Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day018.11 Last-Modified: 2000/07/24 . P-91 Q. Is this in any sense improper, do you think? A. I do not use the word "improper". Q. Is it not a fact that by using this non- confrontational method of interviewing people you sometimes wheedle more out of them over the years than if one was to go there with all the methods of a Fleet Street journalist, cheating them the moment they had given the information and ridiculing them? That my method in the long term resulted in a much greater benefit for the historical community because I extracted the information, the data from them, is that not a fact, by using my methods? A. Well, I do not know accept your rather harsh verdict on Fleet Street journalists and you would have to show me some examples of what they had done but ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Do not let us worry about that. A. But, that aside ---- MR IRVING: The Swabians say zote und zote(?). A. --- do not dispute, Mr Irving, that you have obtained a lot of information which other people have not obtained. MR IRVING: Are you familiar with the collections of documents that I donated to the West German government and also to the Institute of History in Munich? A. I know that you have donated collections of documents, yes, and I am familiar with some parts of them. Q. And that historian around the world have frequently made use of these collections of documents? . P-92 A. They have been used by other historians, indeed, yes. Q. Would you agree that many of these documents are of high value? A. They are of a variable value, but some are valuable, yes. Q. The curate's egg, we used to say? A. Yes, it is a mixed bag -- as any collection of documents. Q. Yes. There are some very high grade private diaries of Hitler's private staff which nobody else has ever seen before? A. Yes, and which you have published. I am not disputing any of this. Q. In other words, people take with the one hand what they like about me, but with the other hand they are quite happy to ridicule me and smear me in public as a racist and Anti-Semite because they do not like the way I write my books? MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is not really a question. MR IRVING: Have you read the review that Professor Martin Broszat wrote of my book "Hitler's War" in the quarterly Journal of the Institute of Contemporary History? A. Yes, I am familiar with it. Q. It is a pretty corrosive review in parts, is it not? A. Indeed. Q. Are you familiar that there were personal reasons why Professor Martin Broszat would want to write corrosively about something I had written? . P-93 A. I think that, well, not personally, but you claim that there are. I am familiar with your allegation that there are. Q. If he married a lady ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Mr Irving, before we go on, I do not know what you are getting at. MR IRVING: I am going to keep it very low profile, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What possible relevance has the malice of somebody who has reviewed one of your books got to the present case? MR IRVING: Because the review written by Professor Martin Broszat is very heavily relied on by all the expert witnesses as evidence of my perversity and, for example, that is the origin of the Hitler's Table Talk distortion. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I can see the experts might share Professor Broszat's view of your historiography, but it is the expert's own opinion that accounts. MR IRVING: You know how one little shout brings down the avalanche? A. May I make two points there? One is that I have reinvestigated, as it were, reresearched, all the points made by Professor Broszat so that I am not reliant on what he says. The second point is I can direct you to my answer to your 11th question in the first set that you sent on 30th December. Q. I have not read it. . P-94 A. "If Broszat had personal motives for criticising Irving's work, these may help explain why he did so, but they do not of themselves invalidate the criticisms which have to be dealt with on their own terms". Q. Are you aware of the fact that Professor Broszat refused to allow me any space to reply in that learned journal? A. I will take your word for it that that was the case, though is it normal in that particular journal that -- -- MR JUSTICE GRAY: Whether it is or it is not, I do not think we are going to stay long with Professor Broszat. MR IRVING: Very well. Are you familiar with a document known as the Leuchter report, or have you heard of it? A. Yes. Q. Have you read it in any detail or are you familiar with ---- A. I have looked through it, yes. I am not an expert on Auschwitz, Mr Irving, but I have looked through it, yes. Q. Are you familiar with the fact that other documents superceded the Leuchter report, both written by revisionists and by anti-revisionists, if I can put it like that? There were subsequent investigations. A. Yes. Q. Have you heard of the Rudolf report? A. Yes. Q. The report by Germar Rudolf. A. I have heard of that, yes. . P-95 Q. Did you refer to the Germar Rudolf report in any of your expert paragraphs? A. To be honest, I am not quite sure. Certainly not in any detail. My report is not about Auschwitz. Q. If I could be fairly criticised for having relied entirely on the Leuchter report, does it not take the sting out of a lot of that criticism, in your view, that subsequent reports which were also available to me did the Leuchter job but better, if I can put it like that? A. I really cannot comment on that, Mr Irving. I thought this had been gone through in Professor van Pelt's report and in your cross-examination of him. My concern is not with Auschwitz. I am not an expert on these matters. Q. The tactical reason I have for putting this to you is that my friends tell me that I have not hammered this into his Lordship's consciousness enough? A. Well, to leave me out of it in that case if you are -- if you are doing the hammering, I will get out of the way in that particular one. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Forgive me. What has not penetrated my - --- MR IRVING: I am sure it has now, my Lord, because it is now in the transcript, purely that the Leuchter report was superseded by other reports on which I also relied in continuing to make the statements that I did. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I knew you relied on later reports, yes. That I had understood. . P-96 MR IRVING: There is no harm in repetition, is there? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Within reason, no. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure I knew what you thought I had not understood. MR IRVING: What do you think of Mr Kershaw as an historian on Adolf Hitler, Ian Kershaw, Professor Kershaw? A. I think he is a good historian. Q. A good historian? If I tell you that he declined to testify for us in my case here because his knowledge of German was totally insufficient, would that change your opinion of the books he writes about the leader of the Germans? A. You would have to provide me with a copy of the document in which he says that before I could accept that that is what he said. Q. You quote Robert Harris in the book "Selling Hitler" on paragraph 2.4.8 of your report? A. Give me the page number, please. MR IRVING: I do not have the page number in front of me. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We had it just a moment ago, did we not? Was it 700 or 600 and something? A. Much earlier, I think, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: We can find it on the transcript. MR IRVING: We have time, my Lord, because I have come to the end of my prepared questions on this topic and it may be your Lordship will not want me to ask questions about bundle E which is what I was proposing to do afterwards. . P-97 MS ROGERS: 212. MR JUSTICE GRAY: 212. Yes. I remember 212. Ask this and then we will consider bundle E. MR IRVING: Paragraph 248. You quote Robert Harris in "Selling Hitler", "when the forensic tests shortly afterwards revealed the Hitler diaries definitively as fakes, Irving issued a statement accepting the finding but drawing attention to the fact that he had been the first person to unmask them as forged". Do you remember that passage? A. Yes. It is not the one we have here. Q. 2.4.8? A. It is much earlier on, I think. MS ROGERS: 39. A. Yes. MR IRVING: "Irving issued a statement accepting the forgery finding but drawing attention to the fact that he had been the first person to unmask them as forged. 'Yes', said a reporter from The Times" I am quoting from your report, "when this was read out to him, 'and the last person to declare them authentic'." Do you remember that passage? A. Yes, I have got that, yes. Q. Would it not have been more accurate to write that this was Robert Harris quoting me as saying that rather than me saying that? A. Well, it is footnoted, Mr Irving. Footnote 26 refers to "Harris, Selling Hitler, page 359". So it is perfectly . P-98 clear that it is Harris. Q. But it is reported speech? A. Indeed, it is in Harris's book. It is quite clear in my book that it is in Harris's book. Q. Yes. Reverting to standards on anti-Semitism, what do you know about the statements made by leading politicians on the Jews during the war? Were they anti-Semitic in any degree, people like Winston Churchill or Anthony Eadon or Lord Halifax? Are you familiar with any of the things that they said? A. I am not, no. Q. No. I just want to put to you a little clip of extracts that I made from some of their private diaries, and I do not propose to read these out. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can you just help me ---- MR IRVING: It is headed: "Anti-Semitism in the diaries". MR JUSTICE GRAY: --- as to their relevance? MR IRVING: The relevance? It is arguable, my Lord. I was going to say on a scale of 1 to 10 is Lord Halifax mildly anti-Semitic if these ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: No, but what if he is? I mean, help me about that. MR IRVING: Then the question I was going to say is on the scale of what you know from my private diaries, what number do I reach? 1, 0.5? MR RAMPTON: I mean, the fact that these well-known people are, . P-99 as I can plainly see, having looked at some of this stuff, guilty of the same kind of blatant anti-Semitism as Mr Irving takes us nowhere. MR JUSTICE GRAY: It is a "so what?" point really? MR RAMPTON: Yes, it is a "so what?" point with a big question mark. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That must be right, must it not, Mr Irving? I mean, the charge is made against you of anti- Semitism. That may or may not be justified. It may be partly justified, I do not know. That is something I have got to decide. MR IRVING: But if I was told that I was only one-tenth as anti-Semetic as somebody as respectable as Anthony Eadon, for example, or as Lord Halifax, then I would be able to sleep more peacefully at night, than when I read in the newspapers that I am the bogey man in the nursery. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, I am afraid I take the view that we have to decide what anti-Semitism consists of, first of all, and then I have got to look and see what you have said and written and decide whether that constitutes anti-Semitism or is evidence of anti-Semitism. MR IRVING: I tried to get an explanation from the witness as ---- MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am not helped by knowing what -- I mean, times have changed, apart from anything else. MR IRVING: I wholeheartedly agree, my Lord. Times have . P-100 definitely changed in this respect and they have changed for the better.
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