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Shofar FTP Archive File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts//day022.16


Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day022.16
Last-Modified: 2000/07/24

MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Hang on, just let us try to -- the documents
are in such a mess, I am not even sure that I know which
clip you are ----
MR IRVING:  Bundle B, my Lord, pages 10 and 11 -- no, bundle
D.  Bundle D.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think I am there.
MR IRVING:  Yes.  These are the end notes for the original
edition of Hitler's War which we are already at page
2,653.  It is the original note 63 which was never
published, but it does contain this quotation of Lammers
speaking at Nuremberg, volume 11, page 61.  I accept it is
a brief excerpt and you are entitled to impugn it on that ground.
A.Yes.
Q.Does this not appear to refer to this particular episode?
A.It is not very satisfactory.  One would wish to see the original.
Q.The original document, yes?
A.I mean, we are relying on your notes here, Mr Irving - - it
is always a risky thing to do.
Q.But you accept that this bundle has been before the
instructing solicitors now for some two weeks, and that if

.  P-142



I had got it wrong, no doubt one of their army of
researchers would have by now brandished it and Mr Rampton
would have been on his hind legs.
MR RAMPTON:  Thank you very much for that, Mr Irving.  You may
keep your insults to yourself.  The fact is -- and,
indeed, imply them to yourself if you wish -- this
document, whatever it may be, if Mr Irving has relied upon
it, should have been disclosed by him.
MR IRVING:  By what?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  By you.
MR RAMPTON:  By you.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It looks as if it was though.
MR RAMPTON:  "What" may be the right description.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It looks as if it was.
MR IRVING:  It has been disclosed.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  It is 2653, is it not.
MR IRVING:  Oh, 2653 is part of the discovery.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is what I thought.
MR RAMPTON:  No, no, no, the original document.
MR IRVING:  Well, the original ----
MR RAMPTON:  If I am looking at page 10 of what Mr Irving
calls
his ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think the answer is it will be in
Munich,
will it not?
A.Yes.
MR IRVING:  Well, no, my Lord.  The answer is it will be
one of

.  P-143



the 46 blue volumes of the Nuremberg trial
proceedings,
which are no longer in my custody, possession or
power, of
course.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Because they are in Germany?
MR IRVING:  Well, they are probably in every major library
in
the world.
A.Yes.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Then why can we not -- why do you say the
Defendants have to go and get it?
MR IRVING:  I provided this excerpt, but I can certainly
provide the entire passage and your Lordship is quite
right ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think you have just accepted this
really is
not all that helpful by itself.
MR IRVING:  Yes, you are absolutely right, my Lord, and I
will
certainly provide the entire excerpt.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Shall we chase that up?
MR IRVING:  Yes.  But my point there is it has been now,
both
by way of discovery of the original German text and
also
in this bundle before the Defence now for two weeks,
in
this excerpted form, and I feel quite sure that had
there
been any discrepancy we would have heard about it.
  So, witness, if I can ask you the question,
Lammers there is appearing to say that at some time he
took the matter up with Hitler, including evacuation,
whatever is meant by that, and Hitler said, yes, he
had

.  P-144



given the evacuation order to Himmler, he did not want
to
hear any more about this whole thing until after the
war
is over?
A.He did not want any more briefings, yes.
Q.Yes.  So this is very much in the same kind of line as
the
Schlegelberg memorandum, Schlegelberger memorandum?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  On your interpretation of it?
MR IRVING:  On any interpretation, my Lord.
A.On your interpretation.
Q.I am just saying it is in line, in the same kind of
line.
I am not talking about being a dilatory Fuhrer --
somebody
who was always postponing things until tomorrow.  Now
we
have more interrogations, if we have finished with
that
particular one, Professor?
A.Yes.
Q.Professor, you yourself have quoted at somewhat
greater
length than I have interrogations of people like
Ficker
and Boley?
A.Yes.
Q.Can I just start off by looking at my excerpts?  If
you
wish to draw attention to any further excerpts that
you
have made -- this is page 12?
A.Yes.
Q."Cabinet Counselor Hans Ficker of the Reichs
Chancellery
stated in 1947:  from the invitation to the March 6th
meeting 'it was evident that evacuation or
sterilisation

.  P-145



were on the agenda'.  They took minutes.  Lammers took
this minute to the Fuhrer, and returned with a
memorandum, 'The discussion of the whole affair is to
be
postponed until the after the end of war'"?
A.Yes.
Q.That must have been in March 1942, full stop, and he
continues, "'To our horror, we learned that that then
continued behind the scenes'"?
A.Yes.
Q.And the original German is on the following pages,
I think.  Now, do you agree that on the basis of that
evidence they did not just discuss sterilization, but
wider matters as well?
A.No, no.  This is rather unreliable evidence,
particularly
this, "'To our horror, we learned that that then
continued
behind the scenes'" ----
Q.Yes.  I understand you do not like that, yes.
A.--- which I think is a very obvious piece of
self-exculpation.
Q.Unless it is true?
A.Ficker, if you look at the Himmler Dienstagebuch,
Ficker
actually had dinner with Himmler seven times in 1942
to 3
at the height of the extermination of the Jews and it
beggars belief to suppose that it continued.  It also
beggars belief to think that the, I suppose he means
extermination of the Jews here, carried on behind the

.  P-146



scenes without Hitler or anybody in the senior
positions
knowing about it.  Ficker and Boley, Ficker himself
admitted that he and Boley were together in an
internment
camp after the war, and they discussed the meeting of
6th
March 1942 more than a dozen times.  In other words,
they
cooked up a story, or a kind of version of the events,
between themselves, which would exculpate themselves.
That does not mean to say that everything they said
was
wrong, but one has to regard what they said with
extreme
caution, particularly what Ficker says, because he was
not
actually at the meeting of 6th March 1942 himself.
  There is also a problem when you look at
what we
are calling the Schlegelberger memorandum, because
that
simply reports Lammers's view that Hitler, in a kind
of
ongoing way, had said, repeatedly said, that he wanted
the
solution to the Jewish question postponed until after
the
war.  It does not say that there was a specific
meeting
about the event.  So I think we have to regard all of
these later documents ----
Q.Unless Lammers had gone to Hitler and Hitler said,
"Herr
Lammers, how often have I told you I do not want to
hear
about this"?
A.I think he would have said that he had gone to Hitler
because then that would have meant that he had got
from
Hitler a kind of decision about this, and that is not
what
happened.  That is not what happened.

.  P-147



Q.We do not know.  We are just tied to the documents in
front of us.
A.In you take the contemporary documents, still
remembering
that it is uncertain whether it really was from the
spring
of 1942, and if you regard the contemporary document
as
superior evidence of these cooked up stories from
after
the war in allied captivity by people who were trying
to
save their skins, then I think there is no indication
that
Herr Lammers did go specifically to Hitler.  I think,
if
Lammers went specifically to Hitler and got a ruling,
as
it were, then it would have been in a different form
from
this rather unsatisfactory scrap of paper we have.
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Professor Evans, do you think that that
is
borne out if you look at the text of the
Schlegelberger
memorandum?  Because whatever the tense of "habe" and
however you translate that, what it appears to me to
be
saying is that the Fuhrer has been on and on about
postponing the solution of the Jewish question.
A.Yes.
Q.Then he (Lammers) infers that the present discussions,
which you say are about Mischlinge, are only of
theoretical value.
A.Exactly, my Lord.
Q.Which is a very odd way of expressing himself if he
had
actually gone to Hitler and had, as it were, an
instruction from Hitler.

.  P-148



A.Precisely the point.
MR IRVING:  Is it possible, my Lord, I discussed this
question
with your Lordship, that Lammers, being an experienced
Civil Servant, did not want to burn his fingers by
taking
it up with Hitler again and just said this to the
minister?
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  That is not your case.
MR IRVING:  No, it is not.  But it is dangerous to
speculate
too far, to go too far outside ----
MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Of course.  I agree.
MR IRVING:  -- the parameters of the documents.  We are
just
trying to establish what the document can have meant,
who
knew about it and whether in fact these statements are
self serving.  Professor Evans, if there were a number
of
people who were at this meeting and they were all held
in
allied internment camps, would there not have been a
strong temptation for one of them to have purchased
early
release by shopping the others?  Did that not happen
quite
a lot?
A.I thought you said we should not speculate too much.
Q.Can I ask you if you have ever heard the witness
Wilhelm
Hottl H-O-T-T-L, who was an SS officer?
A.Where does he appear in relation to the Schlegelberger
memorandum?
Q.This is a typical example of a witness at Nuremberg
who
purchased favourable treatment by providing statements

.  P-149



that the Allies wanted to hear.
A.What has this to do with the Schlegelberger
memorandum?
Which of these people, I mean Ficker or Boley?  Ficker
was
not there so we discount him.  Is it Boley then, whom
you
are saying purchased ----
Q.I am not trying to trick you into an answer.  I am
just
asking you if it is not likely that, if there were
several
people in the allied interrogation centres or
internment
camps who had knowledge of this very delicate matter,
and
one of them had information that is the kind of
information that the Allies wanted to hear, he would
have
been quite happy to shop his colleagues by turning it
in
in order to get an early release date?
A.That is totally hypothetical.  Which person are you
talking about here who did that in relation to the
Schlegelberger memorandum, and what is the evidence
for
it?
Q.Was Gottfried Boley present?
A.Yes, at the 6th March meeting.  Indeed.
Q.Did he on September 14th 1945 -- I am now on the
second
paragraph of my page 12, my Lord -- describe
Eichmann's
uncouth behaviour at this conference and say how
Eichmann
used language about Jews being supplied like cattle or
being shipped around?  One man had objected, "one
can't
proceed against the Jews who behave correctly", and
Eichmann's number 2 said, "that comes under our police

.  P-150



judgment".  Is that a self-serving statement, do you
think, a man describing that the conference was
conducted
in these uncouth terms?
A.I think, if he had been really self-serving, he would
not
have said not "one man", he would have said he
protested.
Q.Yes, but why did he have to put in these ugly details
about a conference that he attended?
A.If I had been Boley and wanted to exculpate myself,
I would have that I was the man who objected.  I would
have said, "I said one cannot proceed against Jews
that
have behaved correctly, and I raise objections to all
this," but he does not do that, does he?
Q.His final statement on June 10th 1947 in the final
paragraph, where he says that Kritzinger sent him to
the
conference, Eichmann was in the chair, there were 20
or 25
participants, and he then testifies at this conference
there was no talk of "really grim things", but of the
preliminaries, the evacuation and sterilization.
A.Exactly so.

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