Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day008.12 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. You stop interrogating me, if you will, Mr Irving and give me your explanation why, as I now apprehend, you are saying we cannot trust the page we have been looking at? A. Because it has been typed -- I have looked at the original of this document, Mr Rampton, you are looking at a photocopy. I have looked at the original in the archives. It is typed on different, here onwards it is typed on a different typewriter, this page, the page 28. Q. Where was it found? A. What do you mean "where was it found"? Q. Where was this speech found, Mr Irving? A. Can I just complete what I am saying? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I would like you to because I want to know exactly what you say about ---- A. It is very important, my Lord. It has been typed by a different typist. Q. Page 28. A. And this frequently happened. I spotted many diaries that had been fumbled with subsequently or pages of documents. This had been typed by a different typist. They use different ways of typing. You will notice that there is more space after the first line on page 28, after the . P-105 "Reichsfuhrer SS", it has a double space after that instead of a single space on the previous page. She has indented by five spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. I am assuming it is a she. Q. So what do you infer from that? A. We do not, my Lord. All we can say is that for some reason this page was retyped at a different date. We do not whether it was retyped during the war, which is the likelihood. We do not know what has been inserted or taken out. On this occasion we do not have the other transcripts of that speech. So that is a page that I am unhappy about pinning a capital issue on. You do not often find a document that has been so clearly tampered with as that. MR RAMPTON: Oh, yes, there is, for example, at least two versions of the next speech we are coming to. A. We are looking at this speech though are we not, the fact that change just occurs on this page. Q. I wish you would sometimes let me ask you a question. A. I have not really finished what I was speaking abut. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us pause. Finish your answer and then the next question. A. About the falsification of this particular page, the fact that this particular page has been clearly retyped at a different date and that this is the one page that contains, as I quite agree, a pivotal sentence, makes me . P-106 very unhappy about just relying on this version of that sentence. I am not saying it is a postwar forgery. I think it is unlikely. I think it is the kind of fumbling that goes on during the war, when people have spotted they have said something wrong and so they have put something else in instead. For example, just for one minute I would say I found exactly the same in the private diary of Henry Stimpson, who was the American Secretary of War who retyped the pages just before Pearl Harbour to cut out incriminating material, and as he said later said to Henry Morgan: "I have gone through my diaries cutting out everything that incriminates President Roosevelt", you can spot that if you look at the originals, as I always prefer to, rather than looking at printed versions on in this case microcopies. MR RAMPTON: Mr Irving, we will see when we get to the next speech similar things have happened? A. Yes. Q. I am not the least bit resistant to the idea that that particular page, like others of no particular significance, was retyped. A. Yes. Q. How many versions of a speech or of pages of a speech do you think you go through before you reach the final version if you type them out or draft them beforehand? A. Well, I have looked at very many of the original Himmler . P-107 speeches. As I said, I have must have looked at about ten of these kinds of transcripts, and there are transcripts, there is a whole published volume of Himmler speeches, so you end up with a large number of transcripts to look at. This speech I think is the only one where I found a discrepancy of this magnitude which has not been remarked on by the historians. I am very uneasy that it is this page of all the pages that shows the signs of I would wartime tampering. Q. Not wartime tampering. Can I suggest a natural human process for the production of one amongst several pages that look different? For example, if you look at page 7, the next page, the number at the top of the page has not been typed; it has been handwritten. A. From thereon they are handwritten, yes, in the entire speech. Q. Yes, but what is baffling me, Mr Irving, is why you will not actually use your knowledge of the world to advance the most likely explanation of this phenomenon, is that somebody types version one, Himmler looks at it and he says, "Oh, I don't think like that very much", and in those days of course you do not have word processors, so it has to be retyped on a different typewriter, perhaps the same day, perhaps on another day, it matters not. This is Himmler's words in Himmler's speech in Himmler's own private file. . P-108 A. This is the man who also wrote on another occasion: "Let us do this for camouflage purposes. I like the new version, it's going to the Fuhrer. Excellent for camouflage purposes." We cannot trust him, unfortunately. When we find a speech has been tampered with in this way, then frankly I mention it, in fact I think in Hitler's War I drew attention to the discrepancy in the numbering and the typeface and the paragraph indent and so on. Q. You did, and in such a way as to suggest that there is clear evidence of an order from Hitler to Himmler to carry out the extermination programme could not be relied upon. A. Is this a hanging document? Q. Oh, yes. A. Would you hang somebody on this? Q. I would not hang anybody for anything, as it happens, Mr Irving, not even Adolf Hitler if he were here, though some people in this room might. This is not a prosecution of Adolf Hitler. This is in your mind, should be, not setting out to prove something, seeing what the evidence suggests. A. Yes, but this is precisely the same situation, to my mind, as where a court is shown a so-called confession and then when you look at the original you find out that one page of the confession has been rewritten and inserted at a later date. The court would then throw out the whole confession, frankly. . P-109 Q. This has been put in by the Allies to incriminate Hitler, has it? A. No. You are putting it in to make your point. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Rampton, I think we probably ought to pause. You have not finished with this and it may be it would be worth looking perhaps after the adjournment at how this is dealt with in whichever of Mr Irving's books it is dealt within. A. Yes, I did try to find it, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: Yes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Shall we say 5 past 2? (Luncheon Adjournment) MR DAVID IRVING, continued. Cross-Examined by MR RAMPTON, QC, continued. MR RAMPTON: Now, Mr Irving, will you please tell us slowly and carefully why it matters, in your view, if it be right, that this page of this speech by Himmler has been retyped? A. Well, I have had the advantage, of course, that I have refreshed my memory from reading my own book. Q. Yes. A. So I will give the same explanation or speculation now as I did in my book. Q. Yes. A. First of all, I have had the advantage that I have seen the original and I work from the original paper of this transcript. From the original paper, it is evident that . P-110 the original in the archives is a carbon copy, which means that the ribbon copy went somewhere else. It is reasonable to suppose, as this is typed on the large typeface, that the ribbon copy went to Adolf Hitler. All we can say, however, is that at some time, somebody considered it necessary to retype page 28 which contains the pregnant sentence about the order. I speculate in my book that it is reasonable to assume that the version that went to Adolf Hitler did not have this retyped page in. It went in with some different formulation. Q. There is the leap into space which, I am afraid, I do not follow. A. Well, the alternative -- I would be interested to hear what your alternative explanation would be. Q. No. I do not see anything in the evidence before my eyes. Assuming you are right it was retyped, certainly the page numbering has been changed. A. And the indenting is different. Q. There does not seem to be anything in what I see before my eyes to tell me that it was done after or before the other pages. There is nothing which I see in this document which leads me to think that if it was altered, it was altered for any other reason than that Himmler had changed his mind about precisely what he wanted to say. A. He did not read from this. This is a transcript of what . P-111 he said -- if you appreciate the difference? This is not a script that he read from. This is the typed version of what he said taken from a shorthand note. Q. Well, can you look at this document? My Lord, this is another version of the same page which I am told comes from the archives. It was obtained for me yesterday because I thought we might get to this today. There is one for his Lordship and one for Mr Irving. We have in front of us a typescript, not in Fuhrer's size type, have we not, Mr Irving? A. Yes. Q. With a lot of manuscript alterations on it? A. Editing, yes. Q. In the top right-hand corner the typewritten No. 17 which has not been changed. A. Yes. Q. If you look at about nine lines down, you see the same passage beginning that we were discussing before the adjournment, do we not, "Die Judenfrage" at the end of the line? A. Yes. Q. It still has seven lines below that or eight, six to seven: "Dieses mehr gegevenen [German - document not provided] -- zustattenen befalls war"? A. Yes. Q. I should read the whole thing, "Wie schwer [German - . P-112 document not provided] -- befalls war". That is the same phrase as appears in the other version? A. That is absolutely correct. Exactly the same, no editing on that passage at all. Q. But we can, can we not, infer from the page number that the speech was at that stage a good deal shorter because in our other version the page number finally winds up as being 28, I think, does it not? That may be a function of the different size. A. Different size typeface. Q. But I ask you to notice that the top right-hand corner of the one we have got in the bundle ---- A. Yes. Q. --- appears to have been changed from a number in its teens, does it not? A. Hard to say on the basis of that copy. Q. In manuscript. A. I can only say it is hard to say on the basis of that copy. Q. It is hard to say, but the first of those digits looks a bit like a 1, does it not? A. I can only say it is hard to say. Q. You see, I do not make these observations in order to lead to a particular conclusion. All I say is you do not find in these different versions and different numberings of a page containing the same words, do you, any suggestion . P-113 that this page was added at a later date, after some sanitized version had been given to Hitler? A. That is not the suggestion that I made. Q. Well, what is it? A. I am perfectly content with the suggestion and, in fact, with the clear proof that Himmler actually used these words when speaking to this audience of military gentlemen who were accustomed to accepting orders from above. What I am suggesting is that in the version that he then sent to Hitler he retyped that page and replaced it by another page that is not before us. Q. But why do you say that? A. Because something has happened to this page. Quite clearly something has happened to this page. Q. But people make alterations to their drafts all the time. Look, do you agree that this smaller typeface probably represents an earlier generation of the same ---- A. Quite clearly. It is almost certainly the original shorthand version. Q. So what leads you to suppose then that the speech was made in these terms, let us suppose this is an earlier draft? A. Yes.
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