Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day003.05 Last-Modified: 2000/07/29 Q. -- Rosenberg was perhaps, I do not know. Is there anything you know of that prevents one from supposing that Hitler might have telephoned as he apparently was able to use the telephone on the train, was he not? A. Himmler, you are talking about? . P-36 Q. Himmler I mean, telephoned the Wolf's Lair and said "can I come and talk to you about something"? A. No reason to suppose that at all, yes. Q. So why you do use the word "summon"? A. Because then Hitler would have said "all right, come and see me". Q. You see in the context, do you agree, the word "summoned"? A. Yes. Q. Means that he is being summoned in order to discuss the fate of the Berlin Jews? A. In the context. Q. Yes. Amongst other things, perhaps? A. No, I disagree with you Mr Rampton, on November 30th, he, Himmler was summoned to the Wolf's Lair for a secret conference with Hitler at which the fate of Berlin's Jews was clearly raised. Q. By whom? A. We do not know. Q. Then you go on, at 1.30 p.m. Himmler was obliged to telephone from Hitler's bunker? A. Yes. Q. Who could have obliged, that is to say compel, Himmler to do such a thing? A. His own inner conscience. Q. That is what it was, was it? A. That is why I used word "obliged" otherwise I would have . P-37 said "ordered". MR JUSTICE GRAY: The reality of the way, would you not accept, Mr Irving, of the way it is put in your book is that the reader is going to infer that that was an order from Hitler to him? A. My Lord, I use my words with utmost care when I write passages like that. I will go backwards and forwards over them looking for a word which I considered to be justified by the evidence but not implying or imputing or inferring too much. If I used the word "obliged" then it was because I hesitated to use the word "order" but for some reason he made the telephone conversation. He did not wait until he got back to his own headquarters, he immediately phoned Heydrich from Hitler's bunker without even getting over to the local phone box, he phoned Heydrich with these instructions saying "stop the killing". MR RAMPTON: That is what you intended to convey in that passage of that page of Hitler's War 1977? A. That is all that I felt it was safe to convey on the basis of the very skimpy evidence I had at that time. At that time, of course, I did not even have the decodes, but now the decodes confirm me. Q. So you say. Let us turn to page (xiv) of the introduction to this book, may we? A. Yes. . P-38 Q. Perhaps for completeness start at the bottom of page 13: "Many people, particularly in Germany and Austria had an interest in propagating the accepted version of the order of one mad man originated the entire massacre." We are talking here about Holocaust in the old sense, old, in the Irving history. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I am so sorry, Mr Rampton, I am lost, page 13. MR RAMPTON: (Xiii) of the introduction. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Thank you. MR RAMPTON: I will start again. Last two lines bottom of page 13: "Many people, particularly in Germany and Austria had an interest in propagating the accepted version that the order of one mad man originated the entire massacre." That is to say the massacre of the Jews, those are my words, my Lord. "Precisely when the order was given in what form has admittedly never been established. In 1939? But the secret extermination did not begin operating until December 1941. At the January 1942 Bunzig conference? But the incontrovertible evidence is", note those words, Mr Irving, in the light of your recent answers, "the incontrovertible evidence is that Hitler ordered on November 30th 1941 that there was to be 'no liquidation' of the Jews (without much difficulty I found in Himmler's private files his own handwritten note on this)." In the light of that, Mr Irving, would you care to revise the . P-39 answers you gave a moment ago? A. No. Q. Well, what do those words mean? Do they speak for themselves or do they not, that I have just read? A. I have done exactly what any normal editor would do, you present the evidence and then you draw conclusions. I present the evidence in the body of the book. I even in this one case print a facsimile of the document which is pivotal to this particular argument and then in the introduction (as a good author should) I put my principal conclusions. Here I am putting my principal conclusion as the author, David Irving, that I draw the conclusion from this episode that Hitler had intervened to stop -- and here is the error, the liquidation of the Jews. What I should have written is "the liquidation of a transport of Jews". That was the state of my knowledge at the time I wrote this version of this book. Subsequently of course I amended it. Q. I think you told me yesterday that the only evidence you had for the order of Hitler was that Himmler was there at the time? A. The only evidence that I had for an order of Hitler? Q. Yes, was that Himmler was at the Wolfsschanze at the time? A. I think we would have to see exactly what I testified before I would agree to that brief summary. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think it is right, but if you want to be . P-40 referred to it then no doubt you should be. MR RAMPTON: A summary? A. I hate to agree with vulgarised versions of what I testified. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Let us have a look and see what you did say. MR RAMPTON: My Lord, one could start at line 20 on page 285 perhaps? A. 285? Q. 285, line 20, I am trying not to take too much of it. I suppose it really begins at line five on page 285, but I hope I summarized it fairly? A. I do not think you did, but I will certainly stand by what I stated on those two pages. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Look at line 286, line 3 and onwards. MR RAMPTON: Yes, please. A. This is the question, of course, and not the answer. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Yes, but there is an answer after the question. MR RAMPTON: At line nine there is an answer. A. Yes. Q. My summary was a fair one. There is no evidence beyond the fact that Himmler was at the bunker that day and had lunch with Hitler an hour later, is there? A. Evidence for what? Q. For an order from Hitler that Jews -- that the train load of Jews, let us stick with that for the moment? . P-41 A. This is -- Q. Should be not liquidated? A. -- I do not mean this offensively, but this is the common sense interpretation of the evidence lying before us, rather the perverse interpretation. We will always has versions or two interpretations, one is the obvious one, which is -- and the other is the perverse one. The obvious one is if Himmler goes to Hitler's headquarters and is handed a phone at some time on his way out and he then has to make phone call to Heydrich saying, "stop killing the Berlin Jews", then there is some close connection between that and the fact he has seen Hitler that day. Q. That is a possible interpretation, we in this court, and I do not know about the court of history, we in this court when we say "evidence" we mean "evidence" not "inference". A. The issues that are being pleaded are mistranslation, or distortion, deliberately mistranslation, distortion, manipulation and I do not think that the particular avenue we are going down leads in the -- Q. I will put it bluntly to you and then I will leave it, you can deny it, because you will deny it, I am sure; (a) you deliberately mistranslated it, you inflated from one train load into Jews generally, that is number one; and (b) you inserted an order from Hitler for which there was no evidence? . P-42 A. -- I will take those two allegations seriatim; that I inflated it deliberately, there is not a shred of evidence for that. The evidence is quite clear, that as soon as Dr General Flemming brought to me the evidence there was one train load of Jews which was in trouble that day, I immediately and in subsequent editions of the book revised it to the narrow interpretation of the word "transport" rather than the wider interpretation. Q. And you are sticking with the Hitler order answer? A. As being the reasonable rather than perverse analysis of the documents at that time before us. I emphasise of course it has now been very amply confirmed by the intercepts I read out in my bundle this morning. Q. Very well, then, we must look at another document. This is one of your documents? MR JUSTICE GRAY: Before you do can I ask one rather mundane question. MR RAMPTON: Yes, of course. MR JUSTICE GRAY: But I think you will understand why I ask it, Hitler's headquarters or the Wolf's Lair, how big a building or collection of buildings was that? A. At that time it was not a big formidable complex which exists today, huge concrete bunkers. There were one or two air raid shelters, but it was mostly in the form of wooden barracks scattered around in a compound of a 2 or 3 kilometres area with minefields and forests. . P-43 Q. How many people would work there? A. Probably in the order of one thousand people including all the escorts and security. It had various inner areas and so called "sperrkreise", which were the security zones and he was in security zone A. But if it is ausdembunker, from the bunker, then it is from Hitler's bunker. MR JUSTICE GRAY: By which you mean an office or -- A. No, Hitler -- Q. -- a part of the compound where Hitler was himself based? A. -- in the security zone A there was the bunker in which Hitler resided, lived and conducted his conferences. Later on it was massively reinforced after the Allied air raids started. MR RAMPTON: This is all on the same topic, Mr Irving, so that the document you are will next need is to be found in bundle D8(iii), somebody will give it to you (same handed). A. Very well. Q. The page I want is 1042. A. Yes. Q. At the same time could I give you and his Lordship -- I have composed a page of the reprinted Himmler logs for Sunday 30th November 1941 and Monday 1st December 1941, I have taken from that Witte book. I have taken out the footnotes because I wanted the text. I wanted the text to appear unvarnished. First of all would like you to look . P-44 at the page in D8(iii) page in D8(iii), 1042. This is taken from your website; do you recognize it? A. Yes. Q. You do, Mr Irving. At the bottom of the page the last entry starts: Meanwhile another page from the Himmler file in the Moscow archives obtained by David Irving on Sunday May 17th 1998, reveals the Reischsfuhrer's appointments for November 30th 1941, see above. The day of the telephone call with Heydrich". Turn over now to page 1043. "This suggests that Mr Irving's original theory that Himmler discussed the matter with Hitler before phoning Heydrich is wrong. Himmler saw SS Sturmbannfuhrer Gunther d'Alquen, a journalist, from 12 to 1 p.m. (Reisebericht uber SS Pol Division [that is short for politzei] u. [that is an abbreviated U stop] Totenkopfdivision) then worked for an hour ('gearbeitet') during which he made the phone call, received General Dietl from 2 to 2.30 p.m." I will not bother to read the next bit. "And only then, at 2.30 p.m., went for lunch until 4 p.m. with Hitler ('Mittagessen b. Fuhrer') that is short for bei, yes ? A. Yes. Q. That is your account, must postdate the 17th May 1998, must it not? According to that entry anyway it does, if . P-45 you look at the first page? A. Yes. I did not understand the question, last question, it was what? Q. Well, if you say that you arrive at this conclusion in consequence of the discovery of a Himmler, a file page on 17th May 1998, this, what shall we say, "confession" must postdate that, must it not? A. Perhaps I should explain to his Lordship, if your Lordship is wondering why it is written in the third person. This is a page. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I do not think that matters at all.
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