Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day005.04 Last-Modified: 2000/08/01 . P-28 Q. I do not know it actually. It is very interesting, but I do not understand what it has to do with an answer to my question. A. Because it was typical of the tragedies that were being caused by the evil genius, Dr Goebbels, in his ^^ doktrene insistence on the execution of these anti-Jewish measures. MR JUSTICE GRAY: I think we are sliding away, are we not, from is what is going to be put. MR RAMPTON: I am completely baffled why it is obvious that that diary entry is a reference to the Gottschalt tragedy. A. Because the previous diary has been full of the Gottschalt tragedy and we happen to know what happened to Mr Gottschalt and his family. Q. Shall we have a look see what the "evil genius Dr Goebbels" actually wrote in his diary. Keep what you said he wrote open, if you please, and turn to page 338 of Professor Evans' report. I remind you you wrote only this: "The Fuhrer again instructed Goebbels to pursue a policy against the Jews 'that does not cause us endless difficulties' and told him to go easy on mixed marriages in the future." Now, please, look at paragraph 1 under (D) in brackets on page 338 of Professor Evans' report. I read the English first: "The Fuhrer also completely agrees with my views with reference to the Jewish question." According to Dr Goebbels, there was no water between them in relation to how the Jews should be treated. A. I put my comment on that in my foot note saying, well, . P-29 clearly there was because here is Hitler saying, "Do not keep causing me problems". Q. Let us see what he reports Hitler as actually having said: "He", the Fuhrer, that is, "wants an energetic policy against the Jews which, however, does not cause us unnecessary difficulties". Three things about that, Mr Irving. The word "energetic" has been omitted by you. You have omitted the word "however", "alladings" in German, and you have mistranslated "unnecessary", "unnotige", as "endless"? A. The latter one I accept. Q. Where is the ---- A. But that is not -- that does not really seriously change the burden of what I have said. Q. You have altered the whole sense of that sentence, have you not? A. May I just comment? The word "alladings" is a much stronger form of "however". The normal word for "however" is "aber". "Alladings" is a much stronger word than "however". It implies a much stronger contrast. Q. Where is the word "enagische" in your translation? A. I have not omitted that from the quoted passage. Q. Oh, you have just ignored it. A. No. On the contrary, Mr Rampton, you are not obliged to put in every single word from a sentence unless you put it . P-30 in quotation marks, and I will have a word or two to say about that with Mr Evans when the time comes. In one quotation he left out 86 words, three sentences, five full stops and two semi-colons. Q. Well, well, Mr Irving, I have sufficient confidence in Mr Evans to think that he may be able to deal with that. A. I may be able to shake your confidence when the time comes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Don't let us -- it not fair -- this is the point that is being put to you -- the way you represent this in your book on Goebbels suggests that a wholly passive policy towards the Jews is what Hitler is telling Goebbels should be followed? A. My Lord ---- Q. And, in fact, the word "energetic" is the opposite of "passive", is that a fair way of putting the point? MR RAMPTON: It is another complete perversion of the ---- A. I have not used the word "passive". I have not used the word "energetic", my Lord. I have left it neutral. We have to bear in mind that we are not dealing with a transcript of what Hitler said by court reporters. We are dealing with a passage that had been filtered through the evil brain of Dr Goebbels who I have shown in the rest of the book has a track record of doing things first and then claiming in his diary afterwards that he had the Fuhrer's sanction for it. For example, when he made Hitler stand . P-31 as Vice President which was a disaster for him in 1932, events like that. The Goebbels' diary again and again and again and the Kristallnacht, the Reich, the Night of Broken Glass, is another example of Goebbels doing something first and subsequently claiming in his diary that he had Hitler's sanctions. So you have to be very careful before you use the Goebbels' diary as pure gold source material. You have to refilter it out of that evil brain. Q. Mr Irving, can we please take this in two stages? Do you agree that the version which you have given in the book is completely contrary in sense to that which Dr Goebbels put in his diary? A. On the contrary, it is quite plain from the Goebbels' diaries that the suicide of the Gottschalt family had caused uproar in Berlin life. This is, undoubtedly, what they are referring to, the fact that the onset of the Holocaust in Berlin, if I can put it that way, the deportation of train loads of Jews beginning at this time is leading to these human tragedies. It is precisely what Hitler does not want. He is now fighting a desperate war on the Eastern Front, things are turning nasty, the rains have begun, the frost is setting in, and here is this evil little man in Berlin who is causing him totally needless problems, and Hitler saying, "By all means go ahead with . P-32 your doktriner programmes but stop causing me difficulties". And this is the meaning of that sentence. Goebbels has written it down in the diary and you have to refilter it back into the correct sense because, you remember, it has been given negative spin by Goebbels and you have to give it the right spin again. Goebbels, remember, is an arch liar. He is a minister of propaganda. The diaries show this again and again -- an extremely dangerous weapon to use. Q. He is always telling the truth when he says something which in your mind is favourable to him, but whenever he says anything which is unfavourable to Hitler, he in your mind is a liar and, therefore, you feel justified in obliterating that from the text of your books, do you not? A. Mr Rampton, I do not want to labour the point, but I am sure you are familiar with witnesses and you know how to sort out the evidence they provide which is evidence in their own self-interest and evidence against their self-interest. If you apply that kind of criterion to the statements and diaries -- for example, what he writes about himself, you have to be mistrustful about, even when he writes about Hitler you have to be mistrustful because there is the element of the hero worship; but, on the other hand, what he writes about two or three, C or D, shall we say, in the alphabet, persons is more likely to be accurate because he would have no axe to grind one way . P-33 or the other. You have to apply these kinds of filters. Q. Yes, Mr Irving. I will put it once more in order to get the reader to think that Hitler's policy towards the Jews or the policy that he wanted was really quite kind, gentle, much less ferocious and severe than Dr Goebbels, you have actually doctored the words which Dr Goebbels reports Hitler having said to him? A. What is the essence of this quotation, Mr Rampton? The essence of this quotation is not all the rest of those eight lines quoted by your Mr Evans. Yesterday the quotation to the words does not cause us unnecessary difficulties. That is Adolf Hitler saying to Goebbels, "Don't cause us unnecessary difficulties" and there is no way you can talk yourself out of that particular quotation, Mr Rampton. Q. We can echo that with what General Bruns reported and what Wisliceny reported. "Do not let us make a stink about it, but let us be very energetic in this persecution, discreet cautious, careful, concealed"? A. Well, no doubt you will advance documents and lead evidence in that direction, but those very words, Adolf Hitler, quoted even by the victim himself, Goebbels himself, at whom the criticism is being directed, saying, "Do not cause us unnecessary difficulties". There is no way that your Mr Evans or you yourself, Mr Rampton, can talk yourself out of those five words. Whatever else you . P-34 want to say about the rest of that quotation and what use is made of it mind. Do you want me to have two or three times as much quoted from the diary? If I did that, the book would have been 2,000 pages long. Q. Do you not see a difference between "unnecessary" and "endless"? A. No, not in burden, not in weight, not in thrust, not in push, not in emphasis. Q. "An energetic policy will cause some difficulties, but let us do it in a way that does not cause difficulties which are not necessary to the carrying out of the energetic policy"? A. Well, the energetic policy, of course, we have accepted; people were being roused in the middle of the night by the Gestapo and given half an hour to pack their goods and packed on trains to Riga and Minsk. That is an energetic policy and there is no denial of that in this book. Q. Now, I want to, if I may, go back to these table talks? A. Hitler is saying, "For God's sake, do not take it too far. You are causing us a problem. Q. For which you will still need Professor Evans in a moment. Am I right that you gave us -- I am not going to go to the transcript; it is too time consuming -- the impression -- you will tell me if I am wrong -- yesterday that these table talks were little private gatherings between often, not always of course, Hitler and, say, . P-35 Himmler or Goebbels, the Nazi high ups, perhaps Heydrich might be there as a particular honour, and, therefore, there was absolutely no bar, inhibition or restraint on the use of direct language about what was happening, for example, in the East? A. Not completely right, Mr Rampton, because certain subjects were taboo. That I do grant. Q. Yes. A. The Schierak ^^ family at the end of June 1943, when Henrietta von Schierak ^^ said to Hitler that she had seen Jews being loaded on tucks in Amsterdam and was this kind of inhumanity necessary? There was a lot of glaring went on and the family was banished from Hitler's house for the rest of the war. MR JUSTICE GRAY: All right, but the fact is I think you were suggesting there was a degree of candour because Hitler was amongst friends? A. Well, he is talking to people whom we know were actually the mass murderers, but I was asked a question, Mr Rampton asked, I tried to answer honestly that, in fact, they were taboo subjects. MR RAMPTON: There will have been at many of these lunches, or I do not know whether they were really lunches or dinners or whatever, a whole lot of people who were not Himmler or Goebbels, but much lower down the scale, were there not? A. People like Heinreich Heim who was Martin Bormann's . P-36 private adjutant and took the initial record. He was present. Q. And secretaries and, what are they called, orderlies? A. Yes. Q. People like Schmunet, Schau? A. Yes. Q. The secretary, Krista Schroeder -- people like that? A. Yes. Q. So it is hardly surprising that in that company, as opposed to direct face, one-to-one discussion with Himmler or Goebbels, Hitler's language should be somewhat cloaked? A. That is possible, yes. Q. I am going to deal with it now because I do not want to have to come back to it. Do you remember, you have published this information (and as information certainly not disputed by us) there was a report, I think, in March 1943, by Himmler's statistician, a man called ^^Korheir? A. Dr Richard Korheir.
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