Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day012.14 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR RAMPTON: If it be that it was this document which is before you that you were purporting to describe in the last paragraph on page 276 of Goebbels, it is right, is it not, that what you have written in Goebbels is a total misdescription of the contents of the telex? A. That is ridiculous hypothesis. You are comparing one document with another. Professor Evans, if he had done his job properly, should have said document No. 3052 is in fact a letter from Adolf von Schirott to somebody else and totally unrelated to this issue. But he has not. He has just advanced the bald statement that I got the number wrong, when quite clearly the number is different and the content is different. MR JUSTICE GRAY: And the time is different. A. And the time is different. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: The time is different. This is 1.20 whereas the -- no, it is not timed actually. MR RAMPTON: No, it is not timed. The timing actually fits . P-119 because the text of Goebbels says: "The Four Seasons was set on fire around 1.00. Heydrich", etc. etc., then he went upstairs and then he sent his telegram ---- A. He could not have done all that in 20 minutes for a start. Q. --- and bingo 1.20. A. He certainly could not have done all that in 20 minutes, but we are arguing in the dark here until I can bring the actual document. Q. We should, Mr Irving. I will chase it up and if you would be so good you too, but you may not care to. If this is a wrong assumption and there is a Heydrich telex which says what you say it says, then, as I say, I shall climb down. A. Eat humble pie. Q. No, I shall simply climb down. I shall apologise. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us wait and see what happens, see who is going to eat what. Mr Rampton, I really do think that if there are perhaps eight important documents on the sequence of events that night, the night of 9th, I must have translations. It is just not good enough to hand in a whole lot of German documents and expect me to make sense of it all. I probably could but it would take weeks. MR RAMPTON: Some of them are summarised or translated or partly translated. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but then I have to dart around trying to find whereabouts that is summarized. . P-120 A. My Lord, we can share the burden. I will translate half tonight and they can perhaps translate half. MR RAMPTON: I agree with your Lordship. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not mind who does it. MR RAMPTON: Those that are important, as most of them are, we shall have translated. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Good. MR RAMPTON: But not, I hope, now because it would take too long. "The hotel management", you go on at page 276 of Goebbels, "telephoned Hitler's apartment at Prinz-Regenten Platz, and thus he too learned that something was going on. He sent for the local police chief, Friedrich von Eberstein. Eberstein found him livid with rage." What is that actually based on, Mr Irving? A. Two or three sources. I secured the confidence of the personal Adjutants on Hitler's staff who lived in the apartment directly below him in Prinz-Regenten Platz. They actually received the telephone call from the hotel there and they went up to Hitler's headquarters to warn him that something was happening and that they had received this phone call from the hotel. So this was either Colonel von Below, or he was a major then, who was the air force adjutant, B-E-L-O-W, or the Naval adjutant Captain Futkammer. If I look at the notes no doubt I can see. Q. You just referred to somebody called? . P-121 A. Nicolaus von Below in an interview with him in 1968 which is now 32 years ago. I will try to remember it as best as I can. In fact it was a verbatim interview recorded on tape. The transcript has been made available to you. Q. Oh, yes, I am sure. When was that interview taken, May? A. May 1968. Q. Yes, but one has to be very mistrustful of long- remembered eyewitness accounts, does one not, Mr Irving? A. I think you are probably right. By that time it would have been 20 years since the event occurred. Q. Would it not have been better to have made reference to the message that Eberstein sent at 10 past 2 that morning? A. Well, I disagree, because the message does not add anything to the other messages that went before it. As his Lordship rightly said, it just repeats what the previous one said. It is also not physically signed by Eberstein. It just uses Eberstein's number which is a common German practice. They will send a message out over the boss's name, which does not mean to say that Eberstein was actually in the room when the message went out. As we know, he was actually with Hitler at that time having strips torn off him. Q. We do not know that. A. Well, I know it because I have the eyewitnesses. Q. The eyewitnesses, I am afraid, will not do if they are inconsistent with contemporaneous documentation, . P-122 Mr Irving. We know that, do we not? A. With concrete evidence, yes. Q. What concrete evidence? A. Well, the evidence of the documents. Q. Yes, that is right. Eberstein sends a message at 2.10, presumably some time after he has witnessed Hitler's apoplectic rage about the consequences of what he, Hitler, has authorized, and he sends a message saying "Carry on, chaps"? A. I disagree. If the news from the hotel came that the synagogue next door was on fire, and the telephone call went to Hitler's Adjutants, "Come and get your baggage from the hotel luggage room because the hotel is now endangered by the flames", and they then go up to see Hitler and Hitler says, "What's going on?", and there is this kind of enquiry that has begun in Hitler's apartment, all this thing does not take a fraction of a second. They send for the police chief, Eberstein, who then as to come over from police headquarters. He comes over from police headquarters. By now we are looking at 2 a.m. in the meantime what is happening at police headquarters behind Eberstein's back, we do not know, but presumably this telegram which has come from Berlin headquarters has now been forwarded to the lower units with his name on it, that is nothing new. But at the same time Eberstein is in Hitler's apartment having strips torn off him and Hitler . P-123 saying, "What on earth is happening now? Put an end to it." Q. What do you mean "at the same time"? Mr Irving, your chronology, if I may say so, is sometimes quite extraordinarily, what shall I say ---- A. I am afraid you were not listening because you were doing something else. I think it is quite plain. Q. I was listening. A. It is quite s plain that round about 2 a.m. the important confrontation between Hitler Eberstein took place to which Hitler's Adjutants were the witness. Q. Why do you say it is round about 2 a.m.? A. Because we know that sometime afterwards Rudolf Hess was then required to send out a message to all the Gauleiters on orders from the very highest level, ordering that this nonsense had to stop immediately, and if the deputy Fuhrer sends out a message quoting orders from the very highest level, we can presume, I think, without stretching the bounds of credulity too much, to whom he is referring. That is the kind of concrete evidence I am referring to. Q. I am just going to break the chronology. It is not actually breaking the chronology. We will go on now and look at this famous message from Hess's office, shall we? It is at page 9 of this bundle. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Has nothing happened between 2 a.m. or 2.10 a.m. and 2.56? . P-124 MR RAMPTON: Not so far as I know. There is something which comes after it, but we will look at that in a moment, because again it is something Mr Irving has got in his book. A. I am curious that you have used a different version of the telegram from the one that I provided in discovery, which has the heading of Rudolf Hess's deputy of the Fuhrer. Q. Mr Irving, I doubt it. Your text says: "At 2.56 a.m. Rudolf Hess's staff also began cabling, telephoning and radioing instructions to Gauleiters and police authorities around the nation to halt the madness", footnote 49. It is interesting that the time is the same, is it not? A. You missed what I said, that you have chopped off the heading or this version chops off the heading, which makes it the deputy of the Fuhrer. Also it chops off the line which says, "This is a repetition of the telephone calls that we have been making", in other words ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I would like to see what you say has been cut off. A. My Lord, I am not saying it has been cut off this. This is a different version of the same telegram. Now the other one is in my discovery with these ---- Q. That will be in court somewhere, will it not? A. Is my discovery in court? If not I will certainly bring it. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, look at page 9 of the bundle. . P-125 A. If a copy of the War Path is here in court, then it is a facsimile in that book. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think it is. MR RAMPTON: I do not know. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It needs to be chased up. A. Because it does have the important line saying: "This is a repetition of the telephone calls we have already made", when I was sending a telex to confirm what we said. MR RAMPTON: Yes. A. It also has a reference number, No. 136/38. Q. This document I think comes from Berlin, whatever that means. A. The Berlin Document Centre. Q. Yes, and yours comes from where? A. It came from exactly the same folder. Q. Well, there you go. A. But my one was more significant because it had the heading of the Deputy of the Fuhrer on it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think that may be right. Anyway, is it not somewhere in court? MR RAMPTON: I am not concerned about whether it comes from the Deputy Fuhrer or not. I am quite willing to accept that it does. What I am concerned about are two things. First of all, it is time which is not in dispute between us? A. Yes. Q. 2.56 a.m. right? . P-126 A. Yes. Q. Then it is text. I remind you what you wrote: "At 2.56 a.m.", that is unequivocal? A. Yes. Q. "Rudolf Hess's staff also began cabling, telephoning and radioing instructions to Gauleiters and police authorities around the nation", and these are your words, "to halt the madness"? A. Yes. Q. Right. Now look at the text. You are not saying the text of my telegram is different from yours, are you? A. I know the text of that telegram off by heart. I have quoted it so often in speeches. Q. I bet you do. Now tell us what it says, would you? A. "On express orders from the very highest level", which is always ---- Q. That is Hitler. A. --- which is always a reference to Hitler. Q. I agree. A. "Acts of arson against Jewish shops or the like are under no circumstances and under no conditions whatsoever to take place". Q. Good. Then? A. "Please confirm immediately by receipt." Q. What is underlined -- and is it underlined in your copy as well? . P-127 A. No, it is not, but the words here underlined are "acts of arson against Jews businesses or shops". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is it underlined on the copy I have? A. This is underlined in pencil, my Lord. Somebody has underlined the copy in pencil or pen. It is not a typewritten underlining. Q. But by whom? A. I do not know. I have not seen the particular copy. MR RAMPTON: I cannot answer that. I have no idea. It may be some later underlining by somebody who thought the word significant, I suppose, may it not, Mr Irving? A. Quite possibly, yes. Q. "Shops or the like"? A. Yes. Q. What is "like", maybe garages, little workshops? A. The German is a bit big ambiguous. You do not know whether it is acts of arson and the like or acts of arson against shops and the like. Q. I am quite happy with that, "but we are not here in the presence of a general prohibition against damage to Jewish property, are we"? A. They do not mention synagogues.
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