Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day016.17 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR IRVING: Professor, believe me, I do not want to stampede you into giving an ill-considered answer because it does not help the court one bit. So let us now move on to the middle of December, shall we say? You are familiar with the entry in the Goebbels diary of, I believe, December 13th relating to a speech that Hitler had made to the Gauleiters? A. Yes. Q. Was this speech by Hitler to the Gauleiters which was, in fact, made the previous day, December 12th 1941, in any way different from the old familiar Adolf Hitler gramophone record (as I always call it) in which he harked back to his prewar speech? A. It does seem to be more than just I had predicted this in the sense that ---- Q. And now it is happening? A. Now it is happening now. There is a greater presentationist element in it, I think -- I would have look at the text to point out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we find it? I have lost it because everything is in such a scattered ---- . P-122 MR IRVING: It would be in Professor Evans' report, I think, my Lord. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, it is in the file, this new file, at 60 to 67. MR JUSTICE GRAY: When you say "this new file"? MR RAMPTON: Well, the Browning file. MR IRVING: Page 67? A. The Browning file is L1? MR RAMPTON: Yes, amongst other things. A. And which is the page? MR RAMPTON: 60 onwards, 60 to 67. A. Yes. MR IRVING: Page 64 that we are interested in. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR IRVING: In the afternoon the Fuhrer speaks to the Gauleiters. A. Yes, I have it now. Q. That is where the reference to Hitler's speech begins, I believe? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do we have this in English or not? MR RAMPTON: It is ---- MR IRVING: Then on page 66 is the passage that the Defence relies on, I believe. MR RAMPTON: Yes, but it is in English, my Lord, I think a large part of it is in Evans' report, but as I do not have that here, I cannot tell your Lordship exactly where to . P-123 find it. MR IRVING: Do you have that passage Professor? Page 66 or 498 of the printed text? It is the final paragraph: "With reference to the Jewish problem, the Fuhrer has decided to make tabula rasa" or a clean table. "He prophesized to the Jews that if they would bring about World War once more, then they would experience their own destruction and this was not just an empty phrase". That is probably all we need to read of that. A. Yes. If one compares it, say, to Goebbels in August and they talk about the Fuhrer had prophesized, "The Russian Jews are paying now, the others, they will pay later" there is still a prophecy element. Here it is no longer what will happen in the future, but it is cast as if, when they said, "The Fuhrer has decided", it is cast as if things have already been decided, not as if there is a process of decision going on. So, in that sense, it is not the same gramophone record because the August still has a future looking element. This one, everything is orientated towards or at least has the tone that all decisions have been made. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry. The documents in the shape they are in, I do not know, there are pages of German and there is no indication that I can see of what this is. MR IRVING: My Lord, it is page 498 ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, I have the page, but is this from? . P-124 MR IRVING: It is the final paragraph on that page. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, I know, but what is the whole of the page and, indeed, what are the whole of the preceding six pages? MR IRVING: It is the Goebbels diary of December 13th 1941. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is Goebbels diary. I see. A. Yes, and the question was, did I find this a repetition of the same kind of speech Hitler had made before referring to his prophecy, and I was recalling a document we do not have before us which was a Goebbels entry from August in which I pointed out there was still "and someone will pay in the future", well, here it is, it has been decided. So I was disagreeing with Mr Irving that it was the same old gramophone record. MR IRVING: Our problem is that the August Goebbels entry is not before the court and has not been submitted to the court either in the bundles or in the experts' reports, so we cannot really rely upon that. MR RAMPTON: If your Lordship would like a translation, it is to be found on page 337 at paragraph 8 of the Evans' report. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR IRVING: I am not going to ask you about the Hans Frank speech ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do you mind pausing a second just whilst I catch up? . P-125 MR RAMPTON: The German is set out in note 46 at the bottom of the page. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I have the German all right, yes. You interpret that, Professor, as being a reference to a decision which has been taken and it is a decision systematically to exterminate? A. The question that Mr Irving had asked was, did I find this a repetition of the frequent references to his prophecy and "Was it the same old gramophone record?" was his phrase. I said, no, I did not think so because between a previous Goebbels entry describing a Hitler reference to the prophecy and this one, I have said there is a change of tone and a change of vocabulary. So I disagreed. I said this does not, this is not the same kind of reference to something in the future. And so I happen to think that it is the point at which Hitler makes clear that even though the war will now go on longer, that, nonetheless, they will proceed with the extermination. Up until that point they used two phrases "after the war" and "next spring". After Pearl Harbour, one has to clarify which of those two it will be and, in my opinion, this is the point at which Hitler says it will be next spring even though it will no longer be after the war. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR IRVING: Professor, I will now have to bore you by asking you to look at the actual German used. Is this German . P-126 passage in the subjunctive in German, indicating reported speech or could it be Goebbels himself writing his own words here, so to speak? A. It is not in subjunctive, but I do not know that that would exclude that he is writing an easier ---- Q. Let me put it this way around: if in the second line he had written "Er hat den Juden prophezeit" but "er habe den Juden prophezeit", then it would be beyond doubt, would it not, that he was quoting Hitler? A. That would indicate that he was paraphrasing very closely, but this would not exclude the possibility, and indeed I think that is what it is, is a, you know, writing down what Hitler had said. Q. Are you familiar with reading the Goebbels diaries in English or in German as a source? Not scientifically familiar, but have you used them quite a lot. A. I have used them, but I have not read through all of them. I do not know the entire corpus but I have used them. Q. Would you agree that it is sometimes difficult to distinguish when Goebbels is referring to what somebody has told him and when his only little benevolent mind takes over? A. I do not think I could answer that. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, may I interrupt? This might be a convenient moment. Mr Irving said just now that the . P-127 earlier entry of 19th August 1941 is not in the documents. It is twice in the Evans' report. It is at page 410 at paragraph 7. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But not in this J1? MR RAMPTON: No. MR IRVING: I am indebted to you. MR RAMPTON: Perhaps I should read it out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Hang on. If we are going to have to find it ---- MR RAMPTON: Yes, page 410 of Evans, my Lord. The witness's memory is, fortunately, very accurate, but it is perhaps worth just looking at. This is Evans' translation on 19th August 1941: "We speak about the Jewish problem. The Fuhrer is convinced that his former prophecy in the Reichstag, that, if Jewry succeeded once more in provoking a world war, it would end with the annihilation of the Jews, is being confirmed. It is being rendered true in these weeks and months with a certainty that seems almost uncanny. In the East the Jews have to pay the price; in Germany they have paid it already in part and in future they will have to pay yet more. Their last refuge remains North America; and there they will also to pay some time, sooner or later". MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry that Professor Browning has not got that in front of him. . P-128 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you very much. MR IRVING: The passage is, in fact, also in the Goebbels biography. Unless your Lordship feels it necessary, I would prefer not to deal with the Hans Frank meeting at this point. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Take your own course. MR IRVING: Yes. We dealt with it pretty exhaustively I think already in my cross-examination, and I am not sure that unless the witness has specific points he wishes to make about it, the Cabinet meeting in Cracau, you will remember, on December 16th where Hans Frank referred to, "What does Berlin imagine? Do they imagine we are housing the Jews in housing estates on the Eastern provinces?" A. I would only add on that, that earlier in the entry before he gets to that speech, he refers to his visit with Hitler. Q. Yes. A. And whether that refers to the Gauleiter meeting or the possibility that he had a separate private talk with Hitler, we do not know, but "besuch bei", you know, "von Fuhrer" would indicate a strong possibility that he met with Hitler privately, as he usually did when he came back to Berlin, in which case then he went off and gave this speech, it was not just listening to the Gauleiter but after a conference, possibly after a conference, with . P-129 Hitler as well.
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