Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day029.17 Last-Modified: 2000/07/25 Q. It all comes from plate 2, does it not? A. Mr Rampton, if you are saying that plate 2 starts on page 18 ---- Q. I am. A. Do you know how many images there were per plate? Q. I have no idea. A. Ah. Q. I can count the pages, Mr Irving. I do not need images. A. It was either 25 ---- Q. 35. It does not matter. A. It does, because I think that you will find that the remaining images you got here probably come from yet a third plate. Q. No. A. Because you could not have had more than a certain number of images. Unfortunately, unless your Lordship has in front of you the actual colour photograph I gave you what the plates look like, I think those were the handwritten pages. I am sorry, that would not apply. That is handwritten pages and not the typed pages. The typed pages have more to a page than the handwritten images. Q. They seem to have got on to this plate, plate 2, and I do . P-150 not know whether plate 2 ends on 13th December. I think not, because the Russians tell us that the second plate is partly the 13th and partly the 14th, but we see, of the 13th, they got a total of 59 minus 18, which is 41 pages, and the whole of what you transcribed came from plate 2, not from plate 1, as you would have us believe. A. I am anxious not to put my foot in it by saying something ill considered. The final page in the clip appears to be the end of the day's entry, does it not? Q. It might be that it is, and it may be that there are some more pages in the plate relating to 14th December. It might be, it might not be, it might be the end of the plate, I have no idea. I suspect it is not the end of the plate because of what the Russians have just told us. However, the fact is that, starting on page 26, that is say, roughly speaking, eight pages into plate 2, you then succeed in transcribing your way all the way through in bits and pieces with some left out, to page 38. Yes? A. Right. I am sorry. I am getting the picture now. Obviously, you have thrown this at me just now as I am trying to get the overall picture. You know this better than I do. Which pages of the large type face have I actually transcribed? Q. No. They are not continuous. A. Yes, I know that. Q. You start on page 26, you continue on page 27. There is . P-151 then a gap starting at the bottom two lines of 27, and going through to the end of the first three lines on page 30. You then start again at "Ich habe noch gelegenheit". A. And there is nothing on those pages that I have taken out that you are worried about? Q. No, nothing at all. This is not what I am driving at. A. All right. I think this is the way to do it. Q. You then transcribe the whole of page 31. A. Yes. Q. The whole of page 32, the whole of page 33 and the first three lines of page 34. A. Yes. Q. You then jump to page 38, where you transcribe all but the last two lines of the large paragraph on that page. A. In the part that has been jumped there is there anything significant? Q. No, nothing significant. A. All right, so that is unimportant. Q. I do not know whether there is or there is not. I am not interested in that. A. That is the way to do it, so I know what you are getting at. Q. Exactly. A. Yes. Q. The fact is you managed to get to page 38 of a diary entry which, considering its date, is recording the speech to . P-152 the Gauleiters and I think the Reichskommissars and, considering its date, is a very important entry. A. Yes, if one had known that was there. But you have to remember, I am looking at these glass plates through something the size of my little finger nail like this all day long, dictating on to a tape. Q. Are you seriously telling me that you resisted the temptation to read this important speech of the Fuhrer from end to end, start to finish? A. There was a temptation to read the entire 50,000 pages, this is true. Q. Never mind the 50,000 glass pages. A. There is a limitation. I knew I was only going to be in Moscow for a few days before I flew back to England. Q. You are, or purport to be, an historian with a particular interest in Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler makes a important speech on 12th December 1941, which is recorded by his chum Joseph Goebbels. A. Yes. Q. You are in the middle of this important speech. Are you telling me that your ordinary curiosity would not have compelled you to read on to the end of this speech? A. I have to say that, even had I seen it, and this is an entirely different question, I would not have attached any importance to it, because it is the old Adolf Hitler gramophone record again. But the question you are asking . P-153 is why I did not read ahead and see that kind of thing was there, and the answer is quite simply I did not, so I did not. Q. I am suggesting that you did. It is to be found at the bottom of page 50, the relevant passage. MR RAMPTON: Bezuglich der Judenfrage ist der Fuhrer enschlossen, reinen tisch zu machen. A. Yes. Can you me where I stopped reading? Q. You stopped reading eleven pages earlier, bottom of page 38. Actually, to be fair, in lines it is probably 12 pages. A. So it was not a question of kind of my eye not running over on to the next page. I would have had to read on twelve pages on the glass plate, and then said to myself, hey, this is important, but I am afraid to say I would not have, for the simple reason that none of the other people present at that Gauleiter meeting, none of the other Gauleiters, and there were 48 of them, bothered to write anything about this particular speech being any different from the others. Q. Were you aware at this date when you were examining these plates, Mr Irving, what to you at one time at least was passionately important, that is to say, what you believed to be the signal ending the Final Solution, Himmler's telephone call to Heydrich on 30th November of this year, that is to say 12 years before the event which this diary . P-154 entry records? A. 12 days? Q. 12 days. What did I say? 12 years? A. Yes. Q. It is obviously not 12 years, is it? 12 days. That is elephantine, Mr Irving, but we will not worry about that. You knew well about that diary entry, did you not? A. Yes. I knew about a lot of documents, yes. Q. No, no. This is one of your cherished icons, or it was until it was shattered. A. Said to have been, yes, but I do not agree that it was. It was one of a long series of documents. Q. This was Hitler ordering a final end to any shooting of Jews for ever, or killing of Jews for ever. If you look at the introduction to the 1977 edition of Hitler's War, we can all see that. A. Yes. Q. Are you really telling me that a speech made 12 days after that crucially important event in your mind, you come upon a Hitler speech at the meeting with the Gauleiters and the Reichskommissars, and you do not read the whole of the speech? A. Quite simply did not, because of the very scarce resource, namely time. The archive opened and closed at set hours. I was only going to be in Moscow for two more days. I think this is already probably the last page of notes . P-155 that Miss Teplar made of our actual discoveries. We were running out of time. I could not afford just to indulge my curiosity. I had a shopping list to fill for the Sunday Times. There were certain items we were trying to obtain. I was reading these glass plates under extreme conditions of awkwardness, namely using a 16 times little thumbnail magnifier. I did not do badly under the circumstances, and I agree I should be horse whipped for having not seen that there but, even had I seen it, I would not have used it, I do not think. Q. You would have suppressed it anyway, would you? It does not seem to you significant? A. I do not think so. I think the Schlegelberger document is of far greater significance than this. This is just the old Adolf Hitler gramophone record. I made that prophecy then and they do it ---- Q. Sure. This is the prophecy coming to actuality, if I may borrow from the French for a moment. It is being realized. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they should once more bring about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation in doing so. This was no mere talk. This is on 12th December. The world war is there. The annihilation of Jewry must be the necessary consequence. Then why was the world war there, Mr Irving? Why was Hitler speaking to the Gauleiters on 12th December? The reason is that he declared war on . P-156 United States the day before. A. That is right. He had picked up the gauntlet. Q. Yes. Do you tell me honestly that you did not think that that speech by Adolf Hitler the day after the declaration of war by Germany on the United States, making this into a world war, was something you were not interested in reading from beginning to end? A. This is the difficulty. If you are sitting in a library, in your book lined cave, just picking volumes off a shelf with an index and a contents list, with the content of every entry in the diary, then this is made so easy for you. But, if you sitting in a Russian archive without even a microfilm reading machine, and you are looking at glass plates, and you are the first person to open those boxes in 55 years, you have not the faintest idea what lies ahead of you. Q. This is the date, is it not, Mr Irving, on which in effect Hitler, having declared war on the United States and thus having brought about a world war, declares war on the Jews? A. No. Q. He says to them, does he not: "Right, mates, you brought about the first war, I told you that you would be for it if there was a second war. Now this is it. Face the music". A. Actually, the declaration of war was the next day. . P-157 Q. What, the 13th? A. That is right. Hitler declared war on the United States on 13th December, and the speech is on the 12th. The diary entry is the 13th, but Goebbels also wrote it up one day later. It is not any significance, that point, just ---- Q. I rather think it may be. I had always thought that it was 11th December. I do not know why I thought that. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Just pause a moment. MR RAMPTON: They think it is the 11th, too. They know a lot of history, far more than I do. A. I would not bet on it, but I think I am right. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think there is a reference, which caught my eye as I was looking through, in Goebbels diary to the United States. I cannot now find it. MR RAMPTON: Dr Longerich thinks it is the 11th, my Lord. MR JUSTICE GRAY: What would be conclusive, with all respect to him, is if Goebbels mentioned it as having happened before he wrote his diary entry. MR RAMPTON: Or if Mr Irving did, but I cannot find it in the index. A. It would be in my book Hitler's War, but of course that is just a pack of lies, is it not? MR RAMPTON: No. There are some things that are right. For example, the name on the cover, Hitler, and war. A. I think a sudden silence is going to fall among the--- - . P-158 Q. It is quite an important point so, if your Lordship does not mind, we will find out, on the best authority, when it was declared. A. I think it is a "Who wants to be a millionaire" question, is it not? Q. Not really, I think. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Page 15 of Goebbels diary entry? MR RAMPTON: Page 15 in this Russian version, my Lord? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes. I am not sure if it actually does answer the question, but it is coming close.
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