? Is that the word used?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr irving, will you answer my question? Did you write,
13"He went to discuss with Hitler what to do next"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] "What to do now" and "what to do next", what is the
15difference? You explain to the court.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It might be right if the phraseology were apt to convey
17the impression, "Oh, dear. Whatever shall we do now?" but
18that is not what you translated it as?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am trying to give the difference between "now", between
20"nun" and "nunmehr", and any German in this courtroom
21will know there is a strong difference. "Nunmehr" means
22"now more than ever" and this, I suspect, is why
23Professor Evans has not provided the original German here.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As a matter of fact, he has. Note 104, page
25282, he says the original German is "nunmehrige" which
26I think is the same as "nunmehr", in fact?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I wish we had had the entire text, but he has ----
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You are only quarrelling with that one word, as
3I understand it?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, indeed, but there is big difference, of course,
5between "nun" and "nunmehr", and I can only confirm that
6any German will confirm this.
7 MR RAMPTON: The German is, Mr Irving -- excuse my
8pronunciation once again, but I will read it slowly..
9 A. [Mr Irving] What page is the German?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Den ganzen Morgen regnet es neue Meldungen". End of line.
11The next line: "Ich uberlege mit dem Fuhrer unsere
12nunmehrigen Masnahmen". That is "our next measures", is
13it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I am looking at the original translation in bundle L2 on
15page 3, the original German.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is on page 2, I think.
17 A. [Mr Irving] "Den ganzen Morgen regnet es neue Meldungen ... unsere
18nunmehrigen Masnahmen". There you are, "nunmehr".
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, "our next steps"?
20 A. [Mr Irving] But I have to try to explain once again, because you do
21not hesitate also to keep repeating yourself, that "nun"
22and "nunmehr" have two totally different nuances.
23"Nunmehr" in German means "now more than ever".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] What does it mean, "I discussed with the Fuhrer our next
26 A. [Mr Irving] "... unsere nunmehrigen Masnahmen".
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, "our next steps"?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, "what steps we should now take more than ever".
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] What is apprehensive about that?
4 A. [Mr Irving] The adding of the word "mehr" to "nun".
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then he goes on: "Weiterschlagen lassen oder abstoppen".
6"Shall we go on thrshing them or stop" or "Shall we let
7the thrashing go on or stop it", yes? "That is now the
9 A. [Mr Irving] "Weiterschlagen lasen oder abstoppen", that is right.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Das ist nun die Frage"?
11 A. [Mr Irving] "That is now the question".
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly. What is apprehensive about that?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Because he has been summoned to see the Hitler because the
14whole of Germany is in flames, messages coming in from
15diplomatic missions all around the world about it.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But they are contemplating letting it go on?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Goebbels is contemplating letting it gone on, "What are we
18going to do now?" This is Goebbels' diary, my Lord, not
19Hitler. Goebbels has been summoned before Hitler like a
20schoolboy who has painted something on the wall.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well, who is meant to be being apprehensive? I took it to
22be Goebbels.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Goebbels is apprehensive, yes.
24 MR RAMPTON: About what?
25 A. [Mr Irving] That he had been summoned to see Hitler. Perhaps I should
26sketch in in two lines the background? Goebbels has been
1a very bad for the last six months. He has been caught
2red handed in an appalling matrimonial scandal. He has
3been threatened with this missile. He has contemplated
4suicide. He thought he was doing Hitler a favour with
5this little outrage and, to his horror, he has found out
6he has done the exact opposite. He has been summoned
7before Hitler and Hitler is now showing him the diplomatic
8messages that have come in. Within a matter of an hour or
9two, Goebbels has had to issue a telegram which is on the
10very next page, or page 279 of my book produces a
11facsimile: "Everything is to be stopped immediately. All
12the orders I issued yesterday are cancelled". Am the
13I right?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, you are not right, Mr Irving. You are not right in
15your thesis. You are right in what that document says and
16it is sent to the propaganda chiefs. All that has been
17decided is, well, for the sake of foreign opinion and
18public opinion, we had better stop smashing up Jewish
19shops and killing Jewish people?
20 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, this document which I reproduce in a
21facsimile is sent to precisely the people he ordered the
22day before to start all the pogrom.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you say. We had that argument yesterday ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you keep saying "so I say", but I am the one who
25wrote the book.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I do say and I do not accept it, Mr Irving. We went
1through it yesterday. It is quite obvious that I do not
2accept it. It is no good repeating it. We have been
3through it. The judge will decide the question and then
4see what happened in the next day's diary entry. If you
5pass over to paragraph 4 on the same page, 282 of Evans --
6the German, if you want it, is on tab 3 of the
7Reichskristallnacht file. It is the beginning of the
8diary entry, as I expect you know. "Following this first
9conversation with Hitler on morning of 10th, Goebbels
10drafted an order to bring the pogrom to a halt.
11'Yesterday', he wrote on the 11th in his diary, 'Berlin.
12There, all proceeded fantastically. One fire after
13another. It is good that way. I prepare an order to put
14an amend the actions'". That is the one you have just
15told us about, Mr Irving. "'It is now just enough ... In
16whole country the synagogues have burned them. I report
17to the Fuhrer at the Osteria'." The German is printed at
18the bottom of the page if you want to look at it. The
19"Osteria" was a restaurant in Munich, I think, was it
21 A. [Mr Irving] It is still there, yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not mind. It was, was it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] And if we turn over the page, we can see what Goebbels
25reports of his meeting with Hitler at the Osteria
26sometime, presumably, on the 10th, in paragraph 5 on page
1283: "At the Osteria, Goebbels presented Hitler with his
2draft order to stop the pogram. His diary entry
3continued: 'I report to the Fuhrer in the Osteria. He
4agrees with everything. His views are totally radical and
5aggressive. The action itself has taken place without any
6problems. 17 dead. But no German property damaged. The
7Fuhrer approves my decree concerning the ending of the
8actions, with small amendments. I announce it via the
9press and raid. The Fuhrer wants to take very sharp
10measures against the Jews. They must themselves put their
11businesses in order again. The insurance companies will
12not pay them a thing. Then the Fuhrer wants a gradual
13expropriation of Jewish businesses"?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Now, what holes can you pick in my account of that?
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am coming to that in a moment, Mr Irving. Let us look
16at how you dealt with that entry, shall we, in a minute?
17That starts at paragraph 8. But, first, I want to draw
18your attention to what Goebbels did next, sorry, or before
19which is in paragraph 7: "On the afternoon of 10th
20November", that is after the meeting with Hitler at the
21Osteria, "Goebbels informed the Nazi Party chief of
22Munich-Upper Bavaria that the pogram was to be terminated,
23and added: 'The Fuhrer sanctions the measures taken so far
24and declares that he does not disapprove'". It is
25entirely consistent with the diary entry, is it not? Is
26it not, Mr Irving?
1 A. [Mr Irving] What, what Evans wrote or what I wrote?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. What Goebbels wrote, "The Fuhrer sanctions the
3measures taken so for and declares that he does not
4disapprove of them"?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Which passage are you translating?
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am reading from the text of Professor Evans.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, I see. I thought you were looking at something hard
8and concrete.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I told his Lordship that, unless forced to do so, I am
10going to keep off the German. It is much easier for
11us ----
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is working much better.
13 MR RAMPTON: --- Anglophones. "The Fuhrer sanctions the
14measures taken so far and declares that he does not
15disapprove of them". That is exactly what Goebbels
16reported him as having said at the Osteria, is it not?
17Have you got the place in Evans, Mr Irving.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Paragraph 7?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am trying to read three volumes simultaneously.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know it is difficult. The bottom of
21page 283.
22 A. [Mr Irving] 283?
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes, 283.
24 MR RAMPTON: Then it goes on ----
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you there, Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I am, but I am wondering where he gets the words "on the
1afternoon of". I mean, the timing appears to be
2important, and ...
3 MR RAMPTON: Well, it is perfectly obvious. If he saw Hitler
4on the day, at the Osteria, and Hitler said ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] The note 107 refers to something dated November 11th.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not following your point, Mr Irving.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am wondering where he gets the phrase "on the
8afternoon of November 10".
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does it matter?
10 MR RAMPTON: Because it comes from the text of Goebbels'
11circular. If you look at what Hitler said to Goebbels at
12the Osteria, it is perfectly natural that later that day
13Goebbels should report that "Hitler sanctions the measures
14taken so far and declares that he does not disapprove of
15them". That is exactly what he had already said to
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we have a difficulty here. We have just one line,
18or one line from a message not from Goebbels but from a
19Gauleiter, from a Gauleiter's adjutant, the next day, in
20other words, it is already third-hand.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then I am going to read on, Mr Irving. Top of 284: "In
22another circular", this is Evans, "sent out the same day
23to Gau propaganda officials, quoted in Irving's own book
24on Goebbels, and quite clearly reporting Hitler's views at
25the meeting in the Osteria, Goebbels added: 'An order is
26to be expected according to which the (cost of the) damage
1resulting from the anti-Jewish actions is not to be met by
2insurance companies but by the Jews concerned themselves.
3Furthermore, a series of measures against the Jews will
4very shortly be implemented through the promulgation of
5laws or decrees'." I am going to show you, if you have
6forgotten, Mr Irving, what, in fact, happened next. But
7I want you to look next ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] I am finding it very difficult to see what point you are
9thrusting towards.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will see what point I am thrusting towards. Be
11patient. These things have to be built in blocks,
12Mr Irving. Look at paragraph 8: "How does Irving deal
13with this particularly incriminating diary entry? In
141992, when Irving first read the Goebbels diary entries
15for the period 9th to 10th November 1938, he was convinced
16that it showed that Hitler approved of the pogrom". Here
17is a quote from Mr Irving interviewed by Kurt Franz, CBC
18Newsworld in July 1992: "'According to his diary', that
19is Goebbels, 'and I can't emphasise those words enough,
20according to his diaries, Hitler was closely implicated
21with those outrages. And that's a matter of some dismay
22to me because it means I have to revise my own opinion.
23But a historian should always be willing to revise his
24opinion'"? So far, so good, Mr Irving. Let us see how it
26 1993, "A year later he was sounding a slightly
1more sceptical note. Goebbels diary, Irving said", and
2this is part of the talk that you had been going to make
3in Australia but which you were not allowed to make,
4Irving "'describes how Hitler thoroughly endorses what he,
5Goebbels, has done, namely stating'", this is the top of
7 A. [Mr Irving] "Starting".
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] ..."'starting that outrage that night. This was a deep
9shock for me'", that is Irving, "'and I immediately
10announced it to the world's newspapers that I had
11discovered this material, although it appeared to go
12against what I had written in my own book Hitler's War.
13But even there you have to add a rider and say, "Wait a
14minute, this is Dr Goebbels writing this". Dr Goebbels
15who took all the blame for what was done. So did he have
16perhaps a motive for writing in his private diaries
17subsequently that Hitler endorsed what he had done? You
18can't entirely close that file'."
19 Just pause there, Mr Irving, what motive did
20Goebbels have for, as it were, trying to implicate Hitler
21in something which Hitler knew nothing about?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I think if you read the whole of my Goebbels book, and
23I am sure you have, you will note that there were several
24occasions on which Goebbels took actions independently and
25subsequently sought shelter in either writing in his diary
26that Hitler had sanctioned it, or actually ly went to
1Hitler and informed him what he had done.
2 One example I quote is the decision to put
3forward Hitler's name in the presidential candidacy in
41932 which was a public relations disaster. So there are
5several episodes where Goebbels acts on his own and then
6seeks endorsement from Hitler, not just this particular
7episode. So one is entitled to say, was this another such
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, the evidence is -- we went through it yesterday
10-- if you look at the evidence objectively, the evidence
11is such that it drives one to the inevitable inference
12that Hitler knew along and probably authorized what
13happened. There is no reason why Goebbels should put the
14blame on Hitler if, in fact, that is the case. Second, if
15Goebbels ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] Can I take these points one at a time?
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
18 A. [Mr Irving] So in cross-examination is always wise to ask one question
19at a time. There no reason why Goebbels should have
20sought refuge in Hitler at this time? Well, the answer is
21that by two days after the Reichskristallnacht, every
22finger in Germany was pointing at Goebbels. He had held a
23disastrous press conference before the Berlin foreign
24press corps where he had been ridiculed. Ribbentrop,
25Himmler, Heydrich, every top Nazi, the entire top Nazi
26brass, were pointing the finger at Goebbels and demanding
1that he should be finally dismissed because of this
2outrage. We know this from all the private diaries,
3including from the diaries of anti-Nazis like Ulrich von
4Hassell, and his only protection was to go to Adolf
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] But, Mr Irving ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] And, as I made quite plain, Adolf Hitler -- this is one of
8his weaknesses -- immediately covered for him.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So what is said in the diary is true, but
10Hitler was, as it were, unnecessarily and inappropriately
11taking the blame, is that what your case is?
12 A. [Mr Irving] I think your Lordship has summed it, yes, and I would also
13draw your Lordship's attention to the fact that the
14Canadian video tape which quotes my initial apprehensions
15about what I had just found in Moscow is just four days
16after I returned -- six days after I returned from Moscow
17with the Goebbels diaries.
18 You cannot reach snap decisions about the
19content of a document as tricky as this without comparing
20with all the additional surrounding countryside of
21documentation which is what I then did by a year later.
22 MR RAMPTON: You may think that it is tricky because, of
23course, if it is not tricky, it immediately plants Adolf
24Hitler in the centre of the frame, does it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the tricky thing about the Goebbels' diaries, as I
26have repeatedly said, is they are the diaries of a liar.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Suppose that Himmler, as I suggested to you yesterday, was
2as involved, and perhaps more so, than Goebbels, it would
3be in his interests to pass the buck. It was in all their
4interests, so far as they could, to leave somebody else
5holding the baby perhaps?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Are you suggest that Himmler was involved in it?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] I told you so yesterday.
8 A. [Mr Irving] But all the evidence is exactly the contrary. All the
9contemporary evidence, including the private diary of
10Ulrich von Hassel, says that Himmler and Heydrich were
11absolutely livid with what had happened that night,
12because Goebbels had played fast and loose with the police
13forces which came under them.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Please explain to me, if Himmler and Heydrich were livid
15with what happened, the terminology of that telex of
16Heydrich, which we looked at earlier this morning, timed
17at 1.20 a.m.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Which was the one restricting certain measures.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Saying continue, I think, carry on.
20 MR RAMPTON: Yes, "Carry on, have a good time, do not damage
21German property, do not assault foreign Jews, carry on, it
22does not matter what you do so long as you do not injure
23German property".
24 A. [Mr Irving] They apprehended that they were acting on Hitler's
25instructions and they found out at 2 a.m. that they were
26not, because Goebbels, in his famous speech at the old
1town hall, had clearly given the impression that this was
2what the Fuhrer wanted.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] And then?
4 A. [Mr Irving] At 2 a.m., when the Fuhrer found out what was going
5on right across Germany, he called the people to his
6private residence and said, "What on earth is going on?"
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then, on 10th or 11th November, not only does Goebbels
8record Hitler's approval or lack of disapproval for what
9happened, he actually circulates Gauleiters with a
10statement to the effect that the Fuhrer sanctions the
11measures taken so far and declares that he does not
12disapprove of them. Now, if Goebbels had been lying in
13his diary about Hitler's approval, he was taking an awful
14risk, was he not, of telling everybody that Hitler did
15approve of it?
16 A. [Mr Irving] This is typical Goebbels. This is exactly the way he
17operated and, although I point once again to the fact that
18your source for this circular is a third hand item by an
19adjutant of a Gauleiter, assuming that that information is
20correct, this is typical of the way that Goebbels would
21operate. He would tell everybody to, "Shut up with your
22criticism of me, the Fuhrer was behind it".
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] But it is true. The Fuhrer was behind it, was he not,
24Mr Irving?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Unfortunately, the documents operate the other way. We
26have that document which I produce now in the original on
1the headed notepaper of the deputy of the Fuhrer, saying
2from orders from the highest level these acts of arson and
3similar things against the Jewish property are to cease
4forthwith, a message sent out at high urgency, high
5priority, at 2.56 a.m.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do we get those words "Jewish property" again? When you
7were caught unawares with that document yesterday, you
8correctly translated the word "geschaften" as shops.
9 A. [Mr Irving] The important element of that telegram is not the
10translation of the word "geschafte" but the fact that this
11is an order being sent out by Hitler's deputy saying, "The
12highest level has ordered these things to stop", at 2.56
13a.m. You cannot get out of that telegram. This is the one
14thing that destroys your entire case.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, it does not say it. It says the burning of
16Jewish shops and the like should stop.
17 A. [Mr Irving] If you were right, Mr Rampton, that telegram would say
18"carry on, not enough, more so, more so", and in fact it
19says precisely the opposite.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] It does not say precisely the opposite. We went through
21this yesterday, Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving] If you are saying Adolf Hitler was behind the outrages,
23what is his deputy doing sending ought a telegram at 2.56
24a.m., of which you provided a copy yesterday, without the
25heading showing that it came from the Deputy Fuhrer,
26saying these outrages and the like against Jewish shops,
1Jewish businesses, are to stop.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
3 A. [Mr Irving] This is exactly the opposite of what Adolf Hitler would
4have said.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving, I am sorry, it will not do. You cannot get
6round the wording of that telegram.
7 A. [Mr Irving] You cannot get round the heading of that telegram.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Wait for the question.
9 MR RAMPTON: However much you may wish to inflate it, the fact
10is that it is specific as to Jewish shops and the like.
11Geschafte oder dergleichen.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is right. You do not need to check it,
13Mr Irving. That is right.
14 A. [Mr Irving] "I directed No. 174/38 repetition of the telegram sent out
15that same evening, 10th November, on express orders from
16the highest level, acts of arson against Jewish businesses
17or the like, are not to take place under any circumstances
18whatever." Signed by the Deputy Fuhrer, and you cannot
19get round it.
20 MR RAMPTON: Well Mr Irving, I use your own translation given
21from the witness box caught unawares, "shops". Nothing
22about synagogues?
23 A. [Mr Irving] If Adolf Hitler was totally endorsing what Goebbels was up
24to, he would have done exactly the opposite. He would
25have said, "carry on fellows, magnificent stuff, let's
26have more fires".
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] You look at that message again, if you want. Where is the
2reference to synagogues, houses and apartments?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Where is the reference to Adolf Hitler eagerly backing up
4everything Goebbels was doing?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, Mr Irving. You use that telegram as incontrovertible
6evidence, to borrow one of your phrases, that Adolf Hitler
7smashed his fist on the table and said, "this has all got
8to stop". Look at it again.
9 A. [Mr Irving] Do not forget, I also have the eyewitnesses who were with
10him just before this telegram was sent out. I have his
11two adjutants.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think I have each party's case.
13 A. [Mr Irving] This is another of those pivotal items and this is very
14close to the horse's mouth.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I agree it is pivotal, but there is no point
16in thrashing through it again. We went through it
17yesterday. I understand both cases.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] It is just that my evidence is slightly better quality
20than his.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Will you save that up for the end of the
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes, Mr Irving, laughter in court. Can we look at
24how you have finally come to deal with this Goebbels diary
25entry on page 278 of your book, Goebbels Mastermind of the
26Third Reich? It is the top of page 278 in the fourth line
1at the paragraph.
2 "He made his report (on 'what to do next') to
3Hitler in the Osteria, the Fuhrer's favourite Italian
4restaurant, and was careful to record this" -- and you
5insert "perhaps slanted" -- "note in his diary, which
6stands alone, and in direct contradiction to the evidence
7of Hitler's entire immediate entourage: "He is in
8agreement with everything. His views are quite radical
9and aggressive. The Aktion itself went off without a
10hitch. A hundred dead". Where did that hundred come
11from? I do not remember that. Anyhow, it does not
12matter. I thought it was 17 dead.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 17, yes.
14 A. [Mr Irving] It must be a subsequent entry in the diary.
15 MR RAMPTON: "But no German property damaged".
16 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, remember I was operating from the handwritten
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I may have read the 17 as 100. It was in digits. I had
20the original.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You may be right, it may be a hundred.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed.
23 MR RAMPTON: The official total at the end of it all was 91,
24was it not, Mr Irving.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I take your word for it, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] We do not find that figure in your book, I do not think,
1do we?
2 A. [Mr Irving] You have 100 here.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, that is Goebbels. You do not trust Goebbels. You are
4just telling the readership in a moment each of these five
5sentences was untrue. You are discrediting the figure of
7 A. [Mr Irving] On the previous page 276 I say, "191 of the country's 1400
8synagogues had been destroyed; about 7,500 Jewish shops
9had had their windows smashed. 36 ... had been murdered,
10and hundreds more badly beaten". I give a source for
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] 36. That was an interim report by Heydrich some time on
13the morning of the 11th.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] The final official figure was something in the region of
1691, was it not, dead?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] That comes from the report of the people's court in
19February of 1939, does it not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot quite understand what the criticism is. I have
21said on one page the interim figure was 36. I then say
22Goebbels talks of a hundred.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not the main point, I think.
24 MR RAMPTON: No. You say Goebbels spoke of 100 and then you
25immediately say that that is untrue.
26 A. [Mr Irving] What I say is "perhaps slanted", or what?
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I am reading your own words after the end of the
2quote. "Each of these five sentences was untrue as will
3be seen"?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. So you are discrediting Goebbels' total of the
6dead, despite the fact that you know perfectly well that
7even the Nazi people's court, or whatever it was called,
8in 1939 came to a total of 91?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Well, in that case 100 is untrue. Each of those figures
10is untrue. The point is I am pointing out exactly how
11unreliable Goebbels' diary is and I am saying, each of
12these five sentences is untrue, inaccurate. "No German
13property was damaged". There had been immense damage to
14German property. Things went off without a hitch.
15Exactly the contrary.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tell me this. Do you accept that, whatever else you may
17say passed between Goebbels and Hitler at the meeting at
18the Osteria, Hitler told Goebbels that he wants to take
19very sharp measures against the Jews, they must themselves
20put their business in order again, the insurance companies
21will not pay them a thing. Then the Fuhrer wants a
22gradual expropriation of Jewish businesses?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that was said.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was said and it happened, did it not?
25 A. [Mr Irving] And it did happen, yes.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] On 12th November 1938 there was a conference chaired by
1I think Hermann Goring, at which I think probably
2Dr Goebbels was present, at which very harsh measures in
3accordance with the Fuhrer's wishes were taken against the
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is correct, Hermann Goring was head of the four
6year plan and he was in a position to issue these
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] You do not in your book, I think, Mr Irving, make
9any connection between the meeting in the Osteria
10restaurant, which in fact on reflection was perfectly
11obvious, and the Goring conference of the 12th two days
12later, do you?
13 A. [Mr Irving] You say that Dr Goebbels was present at that meeting.
14I do not believe he was actually present, but I may be
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know. Just have a quick glance -- I am not a
17historian, Mr Irving -- at the top of page 290 of Evans.
18 A. [Mr Irving] 290 of Evans?
19 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are we leaving now the passage at 278.
21 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
22 A. [Mr Irving] He was present, yes.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The point is a wider one than the 100 dead,
24is it not?
25 MR RAMPTON: Yes, but I have been over that.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just put the question, so I get the
2 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 278 of Goebbels. I think the suggestion is
4that there really is no basis for saying that the record
5in the diary is such a complete misrepresentation of what
6Hitler's express view was at the Osteria.
7 MR RAMPTON: That is right.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I am afraid I have not followed your Lordship's question.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, my fault. You see what you say
10about the diary entry?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You are saying that Goebbels is totally misrepresenting
13Hitler's attitude as expressed to him, Goebbels, at the
14Osteria restaurant on the 10th.
15 A. [Mr Irving] In as much as he has ----
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] What is the basis for that? I think that is really the
18 A. [Mr Irving] He has misrepresented the diary in as much as the diary
19suggested Adolf Hitler endorsed, triggered, ignited and
20wanted the pogrom to take the shape it had during the
21previous night.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but on what basis do you say that
23Hitler's view was something different from what Goebbels
24says in his diary?
25 A. [Mr Irving] This telegram, my Lord, the one that goes out at 2.56A.m.
26saying, this has got to stop.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You rely on that?
2 A. [Mr Irving] And of course on the eyewitnesses von Behlo and von
3Putkammer who talked to me in a manner that they probably
4would not have talked to Professor Evans.
5 MR RAMPTON: How many years after the events, Mr Irving?
6 A. [Mr Irving] 1967. That would be 29 years later.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you show them the geschaften telegram of 2.56 a.m.?
8 A. [Mr Irving] This telegram?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I am not sure if I had it at the time I saw them, but
11their own recollections were very, very clear because they
12were burned into their memories.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you say to them, Mr Irving, look at this telegram, you
14cannot be telling the truth, whatever their names were,
15because this telegram is limited to Jewish shops and the
17 A. [Mr Irving] What they described to me was Hitler's anger on hearing
18that the synagogue in Munich was on fire, which news they
19brought to him. His response, "what on earth is going on,
20send for the police chief von Eberstein", the police chief
21arriving. He then said, "send for Himmler, send for
22Goebbels, let us get to the bottom of this". Then the
23orders were issued between 2 and 3 a.m.. This is their
24eyewitness account which they gave to me.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] The answer to my question is no, you did not show them the
26geschaften telegram?
1 A. [Mr Irving] That I do not know. This interview is, what 32 years
2ago? I do not know what documents I showed to them.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Nor did you show them, I take it, von Eberstein's telegram
4or message or whatever it was, of 2.10 a.m., saying in
5effect, "carry on, chaps"?
6 A. [Mr Irving] A message with Eberstein's typed signature on the bottom
7from police headquarters, where Eberstein was not, because
8at that moment he was at Hitler's flat.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] They had a telephone system in Munich in 1938, did they
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, but you have to take into account the factor of
12time. There is no such thing as instantaneous
13communication of ideas. They had to pick up the phone.
14They had to dial. They had to get through. They had to
15find the officer at the other end. Somebody had to take
16the message down, somebody had to type it on to the telex,
17they had to get open lines.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] All of that can be done in about five minutes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think so. I think we are talking about the 1930s
20when everything was done manually, including telephone
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Eberstein already had the text of Muller's telex of 5 to
2312 that night, did he not, and he just recites it.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. There is no question that at the time those igniting
25orders went out in consequence of Dr Goebbels' speech at
26the old town hall, the executive branch, if you can put it
1like that, thought they were acting in conformity with
2Hitler's wishes. At 2 a.m. they learned their mistake.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you show your eyewitnesses in 1967 or whenever it was
4the Eberstein telegram of 2.10 a.m.?
5 A. [Mr Irving] That would not be the way I would conduct an interview.
6I would go there and learn exactly what they knew without
7showing them documents.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did you not think it sensible to test a person's
9recollection, however amicably you do it, after more than
1020 years by reference to the contemporaneous
12 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Gray, if you read the transcripts of these interviews
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think you are getting confused between
15Rampton and me.
16 MR RAMPTON: You do me too much of an honour, Mr Irving, I am
18 A. [Mr Irving] I am sorry, Mr Rampton, I must remember Rampton.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not mind but I really would not think it was very
20nice for his Lordship.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Mr Rampton, you have read the transcripts of my interviews
22with these Adjutants of Hitler because they are verbatim,
23and you will see that we did not go there with a set
24agenda to talk about. I would go along there, we would
25have tea, we would sit for five hours and talk about
26everything they remembered.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Old Hitler faithfuls and you swallowed their tale, if
2I may put it like that, hook line and sinker, did you not,
3because you wanted to?
4 A. [Mr Irving] I swallow their tale?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
6 A. [Mr Irving] They were Hitler faithfuls?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did not take any trouble to test their evidence
8by reference to the contemporaneous documentation. That
9is the last time I am going to ask that question.
10 A. [Mr Irving] On the contrary, once I had conducted the interviews with
11these people, and I had a German secretary transcribe
12verbatim what they said, which transcripts you have had,
13I would then put that into the general dossier on that
14particular episode and I would weigh the interviews
15against the documents, which is precisely what I have done
16over the last 32 years for one book after another.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can I just intervene and ask this question?
18These diaries that Goebbels kept were for his own benefit,
19were they? They were not seen by others at the time?
20 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, in 1933 he published the first volumes of diaries
21which covered the years of struggle, shall we say, up to
22the seizure of power and he was recalled from the
23Kaiserhof to the Reichschancellery. In 1936 he sold
24rights in all his diaries in perpetuity to the Nazi
25publishing house for a large lump sum.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So he was contemplating publication?
1 A. [Mr Irving] They were very definitely written in contemplation of
2later publication. But that not necessarily mean to say
3that there were not also a lot of private materials in
4them which he did not intend to publish, particularly the
5handwritten diaries.
6 MR RAMPTON: Now I want to pass on to something else, also part
7of the aftermath. One of the consequences of this
8appalling business, Mr Irving, was that some people were
9brought before whatever the Nazi party court was called.
10Can you remember what it was called?
11 A. [Mr Irving] The Oberstes Parteigericht, the supreme public court.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Just so we can be clear, that is not part of the
13established orthodox German judicial system at all, was
15 A. [Mr Irving] No. It was a party court established under Walter Buch, B
16U C H, who was a sworn and dedicated personal enemy of
17Dr. Goebbels.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is as maybe.
19 A. [Mr Irving] It is not as maybe. You have to bear this in mind when
20you consider what the findings are which Buch signed.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] The fact is, it was not part of the established judicial
22machinery, was it?
23 A. [Mr Irving] No.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you cannot describe the people who bring people before
25the party court as the public prosecutors, can you?
26 A. [Mr Irving] No.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Would you turn to page 281 of your Goebbels book, please?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Just above the middle of the page there is a reference to
4Rudolf Hess. Do you see that?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] The long paragraph: "Hess confirmed that in his view
7Goebbels was alone to blame. He ordered the Gestapo and
8the party's courts to delve into the origins of the
9night's violence and turn the culprits over to the public
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] My first question about that is this. Would you agree
13that that was apt to suggest to the reader that anybody
14found guilty of arson, looting, damage, assault, rape,
15murder, or whatever, was going to be prosecuted by the
16State judicial machinery once the matter had been
18 A. [Mr Irving] I think that what happened, which is covered by the
19sentence, was that a number of people, both inside and
20outside the party, exceeded their orders, if I can put it
21like that, and went on little private rampages. I mention
22one case where somebody murdered an opponent because he
23was going to testify against him in a libel action.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not really an answer to Mr Rampton's
26 A. [Mr Irving] Would you repeat the question, emphasising the part----
1 MR RAMPTON: The question is this. Do you not agree that that
2sentence, not a long sentence, is apt to suggest to the
3reader that the matter was going to be investigated by the
4Gestapo and the party's courts to find out the origins of
5the night's violence and to turn the culprits, that is to
6say, those responsible for acts of violence of whatever
7kind against people or property, over to the public
8prosecutors so that they could be prosecuted according to
9the law?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I will not go beyond what that sentence actually says.
11What I intended it to mean to the reader I cannot recall
12now twelve years later, but it is footed in a very secure
13document of the day, December 1938.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are still not really addressing the
15question. If I read that, I think I would be inclined to
16think that these people were going to be prosecuted by the
17criminal system of the country.
18 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, there was a large number of prosecutions in the
19regular courts and people went to jail for what they had
20done that night.
21 MR RAMPTON: Do you know the figures, Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I can find them for you, yes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] 16 cases in the report of 13th February 1939. I am coming
24back to what actually these people were considering, which
25is an initial limitation, but we will look at that in a
1 A. [Mr Irving] If we look at the aftermath of this sentence, so to speak,
2there were public prosecutions in the regular criminal
3courts and people went to jail for what they did on the
4night of broken glass in Germany. If you are interested
5in figures I will obtain them for you.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will give you the figures in a moment.
7 A. [Mr Irving] I will provide my own figures, if you do not mind.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Wait for Mr Rampton's question. You may
9agree with it.
10 MR RAMPTON: It is entirely up to you what material you choose
11to put before the court. This is cross-examination,
12Mr Irving, not a speech by you. Mr Irving, can we look,
13please, and see what in fact was the directive which went
14out under Hess's authority? It is in 293 and 4 of Evans.
15It is dated 19th December 1938. It is translated. My
16Lord, it is at the bottom of 293 in paragraph
171. Professor Evans translates it as follows. The German
18is at the bottom of 294.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. This is the source of that particular sentence.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] I know it is. "The aim of the investigation by the Party
21Court is to establish which cases can and must be held
22responsible by the action itself and which cases arose out
23of personal and base motives. In the latter cases a
24referral to the state prosecution service will be
25unavoidable, indeed it will be just".
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] The only people who were going to be handed over to be
2prosecuted by the State criminal justice machinery were
3those who had acted out of base motives of their own.
4Anybody else, however grave their crime, would be let off?
5 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where do we find that in your book?
7 A. [Mr Irving] In this sentence. That document justifies the sentence
8I gave: "He ordered the Gestapo and the party's courts to
9delve into the origins of the night's violence and turn
10the culprits over to the public prosecutors." We have
11already seen in the previous pages that a lot of the
12violence was authorised by the head of state, so quite
13clearly those culprits are not going to be turned over.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Wait a minute, Mr Irving. I am afraid I have now gone
15spinning round in 360 degrees. A lot of the violence was
16authorised by the head of State?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. We have seen that. There is no question about that.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] In what sense?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Hitler has said pull the police back.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is authorizing the burning of
22 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord ----
23 MR RAMPTON: And the killing of Jews.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the answer to that question,
25Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving] It is authorizing what happened in the run up to the
1Reichskristallnacht. If you remember, it was not on the
2actual night of the broken glass once it got out of
3control. When Hitler heard that there were individual
4outbursts in Kassell and Magdeburg and other provinces, he
5said the police are not to intervene, they are to hold
6back, the public must be given a chance to express their
7outrage and so on. That is what I mean when I say that
8that kind of violence was certainly authorized by the head
9of State, and it was not appropriate to turn people like
10that that over to the law courts. But there were other
11people who then went and settled private scores and that
12is what has been winkled out by these party court
14 MR RAMPTON: Shall we just have a look at some figures? Page
15295 of Evans, Mr Irving. Paragraph 3, my Lord. Set out
16are what the people's court, or whatever they call
17themselves, set out above are what I take to be what they
18saw as their terms of reference. Perhaps I ought to read
19that as a preliminary:
20 "The Fuhrer's's Deputy", that is Hess, is it
21not, "shared the view of the Supreme Party Court that the
22excesses which had become known should in any case first
23be investigated by the party jurisdiction ... The view of
24the Supreme Party Court", this is in February 1939, "is
25that it must be fundamentally impossible for political
26offences which primarily touch on the party's interests,
1offences which ... are desired by the party as illegal
2measures," you notice that wording, do you not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] "desired by the party as illegal measures, are confirmed
5and condemned by state jurisdiction, without the party
6previously having the possibility of creating clarity
7about the events and contexts through its own courts, in
8order if necessary to ask the Fuhrer to quash the trial
9before the state courts at the right moment". This was
10just intended to be a complete whitewash, was it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Unfortunately, Professor Evans has, in his amiable way,
12translated only a fraction of the actual document which
13you will find under tab 2 of trial bundle L2, and you will
14find there that he lists there horrendous outrages
15conducted during the Reichskristallnacht at the end of
161938. I will translate very roughly to you, Mr Rampton:
17The Supreme Party court -- does your Lordship wish to look
18at the original German?
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I am listening to you. I am happy to
20follow you.
21 A. [Mr Irving] This is on page handwritten 3 of that document which
22Professor Evans has quoted from. At the end of November
231938 the Supreme Party court received from various gau
24courts, in other words the provincial party courts,
25information that in the conduct of the demonstrations on
269th November 1938, that is the Reichskristallnacht, in a
1considerable degree there had been plundering and killings
2of Jews which are already being investigated by the police
3and public prosecutors, and so on.
4 It then continues about how these various things
5are going to be investigated and it specifies particular
6episodes on the following day, crime committed by
7individual people who are named here, a whole series of
8them, then 16 specific episodes given just in that one
9party court file.
10 MR RAMPTON: I hear what you say. If we need it, we will have
11a translation made of the whole that report.
12 A. [Mr Irving] It does seem that Evans -- I mean, the dot dot dot he has
13put in there does conceal quite a lot.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No doubt with an eye to saving paper. We can have it
15translated if necessary. You can take it up with Professor
17 A. [Mr Irving] You keep saying I can take these things up with Professor
18Evans, but at present his Lordship only has your word and
19this document in front of him in translation.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I have got what you tell me is also
21there and, unless and until Professor Evans says that you
22are wrong about that, I will assume you are right.
23 MR RAMPTON: I cannot possibly take it up with you, Mr Irving.
24I do not have a translation. Paragraph 3 on page 295 of
25Evans, please?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where the Party Courts drew the line between actions which
2could be justified, and those which were judged to have
3been committed out of vile" -- I could say base , I
4suppose, could I not? -- "motives, becomes clear in the
5various judgments of the Party Courts. For instance, in
6the report of 13th February 1939, Goring was informed of
7the outcome of the investigations in 16 cases which the
8Supreme Party Court had undertaken. In only two of the 16
9cases, both involving the rape of Jewish women, had the
10Party Court transferred the perpetrators to ordinary
11criminal courts (and in these two cases the party judges
12were not motivated by concern for the victims, but simply
13by the fact that Nazi party members had committed 'racial
14defilement' or in other words compromised what the party
15regarded as their own racial purity). In all the other 14
16cases the Supreme Party Court asked Hitler to quash
17proceedings. These cases included the brutal murder of 21
18Jews, who had been shot dead, stabbed to death or drowned
19by Nazi party members. The worst punishment meted out to
20these murderers was an official warning and barring from
21any Nazi party office for a period of three years. The
22great majority of offenders received even milder
23'punishments', or none at all." Is that true or false,
24that account given by Professor Evans?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, Professor Evans has not given us the source of
26information for what happened to these people,
1unfortunately. He has just relied on this one report
2which deals with the investigation of these cases, but he
3has not told us what he relies on for the outcome of the
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] 14 out of 16, the two transferred to be prosecuted in the
6normal way being rapists?
7 A. [Mr Irving] You heard me say earlier that there were substantially
8more cases than just the 16, and I will certainly be
9presenting to the court the evidence of the other cases.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us stick with the 16. You are being
11asked, do you quarrel with this?
12 MR RAMPTON: You have only two out of 16. You have 14 that get
13let off despite being murderers.
14 A. [Mr Irving] We do not know what his evidence is for that.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is in the report. He says ibid, which is his footnote
16for 130, which means the same report, the report to
18 A. [Mr Irving] In cases 3 to 16 the Supreme Party Court requests that the
19Fuhrer halt the proceedings in the regular criminal court,
20so it does look as though those 16 were not further
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Two of them were, apparently.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] So they get off just because they are jolly party members
25acting in accordance with the wish of the Fuhrer and
26murdering Jews?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] How does that chime with what you wrote in Goebbels?
3"Hess ordered the Gestapo and the party's courts to delve
4into the origins of the night's violence and turn the
5culprits over to the public prosecutors"?
6 A. [Mr Irving] He did. That is the document of December 1938.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: On the contrary, Mr Irving ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] No, my Lord ----
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 14 of them never went to the criminal courts.
10 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, the sentence, he ordered the Gestapo and the
11party's courts to delve into the origins and so on, Hess
12ordered and so on, to delve into the origins of the
13night's violence and turn the culprits over to the public
14prosecutors, they did then enquire and delve, and
15subsequently in February 1939 there is this later report
16of what the outcome was.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: They just got a ticking off for raping and
19 A. [Mr Irving] This is absolutely right, my Lord, but there were then
20very many other cases to which this document makes no
21reference where prosecutions were carried out, and I shall
22bring that evidence forward.
23 MR RAMPTON: You make no reference in your book to this
24absolutely scandalous manipulation of the justice system,
25do you?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I think I make any amount of reference in the Goebbels
1biography to the manipulation of the justice system by the
2Nazis. There is any amount of evidence of the way that
3they twisted the system in order to prosecute Catholic
4priests and so on. The whole way through the book I have
5shown the cynical manipulation of the German justice
6system but there is a limit to how much you can keep on
7packing into a book without making it 2,000 pages long or
8filled with the 8 pages of sludge that I referred to
9earlier. You have to halt the story at some point and
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] To avoid misrepresentation, which I suggest this is an
12absolutely scandalous example, it is much better to leave
13it out. If you cannot find enough space to put in the
14truth, leave it out.
15 A. [Mr Irving] You are not suggesting the sentence that I wrote there is
16not the truth? It is absolutely true.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course I am.
18 A. [Mr Irving] They ordered an investigation but at some point, we are
19dealing here with December 1938, you then draw the line.
20You have mentioned how many people have been thrown into
21concentration camps, you have mentioned the murders, you
22have mentioned the huge amount of looting and destruction
23that went on, and now I am being criticised because I have
24not referred to 16 specific cases where the Nazis acted in
25a perverse way when it was not Goebbels who was acting in
26a perverse way, it is the rest of the Nazi system that is
1operating in a perverse way.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew perfectly well when you wrote this that it was
3the intention of the Nazi Party that all but a tiny
4minority of those guilty of everything from murder
5downwards should get off. You never said it?
6 A. [Mr Irving] First of all, there is no evidence of any such intention
7and I am not writing a book about the Nazi justice
8system. If I was to write a book about the Nazi justice
9system, I would have gone in far greater detail into this
10kind of evidence. I am writing a biography of the man,
11Dr Josef Goebbels, who triggered this outrage, and there
12comes a point where you draw a line and say, "That is as
13far as one is going down that particular story because we
14now have other things to relate". Elsewhere in the book
15I have given any amount of evidence of specific
16distortions of the German justice system with which he was
17personally involved, for example, the prosecution of the
18German priests and the prosecution of Pastor Niemoeller,
19and so on.
20 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I want to turn now, if I may, to Dresden.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, so we can put away Evans, can we not?
22 MR RAMPTON: He can be put by way, as it were. There are one
23or two places where the full text of a document is quoted
24in evidence which we may need to look at, but I would
25recommend using what I call the Heather Rogers' Guide to
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have got it.
2 MR RAMPTON: No, it is coming.
3 A. [Mr Irving] But, I will, in fact, be in a position to call the
4evidence of the other convictions that resulted from the
5Kristallnacht ----
6 MR RAMPTON: By all means do.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, do.
8 A. [Mr Irving] --- if you attach importance to it.
9 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, neither your Lordship nor Mr Irving has
10seen this document. I would like to use it because, as
11far as I am concerned, it is both comprehensive and
12accurate. When I say that it contains a comprehensive
13catalogue in date order of all the material to which
14I want to refer.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I think I will do with it is put it in
16your summary of place, is that a good idea?
17 MR RAMPTON: Yes, that is a good idea, in the Dresden section.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you producing a file on Dresden?
19 MR RAMPTON: There is a file on Dresden. Sorry, my Lord, about
20this conversation. It is meant to be helpful.
21 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I also provided your Lordship with a small clip
22of documents.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: We might put it in the same file, I suspect.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is why I was mentioning that.
25 MR RAMPTON: I have here two sets of documents, one of which
26one might call the David Irving original research file, or
1clip, the other is some of what Mr Irving has said on this
2question. I am trying to not refer to those if I possibly
3can because I want to use this schedule here. My Lord,
4there is an empty file on the bench, I think, if those
5could go in as tabs 2 and 3?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think I have this empty file. Has
7it got anything on the back of it?
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: L1, yes. This is going to become Dresden, is
11 MR RAMPTON: Well, the first part is history. That is not what
12I meant. The first part is Hitler/Horthy which is a very
13slim clip of, I think, two pages or something, and the
14next two tabs can be Dresden.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to ask if somebody can put this
16into tab 2 because they have been individually hole
17punched so that it is half an hour's work.
18 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Before I start on this topic, my Lord,
19I think I need to know from Mr Irving through your
20Lordship whether he has any objection (and he has not seen
21it before) to using this tabular schedule that I have just
22handed in.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it contain anything that is not in the
24other documents?
25 MR RAMPTON: It is all taken from the documents.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are you happy with that, Mr Irving?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, with reservations, yes. I think it contains
2prejudicial material which does not -- but it depends how
3he presents it
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us work off it anyway, shall we?
5 MR RAMPTON: Let us start off anyway. My Lord, I start on page
63. I should preface that by saying on page 1 your
7Lordship will see as the first four items listed four
8authentic German, that is to say Nazi German, wartime
9documents dealing with the numbers of dead as a result of
10allied bombing at Dresden in February 1945. As your
11Lordship will see, there is no dispute about the
12authenticity of any of those four documents. That is
13right, is it not, Mr Irving?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I do not have them in front of me yet.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] You know what they are, 15th March 1945, final report?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] 22nd March 1945, situation report 1404; the real
18Tagesbefehl 47 of 22nd March 1945, not the fake, and the
19situation report 1414 of the Chief of Police of 3rd April
201945. You are well familiar with all those documents, are
21you not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure about No. 3 and 4 until I actually see them. Do
23they come from my discovery?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] As far as I know. I think perhaps the last one comes from
25Bergander, but I am not sure. There is no doubt that the
26real Tagesbefehl was obtained, I think was sent to you by
1Bergander, but I am not sure, in 1977. Have you seen the
2real Tagesbefehl -- the non-faked one?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am afraid my bundle is not assisting me here.
4Where do I find these four documents in the bundle?
5I have got 15th March one.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know that I can tell you that.
7 A. [Mr Irving] I have 22nd March one.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because for one thing I can hardly read it. There is a
9document on page 7, for example, which might be anything.
10There is a document of 22nd March at page 8.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, those two I am familiar with.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. That goes on and on.
13 A. [Mr Irving] That goes on and on. I am lacking the next 22nd March one
14which you say is Tagesbefehl 47.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know if there is a next 22nd March one. I
16really cannot help. But these documents all, I think --
17we think that these documents came from your discovery,
18such as we have. But you know what I mean by the real
19Tagesbefehl 47, do you not?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not. The only one that I am familiar with is
21the one turns out to have been faked by the German
22Propaganda Ministry.
23 MR RAMPTON: I see.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the original? I mean the genuine
25one? It does not look as if it is in the bundle.
26 MR RAMPTON: No, it does not, I agree. I do not know
1actually. It is referred to in a book by somebody called
2Bergander in 1977.
3 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think there is a genuine one, document No. 47.
4The only one I have seen was a fake which was produced by
5the Goebbels Propaganda Ministry for propaganda purposes.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes, which had an extra 0 added to all its
7figures, did it not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] It multiplied everything by an order of magnitude, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you turn to page 11, my Lord, of the table, it says,
10basing herself on Professor Evans, Miss Rogers writes
11this: "1977, the real TB 47 comes to light. It is
12discovered by Bergander who found a reservist Ehrlich who
13had a copy cited at page 261 of Bergander, etc. Evans
14describes Bergander as the most authoritative work", and
15so on and so forth. I dare say if you have not read
16Bergander, Mr Irving (and I know you do not read other
17people's books) you will not be conscious of ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] Well, Gutz Bergander was a very good friend of mine -- he
19still is a very good friend of mine.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you read this 1977 book of his?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I have not, no.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then the answer to my question was, "You are quite right,
23I do not read even my friend's books and so I am not
24familiar with this document". Is that right?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I gave him a great deal of assistance when he was
26writing his book, but I had no reason to read his book
1because I was no longer writing about Dresden.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whether or not he has found the real one, and I expect you
3to accept that he has ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] That is the first I have heard of it actually at this
5moment there is supposed to have been a real one.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. But the interesting thing about the real one, as you
7will see in a moment, is that its numbers coincide more or
8less ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we have not been shown it. I cannot comment on
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 67, tab 2.
12 A. [Mr Irving] It was in his book, right. Is this from a printed book?
13 MR RAMPTON: No, this is from Bergander.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So we have not got it?
15 MR RAMPTON: We have not got the document, no.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Are you referring to the handwritten page 67 or typed?
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Handwritten. That looks like Bergander.
18 MR RAMPTON: It does.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot see any reference to the Tagesbefehl. It is
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 235. I am probably wrong, but there is
22a reference to "befehl" there. No, I think it is a
23different "befehl".
24 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I can tell your Lordship this, that on
25page 553, 552 and 53, Professor Evans reports the
26discovery of the real TB 47 by Bergander through Ehrlich
1and at paragraph 2 on page 553 he says this: "In this
2new, authentic Ehrlich copy the death figure was put at
320,204, the expected dead at 25,000 and the number
4cremated at 6,865", which are exactly the same figures as
5in the fake or forged TB 47 except for the missing 0 at
6the end.
7 A. [Mr Irving] In fact, I calculated that myself when I rewrote the
8Dresden book three or four years ago. I spotted the fact
9that somebody had clearly juggled the figures, but this is
10literally the first I ever heard of the existence of a
11real Tagesbefehl.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] And the reference given for that is Bergander at page
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the reason I mention that this is the first I
15have heard of it is I see that here Professor Evans in his
16infinite wisdom is saying, "despite having been finally
17forced to disown", what by? I never knew there was a real
18one. I have always recognized the other one was fake.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have not always recognized it, Mr Irving. We are
20coming back to that.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Well, ever since -- the last 20 or 30 years I recognized
22it was fake because the figures were so totally inflated.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] All I am asking you to accept -- you can look at it in
24Bergander, it is on page 77 of tab 2 of the file.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is right.
26 MR RAMPTON: All I am asking you to accept, because it does
1save such a lot of time -- there is no trap in it -- is
2that the real Bergander (sic) was found and that, as one
3would expect, its figures are short by a 0.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You said the real Bergander, you mean the
5real Tagesbefehl?
6 MR RAMPTON: I mean the real Tagesbefehl, sorry, yes.
7 A. [Mr Irving] I shall get on the phone to Mr Bergander tonight and ask
8him if he knows about this.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, it is in his book at page 261.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I shall conceal the fact I did not read his book.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You can tell him that you were forced to read it in court
12if you want?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You can tell him you were forced to read it in court.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Well, we cannot read it in court because you have not got
16it. You have only got his book. We have got his ----
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] As I say, his book?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, the book, yes, but I would have liked to have seen the
19document itself which he says he has.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, so would I. I wonder where it is?
21 MR RAMPTON: I do not know. Perhaps Mr Bergander has it. I do
22not know.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps I can get him to fax to me.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] But it really does not matter.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it does because -- well, I am not going to
26presuppose what you were going to say.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am only asking you to accept that the figures for deaths
2and expected deaths in the real version are 20,000 and
325,000, respectively?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. That closely tallies with the Police Chief's report
5of that date.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Exactly.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is all I was driving at.
9 A. [Mr Irving] And I reached this deduction independently of all this
10about five years ago when I rewrote my Dresden book.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is as may be. In fact, document -- I will just read
12out the figures and then we can get on -- the final report
13of 15th March 1945 which I think you have got, or have
15 A. [Mr Irving] You call it the final report?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is called the final report of the Dresden Police sent
17to you on 27th May 1966 ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I am bit unhappy -- oh, it is called
19"Flusmeldung", right?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know.
21 A. [Mr Irving] 15th March.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which should be pages 17 of tab 2 in this file.
23 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct, yes. It is the final report on the four
24air raids.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, good. The figures given in that document, I am told
26by Professor Evans (but you dispute it, if you wish) are
118,735 dead, 212 badly wounded and quite a lot more people
2slighted wounded, is that right? It is no good --
3I cannot read it, so...
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, of course, the Police Chief actually does not spell
5it out quite like that. He says, "18,000 bodies so far
6found", I believe, which is a subtle difference.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sure, and we will come to that along down the road, I am
8sure, Mr Irving. The situation report 1404 of 22nd March
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Situation report gives figures of, I think, and it may be
12there is a misprint because it is odd that it is 18,375
13and not 735. Maybe they have been adjusted. 25,000 total
14expected and 35,000 missing, is that right?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The interesting thing was that the one document was
16supplied to me in 1966 by the Soviet Authorities and
17simultaneously in the same mail I received the other
18document from the West German Authorities. They had found
19it in the German Finance Ministry files.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Middle to end of May 1966, is that right?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, this is three years after I published my book.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I want to go back, if I may, because again I am not
23interested for this purpose -- I know you will get angry
24about it, but I am not -- I am not interested in what
25actually happened at Dresden or in the total numbers,
26though that, as it has in other areas of the case, may
1emerge ----
2 A. [Mr Irving] I remember you said, "So what?"
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, because that is not what this case is about,
4Mr Irving. You accuse people too readily of a kind of
5callousness, I do believe. We are investigating your bona
6fides as an historian and nothing more than that.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Well, you were the one who said, "So what?" ----
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, because the reference to Dresden was irrelevant ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] --- about the way we killed 100,000 people in one night.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- to your reference to Auschwitz. Now, just keep our
11eye on the ball, if we may. Would you turn to page 3 of
12this tabular document, please? Is it right that in
13November 1964 you were in Dresden and you visited somebody
14called Hahn, is that right?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Walter Hahn.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Is it right that when you were in the sitting room
17Hahn and a man called Walter Lange, who is the director of
18the Dresden City Archive, began to discuss the
19implications of the 200,000 figure, yes?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if you have a source for that, yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have your own words.
22 A. [Mr Irving] A diary or?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 517 of Evans. When you came back from this visit,
24you wrote a long memorandum, did you not? It is in the
26 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is difficult to read because it is a photograph of a
2negative or whatever.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I would much prefer to read it from Evans' text. "'Lange
5had not realized that it gave this figure'", that is the
6so-call TB 47, "'and I at once realised why Hahn had
7seemed reluctant it show it to me (in fact he had had that
8probably since 1950 or so, yet he had not shown it to me
9on any of my previous visits in 1962 and 1963)'". Then
10comes this: "'As soon as Lange began to expostulate on
11this document being a patent forgery, Hahn became very
12worried'". What sort of man is or was Lange, Mr Irving?
13 A. [Mr Irving] He was a short, bald headed gentleman with a prominent
14Communist Party badge in his lapel.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] What sort of a man is or was Professor Seydewitz?
16 A. [Mr Irving] He was the former Mayor of Dresden and, obviously, a
17Communist Party official.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Both of those, I think I am right, cast doubt on, if not
19the authenticity of the document, certainly the
20reliability of the figure, did they not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I am not sure that Walter Lange did, but Max Seydewitz had
22published his own book on air raids on Dresden -- a very
23good book -- and he produced different figures.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew from the beginning -- for you this is the
25beginning -- that there was grave doubt about the figures
26given in this document?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] That the figure for dead was 202,000 plus and the figure
3for expected death, again a forgery, was 250,000, was it
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew from this time and said you thought the document
7was genuine, but that the 200,000 figure might be suspect?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said that on a number of occasions. If we turn over
10to page 4 of the table, you said it to ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] Of the table?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- to Mr McLachlan, the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph:
13"It remains to be established whether" -- this is the
14second box, 26th November '64 -- "the 200,000 number it
15contains is equally genuine and if not why not".
16 A. [Mr Irving] Well, yes, that sentence is quoted.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] And on 28th of November 1964 you wrote to a Herr Struss,
18Deiter Struss, I think his name was?
19 A. [Mr Irving] My German publisher.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, my German publisher.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, your German publisher, referring to the death figure
23of 202,040 people. You said: "This information is
24naturally sensational and because it comes from the then
25Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Dr Max Funfack, there is no
26doubt about the authenticity of the document." Now, did
1you in that letter to Herr Struss express any doubt about
2the figure?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Without seeing these two letters, it is difficult to
4see ----
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I quite share that, if I may say so.
6 A. [Mr Irving] --- exactly what the context these sentences are taken out
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 37 of tab 2. It is probably written in German,
9I should think, since it is from you to a German
10gentleman. It is page 37 and 8. It is a letter from you
11to Herr Dr Struss. Can I ask you to read it to yourself?
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is the relevant bit, Mr Rampton, do you
14 MR RAMPTON: It is right in the first paragraph, my Lord.
15 A. [Mr Irving] They do not seem to be irreconcilable. In the previous
16letter on page 36, I say, "Having now examined the
17document minutely myself, I am satisfied of its
18authenticity. It remains to be established whether the
19200,000 number it contains is equally genuine and if not
20why not".
21 MR RAMPTON: That is what you said on 26th November ----
22 A. [Mr Irving] And two days later I then write to Dr Struss.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Tell us whether in that letter -- my only question
24this, I do not know, I have not read the whole letter --
25you raise a doubt about the reliability of the number in
26the same way as you had two days earlier to the Editor of
1whatever the paper was, The Telegraph.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is exactly the same. "This information is naturally
3sensational and coming as it does from the Deputy Local
4Chief Doctor, Dr Max Funfack, there could be no doubt as
5to the authenticity of the document".
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Fair enough. I quite agree. What I asked was whether in
7this document Dr Struss, your German publisher, you raise
8any doubts about the reliability of the figures which is
9the key to this argument, Mr Irving. You need to read the
10whole of it.
11 A. [Mr Irving] "I have just returned from a visit to Dresden and I have
12received from confidential sources the Police report of
13the Police Chief in Dresden on the four air raids". This
14is the Tagesbefehl 47, of course, not the final report.
15"This document gives the death roll known as of that date
16as 202,040. This information is naturally sensational and
17coming as it does from the Deputy Local Chief Doctor,
18Dr Max Funfack, there can be no doubt as to the
19authenticity of the document. This document has been
20mentioned in Eastern Germany, in other words, Communist
21Eastern Germany, but only with the comment that it is a
22Nazi propaganda lie, and extracts have been published from
23it. I accept this judgment on page 245 of our book".
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which judgment is that?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Of the propaganda lie, presumably. Without checking the
26book, I cannot tell.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, now ----
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: "Urteil" means "judgment", does it?
3 A. [Mr Irving] "Urteil" is "judgment", yes, or "verdict".
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you just read the next rather long convoluted
6 A. [Mr Irving] "As I have now seen the complete document with my own
7eyes, I do not doubt that it is genuine, and should there
8be a second edition of my Dresden book, this information
9should certainly be incorporated, possibly as an appendix,
10perhaps mentioned instead on pages 295 to 296 of the
11present appendix on these pages".
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Including the number of dead? You do not say that, but
13that is what you mean, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Well, reproducing the document and I believe I am right in
15saying that is what we actually did. We reproduced the
16document in toto as an appendix which is what one would do
17with a document that one wants to present to readers
18without necessarily forming a judgment on it.
19 MR RAMPTON: You say that, Mr Irving. You see, what I am I am
20wondering is how it came about, as I shall shortly,
21I hope, show.
22 A. [Mr Irving] I have to introduce the caveat, of course, you are asking
23me about things that lie 36 years back.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course. This is why contemporaneous documents are so
25valuable, Mr Irving.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed, and if you ask for my recollection of things, like
1what I said at a meeting with a man in his front room...
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will show you the documents.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, it is better that we refer to the documents.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Why it was, Mr Irving, that with such rapidity between
526th November and onwards, from 26th November onwards,
6your lingering doubts, if indeed you had any, about the
7reliability of the numbers seems to have evaporated?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I do not think I have referred in this letter --
9I may be mistaken -- to saying, I do not think I have said
10that the figure is genuine. I have said the document
11appears to be genuine, but I have doubts, as I make quite
12plain in the letter two days earlier to McLachlan, who is
13an intelligence chief himself, about the actual figure.
14So, clearly, one has to carry out further investigations.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us see what you said, roughly speaking, a week
16later ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] If I can just continue? Of course, clearly, it would have
18been improper for me to suppress the document in any way.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am not suggesting you should have done, not for a
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] It might have been an interesting document. It turned out
23to be ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] It turned out 20 or 30 years later to be totally fake, and
25interesting in as much as it was issued by the Goebbels
26propaganda ministry.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Actually about 10 years later but that does not matter.
2 A. [Mr Irving] As far as I am concerned, it was 20 or 30 years later.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us see how your attitude to this document, which
4I quite accept you did not know at the time was a fake,
5though you had expressed considerable doubts about the
6reliability of the figures up until now. 6th December
71964, you wrote to the Provost of Coventry. The only
8mistake in Miss Rogers' document is that she describes the
9Provost of Coventry as Mr Cunningham. That is, in fact,
10Mr Irving's telephone number, telephone exchange?
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: She is too young to have remembered that.
12 MR RAMPTON: It was Cunningham 8426 for anybody that is
13interested. It was late at night, I know that. That is
14on page 40 of this document. This, I think ----
15 A. [Mr Irving] Can we look previously on December 1st, the letter where
16I am writing to the German Federal archives trying to make
17attempts to find out more about the people concerned and
18the authenticity of the document?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Again I have no translation of this which is why I have
20not referred to it. If it is important, please tell us
21what it says.
22 A. [Mr Irving] "Dear Colonel Teska, during a recent visit to Dresden, I
23have received from an erstwhile officer in Dresden who
24during the war was the Local Chief Medic in Dresden,
25Dr Max Funfack a copy of the attached document. As you
26can see, it is supposed to be an order of the day issued
1by the Dresden Police Chief in which for the first time
2the number of air raid dead is provisionally estimated at
3202,040. Obviously, it is important for me to establish
4how genuine this document is, and I am trying to locate
5the officers who signed this document, Colonel Grosse",
6G-R-O-S-S-E, and so on. I have written to the German
7Federal Government, the archivist trying to track down the
8authenticity of the document.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is very proper, if I may say so, a very proper
10proceeding, Mr Irving. Before you barge into the public
11arena waving the document and saying how wicked the Allies
12were, it is best to be sure that the document is genuine
13and the figure is reliable, do you not agree?
14 A. [Mr Irving] I consider this to be wicked, burning thousands of bodies
15at a time in a public funeral. You may say: "So what?",
16but you are saying about how wicked the Allies are. It is
17a war crime and there is no way round it.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us clear the air. Nobody on this side of the court is
19supposing that it is a jolly good thing that, let us say,
2025,000 or 35,000 innocent German civilians were roasted to
21death in Dresden in 1945.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Roasted to death?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are concerned about your gigantic appetite for
24distorting and exaggerating; that is all I am concerned
25with. I think it was your correspondent -- I cannot
26remember his name now -- a German gentleman who drew your
1attention to the fact that it was probably only 35,000?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Only 35,000 people burned alive in one night by the
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, and he said ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] A charming term of phrase, only 35,000.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] As opposed to the huge figures you were punting about and
7he said, with which nobody would disagree, that is bad
8enough, that is two divisions.
9 A. [Mr Irving] At least he did not say: "So what?"
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, Mr Irving, I think you are being unfair
11when you pick on that phrase when it was used in context
12and Mr Rampton was not belittling the tragedy of the
13bombing. So you have made your point. I do not think it
14is a fair one, but let us move on.
15 MR RAMPTON: Do you not think it even worst or even more of an
16offence to those people who died in Germany and
17Dresden ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] I think his Lordship has said that we should move on.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- To exaggerate the numbers of the dead for your own
20base-political purposes, do you not think that would be
21worse, Mr Irving?
22 A. [Mr Irving] I think his Lordship said we should move on.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a different point, but, anyway,
24I think it is comment.
25 MR RAMPTON: Is there anything else in this letter from you to
26Colonel Teska on 1st December 1964 to which you want to
1draw attention?
2 A. [Mr Irving] No.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us see what you said five days letter in a letter to
4the Provost of Coventry. Was Coventry holding some kind
5of memorial exhibition or what?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Coventry is a twinned city with Dresden and I was
7collaborating with the Coventry Cathedral authorities in
8their celebrations.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Coventry was quite badly bombed in the war, too, but not
10as badly as Dresden.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I believe 300 people were killed, were they not?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not as bad as Dresden. Mr Irving, please keep your eye on
13the ball.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Actually, Mr Rampton, if I may say so, that
15may have been slightly your fault.
16 MR RAMPTON: But there is no doubt one reason for what you call
17the Dresden/Coventry link, is there not?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] They are both victims of bombing during the war?
20 A. [Mr Irving] Both cities were used for propaganda purposes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] What?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Both bombing raids were used for propaganda purposes.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no doubt, war is a terrible thing. "I am now
24enclosing", this is dated 6th December 1964, "I am now
25enclosing a large number of photographs of the destruction
26caused in Dresden by the Allied bombing. Some of them
1should be suitable for the exhibition we had in mind to
2raise funds for the Dresden/Coventry link. I have
3enclosed several duplicates of some of the best for a
4particular purpose. I suggest that when your exhibition
5opens you might circulate these both to the local and
6national newspapers as free publicity material which they
7can print if they like".
8 "To drive home the impact of the exhibition,
9I also suggest that you have the text of the Police
10President's report on the Dresden raid attached, printed
11in large type. I think that it is nonchalance and the
12casualties" (please note those words) "it mentions have a
13shattering impact. Please also feel free to quote any
14excerpts you wish from my book or, for example, from the
15feelings expressed by RAF airmen, without acknowledgment
16if you wish. The Police President's report is really
17something sensational. I brought it back from Dresden two
18weeks ago and I have been trying to establish its
19authenticity through Ministry of Defence channels".
20 A. [Mr Irving] Also, in addition to the German archives.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. Now this: (Underlined) "I am myself in no doubt as
22to the authenticity of the document."
23 A. [Mr Irving] Can I point out that I have not underlined that document
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is not your underlining?
26 A. [Mr Irving] It is certainly not typed in; nor have I done that line
1down the left-hand margin.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I had assumed you had not.
3 MR RAMPTON: I did not take the line down the side to be
4yours. I am not accepting that it is not possible when
5you have typed a letter and looked at it and thought that
6is an important passage, I will underline that in ink, but
7that is not what you did.
8 "In view of having obtained it indirectly from
9the Dresden Deputy Chief Medical Officer responsible for
10the disposing of the victims still lives in Dresden. It
11was circulated to him officially in March 1945. Please
12note that I am leaving", so on and so forth, "at the end
13of December for three and a half months".
14 Mr Irving, you will agree, I hope, that you are
15urging the Provost of Coventry to put into his exhibition,
16with as much effect as he can achieve, a document which
17shows casualties of 202,040 people?
18 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] And yet, Mr Irving, you still were not certain, or should
20not still have been certain, that those figures were
22 A. [Mr Irving] I said quite clearly here that I am satisfied as to the
23authenticity of the document, and we now know that the
24document is accurate, except for the figures.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, in your earlier correspondence ----
26 A. [Mr Irving] The document also mentions enormous damage to buildings
1which, if you have been to Dresden you will know precisely
2which buildings we British were responsible for destroying
3that day ----
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] What has that got to do with casualties?
5 A. [Mr Irving] I heard laughter in court and I thought I should make
6plain that this document did not ----
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Because your answer was absurd, no doubt, Mr Irving. You
8have just been telling us that, we have been through it,
9how you had lingering and then disappeared doubts about
10the authenticity of the document ----
11 A. [Mr Irving] Of the figure.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You were satisfied of the authenticity of the document,
13but had doubts about the reliability of the figure?
14 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Those doubts about the reliability of the figures have now
16disappeared. Why?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I have told him that I am in no doubt at all as to the
18reliability of the document, The authenticity of the
19document because of where it came from.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are asking the Provost of the Cathedral of Coventry to
21plaster these figures, the casualties it mentions which
22have a shattering affect, impact all over his exhibition.
23Why, if you do not believe that the figures are reliable?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Are you suggesting that at this time I had any reason to
25doubt that the figures were inaccurate?
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have said so a dozen times.
1 A. [Mr Irving] I said I am investigating the figures and I am going to
2great lengths at this time, through the various archives
3and governments, to find out what I can about the people
4who signed the document.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have known from the beginning that the figures were
6suspicious, have you not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Suspicion inasmuch as I have not seen them substantiated
8by other documents, for example, on the Eastern Front, we
9have seen some of the major figures of the killings of the
10Jews substantiated by the lower-level documents on which
11those totals are based, and I would have liked to have
12seen similar documents reflecting these totals, as indeed
13subsequently turned up in 1966 when the West German
14Government and the East German Government simultaneously
15provided me with corroborating documents for their
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] A month before this document was sent to the gullible
18Provost of Coventry Cathedral, you wrote a long memorandum
19which had as part of its introduction (my Lord, it is page
2027 of tab 2), in paragraph 4, you wrote this, Mr Irving --
21Has your Lordship got it?
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I think.
23 MR RAMPTON: Obviously, it is of some importance to determine,
24one, whether the document is genuine, i.e. was really
25written by the person claiming to have signed it and on
26the date specified; and two, if the document is genuine,
1whether the 202,040 figure is itself an accurate and true
2detail or whether it was deliberately falsified at this
3time. By the time you write to the Provost of Coventry on
46th December 1964, that last enquiry, that last doubt,
5equivocation seems to have disappeared, am I right?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Have I specifically said to the Provost of Coventry there
7is no doubt that these figures are accurate?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but, Mr Irving, bear with me; you could hardly invite
9the Provost of Coventry to include, with maximum impact,
10in his exhibition these figures, if you did not think that
11they were reliable -- if you were an honest man, I mean?
12 A. [Mr Irving] But you are familiar with the fact that the document does
13not just refer to death or casualties; it refers to the
14entire damage which was inflicted on that city.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] "Casualties", Mr Irving, is your word, the casualties, it
16mentions, have a shattering impact. Of course they will
17do if they are authentic and reliable. But, Mr Irving,
18what if they are not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Are you suggesting that the people of Coventry would have
20been any less dismayed or shocked if the figure had been
2135,000? I do not think so.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are saying in your letter to the Provost,
23you are saying this figure of 200,000 plus is going to
24have a shattering impact. That is the very point you are
25making, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Well, my Lord, we have not been shown the order of the day
1No. 47 which in everything that it contains, part of which
2is the death roll, is the document, and the nonchalance of
3the document to which I am referring saying this is going
4to have a shattering impact on people who visit your
5exhibition, and I have no reason at this time to doubt the
6overall authenticity of the document, although I was
7making enquiries to investigate that actual figure because
8I obviously wanted to make very much more of the figure
9when the time comes. But before I went ahead, I wanted
10to know who had signed the document could I speak to him,
11for example. This is 1964 and there was every chance that
12the man who signed the document, Colonel Groesse, was
13still alive. In fact, I eventually tracked down his
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes, Mr Irving. Could we now turn ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] And if I can also refer to that memorandum you were
17dealing with on page 27. In paragraph 3 I gave reasons
18why the figure did not seem outlandish. I looked at the
19death rolls in Hiroshima and the other major air-raid
20disasters of World War II, so there was less reason than
21might now seem apparent, to question the final
22authenticity of the figure. But you did not read out that
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am reading it now.
25 A. [Mr Irving] It is probably also appropriate here to mention that the
26figure of 200,000 by no means orphaned very many people
1referred to that death roll for Dresden, including members
2of Hitler's private staff, including Hermann Goring's
3personal Liaison Officer Budenschatz who visited Dresden
4and came back and spoke of that figure.
5 MR RAMPTON: It was a jolly good propaganda figure, was it not?
6 A. [Mr Irving] They used it for propaganda, yes.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course they did, and it was totally false, was it not?
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is easy to say in retrospect that that document is
9fake. But I am looking at this in 1964. The document has
10been given to me by Dresden's Deputy Chief Medical
11Officer. The document itself is authentic as we now know,
12but this figure has been inserted for propaganda reasons.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What I am not really clear about is when you
14first saw this document, whether your reaction was that
15the figure does look amazing high; I really am rather
16suspicious about it?
17 A. [Mr Irving] My reaction on seeing a figure as high as that was to say,
18if true, this is sensational. Clearly one has to carry
19out proper enquiries which I then began with the archives
20and trying to track down the people who signed the
21document and through whose hands it passed in 1945. In
22the meantime, I began making cautious use of it on the
23assumption it was genuine, for example showing it to the
24Provost of Coventry, mentioning it to newspaper editors,
25contacting my publishers, saying we may have to put this
26in as an appendix and so on. One does not know how long
1it is going to take to make the enquiries. The German
2archives might have responded a week later and said yes,
3Colonel Grosser is now living in Cologne at such and such
4an address.
5 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Well now, it was not exactly moderate or reserved and in
6accordance with the need to make careful enquiries to
7place these figures before the public in Coventry, and no
8doubt for other parts of this country and abroad, so that
9they shall have a shattering impact, was it, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I did not hear the adjective. It was not what?
11 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] It was not in accordance with what one might call the need
12to make careful enquiries, and to take stock of this
13figure, to place it with shattering impact before the
14public in Coventry the rest of this country and perhaps
15other parts of Europe?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I think it was a proper usage of that telegram for the
17purposes of the charitable fund raising of the Coventry
18Cathedral, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Tell a lie if it raises money, is that it?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think I said that. It would have been a lie
21if -- if I had known that the figure was untrue then it
22would have been a lie.
23 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] You had no idea whether it was untrue or not, back in 1963
24you told your publisher Mr Kimber that you thought it was
25probably a piece of Nazi propaganda, did you not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I did not have it in 1963.
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Now I want to turn a year on to early 1965.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Do you wish to dwell on that statement? Do you want to
3find the actual reference?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that is right.
5 MR RAMPTON: It is right.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is?
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Can we look at the actual reference.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 39.
10 MR RAMPTON: No, it is page 2 of the table.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Page 2 of?
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] April 1963, it is in the Kimber edition of the Destruction
13of Dresden. What is written here is: "In the 1963 Kimber
14edition", second box, my Lord, "edition of Destruction of
15Dresden" ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] Can I halt you there and point out that at this time I did
17not have this document. So we cannot possibly be
18referring to this document.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let me read on, will you, Mr Irving?
20 A. [Mr Irving] I know the reasons why you want to read this out, because
21you want to confuse the court and confuse members in the
22public gallery.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I do not at all.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a bit confusing to me. Can we
25understand the sequence?
26 MR RAMPTON: This is before he has been supplied with a copy of
1a copy, as a matter of fact, was it not, Mr Irving? It
2was not an original copy?
3 A. [Mr Irving] It was the fourth or fifth carbon copy, yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] But it was typed out by Frau Grosse?
5 A. [Mr Irving] If we are going to look at a letter as prejudicial as this
6I think we should see the entire letter and not just the
7sentences that Miss Rogers has picked out. Your Lordship
8will remember that at this time, I said in my opening
9speech at this time Mr Kimber was knee deep in the
10Auschwitz trial, the Dr Dering trial, and he was in a very
11sensitive and raw state.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us see what was published in your William Kimber book
13first of all, Mr Irving.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 3, page 1, is that right?
15 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I take it you take responsibility for what
16appears in your books, do you? Or are you going to tell
17me this was put in by some sub-editor?
18 A. [Mr Irving] You probably know what I am going to say then, do you
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you let me in on this?
21 MR RAMPTON: I am just going to read out what you wrote.
22 A. [Mr Irving] What I wrote or what was published?
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, come on, let us have a nice gentle read of it
24together: "Now if a trifle belatedly in the weeks after
25the American and British destruction of Dresden, Dr
26Goebbels was also discovering the use to which bombing
1propaganda ..."
2 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know where are. What are we looking at?
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: L1, tab 3, page 1.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 MR RAMPTON: In the middle of the page under, "They shall reap
6the whirlwind" - "Now if a trifle belatedly in the weeks
7after the American and British destruction of Dresden,
8Dr Goebbels was also discovering the use to which bombing
9propaganda could be put. At the beginning of fourth week
10in March he set in motion a cleverly designed campaign of
11whispers calculated to galvanize the German people into a
12last horrified stand against their invaders. For this
13purpose he appears deliberately to have started a rumour
14about the death roll in Dresden wildly exceeding any
15figure within the realms of possibility. On 23rd March a
16Top Secret order of the day, Tagesbefehl, was leaked to
17certain Berlin officials would could be relied on not to
18keep their tongues still." And it read: "In order to
19counter the wild rumours circulating at present, this
20short extract from the final report of the Dresden Police
21President on the Allied raids on Dresden of 13th to 15th
22February 1945 is reproduced: 'Up to the evening of 20th
23March 1945 altogether 202,040 bodies, primarily women and
24children, were recovered. It is expected that the final
25death roll will exceed 250,000. Of the dead only some 30
26per cent could be identified. As the removal of the
1corpses could not be undertaken quickly enough, 68,650 of
2the bodies were incinerated. As the rumours far exceed
3reality, these figures can be used publicly."
4 A. [Mr Irving] That is what I wrote in 1962. Yes, I wrote that.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am going to finish it: "It was characteristic of the
6highly advanced national and socialist propaganda experts
7that they did not try to spread this figure through public
8press announcements, but by means of this apparently
9indignant denial of an exaggerated rumour. All
10responsible authorities placed the Dresden death roll
11considerably below this figure. Neither the Dresden
12Police President nor his report on the air raids survived
13the end of the war, the President dying by his own hand
14and the order never having been referred to outside this
15spurious order of the day."
16 Now that was the position in 1963, Mr Irving?
17 A. [Mr Irving] 1962, yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1962. You received a copy of a copy, not even a
19photographic copy, but a typewritten copy of a
20pre-existing document in Dresden in November 1964.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. So this was not ----
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] By which time ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] But this passage is not based on the document of course.
24It is based on ----
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] By which time you had on a number of occasions, quite
26properly, asked yourself whether the document was
1authentic and, more particularly, which is what matters,
2whether the figures were reliable. You had yourself
3raised the possibility in your introduction to your
4memorandum of November 1964 that there might Nazi
5propaganda, had you not? What was it, I ask you, that had
6happened to eliminate that proper doubt about the
7reliability of the figures by the time you wrote to the
8provost of Coventry at the beginning of December 1964?
9 A. [Mr Irving] Right. Taking it in sequence, this passage which is in
10the book which I wrote in 1962 and was published on April
111st 1963, was based, to the best of my recollection, on
12the version of that document given in the book by Max
13Seydewitz, the Mayor of Dresden, who was, as I mentioned
14earlier, he was a leading Communist party official. So
15I accepted what he said in that book about the probable
16origins and motivation of the circulation of that document
17by the Nazis at the end of World War II.
18 In November 1964, as we see from Professor
19Evans' report, he has found among my papers a memorandum
20I wrote on my visit to Dresden where I obtained a copy, a
21carbon copy, a fourth or fifth carbon copy of the actual
22document, coming from a provenance where you would expect
23such a document to emerge, namely the Chief Medical
24Officer of Dresden from whom Dr Walter Hahn, the
25photographer Walter Hahn, had obtained it. This clearly
26gave me food for thought that this document which had been
1mentioned dismissively by the Communist Mayor of Dresden
2apparently did exist and it is in the hands of the Deputy
3Chief Medical Officer of Dresden who considered it to be
4genuine. Does this sufficiently answer your question?
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I want to know how between your receipt of that
6document you are writing to on various occasions, though
7of course one could not be certain that the figures were
8right ----
9 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- thought the document was probably authentic, but you
11still thought that the figures might be unreliable.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said as much in the memorandum you wrote about this
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] How it was that that doubt about the reliability of the
17figures had evaporated apparently by the time you wrote to
18Provost of Coventry on 6th November 1964?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I have not actually in that letter to the Provost of
20Coventry said there is no doubt that the figure is
21correct. I said take the document with its shattering
22figures and use it to raise money for the cathedral.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Your answer is that the document appeared to
24you to be authentic because of its provenance?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Precisely, my Lord, and I was carrying out the proper
26enquiries at that time to try narrow, to focus in on the
1specific authenticity of its contents.
2 MR RAMPTON: But the answer to my original question is nothing
3had happened to bring any greater certainty about the
4reliability of the figures, had it?
5 A. [Mr Irving] No. The figure was as dubious as ever, but I had an
6improved perception of the authenticity of the document
7itself, and we now know that everything else about the
8document was accurate, the contents, because it was
9based ----
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Did it not cross your mind that it was a bit
11suspicious that the figure of 200,040 in the Tagesbefehl
12was identical with the leaked phoney figure, leaked
13propaganda phoney figure?
14 A. [Mr Irving] You mean plus or minus a 0?
15 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No. I do not know mean that. I may have misunderstood
16the figures?
17 MR RAMPTON: No, your Lordship does not misunderstand. If you
18go back to the Kimber book, there was a propaganda
19document which mentions precisely the same figures.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, this is the same document. This is the Max
21Seydewitz obviously also had a copy of the document.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But it might be said that an historian ought
23or his ears ought to prick up when he sees, well, it is
24the very same figure which Goebbels was putting into
25circulation for propaganda purposes?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think your Lordship has understood me, with
1respect. The Max Seydewitz had the same document as
2I obtained. The Mayor of Dresden had the same document.
3He printed it in his own history of the raids. That is
4where I first found it in 1962 and I used it. Two years
5later somebody gives me the document. It is the same
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I follow that.
8 A. [Mr Irving] But it is now not coming from a communist party official.
9It is now coming from somebody who during the war was the
10Chief Medical Officer of Dresden, and for better or worse
11he himself considered it to be accurate. So obviously
12I have to take that into account. It is also not greater
13than the largest figure which had previously been said for
14the Dresden air raids. It only becomes suspect two years
15later with emergence from the archives then finally of the
16Police Chief's report which gives very similar figures but
17of one magnitude smaller.
18 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I am going to go to 1965 in a moment, but
19perhaps I could preface that with this. My Lord, this is
20page 40 of tab 2. You had explained to the Provost of
21Coventry that one of the reasons why you had no doubt as
22to the authenticity of the document, I am not talking
23about the figures ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is the bit that is underlined. "I am myself in no
26doubt as to the authenticity of the document, in view of
1having obtained it indirectly from the Dresden Deputy
2Chief Medical Officer responsible for disposing of the
3victims who still lives in Dresden." That gentleman was a
4Dr Funfack, was he not?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] He was never Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Dresden, was
8 A. [Mr Irving] If I wrote here that he was then certainly that is what
9I was informed at the time.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] He never had anything whatever to do with estimating the
11numbers of the dead, did he?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Well, if I wrote here any differently, certainly I did not
13know any differently.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You knew, however, on 19th January 1965?
15 A. [Mr Irving] I knew what?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] That he was neither Deputy Chief Medical Officer nor had
17any responsibility for estimating the numbers of dead?
18 A. [Mr Irving] You are referring to the letter that he wrote me
19subsequently on the following page?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, 19th January 1965.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You have pinned your hopes on Dr Funfack, have you not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Pinned my hopes on him for what?
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] He was one of the routes to authentication, is that right,
25yes, authentication of this document in your mind, was he
26not, this Deputy Chief Medical Officer?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Without you having read the document since he wrote it 35
2years ago, I can tell you straightaway what the problem
3with this is.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I suspect that is not quite so simple as it
5sounds. Shall we do that at 2 o'clock?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Very well.
7 (Luncheon Adjournment)
8(2.00 p.m.)
9 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, we are in January 1965. My Lord, this
10is page 5 of the table and it is page 520 of Professor
11Evans' report. The person that you believe to be the
12Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Dresden at the relevant
13time, 1945, and whom you thought was likely to have
14corroborative information about the number of deaths and
15casualties, was a Dr Funfack, was it not?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did he write to you on 19th January 1965?
18 A. [Mr Irving] He did, yes.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] You will find the original German of that letter at page
2041 at tab 2 of this file.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] A translation of, at any rate, part of that letter is set
23out on page 520 of Professor Evans' report. May I read it
24in English? If you have a quarrel with the English,
25please tell me or would you like to read the German
26original first to yourself?
1 A. [Mr Irving] This is paragraph 3, is it, of ----
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, it is actually paragraph 4 at the top of page 520.
3Professor Evans says: "On 19th January 1965 Irving
4received a letter from Funfack".
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] And, as I say, no good asking me ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] I am just puzzled by where it says, "... after six weeks
8of frantic marketing". I do not quite understand the
10 MR RAMPTON: Never mind that. You can ask him about that.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, that is gratuitous.
12 MR RAMPTON: Let us try to keep to the dry facts, shall we,
13Mr Irving?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] I would like you just to glance at the German first. It
16is no good asking me to do it.
17 A. [Mr Irving] I have read it during the lunch break.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You did, good. Now I would like to read the English
19translation, if may. Funfack is said by Professor Evans
20to have told you this: "'Why should I now, after 20
21years, be put on the spotlight with the mention of my name
22in the West German papers and be named as a witness to the
23number of dead is a complete mystery to me'". How did his
24name get in the West German papers, Mr Irving?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Presumably, the German edition of the book had been
26published by Bertlesman.
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] The German edition of what?
2 A. [Mr Irving] "The Destruction of Dresden".
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your book?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] In which you name Dr Funfack as a source for these
6figures, is that right?
7 A. [Mr Irving] If you say so, yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] "'Exactly like everyone else'", goes on Dr Funfack,
9"'affected, I have only ever heard the numbers third-hand
10from city commandants with whom I was friends, from the
11civilian air raid protection, etc. But the numbers always
12differed greatly, I myself was only once present at a
13cremation on the Altmarkt, but otherwise completely
14uninvolved. Likewise, I was never Dresden's Chief Medical
15Officer or even Deputy Chief Medical Officer, rather I was
16always working, or worked, I always worked as a specialist
17urologist in a hospital. How one comes to such
18suppositions is incomprehensible to me. I did not have
19the slightest to do with rendering any such services. The
20photos of the cremations on the Altmarkt as well as the
21"Order of the Day 47" were also given to me by
22acquaintances. Therefore, I can give no firm
23[verbindliche] Information about the figure of the dead
24but only repeat what was reported to me'."
25 Mr Irving, from that date you knew, did you not,
26that Dr Funfack was not your man?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Can I comment first on the person of Dr Funfack?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, answer the question first and then go
3back to that.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Well, the answer is, no, I did not accept that. My Lord,
5I gave you a little glossy brochure, a brown brochure, and
6if we were to open up the middle picture, it opens -- the
7middle, that is the picture section of my book, "The
8Destruction of Dresden", and you will see a rather
9horrible scene of the burning -- of the public cremation
10of the air raid victims; and Dr Funfack is one of the
11uniformed characters in the background of that picture.
12He had been identified to me on that and other photographs
13standing on top of one of the heaps of 1,000 bodies
14waiting to cremated.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, he says he attended one cremation at
16the Altmarkt?
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is correct. He was wearing Nazi uniform, a Nazi
18Party uniform. He is living in East Germany. They are
19all wearing uniform in that picture. He is living in East
20Germany a quiet life as a retired doctor in 1965, and this
21letter and the subsequent letter which he wrote me, which
22I am not sure if Mr Rampton is relying upon ----
23 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
24 A. [Mr Irving] --- makes it quite plain his agony at having been
25mentioned in the West German press. In the subsequent
26letter which I will draw your attention to ----
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] I will tell you its date. It is 19th March, I think,
3 A. [Mr Irving] 19th March, which is page 51, is it? Yes, page 51 of the
4bundle. He refers to his friendship with the City
5Commandant, General Mehnert, "who was a close friend of
6mine" and he anxiously then goes on to say, "He was, God
7knows, no Hitler fan, and for this reason he was
8particularly sympathetic in my -- sympathetically in my
9memory", and he continues either in this letter or in the
10next letter which he wrote, which I will now find, very
11significantly to say that the information that he had been
12mentioned in the West German press was brought to him by
13the officers of the Ideological Department of the
14Socialist Unity Party in East Germany who gave him a very
15rough time.
16 Now, I think it does not take very much
17perception or imagination to perceive the reasons why he
18now denies that he was a senior medical officer in
19Dresden. I will put it no more strongly than that.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is it, is it, Mr Irving?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you had no positive basis for continuing to assert that
23Dr Funfack, not only was Deputy Chief Medical Officer of
24Dresden at the time, but would know the figures?
25 A. [Mr Irving] I had had a lot of correspondence with people living
26behind the Iron Curtain, and I am very familiar with this
1kind of letter. All three letters that he wrote to me are
2riddled with the kind of sentences that one put in letters
3that one knows are going to be read by the Gestapo or by
4the Communist letter censorship authorities, repeating
5that his close friends were dedicated anti-Nazis, and so
6on. The information that I had that he was Deputy Chief
7Medical Officer of Dresden came from a reasonable and
8reliable source.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which was?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. But, obviously, I would not have stated it
11off the top of my head. But I would also draw your
12attention to the passage which Professor Evans has left
13out immediately following the part which he quotes, and
14I will translate it for you, after the words, "I can only
15repeat what was reported to me", and he then says what was
16reported to him which, for some reason, your expert has
17left out: "The City Commandant" ----
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, you are going just a little bit fast.
19I am trying to keep up with the highlighting.
20 A. [Mr Irving] I am continuing the quotation from January 19th 1965, my
21Lord. The letter of January 16th -- January 19th 1965,
22pages 41 and 42.
23 MR RAMPTON: It is on page 42, my Lord, I think.
24 A. [Mr Irving] On page 42.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] The sentence begins half way along the line at the first
26quarter of the page ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] [German - document not provided] I am relying on that
2sentence which says: "The City Commandant, General
3Mehnert", who was a friend of Funfack, as he stated
4earlier in the letter, "spoke to me on about February 22nd
51945 of 140,000 dead, and Professor Fetscher" --
6F-E-T-S-C-H-E-R -- "of the Civil Defence Organization
7spoke of 180,000 dead". And I should emphasise the fact
8that Professor Fetscher, the well-known Communist, a
9doctor, the father of very well-known West German
10politician now, Iring Fetscher -- I-R-I-N-G -- who was
11shot by the SS at the end of war, so it can be no
12suggestion that he was a Nazi propagandist, and that
13passage has been left out of the passage quoted by
14Professor Evans.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is there. It is on page 533 of Evans. It is a case
16for humble pie, perhaps.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I take that back but, of course, he has not quoted
18it in the apposite part, the appropriate part.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just let me see why he divides it up.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I am sure he had his reasons, my Lord.
21 MR RAMPTON: It is quite an interesting passage, is it not?
22Have you got 533?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. He goes on to say that the International Red Cross
24sent people to investigate Dresden and, as will you notice
25on the rest of the bundle, I then went to very great
26lengths contacting the International Red Cross, locating
1the person concerned, and so on.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, have no fear. I am coming to the Red Cross,
3Mr Irving. It is a little bit further down the line the
4next month. I still am puzzled for an answer to my
5original question. What basis did you have for continuing
6to assert that Dr Funfack had been Deputy Chief Medical
7Officer of Dresden and would have known the figures?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Firstly, I had been informed he was the Deputy Chief
9Medical officer of Dresden. Secondly, this letter of
10denial is couched in precisely the kind of letters that
11you got from these Communist countries where people were
12terrified because they knew the problems that were going
13to open up for them. He had been visited by, as he says,
14officers of the Ideological Department of the Socialist
15Unity Party who had come and asked him penetrating
16questions about how his name had got into the Western
17press and ----
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not quite understand what he had to be
19ashamed of.
20 MR RAMPTON: Nor do I.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If he had been in the SS or something like
22that, yes, but he was Deputy Chief Medical Officer. Is
23that something that ----
24 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, it is difficult for us to appreciate living in a
25free democracy the kind of terror that people lived in,
26first of all, in Nazi Germany and then in the Communist
1East Germany. There were informants everywhere. People
2were being arrested at the drop of a hat, and the
3suspicion that somebody had been a senior officer in the
4regime or hierarchy of a Nazi German City, wearing
5whatever uniform and had not yet been punished for it,
6would certainly have persuaded me also to write this kind
7of letter and make repeated references in the letters to
8"my proper beliefs" and "my anti-Nazi friends", and all
9the rest of it, particularly as he then went on to give me
10very useful information which is the reason for writing
11the letter, that his friend, the City Kommandant of
12Dresden, General Mehnert, had told him the following
13figures, and that was what he obviously wanted to tell me
14in this very guarded manner.
15 MR RAMPTON: I quite appreciate, Mr Irving, you may have had,
16perhaps, quite sensibly inspired doubts about Dr Funfack's
17denial of knowledge. Did you ever make that clear to any
18of your correspondents or your readers?
19 A. [Mr Irving] No.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] That he had denied it?
21 A. [Mr Irving] No.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] You just suppressed the fact that he denied it and
23continued to refer to him in categorical terms as the
24Deputy Chief Medical Officer of Dresden at the time?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed. In a letter immediately following, I referred to
26him as being a Senior Medical Officer in Dresden, which he
1clearly was, he was head of the urological department of
2one of the City's biggest hospitals, which is precisely
3the position that the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of the
4City would also have occupied, in my view.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] It follows, does it not, that ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] Can I draw your attention -- I am sorry to interrupt you
7-- page 42, at the foot of that first letter, it is very
8difficult to read, but I have read it during the lunch
9hour: "I learned of the naming of my name in the press by
10a Mr [somebody] of the Ideological Commission of the
11Socialist Unity Party of the City administration in
12Dresden; and that is his way of telling me, "This is what
13all the above is about. I have been hauled over the coals
14by the local Communists because of this". [German -
15document not provided] It is an appalling copy, but that
16is what the words say, and that is what he is saying in
17this postscript.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The irony is, of course, that he was right?
19 A. [Mr Irving] I beg your pardon?
20 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I mean, what he said, "It has nothing to do with me", he
21was right; it was not anything to do with him?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, except that he admits that he did have the copy of
23the document in a later letter. He said, "I have a copy
24of the document. I have the original here. You are
25welcome to come and see it, and he also tells me quite
26gratuitously that he knew from the City Kommandant, who
1was a close friend of his, which is exactly what you would
2expect of somebody who is Chief Medical Officer, that the
3figure was 170,000 or 180,000, and that the Professor
4Fetscher, who was the head of the Civil Defence, also
5stated such figures as early as 22nd February. So that is
6very much in the same order of magnitude as what the
7document said.
8 MR RAMPTON: Did you write to the Red Cross at the beginning of
9the next month, Mr Irving?
10 A. [Mr Irving] In view of the fact that Funfack said that there had been
11a Swiss Red Cross visit to Dresden, yes, I did.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sorry, it was at the end of January?
13 A. [Mr Irving] A very few days later, yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] I think on 4th February you got a reply, did you not? My
15Lord, this is the bottom of page 5 of the table.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am afraid there is no copy of this. The reason for that
18is a simple one, Mr Irving. Your copies of these letters
19-- it is not a criticism -- are on microfilm, are they
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. All these negative ones, presumably, come off my
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know where they came from. When my researchers,
24our researchers, looked at them, they were able to see
25what they said. However, it was not possible to produce
26satisfactory photocopies of the copies made from the
1microfilm. Do you understand?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Does that sound technically likely to be right?
4 A. [Mr Irving] It sounds highly likely, yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you turn to page 534 of Evans, we see what the Red
6Cross said in their letter to you of 4th February 1965.
7"It is correct to say" -- this is in paragraph 3, my Lord
8-- "that on of our delegates, Mr Walter Kleiner, was in
9the Dresden area during the period you mention, for the
10purpose of carrying out his duties of visiting camps. We
11have in fact in our possession the reports he made at the
12time on prisoner-of-war camps. We have, however, no
13information concerning the victims of the Dresden air
15 Then so that we can telescope it, I think on
1617th of the same month they wrote to you and said: "There
17were no prisoner-of-war camps in Dresden itself.
18Consequently, Mr Kleiner's reports did not even allude to
19the air raids on the town."
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] That was a dead end, was it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, except that they gave me the name, the address of
23Mr Kleiner, and I then wrote a letter to Mr Kleiner which
24was also in this file which came back that he no longer
25lived there.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] But the Red Cross provide no confirmation one way or the
1other of the figures which were being floated around at
2this time?
3 A. [Mr Irving] No.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] How is it then, if you turn the page to page 8, that in
5the 1966 Corgi edition of your book -- it is in the middle
6of page 8 ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- I have asked Miss Rogers to try to find the page in
9tab 1 of the file?
10 A. [Mr Irving] What tab are we now on? I am now lost.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sorry. I am at page 8 of the table at the moment.
12I am just searching for the reference in the Corgi
13edition. Thank you very much. My Lord, it is page 9 of
14tab 1.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say tab 1, do you mean tab 3?
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I am sorry. I will find it in my own copy.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps you can help me -- what are we actually looking at
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I thought we were looking for the Red Cross--
20here we are, yes. In the middle.
21 MR RAMPTON: I have found it.
22 A. [Mr Irving] In the middle of what?
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Sorry, tab L1, tab 3, page 9.
24 MR RAMPTON: Page 9, and this is page 225 of your 1966 Corgi
25edition, and in the middle of the paragraph which
26begins "shortly after", you write this: "On 22nd February
11945, nine days after the attacks during the tour of
2allied prisoner-of-war camps in the Dresden area,
3Mr Walter Kleiner, the Swiss leader of an International
4Red Cross delegation, was in the presence of witnesses
5informed by the Dresden City Commandant, General Karl
6Mehnert, that the current death roll was 140,000." Where
7can that come from, Mr Irving? It did not come from
8Mr Kleiner, did it?
9 A. [Mr Irving] No, Mr Kleiner was dead at the time.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] And it did not come from the Red Cross either, did it?
11 A. [Mr Irving] Not at that time, but, I mean, without going back to my
12files and looking for this, I certainly would not have
13invented that passage. There are two possible sources.
14Either the Red Cross published a report which the person
15who made the response to me was not familiar with and
16I relied on that. That is one possibility. Or possibly
17one of the prisoners in the prison camp who kept diaries
18(and I had some of their diaries) was a witness of it.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I am sure you will produce them if you still have
21 A. [Mr Irving] Right.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] But you cannot tell ----
23 A. [Mr Irving] OK, no, I can see what this is.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, tell us then.
25 A. [Mr Irving] This is derived entirely from the Funfack letter, quite
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Did Funfack say anything about what Mehnert had told
2Kleiner? Funfack reported to you what Mehnert, his chum,
3had said to him, did he not?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Let us go back and see the letter then.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Or have I misunderstood that?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just go a little slower -- where is
7the Red Cross letter?
8 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry. The first one did not reproduce, but
9the second one we do have, and I will give your Lordship.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I could not find -- I was scrolling back and
11I cannot find the reference.
12 MR RAMPTON: It is page 43 of tab 1. That one did reproduce.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tab 2?
14 MR RAMPTON: 2. Tab 1 is Hungary. I am so sorry. Tab 2. It
15is dated 17th February 1965 and the first paragraph says:
16"There were no POW camps in Dresden itself.
17Consequently, Mr Kleiner's reports did not even allude to
18the air raids on the town. Moreover, the ... (reading to
19the words) ... is only to hand its delegates reports to
20the detaining power of the prisoners power of origin",
21whatever that means.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right, so it did not come from there.
23 MR RAMPTON: It did not come from them.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So the question is where it did come from.
25 MR RAMPTON: Well, Mr Irving says Funfack. If one looks back
26at page 42 ----
1 A. [Mr Irving] Well, I suggest Funfack. Can I interrupt my own train of
2thought at that point and say the two following things?
3We have in this file approximately 100 pages of paper, do
4we not, which is a selection of, I suppose I had four
5microfilms of paper, 8,000 pages of paper were before you
6when you did your discovery, inspection of my discovery.
7So you selected 100 pages from 8,000 pages of paper,
8right? There is a clue to what the source is if you go
9back to page 42A under tab 2. If you read the second
11 MR RAMPTON: I have not got that.
12 A. [Mr Irving] It is the letter which I wrote to the International Red
13Cross on January 27th, 1965: "On about 22nd February, a
14representative of the International Red Cross visited
15Dresden to ascertain, among other things, the fate of the
16prisoners-of-war in the City. The American Government
17kindly quoted to me details from the report your officer
18wrote." Now, that report, of course, is not in the
19discovery as is before the court.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Carry on en.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Has your Lordship the passage? "I have just today learned
22from a leading Medical Officer in Dresden at the time that
23during visit of your officer, which he recalls as having
24been from 22nd to 26th February, all the casualty figures
25for Dresden were made available to your Officer, the Red
26Cross Officer".
1 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is that a reference to Dr Funfack?
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is to Dr Funfack, yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where is the communication from Dr Funfack which he says
4that he got the figures from the Red Cross or the Red
5Cross gave figures to Kleiner -- I am sorry.
6 A. [Mr Irving] The figures -- Funfack told me, is this correct?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Funfack told you that Mehnert had told him. That is stage
9 A. [Mr Irving] That Mehnert and Fetscher had told him these two figures?
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Right, so those would be the figures that would have been
12given on that date to the International Red Cross visitor,
13Mr Kleiner.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] But I want to know who told you that during the visit of
15Kleiner all the casualty figures for Dresden were made
16available to Kleiner.
17 A. [Mr Irving] The American Government report.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. "I have today from a leading Medical Officer in
19Dresden at the time that during a visit of your Officer
20all the casualty figures for Dresden were made available
21to your Officer".
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That must be information from Funfack?
23 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct, but I am referring to this letter dated
24January 27th which states originally, "The American
25Government has kindly quoted me details from the report
26your Officer wrote and you have not produced that".
1 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But that is nothing to do with it. That is before the
2semicolon. I do appreciate your difficulty, Mr Irving,
3because you are being asked to produce the source for
4something out of a ----
5 A. [Mr Irving] 35 years ago.
6 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] --- very, very large quantity of documents.
7 A. [Mr Irving] With respect, I see little difficulty. This is quite
8clearly sufficient material to identify the circles from
9which the information came which I wrote that paragraph
10on, namely there is an American Government report citing a
11report by the International Red Cross Officer, Mr Kleiner;
12that Mr Kleiner has visited Dresden and toured camps in
13and around the City; during that tour he has been told
14figures by Mr Funfack, as Mr Funfack recalls; Mr Funfack
15tells us in that letter what the figures were that he knew
16from the City Commandant and from the Civil Defence Chief,
18 MR RAMPTON: Where does Dr Funfack say that he gave Mr Kleiner
19the figures -- because that is what this letter says.
20 A. [Mr Irving] We have three Funfack letters to rely on. Which is the
21Funfack letter that refers to the International Red
22Cross? If you know that, that would be of use.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Funfack's letter to the Red Cross or
24referring to the Red Cross?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Referring to the visit from the Red Cross.
26 MR RAMPTON: It is probably this one on 19th January.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page?
2 MR RAMPTON: I do not know; it is in German.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What?
4 MR RAMPTON: Sorry, it is in German.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but it has a page number, 41.
6 MR RAMPTON: Yes, sorry, my Lord, yes. It starts on 41 and
7finishes at ----
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is hopeless. I mean, not only are these
9almost illegible, but they are in German and why should
10one have to plough through them?
11 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I have read it actually during the lunch hour and
12there is the reference to the International Red Cross
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know, but I am complaining on my own
15behalf, you see, rather than yours.
16 MR RAMPTON: I complain on my behalf as well.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, why does somebody not do something
18about it?
19 MR RAMPTON: There are two reasons for that, (a) because I do
20not believe it is necessary because there is not any
21connection in Funfack's letter between the Red Cross and
22what Mehnert's version of the figures was, according to
23Funfack. Once again, Mr Irving has made a bridge where
24none exists. You have made a bridge a between Funfach and
25the Red Cross.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, he is having difficulty (as I am) in
1even reading this document, let alone seeing what it
2actually means.
3 MR RAMPTON: The other reason, my Lord -- I will be quite
4honest about it -- unless it is strictly necessary, we do
5not translate things if they are already in an expert's
7 A. [Mr Irving] But you see one example of where your expert has left out
8a very relevant fact, namely that in the very next
9sentence ----
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Which is what?
11 A. [Mr Irving] --- my source was telling me about 180,000 dead as
12reported by the City Commandant on February 22nd and
13170,000 dead as reported by Iring Fetscher, the Chief of
14the Civil Defence Organisation, and because that goes very
15closely to the 202,000 contained in the Grosse report,
16your expert left it out.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Very good point, Mr Irving. Take it up with Professor
18Evans. My Lord, on page 533 of Evans you will find the
19relevant passage from Funfack's letter translated.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I know it is there, but what we are looking
21for is to see whether there is anything about the Red
22Cross in this letter.
23 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, we have it, my Lord. It is on page 42, and I am sorry
24to disappoint Mr Rampton.
25 MR RAMPTON: No, it does not disappoint me. You are wrong,
26Mr Irving.
1 A. [Mr Irving] The City Commandant ----
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What are you looking at? Come on, let us
3get ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] "The City Commandant, General Mehnert, spoke on or about
522nd February 1945 of 140,000 dead, Professor Fetscher of
6the Civil Defence Organisation of 180,000" ----
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes, but that has got nothing to do with ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] --- "but I have never seen written records of that.
9I attach great importance to the fact, to the facts in
10order to pay justice to the truth. Best of all, the
11delegate of the International Red Cross should know the
12facts who visited Dresden on about 22nd to 26th February
13under the leadership of a Swiss gentleman and to whom all
14the figures were placed at the disposal of."
15 MR RAMPTON: So you infer from that, do you?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Remember, we are writing a book on a
17very ----
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is fine.
19 A. [Mr Irving] --- very little known document in history. We have a 50
20year rule on the records of the British in force at that
21time. Dresden is behind the Iron Curtain. I am doing my
22little best. I think I have got very close to it with
23this one document where I am dealing with the man who was
24the Deputy Chief Medical Officer and who gives me figures
25given to him by his best friend, the City Commandant of
26the Chief of the Civil Defence, and he says, "We passed
1them on to the International Red Cross delegate". I then
2contacted the International Red Cross who told me the name
3of the gentleman. The American Government had the report
4of this delegate.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] So you have converted that letter and what you were told
6by the Americans into this proposition, if I may call it
7that ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] At set out in that paragraph of the book, yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] --- Mr Irving, that the Red Cross were told or Mr Kleiner,
10the Swiss leader of the Red Cross delegation, was told by
11General Mehnert that the current death toll was 140,000?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, because that is the figures that Funfack is referring
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we must have a translation of the
15whole of that page. I mean, that is a very good
16illustration of why it is unsatisfactory to work off
17illegible German text.
18 MR RAMPTON: I will ask for it to be done. Every time it is
19done it costs money because it is better if it is done by
20an independent translator. I am resistant to doing it
21unless it is absolutely necessary. If your Lordship
22thinks it is necessary in this case, we will have that
23Funfack letter translated.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I can see Mr Irving's point. I mean,
25you may say he is adding two and two together and making
1 MR RAMPTON: I do, yes, at least.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: And it is a point that would not have been
3apparent if Mr Irving had not spotted it.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Fortunately I took the lunch hour to read the whole
6 MR RAMPTON: Well, the whole thing is translated in different
7places, I agree ----
8 A. [Mr Irving] But may I enquire at this stage whether the report of my
9conversation with Grosse's widow, the Police Chief's
10widow, is in this file? I cannot see it.
11 MR RAMPTON: I have no idea.
12 A. [Mr Irving] Right. That also appears to be a relevant document.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, you have to make your own case. If there are
14documents which you think we have not included in the
15bundle which are going to undermine what any of my experts
16say in his report, then you must produce them.
17 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, I should explain that the person who wrote this
18Tagesbefehl No. 47, Colonel Grosse, I tracked down his
19widow and interviewed her at length.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I knew that, but I had forgotten the
21significance of that.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Well, she confirmed that, yes, she remembered her husband
23talking to her about that kind of figure.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] 202,000?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
26 MR RAMPTON: Now you also corresponded in February 1965,
1Mr Irving, with somebody called Theo Miller, did you not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] Theo Muller.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, I have him as "Miller". Unfortunately, once again
4the copies -- M-I-L-L-E-R -- my Lord, this is page 538 of
5Professor Evans' report ---
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you.
7 MR RAMPTON: --- and page 6 of the table. This is written in
8English, apparently. One can probably see from reading
9what it says. My Lord, there is quite a lot of Miller and
10I do wish to draw attention to all of it. 538 to 540.
11Might I ask that your Lordship and Mr Irving ----
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I would be grateful for the opportunity.
13 MR RAMPTON: --- read it to yourselves. Now, you have read
14those passages?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] From Mr Miller's letters. Were they all in English?
17 A. [Mr Irving] I have no recollection at all of this man, but it appears
18to be a letter written in English by this German.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] There were two.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Do we know where he was living? Was it West Germany
21or East Germany?
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea. One of the 7th February and one of the
24 A. [Mr Irving] This is one problem. We are seeing only an extract like
25this rather than the whole letter.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we will assume he is in East
1Germany. He is probably still in Dresden, is he not?
2 A. [Mr Irving] That is my suspicion.
3 MR RAMPTON: He has told you that he was a member of the
4Dresden clearing staff.
5 A. [Mr Irving] I just wanted to develop what I was saying there.
6Presumably the same kind of constraints operated on him as
7operated on Funfach when he wrote letters.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: His name had not gone public.
9 A. [Mr Irving] No but he is aware that any letter he writes from East
10Germany to England is going to be opened and read.
11 MR RAMPTON: Taking all that into account Mr Irving, that
12account from a man who, if he is telling the truth, was on
13the spot and could be expected to know the truth figures,
14if correct, totally exploded the 200 to 250,000 figure,
15did it not? This is in February 1965.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do we find any reference to Mr Miller's account of the
19 A. [Mr Irving] Anyone can play this game, Mr Rampton.
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, that is not an answer.
21 A. [Mr Irving] I am just explaining.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes or no?
23 A. [Mr Irving] The answer is no. I do not think so anyway, but there are
24very many witnesses who wrote to me who did not finally
25get mentioned in the resulting book.
26 MR RAMPTON: No. You have mentioned what may be a third or
1fourth hand hearsay account numerous occasions, apparently
2derived from Dr Funfach but which Dr Funfach denies.
3Great faith you place in that third, fourth hand denied
4account of Dr Funfach. Do you not think that the account
5of Mr Miller ----
6 A. [Mr Irving] What is the third or fourth?
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who claims to have been there, deserves a place by way of
8balance at the very least?
9 A. [Mr Irving] What is the third or fourth hand account?
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Answer the question and go back to that.
11I think the answer is obvious.
12 A. [Mr Irving] It is not. I will go back to that in a minute. Do
13I think this deserves a place? The answer is no.
14 MR RAMPTON: Why?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Because we have better quality evidence from somebody
16better placed to know.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] Who is that?
18 A. [Mr Irving] General Mehnert.
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] He is dead.
20 A. [Mr Irving] Can I quote you the letter of 19th March 1965, page 51?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am really not going to stop you at all, but
22I suspect Mr Rampton would you like to just maybe answer
23one or two more questions about Miller first.
24 A. [Mr Irving] I was just stating in principle that anyone can play that
25game, that is where your Lordship stopped me earlier,
26picking documents that back up your own case and ignoring
1the rest, which is precisely what I am accused of.
2 MR RAMPTON: No, no, Mr Irving. You mistake me completely.
3I am not trying to prove a case about the number of deaths
4at Dresden one way or another. This is a mistake you
5habitually make. You make the same mistake in relation to
6Auschwitz and elsewhere. No, Mr Irving. I am wondering
7why it is that an honest, upright, careful, meticulous,
8open minded historian does not mention two alternative
9sources, the one of which claims to be a direct witness of
10what happened.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Are you saying that nowhere in my Dresden book do I state
12that there are authorities which hold that lower figures
13are more accurate? Is that what are you are suggesting?
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, I am not.
15 A. [Mr Irving] And that this person is not included among those
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am very puzzled why an open minded historian desiring to
18give a balanced account of what the figures might be would
19not include this man who, on the face of it, appears to be
20a very powerful witness for the opposition.
21 A. [Mr Irving] Indeed. I am sure that Evans will have seized all the
22particular letters that run in that vein and said, here
23are all these ones and let us ignore all the rest, the
24same as he has ignored the figures that are presented in
25Funfach's letters.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think what Mr Rampton is saying is that
1this is a man, part of whose job was to try and record the
2numbers of deaths at the time. Does that not make him
3rather a specially valuable witness?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Purportedly he was.
5 MR RAMPTON: Did you follow him up?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just finish what I am saying? When you write a book
7like this, you get letters from all sorts of people who
8claim to have been on the spot. If they do not provide
9some kind of instant justification, for example the man
10who took these ghastly photographs of the, so what,
11burnings on the Altmarkt, he produced to me his actual
12pass signed by the Gauleiter giving him permission to go
13through the police cordons. If someone comes to me with
14this kind of evidence and I am also looking for something
15which gives verisimilitude. Do you remember General
16Bruhns and the girl in the flame red dress that was still
17in his mind's eye? Looking at that letter, and it is
18difficult, having only two paragraphs presented to us, for
19me to say what caused me to put this lower down the ladder
20of reliability, because we are only just shown two
21paragraphs from it. It may have been the fact that it was
22typed on a very cheap typewriter or perhaps it was badly
23spelt and illiterate, and the person was not in the right
24position where he should be. But there may have been
25something and I cannot tell you after 35 years what it was
26that told me that this letter assigned less importance to
1than the letter typed by Mr Funfach.
2 MR RAMPTON: Mr Funfach denied having had any direct knowledge
3of it at all. All he told you was that General Mehnert,
4who is dead, had mentioned a figure of, what, 180,000.
5That is better evidence, is it, than the direct eyewitness
6testimony, on face of it, of Mr Miller?
7 A. [Mr Irving] If you turn to page 52, you will see Mehnert telling to
8Funfach, we were both absolutely astounded at the low
9figure of 35,000, which is given in the press here.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] I repeat it, Mr Irving. Mr Funfach says he was not
11there. He reports the words of a dead man.
12 A. [Mr Irving] He reports the words of a man who was alive at the time he
13spoke to him.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You put that in the forefront and reach firm conclusions
15on the basis of it. You suppress what you were told by
16Mr Miller.
17 A. [Mr Irving] You say suppress. This implies that there has been a
18deliberate act of suppression of something because it does
19not agree with what I intend to say.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Indeed. That is precisely my suggestion. You have got it
21in one, Mr Irving.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Nowhere in my Dresden book have I stated words to the
23effect that there are authorities which hold that lower
24figures are more credible, and that this kind of letter is
25not covered by that kind of statement.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I did not say that, Mr Irving.
1 A. [Mr Irving] I have repeatedly said, both in the Dresden book and
2elsewhere, there are upper figures and there are lower
3figures and you have to decide yourself what figure is
4more plausible. I then said I consider figure X to be
5plausible because ... and I have then given the reasons
6why, which is precisely the way that a scientist should do
7it. But for your Professor Evans to come along and say,
8oh, look at this letter which he ignored or suppressed,
9which is the word you use, is totally unjust.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] My information, for what it is worth, I do have a sort of
11---- where does this come from? It is in an H1 file.
12Mr Miller wrote to you, Theo Miller, from Ingoldstadt,
13Donnau which I think is in West Germany, is it not?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Why is the entire letter not before us in this bundle so
15that I can form an impression?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am afraid, Mr Irving, somebody is to blame for that. It
17ain't me and I don't know the reason.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: The reason is that it is not legible. That
19is what it says in the table.
20 MR RAMPTON: It is jolly difficult to read.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think Mr Irving ought to have a look at it.
22 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If there is a point to be made, he ought to
24have the chance to make it now.
25 MR RAMPTON: That is the second letter. I do not know about
26the first letter.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Anyone can use this tactic of coming along with isolated
2paragraphs and say, why did you not quote this and why did
3you not quote that?
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not concealed from you that I think it
5is all rather unsatisfactory.
6 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, this is not actually very funny, but that
7is the state of the first letter.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, let us see.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] The second letter is a bit more easy, so there they are.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: How much of the first page did Professor
11Evans -- he has a good imagination.
12 MR RAMPTON: When you read the microfilm, you can read them.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Off the microfilm.
14 MR RAMPTON: I will not hand that one up.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Unfortunately, he says, my recollection is very poor.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whereabouts on the page? I think I have page
17you are looking at?
18 A. [Mr Irving] It is about line 10 of the first page, my Lord. "My
19recollection of names etc. is very poor. Please
20understand everybody" ----
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Yes, names. That is the point, is it not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
23 MR RAMPTON: It looks as though you did write back to him,
24Mr Irving.
25 A. [Mr Irving] He says he is answering my questions.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, he wrote to you first, I think, on 4th February, 7th,
1that is the one we cannot read. The first line of this
2says: "Dear Mr Irving I thank you very much for your kind
3letter of February 21st". Do we have that in the bundle?.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. That is the one I am looking at.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] ---- "Which I received today. Your compliments on my
6English are undeserved but Cassell's Dictionary being
7rather a help, I think I had better continue writing in
8English". Then I am afraid it gets harder and harder. Is
9there anything in that letter which betrays a good reason
10not to accept the evidence of Mr Miller, given that he is
11not after all writing under the heel of the communists of
12East Germany?
13 A. [Mr Irving] This is the second letter, not the first letter of course.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but answer my question. I cannot read the first
15letter. It is blank. Is there anything about that letter
16which makes you suspicious of his veracity?
17 A. [Mr Irving] His veracity?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think he is deliberately lying, no.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. so there is no reason to suspect his good faith?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is there any reason to suspect that he is not telling what
23is accurate?
24 A. [Mr Irving] He is telling me what his recollection is of the events to
25the best of his ability, given what he admits is a poor
26recollection of details.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Names.
2 A. [Mr Irving] Well, names, etc.
3 MR RAMPTON: Names, and the effect of his evidence is twofold.
4First, that the amount of dead persons that they had
5managed to count by I think the middle of March was
7 A. [Mr Irving] I would say may well be the result of cross pollination
8from the fact that this was the figure which was always
9stated in the western media and in the East German media.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] He writes in the middle of March 1945, "Our task was
11almost completed. The town was free of corpses. My
12records at the clearing staff showed 30,000. If you
13assume that the amount of dead, completely burnt, etc.
14would reach 20 per cent, the total figure of victims will
15not exceed 36,000". Then he goes on to explain in quite a
16lot of detail in the second letter how it was impossible
17that 68,000 corpses could have been burnt in the Altmarkt,
18does he not?
19 A. [Mr Irving] Are you referring to the second letter of February 25th?
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, February 25th, PS, which is set out on page 539 to 40
21of Evans' report.
22 A. [Mr Irving] There is nothing on this letter of February 25th by nature
23of a PS, and there is no reference to those figures.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, then poor Professor Evans must have made it up.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well come on, no. In a post script typed a
26day later.
1 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
2 A. [Mr Irving] It is not on these pages I have here.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. I suspect that is the explanation.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Again, I can only talk in generic terms and say that
5I collected several thousand letters of this nature when
6I wrote the book, far more material than I could possibly
7use, and I would be looking for specific pointers in an
8instinctive way as to which letters were written. I think
9it is acceptable, it is common knowledge that some people
10have better memories than others. Some people have better
11short term or long term memories than others. They can be
12the same age, but their memory differs from person to
13person. I would have been looking for people who had
14specific information about specific events rather than
15more general information.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am sorry, Mr Irving, for interrupting, but
17I cannot understand how you could get more specific
18information then the information from Mr Miller, whose job
19it was to compile records, that his records at the
20clearing staff showed 30,000 corpses.
21 A. [Mr Irving] That is the only specific information contained in it.
22 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] What more can you want than that?
23 A. [Mr Irving] If I was to sit down and type an index card on that
24letter, that is all it would contain. I would say, it
25says he was a member Aufrollungskommando based on such and
26such a place, recalls figure 30,000. Against that I would
1set the fact, well, this is the figure which all the West
2German Press says, this is the figure that the East German
3Press says, it does not really advance the cause of our
4knowledge. I would clearly recognize that as being an
5echo of what this man is reading in the press, my Lord, at
6that time.
7 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] So he is a liar, then?
8 A. [Mr Irving] No, a liar is somebody who wilfully ----
9 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] But he says, "My records at the clearing staff showed
1030,000 corpses". That is a lie if what he really means
11is, "I read in the press the other day that it is
13 A. [Mr Irving] I agree. I think he is fantasizing slightly.
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: He is fantasizing?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. We remember that Ada Bimko also remembered seeing 4
16million in the Auschwitz record that she read.
17 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, we know, with the wonderful benefit of
1820.20 hindsight, that, so far from Mr Miller being a
19fantasist, he actually got the figure more or less spot
20on, did he not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] His figure compares very closely with the figure contained
22in the police chief's report.
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] And in the genuine TV 47, and in Reichert's book, and
24everywhere else you want to look, the true figure is
25somewhere between 25 and 35,000 at the maximum, is it not?
26 A. [Mr Irving] Except for the fact that, if you look at that little
1passage sideways on the letter, page 2, he says, "by the
2way, the figures of dead were reported every day to a
3central air defence staff in Berlin". Now, I am quite
4familiar with those records and there is no such figures
5reported from Dresden over that period. It is that kind
6of thing that would have lit a little alarm light in my
7brain. That is exactly the kind of place that I was
8looking for data like this, and had there been daily
9reports coming from this Aufrollungskommando in Dresden,
10I would have seen them.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Now I wonder ----
12 A. [Mr Irving] I admit 20.20 hindsight is very nice, but we are not
13blessed with it.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I only said that in the poor man's defence. For all
15I know, he is sitting in Ingoldstadt on the Donnau,
16reading books of this case. You accuse him of being a
17fantasist. As it turns out, his information was almost
18precisely accurate.
19 A. [Mr Irving] Well I said this in response to his Lordship's suggestion
20that I was imputing that the man was a liar, and I thought
21that that was going too far, the fact that he said that
22they kept records, and the fact that he said, "we had
2330,000", I would not----
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] He was right.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I would not have said that this was evidence of lying.
26I would suggest that this was evidence of the fact that
1yes, he was telling the truth about keeping records and
2that he then tacked the figure of 30,000 on because he
3knew that was the newspaper figure.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am sure he will be delighted to read that in the
5newspaper. Mr Irving, I am going to leap ahead, if
6I may.
7 A. [Mr Irving] Perhaps one day I shall bring my entire Dresden records to
8court and then his Lordship can see how many thousands of
9pages these are selected from. This is a very easy
10exercise to perform, if you want just want to suggest that
11someone is suppressing documents.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, I am now turning to page 9. I am going to the
13early summer May 1966. Have you got that, Mr Irving? It
14helps to follow the chronology?
15 A. [Mr Irving] We are back on your tabulation.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I do not know whether Boberacht's discovery of
17situation report 1404 was communicated to you. Was it?
18 A. [Mr Irving] As I mentioned earlier today, I received both those
19documents in the same post on my return from abroad.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] In May 1966?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, both the East German one and the West German one.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right. Which is which of those? Boberacht is East
23Germany, is he?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Boberacht was the head of the West German archives.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] His figures were 18,375 current death roll up to 22,345,
26expected death roll 25, and 35,000 missing, yes?
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Whereas the one from East Germany, we do not have the
3figures here but I know what they are and I am sure you
4do. So that up to early 10th March 1945 there were 8,735
5dead, 2,212 badly wounded, 13,718 slightly wounded, and
6350,000 homeless and long term re-quartered, did it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] Upon receipt of those documents you must have given this
9problem some very considerable thought, did you not?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I discussed them with my London publisher.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] You wrote a letter to The Times?
12 A. [Mr Irving] My London publisher advised me to keep quiet about them.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Never mind.
14 A. [Mr Irving] This is quite important.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh no, Mr Irving ----
16 A. [Mr Irving] He said, you will do yourself discredit if you let people
17know that there are figures that dispute yours.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: But you form a judgment. You do not do what
19your publisher says?
20 A. [Mr Irving] If you are dependent upon your publisher for your entire
21livelihood, sometimes you do, my Lord.
22 MR RAMPTON: So much more so, Mr Irving, if I may be a little
23cynical for a moment, if you should go on trumpeting the
24200 to 250,000 figure, and these two documents should be
25brought forth by somebody else. Much better to come clean
26to protect yourself.
1 A. [Mr Irving] This was one argument I used to the publisher, of course.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] Quite right, too. You wrote to The Times. I am not going
3to read it out. On 7th July, it is at page 56 of this tab
42, you said that, in effect, you thought that the original
5TB47 figures were falsified and that you had no interest
6in promoting -- this is the last paragraph -- "or
7perpetuating false legends and I feel it is important that
8in this respect the records should be set straight".
9 A. [Mr Irving] I do not refer to TB47 in this document, of course.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, but that is what you mean, is it not?
11 A. [Mr Irving] But you implied that I did.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, you do eat humble pie. One does not
13want to skim over this letter so quickly. In the second
14paragraph you do say you are to blame for all this, you
15got it wrong.
16 MR RAMPTON: Yes. Quite right.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] You say at the end of the third paragraph -- Mr Irving,
19sometimes it is not good to be too much of a trainspotter
20-- "Two years ago I procured from a private East German
21source what purported to be extracts from the police
22president's report" -- that is the forged TB47, is it not?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is correct.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] -- "quoting the final death roll as a quarter of a
25million. The other statistics it contained were accurate
26but it is now obvious that the death roll statistic was
1falsified, probably in 1945".
2 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is a reference to TB47.
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] And a recognition that it was a forgery?
6 A. [Mr Irving] That is correct. No, that the figure was falsified.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. I agree.
8 A. [Mr Irving] The document was genuine but the figure was falsified.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sure. That is what you do if you are a reasonably good
10liar or forger. You get as close to the truth as possible
11but falsify the crucial fact. Now, in August 1966 you
12were ----
13 A. [Mr Irving] Can I just draw your Lordship's attention to the fact that
14what you are looking at on that page 56 is not the actual
15page from The Times, which actually looked like this ----
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the point?
17 A. [Mr Irving] That I went to the trouble of having 500 copies of that
18letter printed at my own expense.
19 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] I see.
20 A. [Mr Irving] That is what you are looking at there. I wonder how many
21historians would actually do something like that and sent
22it to historians around the world to correct the error
23that I thought I had made.
24 MR RAMPTON: That is what is troubling me, Mr Irving.
25 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, for quite a different reason. In August 1966 an
1Italian edition of your book was about to be published,
2was it not?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Can you please turn to page 65 of this tab? My Lord, I am
5now on page 10 of the tab. You wrote to your Italian
6publisher, a Miss Calabi on 28th August 1966: "Dear
7Miss Calabi, thank you for your letter. I have now
8written out the few alterations that are ideally necessary
9for my book, The Destruction of Dresden, in the light of
10the new documents I have obtained from Germany." Those
11are the two documents we have just been discussing, are
12they not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Thank you. "They are not too sweeping because, despite
15what I wrote in The Times, I do not think too much
16importance can be attached to the figures given in the new
17German documents. On the other hand, they cannot be
18ignored. I have marked a copy of the Corgy edition of the
19book and I am sending it to you separately. I do not
20think it is necessary to print my letter to The Times as
21an appendix, as this would call unnecessary attention to
22the new documents. If you have any urgent comments, I am
23at the following address in Spain, yours sincerely". What
24does that letter mean, Mr Irving? You tell me. I know
25what I think it means, but you tell me.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I have no idea. This letter was written 34 years ago.
1Would you run your own hypothesis past me?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] My hypothesis is a suggestion which you will need to deal
3with. You had written to The Times. You had withdrawn,
4and you had accepted, on the basis of those two documents,
5that the original figures were pie in the sky. But now
6you do not want to draw attention to them. Why not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I will tell you what puzzles me, Mr Rampton, and that is
8why you have not included in this bundle the actual
9changes that I made, so his Lordship can judge whether
10they were apposite or not. I have them here and they are
11in the little bundle I gave your Lordship this morning.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we ought to look at them.
13 MR RAMPTON: It is quite right. We should look at page 63, Mr
14Irving, which is in fact Montadori, the publisher, writing
15to you. She says on 15th July 1966: "Dear Mr Irving,
16I have seen your letter to the editor of The Times on the
17figures of the bombing of Dresden in 1945 and I wonder
18whether you would like us to publish it as an appendix to
19a possible reprint of a populicia Dresda".
20 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Your response was, I had better keep off that, I do not
22want too much attention to be drawn to these two new
23documents. Now why?
24 A. [Mr Irving] Why do we not just look and see the changes I sent to
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think, if you want to and I see why you
1want to, I think we should. The difficulty I have is that
2I do not quite know where they are.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Pages 6 and 7 of the little bundle, the one with the
4photograph in the front.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Has Mr Rampton got this?
6 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. Everyone has it.
7 MR RAMPTON: I hope so.
8 A. [Mr Irving] It is page 6, right at the back, my Lord, the last two
9pages. Unfortunately, my secretary has stapled in inverse
10order. That kind of thing happens. Alterations in the
11text of destruction of Dresden resulting from -- I draw
12your attention, my Lord, to the very last item on page 2
13of the last but one. Delete this appendix, the order of
14the day, No. 47, so that was out.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Wait a minute.
16 A. [Mr Irving] I am beginning to understand why this document is not
17before the court until I brought it this morning.
18 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Are you referring to the English edition page numbers?
19 A. [Mr Irving] This was the Corgi edition, but the same document went to
20all the publishers. It is dated August 28th, as can you
21see. It is the same date as my reply to the Italians.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Have we got the Corgi edition?
23 MR RAMPTON: S of it. I have not got the whole.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This exercise is not going to achieve much
25unless we know what is actually in the Corgi edition.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Except, my Lord, if you look at the long paragraph I am
1saying to insert on the second half of the first page ----
2 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Page 226?
3 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. That is my treatment of the new evidence.
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes. I am reading it.
5 A. [Mr Irving] That was my take on the new documents as of that day.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes. It is the paragraph underneath the big paragraph
7which is going, you are suggesting, to go on to page 226,
8which starts "These figures must be regarded with extreme
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. That is still my position to this very day, in fact.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Oh, is it? I see.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I am curious that this was not included in your bundle.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] Do not worry, it was not deliberate. Miss Rogers could
14not find it.
15 A. [Mr Irving] It was not suppressed in any way, was it?
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] No, of course not. It is in the bundle anyway, Mr Irving,
17if you bothered to read the papers. This is a bundle
18prepared by us. Suppress, my foot!
19 A. [Mr Irving] It is in now.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] My Lord, can we put it in this bundle?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was thinking exactly the same thing.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] It should go behind the letter to Miss Calabi, should it
23not, so it should be 65A and B.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is this going?
25 A. [Mr Irving] It should be behind the next one actually, behind 65A. It
26should become 65B perhaps.
1 MR RAMPTON: 65B and C. You have written in similar terms to
2Miss Amy Howlett, I see, on 28th August?
3 A. [Mr Irving] I wrote to all the publishers who at that time had the
4book under licence.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Right, Mr Irving, let us get to grips with it. What are
6your reasons for being suspicious of the new figures which
7suggest a maximum of, say, 30,000?
8 A. [Mr Irving] Well, it was not a maximum of 30,000. He mentions of
9course all the numbers of those missing, and so on.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, 35,000 missing. A whole lot of people fled the city,
11did they not, after the bombing?
12 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. The reasons for my being suspicious, even of those
13figures, are, firstly, the statements by Mehnert and
14Fetsher as quoted by Funfach. Secondly, comparison of the
15disaster that had befallen Dresden with the disasters that
16had befallen similar cities under similar conditions.
17Thirdly, the statements by large numbers of Dresden
18civilians that they considered those figures to be far too
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] This is hard documentary evidence dating from the period
21by the Nazis themselves.
22 A. [Mr Irving] Fourthly, that the man who drew up the report dated March
2310th 1945, the police chief of Dresden, was ipso facto
24also in charge of civil defence precautions for Dresden,
25the air raid shelters and so on, and so, if there had been
26a huge casualty resulting from inadequate provision of air
1raid precautions, he was largely to blame himself, so he
2would have every justification to keep his estimates as
3low as possible.
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is it not odd? He has therefore doctored both reports,
5has he, or had them doctored?
6 A. [Mr Irving] I am not saying he has doctored them, but the police chief
7of a German city was also ex-officio the head of the air
8defence precautions for that city. He was in charge of
9ensuring the underground air raid shelters, the static
10water tanks and so on. In the case of the biggest
11disaster in German history like this, he must have been
12deeply conscious of the fingers being pointed at him for
13having provided no air raid shelters and inadequate air
14raid precautions for the city.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] So, Mr Irving, what is your rational, calm, best estimate
16of the likely death toll at Dresden now?
17 A. [Mr Irving] In the latest edition of my book, Apocalypse in Dresden,
18which was published two years ago, I think I estimated
19that the best margins for the figures which I would accept
20would be between 60,000 and 100,000, which brings down the
21original figure that I suggested substantially, which
22still puts me in a bracket above that contained by the
23police chief of Dresden. But I have explained in that
24book the reasons for these calculations. I have not just
25stated this as being gospel. They are not carved in
26letters of stone.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, this all started with a document
2coming to light and I am trying to find where that is,
3because I do not think we ever looked at it, did we?
4 MR RAMPTON: Which was that, my Lord?
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: This particular line of cross-examination all
6started with a particular document coming to light, the
8 MR RAMPTON: Two documents, my Lord.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to find it in the table and I do
10not think we have looked at it, have we?
11 A. [Mr Irving] It is almost illegible, my Lord. It is printed as an
12appendix to the Corgi edition of the book. It is page 1
13under tab 2, that is, the major police report, and on page
148 of tab 2 there is the minor one which was found in the
15West German archives.
16 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] Thank you very much. That is very helpful. We have not
17actually even read what Evans says it says.
18 MR RAMPTON: I have given the figures. They are here. We will
19look at Evans if your Lordship pleases, 546
20and 547. There is no dispute about what they say, I do
21not think, and there is no dispute about their
22genuineness, as far as I know.
23 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but I need to know, do I not.
24 MR RAMPTON: I did read the figures out, but your Lordship
25should see them. On page 545 your Lordship should start,
26which is the so-called final report of 15th March 1945,
1and it had all the right signatures on it.
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Broadly speaking, they are all saying the
3same thing.
4 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
5 A. [Mr Irving] The statistics are exactly the same.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What puzzles me is why you do not accept --
7I suppose the reason why you do not accept these three
8more or less unanimous reports are the reasons you have
9just listed from 1 to 4. Is that right?
10 A. [Mr Irving] The underlying reason is that the report specifically
11states that this is the status as of March 10th, at which
12sometime the city was still completely ruined. The
13cellars had not been cleaned out. The whole of the centre
14of the city, I am sure your Lordship has seen the
15photographs of what Dresden looked like afterwards. They
16did not have the manpower to dig out the bodies, whatever
17figure he gave was an estimate. He said we have done this
18so far. We have counted these bodies. The latest book
19published by the East German authority goes into enormous
20detail. They have now dug out of the archives the
21cemetary registers of how many bodies were delivered to
22the local cemeteries and how many rings were taken off the
23bodies and how many shoes were taken off the bodies and
24shipped off to be recycled elsewhere.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I see.
26 A. [Mr Irving] Frankly, truck loads of shoes were taken off the bodies.
1 MR RAMPTON: Do you know how many bodies were discovered under
2the ruins of Dresden between 8th May, that is the day of
3the German surrender, in 1945 until 1966?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, I have read what the latest book says on that and it
5is very illuminating. They have done a very thorough
6piece of research on that.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1800. Do you know that between 1990 and 1994 when I have
8no doubt Dresden was being extensively rebuilt after
9reunification, they found no bodies at all?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. If you see the heaps of ashes, do you think they
11managed to keep account of the heaps of ashes? You are
12not looking, Mr Rampton, but you will see the photograph
13here, the heaps of ashes in the background.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Put your horrid photograph away, please, Mr Irving.
15 A. [Mr Irving] Two photographs.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tell me how many people.
17 A. [Mr Irving] You see heaps of ashes and you tell me how they can count
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tell me how many people you think were incinerated in the
20Altmarkt after the 13th to 15th February 1945?
21 A. [Mr Irving] Large numbers.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Tell me how many. 35,000?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Large numbers were incinerated.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Maximum of 9,000, is it not?
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Give us your best estimate, Mr Irving.
26 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know, my Lord, not off the top of my head without
1looking at the figures.
2 MR RAMPTON: Where did the 35,000 missing people go? They have
3not been found in the ruins. You cannot incinerate that
4number in the Altmarkt. Where did they go, Mr Irving?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Have you ever read -- I will not put this as a question.
6I have read the report of the police chief of Hamburg on
7the after effects of the British fire storm air raid on
8Hamburg, which described how, in the cellars and bunkers,
9they just found heaps of ashes, because the bodies had
10just self incinerated inside these buildings in the heat.
11Tell me how you can count them.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] The fact is, Mr Irving, that the scientific, the cold
13objective, clear headed assessment of those who
14investigated this matter in depth cannot get you beyond
15the figure of 30 to 35,000, at the very most, for those
16that died. Is that not right?
17 A. [Mr Irving] No, it is not.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, answer my question, please.
19 A. [Mr Irving] If you have been to Dresden, I have not been to Auschwitz
20but I have been to Dresden and I have been to the cemetary
21where they buried the bodies, and there is a big monument
22above the mass grave which says in a German poem: How
23many lie here? Who knows the number? Nobody knows.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] I repeat my question. I am not going to get an answer,
25I know, where did the 35,000 missing go? They are not
26found under the ruins, they cannot be burnt in the
1Altmarkt. Where they have gone?
2 A. [Mr Irving] I gave one answer and that is to say a large number were
3cremated live in their homes. I do not think you have any
4perception of what a fire storm does to a city. There is
5not very much left in the centre after it has passed.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Have you been in one, Mr Irving?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I spent 3 years of my life investigating this one. I am
8deeply ashamed of what we did.
9 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, it is my fault. I am not quite
10understanding your question about where did the missing
1135,000 go.
12 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, one of the documents said, I think it was
13the final report, no, it was the other document, situation
14report No. 1404, page 547 of Professor Evans' report, my
15Lord, paragraph 3, I will read it:
16 "Simultaneously on 13th May 1966 the West
17German archivist, Dr Boberacht, drew Irving's attention to
18the discovery of a document in the Federal Archive in West
19Germany that confirmed the authenticity of the final
20report (that is to say the real one). Amongst the
21situation reports on air raids on Reichs territory dated
22between 23rd February and 10th April 1945 situation report
23No. 1404 of the Berlin chief of police", that is the
24Berlin chief of police Mr Irving, "dated 22nd March 1945
25had appeared, a document dated the very same day as TB47.
26In it the same data were recorded as in the final report
1including the then current death roll of18,375".
2 A. [Mr Irving] Can you tell me what page you are on, please.
4 MR RAMPTON: "A predicted death roll of 25,000, that is total,
5and a figure of 35,000 missing". Now, Mr Irving, if,
6which is insane, but if you propose that all those 35,000
7were incinerated in the fire storm as opposed to some
8proportion at least having fled the city and not come
9back, particularly if they happen to be refugees, if you
10add those together, what is the total that you get?
11 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. Tell me.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] 60,000, is it not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] If you look at page 9 of the first major report dated
14March 15th, where it says, "personal damage, damage to
15persons", it says: "By 10th March in the morning we
16determined 18,375 killed, 2,212", these are actual bodies
17they have counted.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] No 2,212 is badly wounded, not bodies.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I am saying badly injured, yes.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] So some of those might die.
21 A. [Mr Irving] 350,000 homeless.
22 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes.
23 A. [Mr Irving] 350,000 homeless.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, Mr Irving.
25 A. [Mr Irving] Right.
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] Not incinerated in a fire storm.
1 A. [Mr Irving] If they count 18,375 killed, that means they have had the
2actual bodies stretched out in front of them and they have
3done a head count. If you see the damage to the city of
4Dresden, the way it was, you will know there were not
5bodies in the centre of the city. There were just heaps
6of ash.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: My impression was -- I probably got this
8wrong -- that they actually were rather thorough in the
9Altmarkt and that they did try and identify all the bodies
10that were there. Is that wrong?
11 A. [Mr Irving] My Lord, if you look at the second page, you will see them
12doing some of the identification. The bodies have been
13laid out, there are the horses, they have been taken off
14the horse drawn carts, but these are not bodies that have
15been cremated in cellars. These are bodies that have been
16taken into the Altmarkt to be cremated.
17 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] No, but I think you just said, did you not ----
18 A. [Mr Irving] They have done what they could. They have taken the
19rings, they have looked at the inside of the rings to see
20the initials that are engraved inside the wedding rings.
21 Q. [Mr Justice Gray] When you refer to heaps of ash, I thought you were seeking
22to suggest that you did not know who had been incinerated
23in the Altmarkt.
24 A. [Mr Irving] Certainly, these ones, the big funeral pyres, they would
25have done what they could to identify them and that is
26what Funfach is doing in the photograph in the centre of
1the book I showed you, but in the Hamburg air raid it is
2very clearly described, in fact in horrible detail about
3what people found when they went into the basements and
4what they found when they went into the bunkers. In
5Hamburg alone 48,000 people were killed. That was in a
6city that had been completely prepared for air raids with
7air raid shelters and bunkers and anti-aircraft guns, and
8the city was aware what air raids were, they had air raid
9sirens. This was a city with a million refugees, many of
10them camping out in the open streets with no shelters.
11 MR RAMPTON: Now, Mr Irving, a little bit of arithmetic, if you
12do not mind. I added together the prediction, 25,000, in
13the situation report 1404, to the 35,000 missing.
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Making 60,000.
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
17 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is already an exaggeration because, if you base your
18prediction on a figure of 18,375, some part of those
19predicted 25,000 are going to come from the 35,000
20missing, are they not?
21 A. [Mr Irving] I think these are very round figures indeed. Nobody knew
22how many people were in the city that night because of the
23refugees that had poured in from Bresslau and all the
24eastern provinces fleeing the Russian advance.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you push it as far as you possibly can and assume that
26all the missings are going to have to be added to the
118,375 as dead people, quite ignoring the probability that
2the whole lot of them actually just left and were never
3found again, at any rate by 22nd March, you only get a
4figure of 53,000, and that is a pie in the sky, over
5optimistic in your terms, exaggerated estimate even then,
6is it not?
7 A. [Mr Irving] I did all these calculations at the time back in the
81960s, backwards and forwards from every possible
9available source.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well then, why did you write in Hitler's War in 1991, page
11739, the night's death toll in Dresden was estimated at a
12quarter of a million?
13 A. [Mr Irving] Because it was. The estimates that came to Hitler on that
14day were quarter of a million.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just go a little slowly at the
17 A. [Mr Irving] I am sure that Mr Rampton has anticipated that answer
18because I can see a little triumphant smile coming.
19 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, I mean really ----
20 A. [Mr Irving] It is so obvious that ----
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If I may, I would just like to have a look at
23 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What we have not done so far is seen what
25Mr Irving was writing in his books as opposed to writing
26to the Provost----
1 MR RAMPTON: That is what I am coming to now. I have leapt into
2the future because it is very interesting to see what
3Mr Irving made of this information. I will take it a
4little more slowly perhaps.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the end this is what matters, is it not?
6 MR RAMPTON: Of course. Oh, of course.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Are there any earlier references than
8Hitler's War?
9 MR RAMPTON: These came to light in 1977, so I will start after
10that, if I may. Your Lordship in tab 3 will see a page,
11I think page 18, of the book Goring by Mr Irving, which
12was published in 1989.
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am going to have to have an index to these
14files, am I not?
15 MR RAMPTON: I hope so. I hope I get one, too. You must have
16an index and it would be very nice to have an index for
17each file.
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is what I am talking about.
19 MR RAMPTON: You should, if I may say it, and I am not
20criticising anybody, so that everybody can hear ----
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So that it gets done.
22 MR RAMPTON: You should have, I think, an index for the whole
23set of files, and in each file there should be a separate
24index so far as possible.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. The unfortunate thing is that I really
26need one when these files are produced, not later.
1 MR RAMPTON: I know. Your Lordship will find in the table, if
2your Lordship turns to page 11, that the mistress of the
3documents has written in the reference.
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I was forgetting that.
5 MR RAMPTON: Page 18. This is in 1989, and this by Mr Irving's
6standards, I have to say, is a relatively conservative
8 A. [Mr Irving] What page are you on? Page 18 you say?
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] Page 18 of the file, Mr Irving, yes, page 554 of the
10book. At the bottom of the big paragraph in the middle of
11the page you are writing about Dresden and you write in
12the last sentence: "The death toll of that night's
13massacre would rise to over 100,000".
14 A. [Mr Irving] I cannot find it.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is the last sentence of the big paragraph in the middle
16of the page.
17 A. [Mr Irving] Which book are we at?
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Goring, page 454 at the top, 18 in a round circle in blue
19biro at the bottom right hand corner.
20 A. [Mr Irving] I have no round figures on mine. Is this in tab 3?
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: If you do not have pagination on the bottom
22you are going to have----
23 MR RAMPTON: You will find a Goring between two black lines.
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Somebody really ought to have paginated that
26 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, I quite agree.
1 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do think, bearing in mind how much time,
2energy and money has been spent on preparation for this
3case, that that sort of thing really ought to have been
4done. It is not fair. He has enough to contend with.
5 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is about ten or eleven pages in to that
7tab 3.
8 A. [Mr Irving] I have it, yes.
9 MR RAMPTON: I am sorry about this. The last sentence of the
10long paragraph in the middle of the page, Mr Irving.
11 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] You are talking about Dresden: "The death toll of that
13night's massacre would rise to over 100,000".
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] Where did that figure come from, Mr Irving?
16 A. [Mr Irving] That is my figure.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not really an answer, is it?
18 MR RAMPTON: Certainly it came out of your head, but what is it
19based on?
20 A. [Mr Irving] All my books come out of my head.
21 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, sure. What is it based on? You accuse poor
22Mr Miller of being a fantasist.
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am not purporting to write something from my own
24experience, which Miller was. If this is my best estimate
25on the evidence that I have up to that point when I wrote
26this manuscript, which was 1980 something, my best
1estimate of what I knew. This would be about 1984 that
2I wrote that.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1991?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Previously, of course, I had said 135,000, so I am
5bringing the figure down by now.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] If we turn over two pages in this file -- one page will do
8 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not know. This is from Hitler's War 1991.
10 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] And you are writing about, I think, the reaction to
12Dresden. I have not read this page 738 but am I right
13about that?
14 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
15 Q. [Mr Rampton] The reaction in Berlin?
16 A. [Mr Irving] Yes. You remember this book is viewing everything from
17inside Hitler's bunker.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of course, I understand that. When you write at the top
19of the page, therefore, tell me if this is right, the
20night's death toll in Dresden was estimated at a quarter
21of a million, that was the estimate that Hitler was being
22given, probably by Goebbels. Is that right?
23 A. [Mr Irving] Not by Goebbels necessarily, but it is quite clear by this
24time, when you have been reading 739 pages of this book
26 Q. [Mr Rampton] I do not want to take any false point. That is not an
1estimate you are giving to the reader of your own?
2 A. [Mr Irving] No.
3 Q. [Mr Rampton] Then the 1995 edition -- wait a minute, I have leapt ahead
4of myself. We will come back to it, Mr Irving, when we
5have the document, but I just want to ask the question
6whether you remember on 28th November 1991 saying in an
7interview with This Week that there were 25,000 killed at
8Auschwitz and that "we (that is Allies) killed five times
9that number in Dresden in one night"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] I probably would have said four times or five times.
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Check it.
12 A. [Mr Irving] I do not know. I would have to see what I said.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] If you did say that, what it means is that you are saying
14to the viewers on 28th November 1991 that 125,000 were
15killed at Dresden ?
16 A. [Mr Irving] I would need to know exactly the words I used in that
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Rather than leave these things dangling in
19the air. Have we not got that somewhere?
20 MR RAMPTON: The files have been taken away to be marked up for
21another purpose which your Lordship knows, the K files.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have probably got them here, have I not?
23 MR RAMPTON: Your Lordship probably ----
24 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would much rather not leave points hanging
25in the air or we will forget about them.
26 MR RAMPTON: I agree.
1 A. [Mr Irving] If your Lordship knows can I know too?
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I was going to show you my copy. I am not
3going to keep it from you. The whole point was to show it
4to you.
5 MR RAMPTON: I cannot tell your Lordship where to look, I am
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you tell me even the letter of the
9 MR RAMPTON: The date is 28th November 1991.
10 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the file called?
11 MR RAMPTON: K3, says Miss Rogers.
13 A. [Mr Irving] This is a transcript of a Thames Television This Week
15 MR RAMPTON: No, it is a transcript of an interview with you
16This Week.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Somebody has removed my K3.
18 MR RAMPTON: What I am going to do is to read out your exact
20 A. [Mr Irving] I always like to see the context of what things are being
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is going to be shown to you.
23 MR RAMPTON: I am going to show you the whole page and a half
24that I have. I am going to read it out and if you have
25read it and say I have missed something or I am being
26selective, then please tell us.
1 The interviewer, whose name I know not, asked
2you: "So what is the point of quibbling about the exact
3number of Jews that were killed by Hitler? Irving: Exact
4numbers are important. Look at Auschwitz, about 100,000
5people died in Auschwitz. Most of them died of epidemics
6as we know now from code breaking", that is to Hinsley
7decrypts. "So even if we are generous and say a quarter
8of them, 25,000 were killed by hanging or shooting, 25,000
9is a crime, that's true. 25,000 innocent person executed
10by one means or another, but we killed that many people,
11burning them alive in one night, not in three years in a
12city like Faucheim. We killed five times that number in
13Dresden in one night, equals 125,000."
14 A. [Mr Irving] We killed I think 17,000 in Faucheim in one night and five
15times that is less than 125,000.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but that is not rally the relevant bit,
17is it?
18 A. [Mr Irving] That is precisely why I would like to see the original
20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let Mr Irving have a look at and see if and
21make any point you want.
22 A. [Mr Irving] I am not really going to quibble about this, because to my
23mind if I said it is 125,000 and Mr Rampton says it is
24only 100,000 in my mind, or you said only 100,000 before,
25this kind of chiselling around major catastrophes I find
26regrettable, repugnant. I will have a quick look at it.
1The reason I want to look at it, my Lord, is because
2Professor Evans by suppressing one word in a quotation
3from a certain letter has totally reversed another
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are absolutely entitled and right to ask
6to look at it.
7 MR RAMPTON: Yes.
8 A. [Mr Irving] Here I am going to have to say I want to hear the sound
9recording to see if I said five times or not or four
10times. If they are going to quibble on that kind of word
11I want to what hear if I said four or five.
12 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is not a quibble.
13 A. [Mr Irving] It is a quibble.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] You said yourself, Mr Irving, that the figures are exact.
15 A. [Mr Irving] That is why I think it is important I should know whether
16I said four or five. Is that This Week recorded by the
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Yes, I think so.
19 A. [Mr Irving] I will listen to it at home. I have it on tape.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] By all means do.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Please do.
22 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, remember the Leuchter press
23conference? My Lord, I am sorry, I have jumped a date,
2423rd June 1989, page 11 of the table. I have got the
25transcript here.
26 MR JUSTICE GRAY: What is the reference? It is in D2
2 MR RAMPTON: The actual file is D2(i) tab 5, page 10.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. Does Mr Irving have a copy?
4 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
5 MR RAMPTON: You start at the bottom of page 9. This is the
6question and answer session of the Leuchter press
7conference. Does your Lordship have it?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes I have.
9 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, have you got it? I am starting with
10Irving at the bottom of page 9. "I am suggesting to you
11alternative explanations to the gas chambers, because
12obviously as the gas chamber now turns out to be phoney,
13then we have to try to explain what happened to the
14figures". I think you probably meant the people.
15 "Now one possible reason is the large number of
16Jews that turned up in the state of Palestine which is now
17the state of Israel. Jews in Israel did not come from
18nowhere. Another part of them when Auschwitz was
19liberated was set out on the roads and shipped westwards
20where they ended up in cities like Dresden".
21 Pause there, Mr Irving. What evidence do you
22have that any of the people from Auschwitz went to
24 A. [Mr Irving] I say cities like Dresden.
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] Let us read on in the light of that answer.
26 "I do not have to tell you what happened in
1Dresden three weeks after Auschwitz was evacuated by the
2Germans. One million refugees on the streets of Dresden
3at the time when we burnt Dresden to the ground killing
4anything between 100,000 and 250,000 of them"?
5 A. [Mr Irving] Yes.
6 Q. [Mr Rampton] Of whom ----
7 A. [Mr Irving] Of the 1 million people on the streets of Dresden.
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] One million refugees on the streets of Dresden.
9 A. [Mr Irving] One million people on the streets of Dresden.
10 Q. [Mr Rampton] "One million refugees on the streets of Dresden at the
11time when we burnt Dresden to the ground killing anything
12between 100,000 to 200,000 of them."
13 A. [Mr Irving] Of them.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] The refugees?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Dresedens, the people in Dresden.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I can well understand a degree of ----
17 A. [Mr Irving] Hyperbole.
18 Q. [Mr Rampton] Sloppy expression in answer to a question. Of course
19I understand that. Although you say refugees, I do not
20suppose you meant that 250,000 refugees were killed in
21Dresden, any more than you meant that 250,000 refugees
22from Auschwitz were killed in Dresden?
23 A. [Mr Irving] I am giving the upper and lower limits.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] In 1989 where does the figure of 250,000 as an upper limit
25come from, Mr Irving?
26 A. [Mr Irving] It comes in the war years from the records that I saw, as
1the upper limit, hence the estimate that was put to Adolf
2Hitler on the morning after, but also over the intervening
3years I received very large numbers of letters from 1960
4onwards when I was writing the Dresden book, from 1960
5right up to 1989, that is almost 30 years I received
6persistent letters from people who said it cannot possibly
7have been as low as X; it must have been as high as Y.
8Nearly all of them gave as the upper limit the figure of
9250,000. So I am stating here limits in my view; not more
10than 250,000, not less than 100,000.
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: So you attach credence, do you, to letters
12like the ones you have just mentioned, giving an upper
14 A. [Mr Irving] Not only to that, my Lord, I also mentioned the documents
15during the war years which also mentioned that kind of
16figure. It is an upper limit, however improbable and a
17lower limit, however equally improbable, without setting
18the figure in between which on this occasion I consider to
19be more accurate, given as an answer to a question, a
20belligerent question, at a press conference.
21 MR RAMPTON: I think the latest figures I have from you are
22probably in the Goebbels book. I notice, in passing, that
23in the republication of Dresden, the focal point edition
24of 1995, you say in the introduction: "Between 50 and
25100,000", in the text, "up to 100,000". In Goebbels you
26say, "Between 60 and 100,000 men, women and children".
1 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, that is having read the latest accounts that had come
2from East Germany, which I consider to be very impressive,
3which were published, I suppose, within the last three or
4four years or five years.
5 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is Dr Professor Herr Reichert an East German?
6 A. [Mr Irving] My recollection is that the book was sent to me by the
7East German Government -- by the Dresden City
8Authorities. I think it is the last item in your clip, is
9it not? The last item I saw anyway was a letter, yes,
10just above tab 3, my Lord. 1997, yes, they sent me a copy
11of that book. There had been several newspaper accounts
12also based on it.
13 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am trying to find the Reichert's final estimate which
14I think is about 25,000.
15 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where is that?
16 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, 511 of Evans. Dresden historian, yes,
17you can call him an East German, if you like. I prefer
18just to call him a German?
19 A. [Mr Irving] "Central German", perhaps.
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] From Dresden, a Dresdener?
21 A. [Mr Irving] 500?
23 MR RAMPTON: 511, paragraph 6.
24 MR RAMPTON: "Many historians accept the 35,000 figure".
25Pommerin, Sherry. "For instance, the historian, Earl A
26Beck", who seems to be an American, "said the constant
1increase in estimates of the number killed in the raids
2does not comport with the facts. Official reports justify
3an estimate of between 25,000 and 35,000 killed. Figures
4that rose to 100 or 200,000 killed lost touch with the
5reality. In 1994 research by the Dresden historian
6Friedrich Reichart was published, using a previously
7unused source, which convincingly reduced Bergander's
8figure of 35,000 to 25,000. This figure", says Professor
9Evans, "can be regarded as close to definitive"?
10 A. [Mr Irving] Well...
11 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, now, Mr Irving, 100,000, 60 to 100,000 those figures
12are fantasy, are they not?
13 A. [Mr Irving] I think the answer to that is you pays your money, you
14takes your choice, and we know who is paying the money to
15Mr Evans and we know what choice he has made.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] I see. But what about Mr Reichert? Has he been paid by
17the international Jewish conspiracy to produce these
19 A. [Mr Irving] What an extraordinary statement!
20 Q. [Mr Rampton] Well, that is what you have been asserting all through
21this case.
22 A. [Mr Irving] I do not think I have mentioned the phrase even once. Do
23you want me to comment on Reichart's book or are you just
24making ----
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] We are going to have a little trawl through your public
26utterances about the Jews tomorrow.
1 A. [Mr Irving] Oh, good.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] You might enjoy that. Is it right, Mr Irving, that
3when ----
4 A. [Mr Irving] Can we also have a bit of a trawl through the public
5utterances about the Jewish community about me?
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You are perfectly entitled to.
7 MR RAMPTON: About what?
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Call evidence about that, Jewish
9organizations' statements about Mr Irving.
10 MR RAMPTON: Oh well, he can, yes.
11 A. [Mr Irving] I think Reichter has done a very good job. I have read
12the book in part. I have been very impressed by the
13solidity of his research, particularly as he had access to
14the records to the crematorium administration and the
15cemetery administration.
16 Q. [Mr Rampton] That is right, the numbers of burials, certified burials
17and so on and so forth, the numbers of bodies found since
18and all that kind of thing, the capacity for incineration
19in the Altmakt. He is a sensible, level headed chap who
20has actually bothered to check the hard cold figures and
21the contemporaneous documentation, he is not?
22 A. [Mr Irving] Are you implying that these were documents that I was ----
23 Q. [Mr Rampton] No.
24 A. [Mr Irving] --- that I suppressed when I wrote my book in 1962?
25 Q. [Mr Rampton] I am implying that when you write in 1995 and 1996 figures
26as high as 100,000 you were just making it up?
1 A. [Mr Irving] When was Reichart's book published?
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] 1994.
3 A. [Mr Irving] Was that available to me at the time?
4 Q. [Mr Rampton] I have no idea.
5 A. [Mr Irving] When you see yourself that it was supplied to me in 1997
6with the covering letter.
7 Q. [Mr Rampton] Look at Bergander's book. Have you not read that?
8 A. [Mr Irving] No.
9 Q. [Mr Rampton] 35,000.
10 A. [Mr Irving] I know Bergander very well as a human being and I respect
11him as a friend and he is a jolly decent chap, but I do
12not put his book in the same category as I put Reichart's
13book having read Reichart's book.
14 Q. [Mr Rampton] Mr Irving, a final question about Dresden. Then, my Lord,
15I shall run out topics for today. I explain what benefit
16we might gain from that when I finish. One final question
17on Dresden.
18 Is it right that when your German publishers put
19a out version of Dresden in 1985 they described it as a
21 A. [Mr Irving] I believe I am right in saying that Schindler's List when
22it is published has always had the title "a novel" written
23on the front the jacket.
24 Q. [Mr Rampton] Is the answer to my question yes or no?
25 A. [Mr Irving] Yes, indeed, and they apologised to me for their mistake.
26I consider that to be a repugnant kind of suggestion on
1your part.
2 Q. [Mr Rampton] It is entirely consistent with every question I have been
3asking you on this topic since we started on it this
4morning. Pie in the sky, Mr Irving, your figures. May I
5suggest that the reason why you have done it is because
6you want to make false equivalence between the numbers of
7people killed at Dresden and the numbers of people killed
8at Auschwitz?
9 A. [Mr Irving] If I am permitted to re-examine myself in-chief then
10I would say the following, and it may be you would wish to
11interrupt me.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. That is a question and so answer it in
13whatever way you think fit.
14 MR RAMPTON: Is that right?
15 A. [Mr Irving] Do I consider my figures to be pie in the sky? No.
16 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, it is a bit more than that.
17 MR RAMPTON: A little bit more than that.
18 A. [Mr Irving] Would you repeat it?
19 Q. [Mr Rampton] I suggested that your figures are fantastic, that they
20have no sound basis in real evidence, and I suggested the
21reason why, to which you say no, and I suggested that the
22reason why you have done it is that you want to make a
23false equivalent between the numbers of people who died in
24Dresden and the numbers of people who were killed by the
25SS in Auschwitz?
26 A. [Mr Irving] I repudiate that suggestion. I can only state in general
1that I did not just write a book about the air raid on
2Dresden; I also spent three years of my life researching
3all the major air raid attacks, not only on German cities
4but on other cities, that I was able to compare the air
5raids on German cities like Hamburg, Castle, Fausheuim and
6Damschadt, if you look at the death rolls -- am I going
7too fast?
8 Q. [Mr Rampton] No. I was distracted. I do not mean to be discourteous.
9 A. [Mr Irving] I had the impression you were not listen. I was able to
10compare the death rolls in those cities with the death
11roll in Dresden and come to an independent conclusion,
12independent of what people might write to me in private
13letters, that on the balance of probabilities, given the
14scale of catastrophe that was inflicted on Dresden, the
15number of homes destroyed, the numbers of people rendered
16homeless, the numbers of people in the city, the fact that
17the city had no air raid precautions whatsoever, that it
18had no air raid sirens, it had no defences, it had no
19guns, it had no shelters, on the balance of probability
20more people probably died in Dresden than are known to
21have died in Hamburg in a much smaller air raid when far
22fewer bombs are dropped, far fewer homes are destroyed and
23far fewer people rendered homeless. That, therefore,
24although I respect Reichter's work on the basis of the
25documentation of the numbers of bodies dragged up to the
26cemeteries, I concluded that probably more people died in
1Dresden because there were not enough bodies to find.
2 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that concludes my cross-examination on
4 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes.
5 A. [Mr Irving] I have still repeated the figures of 60,000 to 100,000 in
6my latest edition of the Dresden book. On my web site
7edition I have drawn attention to the fact that the
8figures are probably controversial which I think is the
9correct way to go about it.
10 MR RAMPTON: My Lord, that being so ----
11 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, do sit down.
12 MR RAMPTON: I have no further questions to ask Mr Irving this
13afternoon. The remaining topics are, there is a gentleman
14called Almeyer who was for a short time an officer at
15Auschwitz. I am not interested in, shall I say, the
16substance of Herr Almeyer's evidence, but I shall want to
17ask Mr Irving some questions about that. It is only about
18two questions. Then there is Moscow.
19 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Then there is who?
20 MR RAMPTON: Moscow. My proposal for that, actually it is not
21mine again, it is Miss Rogers' clever plan and it is not a
22trick, she has produced a sort of schedule of events which
23I can spend a day wading through in court by reference to
24documents, but which does seem to us to be really rather a
25waste of time, since, as I think your Lordship has already
26observed, much of this may turn out to be common ground.
1What we propose to do, particularly since it is only 20 to
24, is to give your Lordship and Mr Irving a copy of this,
3it is a similar sort of document to the one we have been
4using this afternoon in relation to Dresden, and ask
5Mr Irving to read it overnight and to mark on it those
6areas which are in dispute. Then I can ----
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. Mr Irving, are you happy about that?
8 MR IRVING: My Lord, I am not entirely happy about it. I was
9not happy about this tabulation that was put in because of
10its tendentious nature in parts. They put in quotations
11extracts from quotations.
12 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That the sort of thing that is slightly
13concerning me. That is not a criticism of Miss Rogers.
14 MR IRVING: Some of them are deeply prejudicial they are before
15your Lordship. Your Lordship is a human being. If one
16reads the entire letter you can see what the entire letter
17was about in connection ----
18 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think what I will say, and I understand
19your concern, is read whatever it is that is being
21 MR RAMPTON: I will not give it your Lordship.
22 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not suppose you mind me seeing it, do
24 MR RAMPTON: He did say he was a bit worried it might colour
25your Lordship's mind or something to that effect.
26 MR IRVING: It is already a selection of documents made from
1their own bundles which are not agreed bundles.
2 MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, it will not do you any harm to read it,
3if I may suggest.
4 MR IRVING: I am not easily harmed, Mr Rampton.
5 MR RAMPTON: No, that is perfectly plain.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Read it and then we will see in the light of
7your reading of it what we are going to do with it, if
9 MR RAMPTON: I am quite happy for your Lordship to have one,
10but if Mr Irving is worried about it ----
11 MR IRVING: I prefer if your Lordship waits until I have read
12the first ----
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: You say that and I think that is not
15 MR RAMPTON: Then beyond that which I am going to do in the
16form of broad questions to which I expect to get negative
17answers, if necessary, I will put the questions, Mr
18Irving's political associations, and I will leave the
19detail to be dealt with by my experts so far as they are
20going to be witnesses.
21 Only perhaps at the end, or perhaps not, some of
22Mr Irving's utterances about, put bluntly, anti-Semitism
23and racism, for which there would be marked up files, by
24tomorrow morning, but I do not have them yet.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have not, sort of, gone through to think of
26any other topics that may need to be covered, but I am
1sure you have.
2 MR RAMPTON: I am going to have a trawl through the undergrowth
3with Miss Rogers tonight to see if there is anything that
4we have missed, but we do not think there is. Else. We
5think that is all that is left.
6 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Adjutants occurs to me.
7 MR RAMPTON: I keep forgetting them because I do not like them,
8I find them muddly, but the fact is there may be something
9in them that I do need to do. I am hopeful that I will
10finish cross-examining Mr Irving by the end of tomorrow,
11if not sometime early on Thursday, but certainly this
13 MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is very helpful.
14 MR RAMPTON: Then, my Lord, I tell your Lordship this, next
15week on Monday, Professor Browning will be here, and this
16is always subject to evidence that Mr Irving wants to
17call, because we are, in effect, unless he has finished
18his case at the end of this week, interposing. Then
19sometime when Professor Browning is finished, Professor
20Evans and following him, Dr Longerich.
21 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right.
22 MR RAMPTON: So that should cover the next couple of weeks, the
23beginning of next week, which means we have done actually
24pretty well on the time schedule.
25 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. I have said this before, Mr Irving,
26but if you want a pause between the experts, I would be
1more than happy to agree to that.
2 MR IRVING: I may well ask for one day before we take on Evans.
3 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that is entirely reasonable.
4 MR IRVING: Yes. Between the experts, I think we are ready for
6 MR RAMPTON: I do not know, but my suspicion is that Professor
7Browning will not in the witness box very long.
8 MR JUSTICE GRAY: As we have a few minutes, I have a bit of a
9mound of documents.
10 MR IRVING: My Lord, the cream sheet of paper just confirms
11what I said to you yesterday morning, just those points
12that I made, and I thought you might like to have that in
14 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much.
15 MR IRVING: The other items belong in the Dresden clip of
16Dresden documents they gave you.
17 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Right. I think what I will do with these is
18put them, whatever it was, L1.
19 MR IRVING: Yes. I was going to give your Lordship a bundle of
20photographs, but I find these repulsive photographs
21probably sit better in the Dresden file where they belong.
22 MR RAMPTON: Yes, I put that glossy brochure in the waste
24 MR IRVING: I will retrieve it, if I may. I know you do not
25think very much of what we did to Dresden, but I do.
26 MR RAMPTON: What do you mean?
1 MR IRVING: You said, "So what?"
2 MR JUSTICE GRAY: No. We have disposed of "so what",
3Mr Irving, once and for all.
4 MR RAMPTON: Enough "so whats", Mr Irving.
5 MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am putting it in tab 4 of L1 which I know
6is your bundle.
7 MR JUSTICE GRAY: 10.30 tomorrow.
8 < (The witness stood down)
9(The court adjourned until the following day)