Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day002.20 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. And then we started this little digression, if you remember, by your asking me what I meant by "systematic"? A. Yes. Q. I said and you agreed there are all those meldungs that go back to Heydrich's office? . P-274 A. Halfway up the hierarchy. Q. Or whatever, but quite a long way up, halfway up the RHSA, he is head of the RHSA in Berlin? A. Yes. Q. He is quite close to Himmler? A. Yes. Q. Who is quite close to Mr Hitler? A. Yes. Q. Then this was another example designed only to illustrate this, that a reputable historian might well conclude that this document would not have surprised Adolf Hitler one bit? A. Might not have. Q. No. Well, surely, use your imagination, Mr Irving, if I am Adolf Hitler I am king of the German world, as it were, and this is put in front of me and it represents something that I do not approve of, I am going to go through the roof, am I not? A. I do not say he did disapprove of the killings of the Jews on the Eastern Front. Q. He did not? A. He did in December 1941 in the case of the German Jews being killed. He was quite plain. I mean Himmler sent the message which the British decoded ordering the man responsible to come immediately to headquarters, but the killings on the Eastern Front of the Russian Jews and the . P-275 others, Hitler did not care about them. Q. This is South Russia, the Ukraine and Bialystok which is on the border then of Poland and Russia? A. Still the Eastern Front according to my map. Q. Though by 1942 quite a long way behind the Eastern Front? A. It is the rear Eastern Front area. It is the area in which the SS still operated. Q. It is miles away. It is right over, well, as you say, Stalingrad. This is the height of he battle for Stalingrad? A. But it is the area in the rear of the Eastern Front where the Einsatzgruppen had h task of pacifying and cleansing. Q. Before I move on to something else, do you distinguish in your own mind a sensitivity in Hitler towards the murder of central or western Jews, German Jews, and the murder of 363,000 Eastern Jews? A. I am not sure what that question means, but if I say that one of his staff, Walter Havel, whose diary I had, said that if you want to understand Hitler's attitude to humanity was the way that a man might look on an ant heap, and that is how he regarded the Eastern peoples whether they were Jewish or not, but he very definitely intervened to stop the killing of German Jews at the time that I specified. So there was clearly a distinction in his own mind at that time. Q. We are talking about two events a year apart. . P-276 A. Well, you are talking about two events a year apart. Also you are talking about the giving of the order and the receiving of meldung. Q. Yes, surely, but that is in a completely different context, Mr Irving, as you very well know. You use what you say as Hitler's opposition to the Riga killings as having some kind of relevance to this document. Tell me what the relevance is? A. Hitler clearly intervened, if we can assume that the fact that the telephone call in the first place was made from Hitler's bunker, and if we know that the next day Himmler was ordered to send or Himmler was required to send a radio message to the man who had carried out the killings telling him that he had overstepped the mark, that he had to follow the guidelines in the future with outsettled Jews, the ones sent from Germany, in other words, and this is clearly an indication that German Jews were kept in a different category because the killings then stopped as the historians agree for several months as far as the German Jews were concerned, but the killing operations of non-German Jews behind the Eastern Front continued and obviously, according to this document, on a huge scale. I can only repeat why are we wasting our time looking at this document which I have printed in my books, which I agree is authentic, I am not going to challenge the authenticity of it. . P-277 Q. Or the likely conclusion to be drawn from it that Hitler will have seen it? A. We have agreed that it is probable that given that is says "forgaleg" it is probable that it was shown to Hitler because that is the phrase they would have used. Q. You deny, however, that there is any evidence that the shootings in East were systematic in the sense that they got up and were approved, got up to and were approved by the highest level? A. To justify the word "systematic" I would want to not just one out message and one in message which is all we have separated by 18 months, I would want to see a flow of out and in and out and in, in the way that we are accustomed to seeing them in the archives. Q. You have read what I call in shorthand the EMs coming in from the East to Heydrich's office, have you not? A. They go up to Heydrich's office and hey are detailing purely these security operations. Q. Security operations. I mean they list killings of hundreds of thousands of Jews, as Jews, as Jews, not as partisans? A. Well, let us have a look at all the other ones and see how they are categorized. Q. We will do. A. I agree that the Jews are being brought in under that umbrella. They are being killed under that camouflage. . P-278 Q. You are familiar with the Jager report, are you not? A. Yes, but I very much hope we are going to have a look at the original. Q. We are going to have a look at the original. We certainly are. A. It comes from the Russian archives. Q. I want to be sure, because I do not want to do you any disservice at the end of this case. I want to make sure I have your position clear. You do not accept that that document, let alone its forerunner, you say it is not a forerunner, back in August 1941 is any evidence that the killings in the East by shooting, not by gassing, but the killings in the East by shooting is any evidence at all that this was a systematic process approved of at the highest level of the Third Reich? A. That is my position. Q. I see. Thank you very much. Now I want to pass to something different. What you will need now are copies of your two books, 1991 Hitler's War and Goebbels Master Mind of the Third Reich. You will also need in case we need to refer to it, a copy of your opening yesterday. You will need D2 (i) (ii) and (iii). Forgive me, Mr Irving, I am just trying to find the document. I apologise for that pause, my Lord. Mr Irving, yesterday you made quite something of this document from the PRO which records statements made ---- . P-279 A. The Bruns document? Q. --- by General Bruns but secretly recorded? A. That is true. Q. You told us that this document has considerable evidentiary value. It is not self-serving? A. Not self-serving, yes. Q. And that it has the ring of truth from the phraseology and the things he describes, is that right? A. Yes, very similitude. Q. Yes. Do you have a copy of it with you or can you tell us where to find it? A. Well, the text is in my opening speech of course. Q. I will try to use the same version as you. A. Page 22. Q. Yes, page 22. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is not 100 per cent accurate I remember noticing, but I do not think there is any real difference. MR RAMPTON: I am just checking, my Lord, to see whether the two little passages which I have are the same. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, the one right at the end. MR RAMPTON: There is one, as your Lordship says, right at the end. As far as I can tell at a quick glance, the words which Mr Irving has printed in his speech are the same as I have on the document. So perhaps we can use the speech. In the middle of the page just below the middle . P-280 of page 22, Mr Irving, General Bruns reports having, as it were, been subjected to the experience of one of these Riga shootings. He reports that a man called Altemeyer said to him upon his protest at the use of, at the misuse of he waste of valuable manpower, Altemeyer said: "Well, let it be shot in accordance with the Fuhrer's orders. I, that is Bruns, said: Fuhrer's orders? Answer from Altemeyer: Yes. Whereupon he, Altemeyer, showed me, Bruns, his orders." Yes? A. That is correct, yes. Q. That is what is in the PRO document. Therefore, presumably, General Bruns actually said that? A. Yes. Q. And was recorded as having said it by Allies. If you go right to the end, the narrative is that they managed, Bruns and his colleagues managed, to get back to Berlin, perhaps to Canaris, an account of this shooting, perhaps in the form of an objection, is that right? A. My reading of the document was -- in fact, we know also from other sources -- Gerald Fleming had done some very good work on this particular episode, that an Army Lieutenant wrote a report, having been sent down the road to go and have a look for himself by these cowardly German Generals, and this Army Lieutenant's report was sent over the Army Lieutenant's name up to Hitler's headquarters by the route of Admiral Canaris who was the Head of the . P-281 German Intelligence Service. Q. Can I start at the bottom of the next page 24 where "Canaris" begins a line, do you see that? A. Yes. Q. "Canaris had the unsavoury task of waiting for the favourable moment to give the Fuhrer certain gentle hints. A fortnight later I visited the Oberburgermeister, or whatever he was called then, concerning some other business. Altenmeyer(?) triumphantly showed me: 'Here is an order just issued prohibiting mass shootings on that scale from taking place in future'. They are to be carried out more discreetly.' From warnings given me recently, I knew that I was receiving still more attentions from spies", etc. "They are to be carried more discreetly in future" means the shootings are to be carried out more discreetly in the future? A. I would even go so far as to say mass shootings. Q. Yes. It does not mean that the mass shootings were to come to an end, does it? A. Not in that sentence, no. Q. What it means is that they must be more cleverly disguised from anybody who might notice what was going on? A. Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just whilst you are on that document, you told us, I think, that Bruns would have been a Colonel. . P-282 A. He was a Colonel at that time in the Engineer Corp. and he was a Major-General at the time of his capture in 1945. Q. And Altenmeyer, presumably, was his superior officer? A. No, sir. Altenmeyer, his real name was "Altemeyer", without an "n", he was a 21 or 22 year-old very junior SS officer who just happened to have the lives of these unfortunate people in his power.
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