Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day018.15 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 Q. --- this little catalogue of experts who have, apparently, totally negligently spoken and written highly of my works. A. Well, let me go on to say that in dealing with the reviewers of your work, I try to make a distinction between journalists, on the one hand, who maybe accept it but clearly do not know an awful lot about the subject ---- Q. Can I mention some more names? And A. --- and historians with a general kind of expertise, but not specific knowledge of the sources ---- Q. Would Hans Monson have had ---- A. --- and then historians with a specific expertise in the source materials on which you base your work ---- Q. Would Hans Monson ---- A. --- and it is the last ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, I think, if I may say so, can I try to help you in this way so that we can move on? I am well aware that there have been quite a large number of distinguished academics who have paid tribute to your work as a military historian. MR IRVING: Until comparatively recently, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, leave that on one side. . P-128 MR IRVING: Well, after the 1988 watershed. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Does it really help to fire these names at Professor Evans? I do not think it does. It does not help me. MR IRVING: Do I not have a right to destroy his expert report? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, you do, but I would rather you did it by taking the particular criticisms that he makes of you and try to destroy them, rather than deal with it in a rather indirect fashion. MR IRVING: Well, can we move on to the two names you mentioned, Professor Broszat, we have mentioned him briefly. I am not going to go further into him. You mentioned a second name there, Charles Sydnor? A. Yes. Q. Are you referring to the review he wrote in a journal called, I think, European ---- A. "Central European History". Q. "Central European History". A. Indeed. Q. Have you compared that with the original article by Martin Broszat and have you seen that one is purely derivative from the other? A. I do not think it is purely little derivative. I think Sydnor had his own -- well, let me say two things. First of all, I think it is true that Broszat provided, not only . P-129 Sydnor but also Trevor-Roper with a number of the criticisms that they made of your work, but I do think Sydnor does go beyond that. He is a man who has a particular expertise on the SS and, indeed, he did have research assistants and research grants to write his review. Q. To write his review? A. Yes. Q. Very nice. A. He acknowledges that in his footnote. Q. But it is very largely derivative from Professor Broszat in the way that I have suggested? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, Mr Irving, come on. Let us move on to the criticisms that are made by Professor Evans against you, rather than discussing whether one other author's work is derivative from another. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, two or three pages later we find Professor Evans saying, "Mr Irving gives no example of where writers copy what each other write", and that pre-empts that particular question, so I will not ask it. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR IRVING: Will you go now to the bottom of page 21? A. Well, let me just make a point there, that I am not aware of anything you have written that says that Sydnor copied what he wrote from Broszat. Q. I wrote a reader's letter to the magazine concerned which . P-130 they published. A. I have read it. Q. Yes. Would you now go to the bottom of page ---- A. But you do not make that accusation there, to my recollection. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Professor Evans, we are trying to move on. Do not put the brakes on. MR IRVING: Page 21. MR JUSTICE GRAY: 21. MR IRVING: My Lord, I find it very helpful when you do tell me to move on because I have no way of knowing whether I am barking up the wrong tree or not. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am trying to give you the odd hint -- I meant that in a sort of -- I mean that to be helpful. MR IRVING: "The position can be summed up", you say, in these last two lines on page 21, "The position can broadly be summed up by saying that there is a general consensus that a decision was taken at the highest level". We are talking about the decision to kill Jews, right? A. Yes -- to kill all the Jews in Europe in a systematic way, yes. Q. "... that there is a general consensus that a decision was taken at the highest level some time between the beginning of 1941 and the spring of 1942". Are you a believer in the writing of history by general consensus then? A. Ah, now, well, what I am saying is that I am trying to sum . P-131 up the accepted state of historical knowledge, and --- - Q. Accepted state of historical knowledge? A. Yes, the general state of historical knowledge in which ---- Q. Can I remind you of one or two other previous general consensus -- I believe it is fourth declension -- in history previously? There was at one time a general consensus that the world was flat, was there not, and there was also a general consensus that the sun moved around the earth. Was that another general consensus that was generally accepted? A. Well, I think scholarship has moved on a little since those days. Q. But is it not dangerous to write history or to do astronomy or anything else by general consensus, would you agree? There is a case for the outsider to come along and say, "I may be right, I may be wrong, but let us rethink this"? Do you agree? A. Well, let me go on to say what I say in the next sentence which is: "The limits set by the available evidence do no allow of a date, say, in January 1993, or January 1943. The view that, for example, no decision was ever taken, or that the Nazis did not undertake the systematic extermination of the Jews at all, or that very few Jews were in fact killed, lies wholly outside the limits of what is reasonable for a professional historian to argue . P-132 in the light of the available evidence." That is not to say that nobody should or people should not be allowed to challenge these things, but simply to say that this is what you face and, of course, it is based on an enormous amount of research by a very large number of people in the archives, in the original documents, and that you have to deal with all that research and all the documents which have been thrown up. Q. So you say that people should not be necessarily prevented, they should be allowed to say these things without being harassed, arrested or imprisoned or stripped of their Professorship, but that these are generally not acceptable opinions? A. There are several questions there, I think. Q. Let us deal with just one. A. First of all, I believe in free speech, so you can say whatever you like so long as it does not offend the laws of the land. What one does, as a university Professor, is slightly more circumscribed, that is to say, I think, as an academic historian, you have the duty to confirm to academic standards in the evaluation of evidence and in the views that you put forward, leaving entirely aside whatever people who have been dismissed from their university posts might have done by way of running against the laws of the land in terms of racist statements or whatever. . P-133 Q. Let us just look at the first thing you say here: "The view that, for example, no decision was ever taken", and you consider this is one of the views that is totally beyond the limits. Are you not familiar with the fact that this is precisely the view espoused by Professor Martin Broszat in his famous 1977 paper? He said he came to agree with David Irving that probably there was no decision, and this is also the view taken by Raul Hilberg, is that not right? A. If you present to me the passages in their work where they say that, it is not quite my understanding of what they say. Q. Well, I believed that you were an expert and this is why you were being paid a very substantial sum by the Defence to stand in the position you are in now, that you knew these things? A. Yes, and I am already, leaving aside your cheap jibe about money which I treat with the contempt it deserves ---- Q. It was not cheap, from what I hear. A. --- and I hope the court will as well ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: This is degenerating and please don't let us let it. MR IRVING: My Lord, was this not a justified question? MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not really think that -- the problem I have with this is that Professor Evans has introduced a number of other authors in support of his criticisms. To . P-134 that extent, I suppose it is legitimate for you to introduce, as it were, the other side of the coin. But I will say again, what is going to help me is to look at the individual criticisms and see whether Professor Evans is right when he says you have manipulated the data. I am not stopping you going through these earlier sections, but, without disrespect to Professor Evans, I can tell you I have not marked many of these early pages because they seem to me so broad and general that ---- MR IRVING: They are very broad and general but ---- THE WITNESS: They are intended, my Lord, if it helps, just to set the background. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I realize that, but, in the end, it is the guts of it that we have to tackle. MR IRVING: Yes, but if he is ---- THE WITNESS: I mean, if it helps, Mr Irving, of course I accept that your work has had many very favourable reviews from many distinguished people. MR IRVING: That is not what we are talking about. That is now beyond dispute. What we are saying here is that it is wrong for you to say in your report, in the opening, scene-setting passage, that the view that no decision was ever taken is beyond the pail and no reasonable person would now say this, when, in fact, I have mentioned to you two names of very famous, notable, academic historians, Monson (sic) and Hilberg, who have adopted precisely this . P-135 view and have not been disproved. A. Well, that is my assessment of ---- Q. I mean Broszat and Hilberg, I am sorry. A. That is my assessment of the situation of research in this field. Q. At the end ---- A. If you wish to produce documents which go against that, you are quite welcome to do so. Q. Well, I did take it, Professor, that you had studied the documents in this case which include on several places in the expert reports the precise statements by Martin Broszat and Hilberg to this effect. Would you go to the end of this particular paragraph ---- A. I do, Mr Irving, outline Broszat's ---- Q. --- On page 25? A. --- views on the decision-making process in my report, and I do note that because he thought of the decision- making process as coming from, as it were, the bottom up, that that inclined him to be sympathetic to your particular line on Hitler. So if that helps at all, I do not dispute that. Q. At the end of the last line and a half on page 25, you say: "Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary among historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all". Is this still . P-136 your view, having heard all the evidence over the last four or five weeks, that I show no scholarship ---- A. Yes, it has been ----
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