Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day012.08 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 Q. It is a piece of fiction? A. Well, when you write a book that is going to be read, as opposed to work written by learned authors like Professor . P-63 Evans, you occasionally help the reader along by saying, well, I mean, this was rather a surprising exchange. Here is Adolf Hitler ticking off an Army lieutenant, one of his Nazis, for raiding a Jewish shop and throwing him out of the party for doing it. You would imagine that any other Nazi, like Goring standing nearby, is going to be saying -- doing a double take of this or am I wrong? Q. You are completely wrong. It is a quite illegitimate licence you have taken with a record of history, but there it is. It may not be the biggest point in the case, but it is there. A. How am I completely wrong? How am I completely wrong? Q. You attribute a reaction to Goring for which you have no evidence. A. But it is reasonable to assume that if Hermann Goring, who was a dedicated Nazi, standing next to Hitler, and here is Hitler throwing somebody out of the party on the spot for having taken action against a Jewish kosher store that night, the Nazi is going to be saying, "What is going on here?" and he is going to be doing what is called a double take. I think it is a very reasonable inference to draw, and it is only two words. Q. It is reasonable to assume that Hitler, very disturbed at what had been happening and trying to restore law and order, sent for the lieutenant if, in fact, as Hofmann said, the lieutenant just happened to be there? . P-64 A. Well, I am sure that the ex-Army lieutenant was not hanging around in Hitler's presence the whole time. Presumably, he was somewhere hanging around the bierhall and Hitler learned he was there and said, "Bring that fellow in. I want to tell him what I think of him". Q. Do you not see what you are doing all the time, Mr Irving? With every single one of these little fictions, these little author's licence ---- A. Are you saying that he did not throw the man out of the party for having done what he did that night? This is the major point. You are looking for words ---- Q. Just let me ---- A. --- just the same as in the other one where we have Hitler saying, "You cannot do that, you cannot kill the Jews" and you are picking on the date. Q. No, Mr Irving. A. And here we have evidence that Hitler threw the person out of the party for having taken his squad to ransack a Jewish store, and you are picking on whether he was sent for or not. Q. We will come to that in just a minute, Mr Irving. Please tell me this. When you wrote that passage about Hitler's reaction to this looting of a Jewish delicatessen, or whatever it was ---- A. Yes. Q. --- had you read Hofmann's testimony? . P-65 A. Most of it. Q. So you knew that Hitler had not sent for the lieutenant, did you not? A. This was written, what, 14 years ago so I do know what I knew. Q. You see, all your little fictions, your little tweaks, of the evidence all tend in the same direction, exculpation of Adolf Hitler, do they not? A. How does sending for him or not ---- Q. This is a much more severe measure than just saying to the chap, "Well, look, I gather you are the bloke that did this out of the party", is it not? A. That makes a big difference? Q. It makes a little difference. A. No, the exculpation is not the sending for. The exculpation is throwing him out of the party and that is not denied. Q. And, "Goring goggled, 'Good heavens! Adolf really is not anti-Semitic after all'" A. Oh, come... Q. I mean, really! A. I do not think I actually wrote that, did I? Now you are taking liberties, you are writing things into the text. Q. Shall we look at the German? My Lord, I was told that the Reichskristallnacht bundle will be ready in what was 20 minutes and, therefore, presumably, is 18 now, so I have . P-66 only a couple of questions and perhaps we could then have a short break until it arrives. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, certainly. A. Or you can spin it out the way you are doing now. Q. No, Mr Irving. That is quite unnecessary. It is my fault because Mr Rampton wanted an adjournment altogether and I was trying to use the time. MR RAMPTON: Why should I spin it out, Mr Irving? A. Well, by trying to make some mileage out of the word "sent" when, in fact, you say he was on the other side of the room and said, "You are the one, come over here". MR JUSTICE GRAY: We were going to look at the German. MR RAMPTON: Yes. Look at the English first on page 227. A. He is complaining that I did not identify the source. Q. No, no. A. He does. Q. Could I ask your Lordship and Mr Irving just to read the English in paragraph 2 on page 227? MR JUSTICE GRAY: "That gives a bad impression of the party". MR RAMPTON: Yes. Could you then read the German at the bottom? It goes over to the other side at the bottom of 228 as well. A. Yes. Can I draw attention to the fact, of course, that he has used a different source from the source that I have used? I have used the original microfilm which is -- I do not know whether it was longer than this or not. My . P-67 microfilm is 6,000 pages long, and I have got no idea whether they reproduced the entire text of the trial or not. Q. I just cannot grapple with that, I am afraid, Mr Irving, I do not know. A. Yes, but it is important because if I am being accused of putting things in or adding to the text, it may well be -- I am just saying this, it is 14 years since I wrote that passage -- that I was using the original microfilm, looking at the original court stenographer's version, and he has been using some printed edited text. Q. The last three lines of German on page -- you must forgive me my accent -- 227, almost the last three lines: "Zufallig" - does that mean "by chance" - "ist der Fuhrer der Gruppe dagewesen"? A. By chance the leader of this squad was there, a young Army lieutenant. Q. Right. Are you telling me that that is different from the text that you read? A. Well, he was there. He was no doubt hanging around. "There" does not mean to say he was sitting at Hitler's desk or wherever. He just had to be on hand. Q. Zur Rede gestellt hat diesser gesagt" -- "called on to speak" is a fair translation? A. No, it is not. "Zur Rede gestellt", challenged. Q. Challenged? . P-68 A. Yes. Q. Very good. He said: "I took off the party" ---- A. Emblem. Q. "Insignia". A. Yes. Q. Hitler said "Damit". What does that mean? A. Thereby you have admitted or recognized that you did not consider yourself to be a member of the party at that moment. Q. Yes. A. But you did that. Q. Yes. A. With your entire squad you are thrown out of the party immediately, and I will take care that you will never again be taken up by a nationalist fighting unit. Q. Has it occurred to you, Mr Irving -- again this would not be in Adolf Hitler's favour of course, so maybe it has not -- that what actually made Hitler cross was not so much what they had done but the fact that they took off their party insignia before they did it? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is actually what it says. That gives a bad impression of the party. MR RAMPTON: Exactly. A. Where does it say that gives a bad impression of the party. Q. In the translation. . P-69 MR JUSTICE GRAY: In the translation, four lines down. MR RAMPTON: The relevant English is: "I took off the party badge, that is the lieutenant. Hitler said, by doing this you admitted that you do not belong to the party at the moment when you committed that act. You are expelled ... " Has it occurred to you, Mr Irving, that what actually was meant by Hitler was, if you are going to do things like that, do not be a coward and keep your party insignia on when you do? A. I do not think so. I think this is a very far-fetched interpretation. It is an alternative interpretation but I think far-fetched and the less plausible of the two. I do not think that, if this Hofmeister, if I can continue my argument and I think this will destroy your argument entirely, if this Hoffmann, rather, imagined he was doing Hitler a service when Hitler was on trial for high treason, that he was going to do Hitler a service by saying that Hitler had said, "By taking off your badge, you created a bad impression, you should have done that as a Nazi", that would not have helped Hitler at all in that trial, would it. Q. But do you not think the two things really go together? Hoffmann might have said that Hitler said, "This is a bad thing to do, worse still you took off your party badge"? A. That is not what he said. He said quite clearly, "By this action you have damaged the party", or, "By this action . P-70 you have admitted you were not a member of the party, and therefore I am going to throw you out anyway". He certainly would not have helped Hitler at a treason trial by suggesting that Hitler had taken deliberate anti-Semitic actions against, or that he endorsed anti-Semitic actions against, this grocery store. If this was outside the courtroom, in other words, your explanation could have been plausible. But inside the courtroom, and Hoffmann giving evidence on behalf of Hitler is totally implausible, to put that interpretation on it. Q. That is not a good reason for doubting the credibility of what Hoffmann said, I suppose? A. I am sure he wanted, as the judge said, to get Hitler off the hook. Q. Did you tell your readers that? A. It is quite evident, is it not, when you are relying something? How much do you have to spell out everything to your readers every time? I am not, as I said once before, putting eight pages of sludge into a text in the way that a Professor can in an academic treatise. I have to write a book that will sell. Q. What you do, if it is a mere side reference in a book about Goring, if you have a doubtful source like that, is you leave it out entirely. You do not make some elevating reference to Hitler's protection of the Jews in passing, . P-71 if you are doubt at all about the credibility of the source. You just leave it out. A. On the contrary, this is a most illuminating example. It is a very earlier example of exactly how Hitler acted in the second world war, where he repeatedly interceded against Nazis who had committed excesses against by actions against the Jews. We have already had, and we are going to have a lot more before this case ends, innumerable cases where Hitler has interceded, and this is a very early one in 1923. Q. You cannot have it both ways, Mr Irving. Either Hoffmann is reliable and was not skewing his evidence in order to help his leader out of a tight corner, in which case you should have given the whole account, or else he was an unreliable witness and you should have just left it out. Is that not right? A. You are the one who is trying to have it both ways, Mr Rampton. You want to have him as an unreliable witness who is trying to help Hitler, but at the same time hacking Hitler on the shins by what he says, saying that Hitler was angry because the guys who attacked the grocery shop had had the effrontery to take off their Nazi badges. That would not have helped Hitler at all, would it? Q. What about what you described as the requisitioning of funds by Hitler's armed thugs? A. Oh that was obviously some prank that they carried out. . P-72
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